Fly By Night, Crossness Pumping Station, Thamesmead, London SE2

Duke Riley’s Fly by Night is an art event happening over three midsummer evenings in Thamesmead. It is part of LIFT 2018, which seems to get better each year. The installation itself consists of releasing 1500, racing and homing, pigeons, which have been fitted with LED leg tags, over the Thames at sunset.

The venue for this event is a little way out of Central London. Crossness Pumping Station is a Victorian sewage treatment plant in East Thamesmead and the viewing area is in the grounds of its beautiful Grade I listed building. Thoughtfully, the organisers have kept the building open late and a trip around the accompanying exhibition “The Big Stink” is a diverting start to the evening as we wait for the sun to set.

The location itself is attractive, in an unconventional way, factories and wind turbines face us on the opposite shore. On a good summer evening, watching the sun slowly sink into the urban skyline over the river has beauty of its own, even if, it is not one of the first places you would think to come. The anticipation rises as the sun sinks and slowly the first pigeons rise from their hotel/loft into the sky. They circle the area in small flocks, rising and swooping in the dying light. Gradually, as the evening closes in, the pigeons begin to gather flickering lights as the LEDs start to win the battle over sunlight. Slowly, and almost imperceptibly, over the course of the thirty minute flight, the pigeons fade into the night and all we see are the soaring and diving leg tags making patterns in the night sky.

Beautiful and surprisingly thought provoking.

 

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The Devonshire, Balham High Road, Balham, London

There are very many pubs in Balham and the competition is fierce. The Devonshire has many things going for it. It is huge, so it is very good if there is a big group of you who wish to meet up. It has a large back garden with cabanas which are nice in summer when it does barbeques. It is an old Victorian looking pub that hasn’t been messed around with much, so it still has a quaint old English pub type vibe going on, despite its size, this makes it a good place to bring visitors to the UK, for a typically British, Pub Sunday Roast.

We have eaten here a number of times, both for Sunday lunch and in the evening when it also does food,  and it has always been pretty good, not cheap but reliable. We met with a group of friends, 10 of us, for Sunday lunch. The food was okay but the service was dreadful. Our waitress told us that we should use her for table service rather than go to the bar for our drinks. We promptly ordered and then watched them sit on the bar for 15 minutes until we went and got them ourselves. The place was busy but it wasn’t packed. I saw others complaining about the service too. The problem with ours was that it was slow and very offhand.

The food was slow to arrive, and there was another 15 minutes between the first person being served and the last. This did not ruin our meal as we did not stand on ceremony and everybody ate when their food arrived. The root vegetable pie was very nice, if very cheesy. The sausage and mash was pretty good, but the roast beef was not as good as we would have expected. The wine list is ok and both the house white and the house rose were enjoyed by the group.

As we waited to order our last round of drinks and get the bill, our waitress was nowhere to be found. I asked the manager to find her, but she was unable to and eventually brought the bill herself. As I paid, our waitress appeared. the manager just looked at me and rolled her eyes.

This is a worrying state of affairs for a large pub in an area where there is a surfeit of good eating opportunities.  Although the Devonshire is a pub which has a number of good points, I suspect we shall be trying a different one next time.

St James’s Park, London

St James’s Park is the most tourist friendly park in London. It is relatively small, 1Km at its longest edge. It is a pretty, tranquil, well maintained green area joining many of the most viewed attractions in London.

It has Buckingham Palace as the western side, the north border is  the Mall, containing St James’s Palace and Clarence House, with Trafalgar Square on the North East corner. Horse Guards Parade is on the Eastern edge, where you can see the Changing of the Guard and the Trooping of the Colour. The South East corner has Westminster Square with the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Cathedral.

The park itself is beautiful too,  with plenty of shade from sycamore trees lining Birdcage Walk, which used to be where James the first kept his exotic bird collection. The park still has pelicans which are descended from the ones given by Russia to Charles the second in 1664. You can watch them being fed every day at 2.30pm.  There is plenty of other wildlife and you will need to protect your picnic from both squirrels and pigeons, who have become used to being fed by visitors to the park.

There is a beautiful ornamental lake, with two small islands. The lake can be crossed by a bridge. The Blue Bridge is its official name, but it is sometimes called by the more romantic name Bridge of Spies,  the views from this bride are small but spectacular. Buckingham Palace is framed by trees looking west. Looking east, The London Eye is flanked by the turrets of the Old Admiralty building and could be mistaken for a scene from a Disney movie.

The gardens are always well maintained and the flower beds are full of flowers in season whatever time of year you visit, though they are at their most colourful in spring and summer. Pall Mall the wide road on the northern edge of the park gets its name from, Paille Maille, an early form of croquet, as it was originally laid as a lawn on which to play.

If you want to combine a day of iconic London attractions with a day in the park, St James’s Park is the one to choose!