Each year in a ritual as celebrated as the last conker of autumn or the first loft conversion of the New Year, we mark the season’s first frost. It was today. Happy Frost Day to readers old and new.
2025 – 18 November
2024 – 11 October
2023 – 16 October
2022 – 6 December
2021 – 2 November
2020 – 4 November
2019 – 4 November
2018 – 25 September
2017 – 30 October
2016 – 2 November
2015 – 23 November
2014 – 6 November
2013 – 13 November
2012 – 6 November
2011 – 25 November
2010 – 21 October
Anyone who has experienced the work of Wanstead composer Simone Spagnolo will not want to miss his new play, Mr Baldocci, which has two performances at the Wanstead Curtain next weekend.
Spagnolo is, in our humble opinion, a proper genius. His 2024 walking opera around St Mary’s graveyard, All Rest, was a deeply moving experience which gave listeners an unforgettable experience of place and history.
At this year’s Fringe he was responsible for bringing an experimental audio experience which merged live music with headphone-based storytelling which left its audience in a trance-like state, not quite knowing what was real or where it was coming from.
Mr Baldocci is a more conventional theatrical experience, but it’s not like anything you will have seen before. It’s set in one man’s living room whose life gradually unravels as he receives a succession of answering machine messages. Wansteadium music critic Austin Allegro, who saw a performance earlier in the year, said: “Spagnolo’s composition, performed by celebrated pianist Gabriele Baldocci, is a jaw-dropping whirl of dozens of composers all mashed together into one compelling narrative. Without having to speak a word, Baldocci’s character communicates his downward spiral through his piano, culminating in at least two unexpected turns.”
You can get tickets from the Wanstead Fringe website below:
Friday
Saturday
A structural survey taking place on the George Lane viaduct? What could go wrong… except that it was built in 1947. And that the Broadmead Road bridge in Woodford was built in 1937. Anyway, it’s probably nothing. Sufficient unto the day, as they say.
(H/T Caroline – thank you!)
We generally make a note when Wanstead appears in ads, on TV or films, and in books. Remember Belgique appearing in Robert Galbraith’s Troubled Blood? Or last year’s appearance in Jonathan Coe’s The Proof of My Innocence.
This new appearance trumps that… an appearance of the traffic lights on Aldersbrook Road in the actual winner of the actual Booker Prize. Spotted by longtime Wansteadium reader Martin Talbot.
Reaching Wanstead has taken a good few years, but food waste bins and collection are finally here as part of a Redbridge-wide rollout. More recycling has to be a good thing, but one consequence may be that it will be impossible to avoid noticing just how much food goes to waste in the first place.
In case you missed the instructions on how to use the bins, they are here.
In short, these items CAN go in the bins:
But not welcome are oils , liquid fat, garden waste, animal bedding, packaging of any kind (though a biodegradable liner is all right), or liquids like milk which could cause spillage.
All the waste is heading towards Dagenham where is going to be used to produce bio-gas for electricity and heat, and a bio-fertiliser. Crucially it captures methane which is 25 times worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
So food waste collections – bravo.
Wanstead’s opera star Lucy Crowe’s acclaimed performance in Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Royal Opera House can now be heard by everyone thanks to BBC Sounds.
