One of the nice things about London is its many parks, green spaces, and garden squares. Yesterday I was walking on the edge of Hampstead Heath and today I wandered through Battersea Park. It was a bit of a challenge getting there. I took the underground to Victoria Station and just missed a connecting train. The woman in front of me was able to get on, but I wasn't so aggressive. The train officials directed me to platform 8 for another train that they said would stop at Battersea Park Station. Except it didn't and I ended up in Clapham Junction. No worries. I just took the next train back towards London that stopped in Battersea. My destination was the Pump House Gallery in the park.

It was a beautiful day to enjoy this 200-acre green space across the River Thames from Chelsea.

Apparently before it became a park (in 1858), it was known as Battersea fields and was a popular spot for duelling. The Duke of Wellington and the Earl of Winchilsea met there in 1829 to settle a matter of honor. Fortunately they both aimed their pistols away from each other and there were no casualties.

I walked around the boating lake and found the Pump House, a four-story Victorian tower.

The installation that I went to see was actually in another part of the park, but there was an exhibition inside that I walked through first, In the Offing. The artist was Sally Troughton. I can't say I loved her work, but it was interesting. She has created installations that "engage directly with the architecture of the building. Using a wide variety of materials, the works fluctuate between structure, image and object to explore connections between home, identity, modes of orientation and new technological perspectives." In the first room, for example, there was a large container on a paper tablecloth and the container was filled with a black oily liquid. Floating on the liquid were blocks of bog oak and palm wood. A fan was moving the blocks around. That one I didn't relate to on any level. The next floor was a bit more interesting. She had lengths of silk that were covered in earth from neolithic sites and that were hanging from aluminum framing and window foiling (to create structures that "echo architecture and explore the concept of home and the relation it has to our bodies").

If I had to pick a favorite, it was the third floor where three large pieces of silk were suspended from the floor above. These pieces were printed with digital images from Google Earth of--and I have to take her word for it because you couldn't tell--the Pyramids of Giza, Palmyra and the Acropolis.

The top floor had five headsets with different recorded sounds: a fetus in a womb, cicadas, an archaeological site, static, and the ocean. I left there pretty quickly and headed to the north end of the park to the fountains, passing the bandshell on the way.

Samara Scott created "liquid" paintings for the mirror pools of the park, using biodegradable and industrial dyes and fabric. The installation is called Developer. The artist "uses materials that mix the bodily with the industrial or chemical which create confused reactions of both familiarity and disgust. Her work has an intimacy and repulsion that is tied up within the body." I admit to having those reactions.

I wandered through more of the park. There is a small zoo that I could see in the distance, but I opted for the London Peace Pagoda and the Sri Chinmoy Peace Mile instead. The pagoda was erected in 1985 and the Peace Mile was inaugurated the following year, the International Year of Peace.

I took a bus most of the way home so that I could see parts of the city that I haven't visited yet this time. I had about 20 minutes back at the flat before we had to leave for dinner (Vietnamese) and a play, Breakfast at Tiffany's. The dinner was good, the play wasn't. The play starred Pixie Lott, who is a pop singer and songwriter of some renown, at least in the UK. She did a good enough job with the singing, but not the acting. I wasn't really impressed with any of the actors. Maybe it was their attempts at American accents and speaking really quickly (is that something that Brits associate with Americans?), or maybe it was the directing--Pixie as Holly Golightly seemed almost hyperactive. The best actor was the cat that had several scenes. He was amazing--he let actors hold him and didn't try to get down, then when they put him down, he would jump through a window or exit stage left. And the audience loved him.

We went home by way of the underground at Piccadilly Circus.