Bernard Spiegal

The numbers are lower at the adventure playgrounds. Parents are worried about letting their children out and children are worried about going out. Regular users and those children who are dropped off and picked up are coming but there are no passers by.

Islington feels like a quieter, sadder place.

I have been speaking to people living and working in the borough as much as I can, there is sorrow but there is also fear. One mum said she no longer feels able to let her son go to play with his friend on the local estate – an estate where there have been a number of knife attacks. Knife attacks by children on children that are not reported on the front pages because nobody died. Another mum talked about her fear when she knows her son is walking back home at 10.30pm from his class. She knows she can’t…