Wansteadium

Suki Orange, Wansteadium’s food blogger, writes about something other than food…

I know I’m not alone in sometimes, once in a while, needing somewhere in Wanstead to do a bit of work.  I mean I have a regular place of work (beautiful walnut roll-edged desk, naturally) but sometimes I  need somewhere in or around the High Street to concentrate for an hour or two.

My needs are simple. A table, a chair, solid wifi, and some access to a power socket. It’s not a lot, and I’ve often thought that I might even be prepared to pay a little bit for it. But there’s only one place in Wanstead, apart from dear old Starbucks,  which really fits the bill, and that’s the library, which gets chockablock by mid-morning.

The other day I was unsuccessfully looking for a spot among the audiobooks and old copies of the Sunday Times there, and wandered to the ladies’, when I noticed a rather unhelpful note on the door of the Churchill Room. That’s the hall by the side, where they have arty fairs. This note read: “This room is not for study or work.” It made it sound rather like there were gangs of youths flitting round Wanstead, taking advantage of any spare room to swarm in and stage an impromptu discussion of the parallels of social discontent in Lord of the Flies.

So it was interesting to see, on a recent trip to the delightful Rivington Bar and Grill in Shoreditch (the restaurant’s setting is wonderful, feeling almost like a shady bit of New York or even Paris somehow) that I stumbled on this little place in the picture.  Probably not too much money to be made of an idea like this in Wanstead, but it’s not like the High Street doesn’t have any vacant properties, is it? The Painted House pop-up office space, anyone?

 

 

 

Geoff Wilkinson writes on Wanstead Daily Photo: “I’m sure most people in Wanstead know of our local garage, I & K Brown on Church Path, it’s been in business for more than thirty years. The building that it’s in however is considerably older. In times gone by it was the establishment of a ‘jobmaster’ see Wanstead Daily Photo here. Anyway there are two ‘plaques’ on the front of the building one either side of the main door, they are covered in black paint but if you look very carefully they are really interesting. I managed to decipher the one on the right hand side and under the paint it reads –
‘Private Omnibuses
Wedding Carriages
Telephone Address
561 Wanstead
Isn’t that just a great telephone number, so personal and local compared to all of todays numbers.

Marian Temple, Wanstead’s celebrated guerrilla gardener, has a new venture: to do for the areas around Wanstead station what she and friends have already done for the Corner House. And she needs some help, this Sunday. She writes:

I’d have thought by now that I would have taken over just about every patch of sad public soil in Wanstead and turned it into a pocket patchwork piece with good tempered old fashioned plants. Not so.

The more you look, the more you see. I suddenly realised that the planting around Wanstead Station is full of holes. Evergreen shrubs, they’re fine but where odd ones have died, there are unloved, sad, bald patches. Time for the Wanstead green fingered flying squad to scramble. Last week, we met the Redbridge person responsible for street flower beds. We looked at the bald patches and he seemed to think it wouldn’t be a bad idea if locals took over. We have a good track record in Wanstead. So, I have ensured that any patch adopted and planted will not be a victim of the Redbridge squirt regime. (Very disheartening to have ones efforts splatted by weed killer.)

There are about nine empty patches that could look so much better with a bit of imaginative plantery. My High Street planting over the last 10 years has given me a very good idea of what survives. Plants must be tough, not need watering and not be fast food for slugs. The Wanstead Station patches would look good with the sort of plants growing in the Corner House Garden (can use that as a source). Wild flowers would be fine and a couple of patches tucked away from passers by would look brilliant with zonking great scarlet geraniums. I can supply all these plants. If you like the idea of taking over a sad patch and transforming it into something which people will enjoy seeing every day, here’s your chance.

I’ll be at Wanstead Station this Sunday, (13 April) 11.00 onwards. I’ll be working on the first patch, derubbishifying it, weeding and maybe adding a bit of leafmould to prepare for the foxgloves and primroses which would be very happy there. Just turn up. Bring a garden fork or any other useful garden tools you might have. Gardening experience not necessary. Kids welcome. This might just be the start of something good.

I’m finishing with a bad joke. “What do Marian Temple and Vladimir Putin have in common?” It’s not obvious. The answer… “unbridled expansionism”. Not sure really if the Wanstead Station surrounds can be compared to Crimea but you’ve got to start somewhere.

No one like exposed brickwork more than Wansteadium, but the walls of the Larder are looking pretty bare at the moment.

So we’re very pleased to have been asked to extend this formal invitation from the cafe to Wanstead artists or photographers to hang their work on the wall. Anyone interested is invited to drop ace barista Richard a line with examples of their work or links to their website. They are welcome to sell their work too (with a 10% commission). Contact Richard directly either at the Larder or via richard@worldslarder.co.uk

Wanstead’s social calendar getting busy as it does at this time of year. Two events which are happening this week (below) and one which isn’t – the Upstart Brewing night scheduled got Saturday has been cancelled.
These are going ahead. Feel free to add others in the Comments.

File this one under ‘achievements of Wansteadium readers’.

Andrew Whalley of Nightingale Lane, a lecturer at Imperial College, has been one of the authors of a paper published in Nature Genetics which has demonstrated that common multi-allelic copy number variants (CNVs) appear enriched for phenotypic associations compared to their biallelic counterparts. Andrew and his colleagues investigated the influence of gene dosage effects on adiposity through a CNV association study of gene expression levels in adipose tissue. They identified significant association of a multi-allelic CNV encompassing the salivary amylase gene (AMY1) with body mass index (BMI) and obesity, and replicated this finding in 6,200 subjects. Increased AMY1 copy number was positively associated with both amylase gene expression (P = 2.31 × 10−14) and serum enzyme levels (P < 2.20 × 10−16), whereas reduced AMY1 copy number was associated with increased BMI (change in BMI per estimated copy = −0.15 (0.02) kg/m2; P = 6.93 × 10−10) and obesity risk (odds ratio (OR) per estimated copy = 1.19, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.13–1.26; P = 1.46 × 10−10)! Generously, but perhaps needlessly, Andrew offered to explain a little further. He says the research shows that the chance of being obese for people with few copies of the AMY1 gene is eight times higher than in those with many copies of this gene. He then offered - heaven knows why - to explain even further. The AMY1 gene encodes the salivary amylase enzyme that starts the process of digestion of carbohydrates in your mouth, he says. The possibility is that if you have more copies, the digestion occurs faster and this may affect your body's response to the part-digested food when it moves further down your gut. This might include feeling you've had enough food earlier and so naturally being predisposed to eat less. "We don't know for sure yet as this is purely a genetics study, we are only guessing at possible mechanisms for this effect," he says. Andrew, the readers of Wansteadium will salute your success with a pain aux raisins, or possibly more than one, should the first one not make us feel full.