Wansteadium

@RedbridgeLive what's being done about the Eagle pond. #disgraceful @Wansteadium any idea on who looks after this? pic.twitter.com/Hu5WvvWbUk

— MMSmith (@macatsmith09) April 13, 2014

Answers on a postcard please.

UPDATE: Answer came there like this:

@macatsmith09 @RedbridgeLive @Wansteadium It's wind-blown litter people have left. Repeatedly cleaned up, will be again. @CoLEppingForest

— City of London (@cityoflondon) April 15, 2014

Marian Temple, guerrilla gardener, who invited Wansteadium readers to join her in sorting out the garden areas around Wanstead Station last Sunday morning, writes:

Obviously this was the place to see and be seen. Unfortunately, quite a few people were going off to see a crowd of people running 26 miles. Not a brilliant piece of organisation on the part of M. Temple! However – five of us met at the station for a “clean up sad patches of soil” session.

Amazing how much we got done. Masses of weeding, and it’s the right time to do it as the weeds are not yet at the point where they shed seeds as you yank ‘em out. Masses of litter removing, a whole green bag full of recyclables. Station staff happy to fill our watering can. Geraniums planted on the outer patches where they should delight Wansteadians later on in the season and bits of other plantery happened.

We need another session to clean up – maybe three more patches and start a bit of serious planting. Also, I’ve got loads of wild flower seeds which can be scattered around. Suggest this Sunday 20th 11.00 at the station. Hopefully, nobody will be running 26miles but I expect there’ll be some other unmissable event to give us competition. Never mind. All welcome, kids especially. No gardening experience at all necessary but might be useful to bring any garden tools and gloves if you have ‘em.

See you at the station. Marian Temple.

UPDATE: Ouf! I see that the 20th is actually Easter Sunday. Why do these events keep getting in the way of serious Wanstead plantery? Nevertheless, we’ll stick to this date and hope that a few people can come along. My thinking is that the weekend is the best time for many people but at this time of year, it’s wise to get rid of weeds as soon as poss. Another week of glorious sunshine and they’ll be joyously shedding seeds as we pull them out. I expect there will be another session after this one so watch this space.

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