Set the Controls for the Heart of ..... er Battersea

Last Thursday, in the great quadrangle between the two turbine halls that seems to hang suspended from the four chimneys I finally saw the resident peregrine falcon. He appeared 200 feet up on the shoulder of the north west chimney instantly recognizable by his khaki trousers. He watched the hundred or so pigeons lined up on the exposed girders as the early dusk (4pm) blunted everything then slipstreamed off in a curve behind the chimney. I waited for him to reappear but he didn't and I began to turn back to Michael Collins who was patiently wrestling with the complexities of his beloved but demanding (some would say unforgiving) 10" by 12" plate camera. Suddenly, like arrow fall at Agincourt the hawk raced in from behind me scattered the pigeons and hit one in midair. As the hawk spun and decelerated the pigeon tumbled dazed to safety leaving a handful of feathers to parachute down to the weed - fissured concrete 80 feet below. Even as we watched the dark filled the place like water.