Look, no cars!

A heart-warming and encouraging scene on Henley Street, just round from my house in Oxford: doesn't this look great?

This is thanks to the fact that today is international car-free day.

It's only on a small scale here this year, but at least today there are no ugly great lumps of metal blocking the road (and pavements), preventing people walking, talking, playing in their own street.

Rather, there was music, cakes, community. You could hear the birdsong, in between the happy shouts of children playing.

It's idyllic really - why can't we have this every day?

(Though if you like we can have one day a year as 'international car day', just to remind us of the bad old days?).