What a shower!

Rachel Johnson on how the nation can be spared more Diana Memorial Fountain misery 1 t was a perfect London autumn day. In Hyde Park the leaves were turning fiery gold, the tang of bonfire sharpened the air, and divorced fathers mooched along, occasionally pausing to pick up their bawling offspring when they crashed off their micro-scooters into dog mess, 'I want to see the Diana Memorial Fountain,' begged Robin, aged 40 and three quarters. 'And get an ice cream,' he whined. So we went, all of us, in pilgrimage, four adults and eight children (five of them Robin and Heather's). We hought ice creams and wandered around the fountain, which is, as you probably know, not a fountain at all but an ovalshaped hydraulically engineered watercourse carved out of 545 slabs of De Lank granite, hewn from quarries in the heart of the Duchy of Cornwall, and machinetooled in the foothills of County Down.

Robin's four-year-old, Mercy, was thrilled with the children's new amenity in Hyde Park, and begged her mummy to take her to the grey, granite shallow rim of the monument, which she unaccountably called the 'paddling pool'. She hopped up, and began tracing the course of Diana's life — i.e., walking around the fountain — just as the architect Kathryn Gustafson had originally planned for kiddies to do, before it all went pear-shaped.

So the little girl toddled from the chuckling waters of Diana's girlhood to the bouncing eddies of the rock'n'roli years, until she reached the turbid torrents of the royal marriage. And then a shout rent the air, just as Mercy was closing the oval to reach the pool of reflection, a place of still water designed to symbolise a princess finally at peace.

'OFF! NOW!' screamed the guard, bristling with walkie-talkies. 'I said, GET YOUR CHILDREN OFF!'

'It's all right,' said Heather soothingly. 'I'm holding her. I'll take responsibility. She's mine.'

'I don't care whose she is. It's not safe,' the guard went on, in a raised voice. 'Can't you read? Honestly,' she tutted. 'It's the adults, they're the worst.'

Just to refresh your memory, by the way: in Gustafson's original design pitch to journalists and the Friends of Hyde Park, she said the fountain would be inclusive, like Diana, and child-friendly, also like Diana, but most of all it would be 'an environment you could walk into and become part of'.

Anyway, we left the fenced-off area, feeling somewhat beleaguered, and read the signs that have been erected alongside the high fence that now surrounds the football-pitch-sized area containing the fountain. There are no fewer than seven things you cannot do at the fountain, including walking or running in the water of the memorial, a public fountain that is patrolled round the clock by several guards who do not trust parents to supervise their own children.

That was in October. And now they are closing the fountain yet again before Christmas, in order to install safety bars across the bridges. These gullies apparently pose a risk to children even though the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has described the fountain as being as 'safe as any area of water could be'. The Royal Parks has admitted to me that they will be closing the fountain on and off until they can returf the ground around it with the 'right mix of grasses' successfully (it is, at the moment, a sea of mud and goose poop). And if the grass doesn't take, the Parks will have to seek planning permission to lay down a hard standing path, which could take up to two more years of intermittent closures.

I agree. This is no fountain. It's a shower.

But now the £3.6 million fountain — which takes up one hectare, or 1 per cent, of Hyde Park — has been installed, I reckon we're stuck with it Though why the Princess needed a third memorial in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, on top of a Diana playground and a Diana walkway, when the Queen Mother got only a pair of gates, still puzzles me.

But I do think it's high time the fountain's 'managers', the hapless Royal Parks, who didn't want the thing in the first place, toughened up a bit. After all, they're the ones who are having to pay out of budget — to the tune of over £220,000 a year, double the original maintenance estimate — now that the fountain needs presidential-level security detail.

Kenneth Stern, who has been chairman of the Friends of I lyde Park for four years, went to the gala opening of the fountain. At the ceremony, he challenged Gordon Brown to take financial responsibility for the fountain, which was dumped on the Royal Parks by Tessa Jowell (who selected the Gustafson design). He explained to the Chancellor that if the Parks had to pay twice as much as the architects had estimated for maintenance, they would be forced to commercialise other areas, such as the much-worn Parade Ground, in order to recoup funds. The Chancellor just shrugged and looked away,' recalls Stern. 'Tie said we all have our problems.' Stern wrote to Mr Brown, on behalf of the Friends, and received no reply.

So there's no succour from Gordon. But as a daily park user, here is my blueprint of how the poor Royal Parks can avoid more Diana Fountain misery. Here, for free, is my plan for Hyde Park to escape being saddled with an expensive white elephant on the scale of the Millennium Dome (only this one's hard-wearing and non-porous and is unfortunately for keeps.) One, take down the high fencing attached to stakes. It is ugly, hectoring, and above all this will give the grey-leg geese which have migrated all the way from Canada and Scandinavia to visit the fountain the runway space to take off again, and prevent them 'soiling' the turf.

Two, forget about the new safety-bars to prevent children and troll-sized adults from accidentally getting wedged into storm drains. The Royal Parks spokesman, Theo Moore, already knows they're a waste of time. But it's "ealth and safety, innit?'

'Now we have forbidden visitors from walking in the fountain, it is highly unlikely that any of them will become stuck,' he admitted to me. 'But it was felt that it was always a possibility, and we should install them. Just in case.'

Three, remove the officious guards. What other public fountain in the history of the world has needed full-time security?

Four, allow children and parents to do whatever they like in the fountain at their own risk.

Five, go ahead and install the 'autumn filtration system' (i.e., gratings to remove leaves) and returf, but after that, please, please allow nature to take its course.

After all — and I must say I've been looking forward to saying this — all of the above is, I feel in my heart, just what the Princess would have wanted.

Rachel Johnson's The Mummy Diaries is published by Viking Penguin.