A lunchtime walk

I suspect I’m probably quite weird. When the rest of the office went for lunch today, I wanted to go on a lunchtime walk. In the drizzle.

There were some people who wandered around the White City Media Village with a brolly.

I didn’t have a brolly. But it didn’t bother me. For sixty minutes I wanted to get out of the BBC-bubble. To peer at what skirts the boundary of the world I occupy every day.

 

It’s easy to get sucked in to the safe and reliable world of the media. It cocoons. A brand is a powerful thing. A brand with a well-chosen font, irresistible. To break out of that world requires a bit of a leap of faith. Personally speaking, I rather enjoy seeing something different. It may not be immediately visually appealing to everyone. But if you’re looking for something arresting, a lunchtime walk in the environs can be invigorating.

My walk took me past the lunchtime footballers sliding around the artificial pitch off Wood Lane, on through the mean entrance to Hammersmith Park. On arrival it’s not an especially welcoming place.

Grey. Wet. Abused? Hammersmith Park isn’t somewhere you’d necessarily choose to go to have your sandwiches. It’s not picturesque. But there’s a path to follow. Some historic locations – the place where the vandals scaled the walls into the Blue Peter Garden – and some weird design moments too. Take the Hammersmith Bowls Club signage. As hard as I looked, I couldn’t find a bowls green anywhere near. So why the sign?

No matter. Turn around, walk a bit, retrieve your iPhone from your pocket and frame a shot and Hammersmith Park will – if you’re lucky – surprise. It’s a calm place. Full of hope. Full of good intention. A place in the shadow of a ridiculously large and overbearing building. A space designed to fill a dead space which emerged as a result of  large – overbearing? – rocking up in town. There’s guilt here. Sorrow. Resentment. Most walk through it. No one stops to pause.

The real unexpected joy I stumbled on was walking around the pond. It was still drizzling. The air was cold against my face. I felt sad. Everything around me felt rather sad too.

Amid all of this self-indulgence, there was the sound of the rain on the leaves and on the water. I heard birdsong too. It may sound like I’m being sickeningly poetic. Overbearingly so. Even so, hearing the rain and the bird was a bit of a wake-up call. Almost like it was the kind of ambience I don’t normally hear, day to day.

So by the time I took this picture of the raindrops on the railings, I was feeling reasonably relaxed. It had only taken thirty minutes. Half an hour away from my desk to feel calm, collected and re-focussed. Why don’t we all do more of this? Possibly because those of us working in conurbations don’t think to break out of our usual space and start exploring. Something we should all promise ourselves to do more of in the future.

As I started to wonder how I could eek out this slightly weird lunchtime excursion, it was the flowers which drew my attention.

It may be late January, but there’s some early growth to get excited by.

And let’s make it official. Here and now. The earliest whiff of a naturally occurring perfume really is the best experience. The natural equivalent of being the first to tweet potentially viral content.

But spare a thought for Joseph Shury. A plaque on a bench and nothing to be found on the internet.  Sixteen years old when BBC Television Centre was inaugurated, a significant space for him (or his family) that he his life was commemorated in Hammersmith Park.  What was his story? What was their story? How did their lives abut that of Television Centre and the BBC? Is this an example of how the BBC brushed with the local community?