Last chance for Wanstead Park consultation

It’s the last chance for Wanstead residents to have a say over the future of Wanstead Park, Bush Wood and the western part of Wanstead Flats (ie not the main part of Wanstead Flats). The City of London has been consulting people over future plans, but the deadline for taking part is Friday 7 Jan. Completed forms can be e-mailed to the Corporation, so there is still time to be included. More details, plus links to the forms, are available here.

Twelfth night: How to lose your Christmas tree

Another public service announcement.

Redbridge Council will collect your Christmas tree from your house, and take it away for composting. And in a move which Wansteadium likes very much indeed, you can request the collection online by entering your details at this page: Request Green Waste Collection.

Once booked, trees should be collected within 10 days, though you will have to leave the tree at the edge of your property, which always looks a bit rubbish. But it’s a pretty good alternative to getting pine needles in the boot.

Wanstead news roundup, 5.1.11; Booty, bags and late-night massage

• How to spend 300,000 on Wanstead High Street – a question exercising the minds of administrators after it became clear that the money was to be allocated from central grants. The more hardline advocates of Wanstead improvement would say that investment money needs to be matched with strict planning rules to have the desired effect.

• ‘Fake’ charity clothing collection bags are being distributed in the area again. Wansteadium reader Graeme says he has received a bag from CSS, pictured, which last year Redbridge Trading Standards warned was not the registered charity it claims to be.

• The mystery over the successor to former brothel, Wanstead Sauna, continues. The new outfit in the premises bills itself a “male grooming centre”, and one Wansteadium reader told us last month that he had received a perfectly respectable sports massage there. Now reader Jack writes: “A male grooming centre that’s open at 02:30 AM on Monday 3rd January 2011??!!” Curiouser and curiouser.

Rubbish and recycling thumb nose at tradition

Time was that rubbish and recycling collections followed their own regular patterns, as reliable as the seasons themselves. But beware, anyone in Wanstead whose usual collection day would have been Monday or Tuesday and is expecting, as was the case for their fathers and forefathers, that because of the Christmas bank holidays they should put out their boxes and bags on Wednesday or Thursday.

No, the time is out of joint. Monday and Tuesday collections this week are simply cancelled, and will return to normal next week. Wednesday to Friday continue as normal. Radical.