Chelsea / Battersea Park

Great War Memorial

I set out this morning with the intention of eating breakfast at one of my favorite cafes and getting some reading done at the library. Unfortunately, its being Sunday today, both places were closed. Irritated, but undeterred, I got it into my head that I would just get on a bus and take it to the end of the line, figuring it would be as good a substitute as any for a warm place to read.

For the most part, I was right, although with all the bumping around I was feeling slightly queasy as I alighted somewhere near Victoria Station. I walked around Westminster Cathedral, where services were just ending (or else I would have lingered a bit longer), and then headed to the station with the idea of keeping up the day's theme of public transport.

Soon gathering that a train ticket was pretty much out of the (financial) question, I sauntered off in the general direction of an opening in the skyline. I hoped I might reach the Thames, and, miraculously, I did.

A few blocks walk and I was met by the sight of the Chelsea bridge. Subsequently, I made a happy crossing and came upon Battersea Park, the finest public space I’ve yet seen in all of London. Perhaps you won't be able to glean this from my photos, you'll have to excuse my awkward sense of what's important and my thinking that taking pictures of the lovely green and the flower patches might be a little redundant, when you consider that there is so much of this kind of stuff to be found upon any random postcard, but I hope you will take my recommendation to heart.

It was a beautiful day, the sun baking down on one of the scenic squares where panting dogs dove into a long fountain playing fetch, children hitched rides on bike carriages, and mismatched couples with European accents basked in golden rays, talking either of sweet nothings or various unknown controversies, I know not which.

Speaking of mismatched couples... Typically, perhaps, I spent most of my time reading Bleak House, a novel that I have come to regard with a kind of easy disdain. If you've read any of it, you probably know that the central irony of the book is that it concerns a court case that’s as seemingly endless and labyrinthine as the book itself. It’s a shame I wasn’t assigned something a little less stuffy, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned as an English major, it’s that brilliant writers love their stuff. Close rooms, intolerable pleasantries, ancient, gloomy tradition—it all forms the backdrop against which the protagonist of every significant work of art must nobly struggle (All of Jimmy Buffet’s albums excluded, obviously). Still, sitting out in the sunshine on a day like today…it just made me wonder about a few things…Priorities, in the main.

So, dear, dear friends, I pray that you will consider going someday to Battersea Park. It's not as tourist-y as Hyde Park and not so austere as Regent's.

-Peter Crickners, Esq. ca. two-thousand and eight.



Peace Pagoda