Wanstead roundup, 6.7.12; Music, art, cheese

• The ever-popular Music in Wanstead Park is on this Saturday, from 2pm until 10pm. Bands playing include Nine Below Zero, and Wansteadium’s new favourite Wanstead grunge/power-pop/punk band Bleech. Entry is £10/£4, and full details are available here. The forecast is currently OK. (Send photos to photos@wansteadium.com and we will post some during the event.)

• Artist Bob and Roberta Smith, of the Leytonstone Centre of Contemporary Art, will be familiar to those who have used the new Stratford tube ticket hall. And the BBC is this week featuring a moving film of him creating and then burying a sculpture with an artist in Ghana. You can see it here.

• Drama in New Wanstead on Tuesday lunchtime when a resident came home to find a man searching his kitchen drawers. The chase down the road was witnessed by Wansteadium reader Ann Kaye who rang the police and directed them into Spratt Hall Road where the chase ended up at the Bungalow Cafe. She says: “I was walking down the road towards Snaresbrook when three people came running past me. I rang the police when I found out what was happening. They turned up very quickly and, almost cartoon like, I pointed them towards Spratt Hall Road.” A man was later arrested.

• And in more serious news, Wanstead choir Upbeat which has recorded a song about Cheddar to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory is through to the final of a competition run by the British Cheese Board (not, as one might think, a comedy invention). You can watch the video below, and when you have, you can vote for it in the competition here. Lyrics by choirmaster Tim Sutton, who told the Wanstead Guardian: “I’m a huge fan of cheese. It’s something that unites everyone, except the lactose intolerant.”

• Hedgehog update: Peony Girl reports a hog in her back garden in Langley Drive last weekend. Other sightings have been few and far between. Maybe they don’t like the rain. Please report any sightings to hedgehogs@wansteadium.com

Wanstead Co-op to close again (temporarily)

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Just two years after it was closed to be fitted out under its new guise, the Wanstead Co-op is to shut again for a refit.

A planning application displayed at the shop refers to new air conditioning units, but the two-week closure implies some major work being done on the inside.

This will be welcomed by customers, especially if it results in shorter waits at the checkouts. Some self-service checkouts seem inevitable. And all in good time for the Olympics.

Wanstead news roundup, 26.6.12; Wanstead’s Grand Prix bid

• There’s been an awful lot of talk about a plan to bring a London Grand Prix to the Olympic stadium, a plan apparently backed (with varying degrees of enthusiasm, depending which paper you read) by Bernie Ecclestone. And the people who dreamt up the plan, a point on which the world’s press is agreed, is a Wanstead-based company called Intelligent Transport Solutions Ltd. None of the world’s press, however, seems to have asked who this company is. Wansteadium just wonders, since it doesn’t appear to have a website. Or a listed phone number. And Companies House seems to know of only one company called Intelligent Transport Solutions Ltd. It was based in Bristol and was dissolved in 2010. Naturally, nothing would make this site happier than to discover that Wanstead is home to a firm which is playing such an exciting role in the nation’s life. So if you work for the firm, know where it is based, or know any more about it, please get in touch with us at wansteadium[at]gmail.com.

• An enormous inflatable Stonehenge is to appear on Christ Church Green on 11 August (just to alert you, in case you should be alarmed.)

• Eyebrows have been raised over the tone of publicity for a church which advertises meetings at Wanstead High School on Sunday mornings. Setting out its message in uncompromising terms, the leaflets include a controversial passage from Corinthians in which a 1st Century St Paul sets out that “neither fornicators, adulterers, idolaters, (male) prositutes, homosexual offenders, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers nor swindlers will enter the kingdom of God”. Clearly some churches embrace the harder lines of scripture, as is their right. But at least one resident is wonder if it’s right for them to use state school buildings to do so.

• Police have announced that during the Olympics they will be using powers under a dispersal order zone to move on groups of two or more from Wanstead Flats, if they believe they are behaving in an anti-social manner. More details at the Wanstead Guardian

• And to make everyone happy, a slice of a Sunday afternoon walk from Wansteadium reader @historybeagle.

• Wansteadium reader Simone reports that the parakeets are back. She writes:

Has anyone else spotted green parakeets in the area? A few years ago these were quite common near Hampton Court and Greenwich, but they’ve recently taken up residence in our area (I’m sure our trees make lovely homes!) At first I thought there were one or two, but I saw a flock the other night, of around a dozen or so. I’ve also heard and seen one or two in Wanstead Park and in Epping Forest (Chingford).

UPDATE: Reader Tim suggests in Comments that the Grand Prix company is actually Intelligent Transport Services Ltd, and is based in New Wanstead. Details of the company are here. It was incorporated in May last year.