Boback shared this photo of the leaves turning beautiful autumn colours in Ravenscourt Park, Hammersmith.

What’s your favourite thing about autumn in London? Share your photos with our Visit London Flickr Pool.

The Lyric offers an eclectic array of shows. Last weekend, I went to see their current production, Tightrope.

Tightrope is a show performed by the Lyric’s resident dance theatre company, Amici, integrating able bodied and performers with disabilities. In this way it challenges the conventional expectations of theatre audiences.

Performers of all kinds wander joyously onto the stage, some in wheelchairs; others being helped by Amici performers. Each has their own part to play in this story. Tightrope has everything you imagine a circus to have: clowns, strongmen, tightrope-walkers and snake-charmers.

The wheelchair performers are particularly inspiring. One man rises out of his chair high into the air, another, “the wheelchair showgirl” dances beautifully across the stage. A small band accompanies the show and short poems, written by Amici member Chrissie Kugele are sung.

Tightrope may be uncomfortable viewing for some at first, but as the evening progresses you appreciate the beauty of this show and the prejudices that it overcomes. And as you laugh with these performers there are smiles all round.

I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from Soap, billed as an acrobatic extravaganza in bathtubs. Why bathtubs? But it worked so well.

Soap is a well-crafted show featuring eight incredibly talented performers, which manages to be in turns breathtaking, funny, joyful, sensual, beautiful and clever.

The format is a series of performance skits incorporating gymnastics, rope work, juggling, clowning, trapeeze, foot juggling (surprisingly cool), opera singing and water, water everywhere.

To offset the precision physicality on display, the action is tied together by a female clown who manages to be cute, naughty and highly amusing without ever becoming annoying or twee – tough to do but she makes it look easy. As do all the performers.

The industrial set – seven bathtubs (six on stage, one on the ceiling), pipes and ship-like funnels – adds to the cutting-edge feel, as does the music at times. At other moments, we get a selection of 50s be-bop (Bobby Darin’s 1958 hit Splish Splash I was Taking A Bath) mixed with classical tunes from a soprano dressed in London’s most glamorous shower curtain.

Meanwhile the acrobats’ top-flight gymnastics were made more difficult (I imagine) but also more thrilling by the presence of H20, either in their tubs or raining from above. On dry land, this show would be impressive. Add water, and it’s nothing short of awe inspiring.

To experience Soap for yourself at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith until 25 April,  buy your Tickets to Soap today ( £20+bf).

It took two years for Sipsmith to obtain permission to set up their distillery in London. The licence, issued on 9 December 2008, looks more like an Etsy invoice than the grand, gold-embossed affair you might expect to honour the fact that this is London’s first copper distillery in nearly 200 years. But no matter, one year on and 9,00 bottles of lovingly produced London dry gin and barley vodka later, Sipsmith founders Sam Galsworthy and Fairfax Hall are upbeat and enthusiastic.

This morning’s sparkling weather made for a pleasant journey from VL Towers to Hammersmith. The copper still, named “Prudence”, is housed in a garage with perfect pedigree – it was originally a microbrewery for a local pub, then home to beer and wine writer Michael Jackson. The weather wasn’t the only thing sparkling; my tour coincided with cleaning time and, as Sam and Fairfax shared the Sipsmith story with me, I watched Prudence go from the deep auburn she turns after a batch is made to a georgeous, gleaming pinky-gold.

The two friends’ idea for Sipsmith germinated in the US, where they were both living and working in the drinks industry, and where the trend for small artisanal distilleries is well established. Inspired to do something similar, a mutual love of London, and gin, sealed the deal. While waiting for that licence, the two commissioned their copper still from a German family firm that has been making them for generations. Each one is different but Sam says, naturally, Sipsmith’s is the best. In fact, the “swan” pipe – a crucial part of the machinery – was the inspiration for Sipsmith’s swan logo.

Sipsmith claims its flavours are particularly fine because they make it with a one-shot process that doesn’t require re-filtering or diluting the spirit with anything except pure water from the source of the Thames. And of each batch made, only the finest “heart” section of the spirit is used (read londonist’s explanation of the process).

Spirits before noon are generally a no-no, but Sam and Fairfax’s passion and excitement about their product meant I couldn’t resist trying it. First, the vodka, which is a lot more flavoursome than most, smooth and doesn’t burn. Then it was the London Dry Gin — with a lovely “proper gin” nose of juniper and citrus, it was absolutely lovely, rounded and with a pleasant, lingering aftertaste.

London is the inspiration and gin is the spirit of London, so to speak. The whole ethos of Sipsmith swirls around both the London of yesterday and the city of today. It’s a new brand that draws on the oldest traditions of gin-making. A product that’s sophisticated, yet neighbourly (a local wine shop sold more than 1,000 bottles),  made with the old-fashioned, yet thoroughly modern concept of hand-crafting something fine, and supporting local produce and producers.

It may have taken a few years to get here, but Sipsmith feels, and tastes, exactly right right now. Cheers!