AT THE PRINCESS of Wales memorial fountain last summer I did not spend my visit, as its American creator Kathryn Gustafson intended, “thinking about Diana, thinking about our lives”. Rather I was thinking: “How many uniformed attendants does it take to tell off my sons for wading in?” (Answer: around a dozen); “Why did they spoil the lovely vista with that nasty plastic fence?”; “This water-logged turf is ruined — oh soddit, so are my new Camper sandals”; and other unedifying ruminations.

Then my defiantly adventurous elder son fell in. It was a hot day, so no one cared except the Fountain Führers. But policing one’s children is wearisome, so we cleared off to another nearby Diana monument, the Peter Pan-themed children’s park.

I have measured out my first parental decade in that playground. There no one berated my sons (when toddlers) for splashing in the water feature, a stream trickling over boulders. These days my boys scale the mast, right up to the crow’s nest, of the life-sized galleon or excavate the sand with mini-diggers. You could scour the planet for a finer place to play.

But beyond proximity to Diana’s old Kensington Palace home — where she spent her troubled and lonely final years — why is the playground situated here? Why should it chiefly be enjoyed by the much-blessed children of Kensington and Chelsea, the rich expats — scions of American bankers and velvet-frocked enfants français — and the tourists? Why is there not a pirate ship in every British town? If Diana loved children, surely she loved those of Swansea, Blackburn and Barnsley too?

You could build an armada of pirate ships with the £25 million the Diana fountain will cost the Royal Parks to maintain throughout this century. It has already drained away £5.2 million: £3 million to build, the rest to unclog leaves and mend cracked Cornish marble. By contrast the Peter Pan playground cost £1.7 million to create and in the summer months is enjoyed by 5,000 adults and children a day. A similar number, it must be acknowledged, visit the fountain, but I ’d bet enjoyment rarely comes into it.

This week, when Gordon Brown announced £1 million to be spent creating a memorial — in another London park — for those who died in last July’s bombings, one could only dread whatever controversy-dogged, budget-busting installation will eventually cloud the memory of 52 lost lives. While it is politic of the Government to hand artistic control to the families of the dead, the project still risks the curse of Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary. It was her casting vote that approved the disastrous Diana design, her department that failed to monitor the works.

Plaques bearing the names of the 7/7 victims are already being erected at the sites of the four explosions. And I wonder, with the utmost respect to the bereaved, if these are not already the most fitting tributes. Because whatever colonnade or cascade or colossus is chosen, it faces some measure of public opprobrium, even disgust. Already one ponders tonal problems: how do you meld sadness at loss with defiance of terrorism, grief with anger? I’m sure some artist will get rich telling us. But one thing is certain: however high they build it, however much they spend, it will never be enough.

Perhaps they should consider the relatives of the 9/11 bomb victims. This month work finally began at Ground Zero on a memorial called Reflecting Absence which consists of water cascading into two underground pools. It has taken years of sifting through 5,000 proposals to get this far. But still some of the bereaved are dismayed that their loved ones’ names will be listed below street level. Others are angry that Reflecting Absence will cover over the “ footprint” of the World Trade Centre towers, so that the size and scale of the disaster will never again be fully appreciated. Anyway the project still lacks 80 per cent of the money it needs for completion. Who could bear to drag a broken heart through such a process?

The law of public monuments should be: make it useful or keep it simple. The Peter Pan playground is a loved and living place: perhaps Diana’s grandchildren will one day scale that ship’s mast too. And while in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam every tiny, hidden, upper room breathes the terror of Nazi persecution, downstairs is a display about human and civil rights abuses throughout the world today.

But our simplest monuments are the most touching. No one ever complained that the cenotaphs in every British village were too basic, that a stone cross and the names of the fallen were insufficient. The acclaimed Vietnam memorial wall in Washington simply lists the multitude of dead, as do the Holocaust monuments of Paris and Budapest. And in the City of London, in Postman’s Park, a small garden (it features in the movie Closer) where staff from Bart’s hospital can nip for a fag, is a wooden pavilion bearing the names and stories of ordinary folk who died trying to rescue others. It is austerity that most ably reflects the bleakness of loss.

To mark the millennium, two projects were commissioned: the Dome, with no purpose beyond being huge and grandiose, and the London Eye with its cheerfully childish objective of taking people up very high to look out over their capital. No surprise which fell to dust and which has become a bright new landmark.

Likewise we don’t need half-baked conceptual artists with zero plumbing skills to orchestrate our grief, to tell us what we should be thinking or feeling and where. The £1 million for the 7/7 memorial could be given back to the living, those who survived the attacks, still struggling with terrible injuries or to provide for the children of the dead.

As for the Diana fountain, while there are cynics who believe something so shallow, high-maintenance and surprisingly slippery well represents that complex woman, this folly cannot be allowed to suck the Royal Parks dry. Why not rip down the fence, dig up the ugly tarmac pathway and restore it to parkland? Break the leaky marble into a gazillion pieces. Fashion it into ashtrays, keyrings, egg cups and table tops. Sell them to the highest bidder — in Harrods! — to mawkish Diana groupies, her American fan club, sheikhs and tourists. And with the booty raise a pirate flag in every town.

janice.turner@thetimes.co.uk

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