Taking mighty inspiration from one Little Mermaid

IT’S a city of over 600,000, and the most popular place to visit is a statue.

Not even a big one, a very small one! And not of someone who’s done anything extra special for the city, but a character out of a classic children’s story, yet, all day every day, buses, boats and if planes could land near they would, full of visitors from throughout the world, come to see her.

Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid. Why? It’s extraordinary. I stood four deep in a crowd, two boats were there, six buses, 10,000 push bikes ( slight exaggeration but it felt like it) and all with cameras fighting to take a photo as if she was going to swim away. It’s superb tourist fodder. And it had to start somewhere.

One day someone said, “Let’s build a statue dedicated to old Hans’ story of The Little Mermaid”.

Did someone reply, “Nah, too much money, council can’t afford it” or “What for … no one will want to see it”, or even worse, “maybe later, next budget”. They thought about it and did it. This wonderful little statue is also surrounded by shops and buskers, all created brilliantly by cleverly woven publicity. True, she’s been the target of many vandals, like the Save The Whale people who painted her red, also had her arms and head pinched as well, but straight away, she’s been to the fish monger and fixed.

This little lady of a children’s fantasy gazes out to sea waiting for her prince.

Surely, we could have something similar. After all she’s very small – obviously her father was a sardine.

We do have our dugong and turtle, and hopefully, depending on finance and a few thousand meetings, the unique idea of underwater art that can be seen when the tide goes out.

I can hear someone saying, “Yeah, sure, Pricey, but Copenhagen has 600,000 people”. Well, the answer to that is, they were 200,000 once.

This city in Denmark has trains without drivers, superb transit vehicles.

I’m sure our council has looked into it, or similar, and ready to put it into action one day after the stadium is built.

It’s funny how when you love a place, and you travel, you can’t help but relate ideas seen, to your own wonderful home.

In this Danish city, they are slowly trying to move the majority of cars out and use pushbikes. We, of course, on the other hand for some strange reason are trying to move cars in.

They have classic buildings, we have too, waterways, we do too, they had a time of change ... we do too, it’s now.

I’ve seen the research from Pure Projects, it’s great.

Let’s hope it doesn’t end up on the shelf, so our next generation can benefit from paradise even more.

Happy Days.