“Christ we look like fucking tourists.”
That’s what she said to me rather than me to her.
We were waiting in the queue for The Garden at 120 Fenchurch Street. We had an hour to kill and I was being my usual penny pinching arse tight self.
The Garden at 120 Fenchurch Street is fantastic if you like your freebie London experiences. We weren’t alone as we joined the queue just as the skies started to darken.
I’ve been here before on my own. It was midsummer and there was a break in play back at The Oval as rain threatened. I legged it up to Fenchurch Street and had a quick shifty around a completely deserted garden just as the sun was breaking through. I could see that play was likely to start back again down in SE11 in the next half hour or so.
Even with gloomy skies and the setting sun on Wednesday, The Garden at 120 Fenchurch Street was well worth a look. You get a full 360 view of the city, stretching out to Crystal Palace in the south, through to, Gawd knows where, with my crap North London geography.
We focussed mainly on Not So Sunny Stockwell and surrounds. After around fifteen minutes or so I got the hee bee gee bee heights. I don’t know how I managed to live on the 12th floor of a tower block for over a year.
As the name suggests, there is a garden in the centre of the viewing space. I calmed down my vertigo with some OCD pleasing hedge trimming viewing. I then realised they were probably plastic.
The impressive wisteria could have done with something of a snip though. That’s something I’m not going to miss next summer with all the constant trimming of the green wisps. RIP Estuary Wilds wisteria. You won’t be missed.
I regained my spatial awareness once again and allowed myself five more minutes of looking around at the office blocks down below. The Lloyd’s building, right in front of you now, appears anonymous. This was the future less than thirty years ago, with its inside out architecture.
We took a mental shot of roughly where St Paul’s was. We had a Too Good To Go bag to pick up half an hour later.
TUCK IN.
