Wansteadium

Wanstead gets its first taste of Redbridge Council’s new Local Forums on Wednesday afternoon. This is the new meeting which controversially replaced the area forums last year, and will be held from 2pm to 5.15pm at Wanstead Library. More details below. If you are attending, tweet using the hashtag #wansteadLF and we’ll publish or RT the tweets. The meeting is focusing on how the council should make its £70m savings.

Geoff Wilkinson writes on Wanstead Daily Photo: “Remember ‘Day of the Triffids’, the novel published in 1951 in which tall carnivorous, venomous plants have a crack at taking over the world. That’s what occurred to me when I spotted these Brussels sprouts underneath this fine mesh. I think the mesh is to help keep the frost off them, I thought it made them look like ghosts rising up…. Anyway between Triffids, ghosts and of course Brussels sprouts I don’t think I’ll be getting an allotment any time soon…”

The parents behind a crowdfunding bid to rejuvenate the Christ Church Green playground have got, rather like a toddler sitting in a swing, a big push from behind as more than £3,000 has been pledged by 35 funders in the appeal’s first couple of days.

The target is £13,704, which will pay for:
* New, modern and inclusive equipment
* A toddler-friendly play area
* Child-friendly flooring
* More benches and places to sit

An action plan along with details of how to contribute has been published by the group – calling itself the Wanstead Playground Association – and you can go to the site via this link. Future fund-raising events include a Frozen Singalong on 7 March from 10-12.00 at the Duke, and a Wanstead Comedy Club event on 27 March. Keatons boards will be going up around Wanstead and South Woodford advertising the appeal (which will make it look like everyone has decided to sell up, but in fact probably shows the opposite).

Wanstead Talk – our message boards – have been on a break which was enforced by Wansteadium’s limited capacity to be coder, developer, blogger and street magician simultaneously. But now it’s back with a much simpler layout and organisation. All the old subjects have been archived, which means it’s a clean slate. Existing logins will continue to work, though. (Nearly 300 Wansteadium readers have got a login.)

You can log in here.
If you’ve forgotten your name or password you can go here.
If you would like to register to take part, go here.

And if you just want to see what people are talking about (the list of topics is expected to grow) then go here.

The house rules are a bit tighter than before, but the essence is the same… keep it friendly, polite and constructive. And if you have scores to settle or arguments to have, there are plenty of other places on the internet where you can do just that.

Wansteadium reader Justin McArdle wrote to say that on 1am on Friday he was woken up by “an overflying propeller driven plane”. He checked on the website FlightRadar24, which as its name suggests keeps track of what is in the sky, and found that the plane was a Cessna and had made “in excess of 40 passes at less than 1000m backwards and forwards across London”. He added: “Its flightpath did not actually quite directly overfly Wanstead – the plane turning westwards over Leyton but close enough to be heard quite clearly. I heard the plane on several occasions through the early hours as it returned on its criss-cross of London.” Anyone else hear something similar? Please use the form below.

Geoff Wilkinson writes on Wanstead Daily Photo: “Space junk…….that’s what occurred to me when I saw this mess from across Nightingale Green, I’m not sure why space sprung into my mind. Anyway, close up, it looks to me like an old stool that someone has thrown out. I’d rather they had taken it to the dump, still at least it hadn’t fallen off the International Space Station.”