The perfect monument for Princess Diana

There is a place for risk and danger in our lives, and the sooner children learn that, the better

As she looks down from the private cloud in heaven which is surely hers, Princess Diana may be having conflicting thoughts about the granite monument which has been erected for her in Hyde Park. A wry celestial smile might have crossed her features as the Royal Family turned out in force for the opening of the memorial fountain. There will have been pleasure at the sight of children and adults splashing about for the monument's first days.

As she looks down from the private cloud in heaven which is surely hers, Princess Diana may be having conflicting thoughts about the granite monument which has been erected for her in Hyde Park. A wry celestial smile might have crossed her features as the Royal Family turned out in force for the opening of the memorial fountain. There will have been pleasure at the sight of children and adults splashing about for the monument's first days.

Now, perhaps, there is disappointment. First, the pumps were clogged up by some unexpected summer leaves. Then, worse, a casualty list of those who had slipped in the cascading waters and grazed or cut themselves became such a cause for concern that the whole thing is in jeopardy. "The fountain will remain closed until all those involved are satisfied it is safe to reopen it to the public," someone from the Royal Parks said this week.

To those of us who have had the pleasure of visiting the memorial during its brief period of activity, the fact that it has so quickly turned out to be something of a health hazard will come as no surprise. I was one of a team of critics on Radio Four's Saturday Review, and enjoyed a paddle there myself earlier in the month. It was definitely a very superior water feature, I decided, worth the delays in the project if perhaps not quite the £3.6m that it had cost. The water which cascaded over artistically corrugated steps of grey Cornish granite provided a highly acceptable paddling experience.

It was also, clearly, lethal. Granite, even expensively roughened granite, is slippery, its edges sharp and hard. To ask people to paddle on its rutted surface, which includes steps of four or five inches was asking for trouble - and that was before slimy green algae inevitably began to gather on the stone. Even I, an adult with the agility of a mountain goat, found that I had to take care as I walked. In my radio review, I included a grim prediction that, within a few days, certain rather painful health and safety issues would emerge.

There is something bizarre happening here beyond the fact that a monument to a great lover of children has been cracking open their little heads. As a nation, we have never been more obsessed by regulations to protect ourselves from objects which might just do us harm. The swings and slides of civic playgrounds are forever getting smaller, slower and tamer for fear of accidents and law suits. For those building or converting a property, an ever-lengthening list of building regulations covers every move, providing firm instructions on the acceptable height of electrical sockets, the need for handrails on every flight of stairs, compulsory air-vents in every room, heat regulators on every tap.

Under these circumstances, it is a genuine mystery why a public monument largely designed for small children should be quite so hazardous. One is almost tempted to conclude that its architect, Cathryn Gustafson, was making some kind of moralistic point. Just as the life of the Princess of Wales exemplified that pain that can exist behind beauty, the memorial fountain would reveal that innocent pleasures can have hidden perils.

Public monuments have an odd habit of representing a different, deeper reality than the one which originally lay behind their creation. The Dome, it seems, may now become a giant casino, the perfect symbol for early 21st-century Britain. The Diana Memorial Fountain proves, with every bruise and cut to its visitors, that there is a limit to how cosseted by regulation we should allow ourselves to become. The senior bobby who this week launched the Government's pamphlet about terrorism was right when he argued that we have been "weaned away from risk" and, as a result, are more hopeless and helpless in our everyday lives.

It has become accepted in our culture that almost every matter of safety is the responsibility of government, or the local council with its health and safety experts. This whittling away of personal responsibility is undoubtedly good news for lawyers, but it is politically harmful, too. Those who expect the state to protect them from life's everyday hazards become, over time, less independent-minded and self-reliant.

There is a connection between leaving every small matter of personal safety to regulation-wielding suits in authority and abrogating political responsibility in the same way. A brain-softening, will-sapping process sets in, leading to a morose fatalistic conviction that there is nothing that the individual can do about the life's big decisions, beyond going for compensation when something goes wrong.

Am I reading too much into a malfunctioning water feature? Perhaps. But I hope that the Royal Parks authorities will be brave enough not to replace that expensive granite with material that is bouncy and kiddy-friendly, and will allow the water to gush as busily as before, perhaps with a small warning sign to cover themselves against lawsuits. There is a place for risk and danger in our lives, and the sooner children learn that, the better. As Paul Simon once wrote, you've got to learn how to fall before you learn to fly.

terblacker@aol.com