Jimmy Burns - Editor Mike Bates - Production - Battersea Park

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Maximilian, ‘Max’ to his friends ,is a 27 year old criminal barrister, Battersea resident, and regular exerciser in the Park. The Review’s editor, Jimmy Burns, finds out more. Above: Max, hanging around. So tell me, Max, what got you into this exercise thing? A few years ago in a moment of madness I joined the Territorial Army. It was a passing malaise, I’m glad to say. Really? Everyone I’ve ever known in the TA-and there are one or two on both sides of the River-loved it. Well in my case, it happened like this. During one of the regular bouts of ‘Phys’ that are my principal memory of that sort-lived folly I was introduced to the Bastard… Please Max, this is a family mag… No, no…. A Bastard is a fiendish exercise that incorporates a press-up with a squat thrust with a star jump. As a civilian you can experience this for a small fee by joining something called BMF (British Military Fitness) which meets at regular intervals in Battersea Park during the week…. Sounds pretty tough to me… It is. Except that for civilians the Bastard is rechristened as ‘Oh No’. So, you couldn’t hack it… PARK PEOPLE Maximilian Hardy One of the reasons that precipitated my departure from the TA, other than a craven lack of moral fibre, was the realization that one could get fit without signing up for extended tours of the Middle East’s worst war zones. Any other reason? I stopped attending BMF when I realized that it was possible to get fit without paying someone else for the privilege. I detect a thesis here… Well, this is really the point. How many of us have a monthly subscription to belong to some fetid, germ-ridden, soul destroying gym? Yet we have on our doorstep one of the finest parks in London with river views that at sunset would set even the worst curmudgeon’s spirits soaring. I never thought of you as a contemplative…. I observe other activities that take place in the park that are of benefit to the mind, body, and soul. For example… Tai Chi enthusiasts can often be seen reaping the rather mystifying benefits of moving one’s body around very slowly indeed. I have also watched yoga classes taking place on the stone stage to the side of the Buddha gazing beatifically on the Thames from the Japanese Peace Pagoda. Come on Max, I’m sure those aren’t the only scenes in the Park that you observe now and again… Well, I do reflect occasionally on the numbers of sturdy and rather muscular women indefinitely prolonging the glory of their school hockey careers or Premiership footballers manqué deluding themselves that the astroturf pitches are really Stamford Bridge. And of course in the Summer there is the cricket to be had, of varying degrees of skill and application; often to the accompaniment of a steel band! I like that, Max, it shows you have a sense of Battersea Park in all its human diversity. But you still haven’t 14 told me what particular exercise you’ve been converted to… For myself the exercise of choice necessarily entails the remorseless degradation of cartilage in the joints and only running will do the trick. I’m a walker myself and my joints are already degraded…. It’s not walking I compare it to. It’s the gym. That any sentient human being could swap a lap or two of the park on a misty spring morning for the subterreanean hell of the treadmill simply offends against reason. Anybody with even passing knowledge of the park will have seen the circuit training course by the athletics track which can give for free as good a workout as the most sophisticated machines in any gym. The same friendly faces can be found there every morning before breakfast and the circuit boasts a facility no gym in the world can rival. I’m intrigued… His name is Joe. He is a 78 year old former army physical training instructor. He does one hundred pull ups every single day. And he does them properly and I know because I have seen him. Unfortunately Joe has also seen me do pull ups. I can do ten and rarely properly. Below: Joe, pulling up! A final word or two on what makes the Park special for you… Selling the virtues of exercising in Battersea Park seems like selling sweets to children to me. It’s free, it’s green, it’s beautiful and you never know who you might meet there. Just ask Lord Browne. Thanks, mate…
As a travel journalist, Sophie Campbell has journeyed far and wide across the globe, searching for the idyll location. Here she tells us what it is that draws her back to her Battersea flat, and out into the Park across the road… ON South Carriage Drive, during last summer’s heatwave, I came across an elderly woman holding a lead. On the other end was a Peke, three-quarters submerged in a puddle, a coiffure of centrally-parted honey-blonde hair swirling lazily about him. The puddle, in the molten heat of a globally-warmed SW11, looked like a bonsai oasis. The Peke looked like Jimmy Savile, or possibly a new type of synthetic mop. ‘We come here once a week,’ said the woman crisply, ‘His favourite puddle. Keeps him cool.’ They had been there for over 20 minutes. The funny thing was they no longer lived in Battersea. They came back for the puddle. I like that sense of ownership in the park; the conviction that one small part of this most public of facilities belongs, for a time, to you and you alone. North of the Peke, five-a-side footballers rampaged up and down the Astroturf for their allotted hour, spraying sweat in the heat. Beyond them, picnickers colonised the fields between the cherry avenues. Then came the cricketers – including a pretty Indian girl in a crop-top, tracky bottoms and a long plait – then the dreamers in the library-quiet of the English Garden, then the cyclists and in- ON THE BENCH Sophie Campbell line skaters and kids on bikes, then the runners and walkers, then the river. We are bounded by the river, by luxury flats and by daisy chains of expensive cars, beyond which are the horrors of London proper. Traffic. Murders. Chelsea. No wonder we have fellow feeling. We are so lucky not to be out there. We are in here and we can argue with each other instead. The pro-duck-feeders (mainly under fives, or ducks), for example, and the anti-duck feeders. Pedestrians versus skaters. Skaters versus cyclists. Skaters and cyclists versus pedestrians. Everyone versus cars. The people who think the little fences are silly. The people who don’t. The dog walkers. The contra-dog walkers. The swearing birdwatchers (have you met them?) and the RSPB types. The executive joggers and the squads of 30-somethings doing British Military Fitness. All life is here, mildly irritated by all other life. It is the equivalent of the beach in Rio or Barcelona. I think my favourite time in the park is at night, though I never go in there. Ooh no. Instead I go round the edge, walking back across the bridges or from the bus stop, staring in. In summer, you can feel the enervated ground releasing the heat of the day. In winter, it sweats cold, which pours icily through the railings. There are dim lights in there at night, and strange rustlings, and the sort of people that go into parks at night, and sometimes the engines of joy-riders doing hand-brake turns on the car park gravel, though I haven’t heard them for a while. The south east corner smells as rank as zoo. Feral. Almost certainly fox. In fact, they should do night tours of the park. I’d sign up, if there was an armed ranger. We might see the owl I mistook for a mugger (it had the lousiest hoot you have ever heard, the worst fake owl noise ever, and I truly thought it was a signal between people after my handbag until my companion pointed silently up into 15 a tree. There was an owl, staring at us with eyes ‘like twin hostile moons’, in the words of one fine writer. I still think it was eyeing my bag, though). I’ve seen a hawk in there, though I don’t know what type, and bats, and cats. We could have a Battersea Park Night Safari, with a bush dinner in the café. Increasingly, though, safari-goers will see the lights of hundreds of new luxury flats on Chelsea Bridge Road twinkling along our eastern borders. By the time you read this, the last block filling the gap between the QVC building and the new development may have blanked out our last unbroken view of Battersea Power Station. Then you will only be able to see its familiar, lardy billiard-table legs from north of the river, or from the top of a bus passing the Dogs’ Home – or of course, from the balcony of your east-facing luxury flat in Chelsea Bridge Wharf. Until the developers finally get their way and knock it down anyway. So, our isolation is complete. We are now properly marooned, hemmed in on all sides, and we like it that way. We welcome visitors, it is true – especially if they bring hard currency – but really it’s our turf. We all own a bit of it, at certain times and in certain ways, from the tennis courts to the Peace Pagoda, from the rose gardens to the café. But back off the puddle, though. The puddle is taken.
Page 1 and 2: Friends of Battersea Park R E V I E
Page 3 and 4: THE POWER STATION Have we been here
Page 5 and 6: PARKWATCH A charming mid summer reh
Page 7 and 8: Unholy action LARGE chunks of grass
Page 9 and 10: FT in the Park PARKWATCH Foreign co
Page 11 and 12: In the continuing series of Nature
Page 13: fore breakfast, my father would tak
Page 17 and 18: The rejuvenated Pump House Gallery
Page 19 and 20: Below, a summary of the Friends acc

Jimmy Burns - Editor Mike Bates - Production - Battersea Park

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