A few weeks ago, my husband and I were left alone in London for two nights while my inlaws took the kids to their house. We were giddy with possibility for our saturday without responsibilities and decided to walk to Soho to go to the flicks. An urban walk. We got ready with The Communards For a Friend in the background, which sort of set the tone for an accidental day of activism. The first thing we noticed after setting off from East Dulwich – maybe 10 minutes from the house – was this.

And I instagrammed it because I’m sick of London giving itself up so willingly to developers – sometimes really crappy ones – and it’s nice to have green around. Here’s a link to the site if you’re local and interested. What it boils down to, is that nearby Dulwich Hamlet Football club has been eyed up as a great site for flats – hey, where isn’t? – and the plan is to move the club onto this field. Which is a shame, because the current DHF bar is quite fun and it’s a big community gatherer. Ok, quite honestly I’ve been once, but my son is interested in joining now he’s seven. By coincidence, Matt Raw my ceramics teacher in Hackney – I’m coming back to that next week I promise – recently told me that all the east London hipsters have started coming down to play football at it. Anyway….

We continued on to Ruskin Park, saw some people doing karate in the bandstand – very Mr Miyagi – and came out just down from the lovely Carnegie Library in Herne Hill in time to join a massive march to save it.

The library was shut by the council on the 31 March with a plan in place to convert it into a private gym with – an unsavoury bone – a room of books, but no librarians. To give this a bit more context, the library is named after Scottish-American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who around 1906, gave a Lambeth librarian a grant to build a new library for the neighbourhood that is now Grade II listed. Carnegie was born in Dunfermline but emigrated to the States poor with his parents, made a mint and devoted his life thereafter to philanthropy, with a special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education and scientific research. He sounds like a flipping legend who we could do with having around these days. It’s a total insult to his desire to give enrichment to people with less than him that his gift is being turned into a bloody gym. Carnegie library is one of ten belonging to Lambeth council that have either been sold already or are under threat, so a massive shout out to the Defend The 10 campaigners and everybody else who came out to support the march.

We hit the Loughborough Junction community farm next, which was a bit of a relief and the volunteers running it were a right lovely chatty bunch – I’m borrowing their photo, which is nicer than mine…

They set up the farm in 2008 to bring positivity to an area that was pretty neglected (it was directly after a local murder) and organise street parties, festivals, art projects, street cleaning days and such likes. When we went, they were making homemade pizzas to sell and were expecting a big queue from the march.  I think there are bigger plans afoot to help grow local businesses now too after they received a grant, but I think they’re also still looking for volunteers.

We had bit more of a spring in our step after this and left on a winding walk towards the farmers market at St Mark’s Church in Kennington where I overheard the Kennington version of me telling her friends how she ultimately wanted to move somewhere more green and it struck me how much we all think towards something else – I’m forever wishing I could move further into town. After this, we walked past a stoop opposite Oval with books out front to help yourself to. I took that Paul Auster thank you very much.

Stumbling distance from here is the totally beautiful Bonnington Square, which we’d never been to before. It’s hidden behind that massive main road not far from the Vauxhall Tavern and is my new fantasy home. The garden was another community-led project that Dan Pearson was involved with, and is just a beautiful exotic lush space.

There was a ‘Friend of Palestine’ on the window of the cute cafe – noted by my husband, whose family live there under occupation.

After that we crossed the river and hit Westminster and a large anti-Cameron march going on about his offshore banking trust.

That photo makes me feel like a paparazzo.

The Curzon Soho was the final destination thereafter, and I’ll leave you with a photo and a link to a petition for it’s under threat because of Crossrail.

Couldn’t believe it.