Ceri and I thought you would like our front cover photograph: Ashen Grove shortly after its construction in 1910. Certainly there was no parking problem for early residents! They would have found it hard - or impossible - to believe that nearly everyone today has what was once a luxury for only the most affluent, the motor car.

Life in pre and post war Ashen Grove has recently been beautifully drawn and recorded by an erstwhile Ashen Grove dweller, the famous author Raymond Briggs. Although its sales haven't rivalled his best selling "Snowman", "Ethel and Albert", his account of his parents' married life and his own childhood in Ashen Grove, is proving to be widely read and much publicised.

It's ironic, then, that today's Wimbledon Park children may not much longer have access to a nearby library where they can browse through the work of this multi-faceted and celebrated author who is familiar with the schools, sights and even some of the people that they know. This would be a lamentable setback in the current crusade for higher standards of literacy and would undermine the efforts of those working to maintain Wimbledon Park as a warm, interdependent community.

Naturally, if our library disappears, our traffic will be exacerbated, as people are forced to drive to distant libraries. This brings us back to our cover photograph which, in the light of our current concerns, seems more than ever a reminder of a vanished Golden Age.

          E. M Baker