Teepees and Tantrums at the Thames Barrier

There are many good things about delaying my walk until the afternoon. I do my chores, I get my work done and I feed myself twice before I even think about setting foot outdoors. All of this leads to greater productivity and less money being spent. The bad thing is that on a scorchingly hot day I usually set out when most sane people are cowering indoors with the blinds closed.

So it was on Thursday. I had only been outside for ten minutes before my face started turning to soup and I could feel the blood boiling in my veins. By the time I had climbed three flights of stairs to the DLR platform I was regretting all my life choices but I am nothing if not stubborn, stubborn and sweaty. I slithered onto the train and headed for Royal Victoria because it seems that left to my own devices I am forever pulled in the direction of Beckton. It must be the lure of the big Asda.

When you get off the train at Royal Victoria you can go one of two ways out of the station. Everyone was heading towards the exit for the cable car that takes you across to the O2 centre, so I went the other way. I ended up on an extremely long road that followed the train tracks on one side and a housing estate on the other. All along the length of the tracks was something called Newham Trackside Wall. It’s a collaboration between the artist Sonia Boyce and UP Projects. Boyce, who was born in Plaistow and went to school in Canning Town, is a brilliant artist who was the first black woman to represent the UK at the Venice Biennale where she won the Golden Lion. She was also the first black woman to become a fellow of the Royal Academy. There is a fantastic Imagine documentary about her on iPlayer. She worked with local residents of all the areas of Newham to create an artwork which showcases the voices, aspirations, memories and dreams of the local residents.

It was, it turns out, the perfect thing to do on a boiling hot afternoon. I walked slowly from one end of the wall to the other, reading all the excerpts and immersing myself in the pleasure of good and unexpected public art. By the time I’d finished I had walked all the way to Custom House tube station, where I crossed the tracks and went into the ExCeL centre. The wall had been surprising, touching, connected to community and thought provoking. The ExCeL centre was anonymous, soulless and like something I’d run through in a nightmare, trying to escape some nameless dread snapping at my heels. It’s so massive, by the time I walked out, I was back where I had started but on the other side. I passed all the people queueing for the passport office and the cable car feeling slightly traumatised.

Rounding the edge of the water I bumped into more artworks that are part of The Line. Big, beautiful hoardings of Madge Gill’s nature drawings and a statue of a small, forlorn beaked creature on a raft in the water being ignored by a tired and very real duck. Further out in the water, a man was water skiing using a zip wire. People were watching him from a floating bar while about a thousand small children played in the water next to them. It was not restful.

I headed through an underpass to something called The Expressway. It was badged up pretty heavily so I was expecting amazing things. Instead, when I emerged from the gloom of the underpass I found it was a lot of business units tucked into the side of a flyover on one side and a huge building site on the other. Over the mountains of rubble in the distance loomed the Tate & Lyle sugar factory with an enormous tin of Golden Syrup suspended on the corner of the building. I really, really wanted the enormous tin. I think Golden Syrup tins are genuinely beautiful items and a triumph of packaging, in a very sticky way. I headed towards it. I think I was hoping it might drop off into my waiting hands. It did not.

By this time I was in Silvertown, which, like so many places here is undergoing enormous modernisation. I threaded through a half finished forest of tower blocks until I found the river again, tucking in gratefully by its side. It was cooler by the water and there was a very welcome breeze. I made friends with a giant bulldog who woofled over and rested its jowls on a concrete bench while I did my shoe up. He looked like a cartoon dog. I enjoyed him immensely but was also glad he wasn’t mine. There was a lot of drool.

The tide was out and I spent quite a lot of time idly peering over the railings into the mudflats, thinking about mud larking. Everything was roped off and very much forbidden in terms of getting down to the water. I was quite disappointed by this, although I do realise that I would probably have ended up having to be rescued by the river police and fined for wasting their time had I actually managed to get down there, so it’s probably a good thing I couldn’t.

The birds were having a fine time, hunting about the shallows. There were thousands of prints where they had been criss crossing the flats searching for delicious muddy snacks. The regular gulls had quite deep footprints but there were some smaller, white gulls with fetching Sixties style eyeliner with a much more delicate tread. I got quite invested in their travels. They were so busy and purposeful in stark contrast to a jetty full of sunbathing pigeons I came across who were splayed as flat as they could get to the concrete, soaking up as much sun as they could get. As I passed they never even stirred they were so sun drunk.

I was so busy watching the birds I completely failed to notice that I’d walked up as far as the Thames Barrier until I practically tripped over it. I am not sure now why I got so excited about seeing it, except I was and I took about thirty terrible photos of it from all angles except underwater and have told everyone I’ve spoken to since then that I saw it. Everyone I have told has reacted by being utterly underwhelmed, but I’m still enjoying it 24 hours later.

There is a lovely park with some fabulous, wave like topiary that runs along the side of the water. As I walked through it to get the tube home I saw a family having what looked like the perfect picnic on the grass. It was like Instagram come to life. They had a sea of blankets and cushions in shades of cream and pink, a tiny, toddler sized picnic table and benches laid out with plates full of sandwiches and cakes, also toddler sized. There was a cream, teepee style tent and even a little signpost with multiple signs pointing off in various directions. I couldn’t read what was written on them. I expect it was something cutesy and sickeningly perfect. I wanted to hate it all. I did not hate it all. I thought it looked amazing and I felt like I wanted to be their child.

In reality, amidst all this beauty, several children sat on the grass staring into the middle distance and wouldn’t be coerced back to the blankets. One child sat, stolidly eating its way through all the food and another child was in the middle of such a screaming tantrum that he threw himself onto the floor and fell backwards into the teepee until all you could see was a pair of tiny, drumming feet and hear the roar of the world’s most miserable toddler. Children will always ruin your plans for childhood one way or the other. Thus it ever was.

I nearly volunteered to be adopted by them. I’d have played so nicely and been extremely well behaved. Instead I went home and dragged my reluctant teenager out to try Pizza Pilgrims with me. Once he had gotten over the shock of being outdoors, he was delightful company and I was cured of any yearning for small people until the next time.