A local excursion from West London

You know how it is when you want to go somewhere for an afternoon, but don't want to organise a great trek? That's when you need to know what's in your own back yard.

It's funny how people often don't visit things on their doorstep. My mother lived in Cardiff for 26 years and has never visited the Castle - which is slap bang in the middle of the city centre, and which she passed on her way to work for several years. I've now lived in London for 14 years, and usually only go to places when I have visitors: I only got around to the a trip on the London Eye a few years ago, when my brother and family visited.

So it was a pleasant surprise to spend an afternoon along the Thames in Putney recently - or should that be Fulham? Now, I'd been to Putney High Street before, for shopping and to meet friends there for drinks, but I'd not seriously thought about it as a destination for a non-shopping afternoon. But what a revelation!

Firstly, there's the river banks around Putney Bridge. The river is actually quite interesting here - a greater variety of buildings, lots of boats moored around, and the odd canoeist too (something you don't get in the centre). On the north bank is the delightful and historic church of All Saints, Fulham. Although rebuilt in the 19th century, its tower dates to 1440 and it is full of interesting memorials and monuments from the Tudor period to the late 18th Century.

Next door is Bishop's Park - a large and really delightful space. Wrapped around the impressive grounds of Fulham Palace, it has both a Thameside walk and an historic Moat walk, areas of formal park, ponds, a skating area, tennis courts, bowling greens and lots of green space for kids to let off steam (and lots of benches for granny to sit down, too. And me, come to that). There's s small cafe at the Putney Bridge end for a cuppa afterwards.

And then there's Fulham Palace itself. Once a summer retreat for the Bishops of London, parts date back to 1495, although the Bishops used it from the 11th Century onwards. The grounds are very attractive in their own right, and the Palace is used for art exhibitions as well as conferences, corporate events and weddings. The grounds still contain allotments - a relic of efforts in World War II to grow more food domestically - as well as the remains of Britain's oldest botanical garden.

Crossing the bridge back into Putney, immediately on the left there's the tower of the church of St Mary. The tower is again late mediaeval, but the interior is largely the result of Victorian rebuilding and a major reconstruction after a disastrous arson attack in 1973. It now includes a cafe and community centre, as well as an exhibition on the 'Putney Debates'. These were discussions held in the church during the English Civil War when Cromwell's Army was stationed here. They revolved around the potential forms of Government that could be adopted to replace the Monarchy. Although they had limited impact at the time, in retrospect they probably influenced the development of modern parliamentary democracy and may have influenced the content of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States' Constitution.

After all that, you'll probably need some refreshment: apart from the cafe at St Mary's, Putney has several nice pubs.

Or - you could go shopping...

Conkers Everywhere

As autumn gently arrives (not that it's following much of a summer), the trees in the square in front of my flat are beginning to turn brown, and the horse chestnuts are shedding their conkers.

Now, as a child I remember being taken by my Mum and Dad to collect conkers on a lane on the hill of Brent Knoll in Somerset: the conkers from the few trees around where we lived were quickly snapped up by eager young hands, whereas where we went there was less competition.

Of course, we always collected far more than we needed to play conkers at school, in those blissful, far off days when, if you'd told anyone that playing conkers might one day be banned by the Health & Safety people, they would have thought you were mad.

Fast-forward to 2008 and the trees in Nevern Square (and one in particular) are producing a bountiful harvest of fresh, plump conkers. I think they are beautiful objects in their own right, but alas, no-one seems to collect them these days: there are plenty of children around here, but clearly this is one tradition that has bitten the dust. There are drifts of conkers lying in the road, just waiting to be squashed by parking cars.

It seems such a terrible waste to me: perhaps I should go and collect some, just for old times' sake...

Hiding behind the sofa...

It's hard to miss the giant posters of Daleks around Earl's Court at the moment. No, it's not an invasion, but more a sign that the school holidays are upon us, and there's an exhibition of the iconic Sci-Fi series to promote, taking place in the museum hall of Earl's Court.

The exhibition features some of the costumes and props from the current run of the series, including Daleks and Cybermen, as well as displays on its history and the making of the programmes (some with strobe lighting, dry ice and other special effects) since its inception in 1963, though the emphasis is on the current 'resurrected' series, produced by BBC Wales.

For much of my childhood I was an avid fan. My earliest memories are of the second Doctor, played by Patrick Troughton, fighting Ice Warriors and surrounded by lots of foam. (I think this was supposed to be a suffocating goo produced by fungi the evil Martians had sent to earth to poison the atmosphere).

I followed the adventures every week, always willing us to get to my Grandmother's on time when we visited, which was almost every week-end. One of my frustrations was that we seemed always to turn up just as it was starting, and the TV set took about five minutes to warm up. (Younger readers will never know the joys of ancient black-and-white sets with their huge valves...)

The Ice Warriors - scaly humanoids from Mars whose weakness was warmth - quickly became a firm favourite, alongside those real monster stalwarts, the Cybermen and Daleks. I must confess that I never actually hid behind the sofa, and didn't find the Daleks all that intimidating. Perhaps I was just being precocious, but I sussed early on the fact they couldn't climb stairs. (Eventually, of course, the TV producers realised they had to tackle this and showed that the Daleks could hover; in the latest incarnation, they can actually fly. In my view, that's just cheating). I therefore found the Cybermen more scary, as they were cold, unemotional, invincible and could get to the first floor without a lift. (Have you noticed that the Daleks always seem so highly strung, too? All that shouting 'Exterminate!' all over the place. So un-British.)

It's funny how memory makes you associate individual programmes with specific real events. I recall missing an episode of The Curse of Peladon because of the power cuts in 1972, and it was only years later that I bought the video to find out what had happened. I'm not a great collector of videos, but it's an absolute tragedy that the film of so many of the earlier series have been lost - I would love to see The Evil of the Daleks again, just to see if it is as I remember it. Many that have survived have only done so, apparently, because networks in Australia and Singapore kept their copies. I always preferred episodes set in space, or at least on other planets (my wanderlust started early, too) and was somewhat disappointed when the third Doctor Who, in the form of John Pertwee, had a long run set on Earth. More cheating, in my view. But at some point in Tom Baker's wonderful stewardship of the role, the usual teenage interests took over, not to mention 'O' levels to study for, and going to University in 1980 marked the end of Saturdays spent in front of the telly.

Until its recent resurrection, of course. BBC Wales really did hit on something when they realised that modern cgi techniques, plus a singular lack of decent drama and a frustrated audience of grown-up fans, meant that there was a ready market for a new series.

I have to say I find the glitz and polish of the new productions a little off-putting - there was something terribly endearing about all those slightly dodgy sets, where imagination had to fill in for special effects. (Wasn't it strange how many planets looked like disused quarries?) And the monsters these days often seem too easy to polish off: the Cybermen of old really were nigh-on invincible, their only weakness being gold dust, which they couldn't breathe.

There - my anorak credentials are laid bare!

The Dr Who exhibition runs at Earl's Court until September 15th. Adult entry is £9, children £7 (plus booking fee if done over the internet) and tickets are for entry at a specific time.