Author: Wansteadium

The milk crash on the Redbridge roundabout which happened on Friday lunchtime. Jon Fentiman, Wanstead’s comedy impresario, was the man with the camera – but the punchlines are as yet unwritten.

Wansteadium hivemind – do your worst.

Attention, good people of Wanstead. Are you weary of forever wishing that, if only such-and-such a thing happened in Wanstead, it would be really cool? Do you find yourself looking at other, more funky, areas of London, and thinking ‘That could be Wanstead, if only…’ Have you ever lusted after someone else’s vibe?

Well help is at hand – or, to put it more accurately, self-help.

Wansteadium has very great pleasure in announcing that the first ever Wanstead Fringe will be held this year, between Saturday 7 and Saturday 14 September – that’s the week leading up to the Wanstead Festival on Christ Church Green.

The fringe will consist of a variety of events – including COMEDY! FOOD! DESIGN! PHOTOGRAPHY! MUSIC! BAKING! CYCLING! RACONTEURS! (how classy is that?) and REAL ALE!

This website will be revealing more details in the coming week, but there is one very important message that we would urge all readers to bear in mind: this fringe is self-organised. It’s just ordinary Wanstead folk deciding to do something practical to help make Wanstead better.

Which is where you come in. Would you think of organising an event yourself? There are six weeks in which to get stuff set up – which is do-able if you start now. And if you want to be involved but don’t think you can arrange an event, will you help with one of the other events? Or maybe you’d help with telling other people about the fringe?

Watch this website for more details about how to get involved in the days to come, and in the meantime, if you want to let us know that you’re interested, send your details using the form below.

[gravityform id=”7″ name=”Wanstead Fringe”]

Wanstead weatherman Scott Whitehead has written on his blog about last night’s storm. He says it came after temperatures reached 34C in Wanstead – higher than the official recognised figure of 33.5C at Heathrow and Northolt.

At 1.45am, he writes, there was “multiple thunder, lightning and heavy rain with hail”.

He goes on:

“Then, bang, the storm hit Wanstead… Multiple crashes of loud thunder followed by, at one point, dazzling lightning flashes. You know how close a storm is by counting the seconds between lightning and peal of thunder. At 1.51am I barely counted to one between a dazzling flash and one of the loudest cracks of thunder I’ve heard. Only 6.5mm of rain was recorded, though this fell at a rate of 60mm/hr – the highest rate since I put the meteo live online last November. It doubled the previous highest rate.”

The rain overnight seems to have averted – perhaps just temporarily – an invasion of giant flying ants. For the time being there’s no need to welcome our new insect overlords.

Quote of the week, from Wanstead stunt man and magician Steve Truglia on doing a card trick while on fire:

“If the flame had come around the front because of a change in wind direction I could quite literally have lost my face or a hand and never been able to do card-magic again.” (Source, Daily Mail)