Congratulations to City Place which has opened its extension in the former Nationwide Building Society, and an impressive space it is too. In just over a year the cafe has become a key presence on the high street*, and the new expanded area will be very useful – in particular for Fringe organisers who are already planning events to be held there this year. Good luck to all the City Place staff.
* [Full disclosure: It also hosts an excellent pop-up bookshelf from Wanstead Bookshop.]
Lots of eyes are on the controversial kiosk cafe on Christchurch Green which has opened for business. Will it lead to a change in the kind of people using the green? Will it lead to a rise or a fall in the amount of litter? Will it increase or decrease anti-social behaviour? Will the impact on high street cafes and shops be noticeable, or could it attract more people to spend time in Wanstead? We’re not sure how these questions will be answered, but at the time of writing, there have been no reports of the sky falling in.
We will however be interested to hear about the plans for small recitals and events which were part of the proposition.
We are delighted to have been proved correct by guessing that the weird new thing outside Wanstead Tube station would be a free water point, though we do hear reports that its opening might have been accelerated by some freelance unveiling. Anyway it’s a great thing. Drinks all round.
Meanwhile longtime reader Mick Terry tells us that the weird yellow box on St Mary’s Ave is the site of a new cabinet for Community Fibre broadband.
A raffle to help raise money for treatment for Wanstead resident Kirstin is running until the end of the month, aiming to help her family reach their £200,000 goal.
Kirstin, 37, has fibromyalgia, PoTS, Vitiligo, ME and other chronic conditions, and needs treatment including spinal fusion and spinal cord surgery.
The family campaign, known as CHRONIC, aims not only to fund Kirstin’s treatment but also to help improve outcomes for others in a similar position.
Her family write:
Anyone who knows Kirstin will tell you she’s a funny, caring person. Before she got too sick to leave the house, we had a standard joke that she would be late because she’d made friends with three people on the way home. What you may or may not know is Kirstin has spent most of her life living with constant pain and illness. It started back in 1991, with Post Viral Syndrome and ME. She was only six years old. Little was known about post viral conditions or their long-term effects and Kirstin has lived with deteriorating health ever since.
The raffle runs until the end of July. Here are the prizes – entries can be made through the campaign’s GoFundMe page, where you can also read more about Kirstin’s story.
Who has the best handwriting in Wanstead? This is the chance for Wanstead primary school children to show it’s them, as we launch the Wanstead Fringe Handwriting Competition.
“Handwriting is not an art of the past,” says Maura Wilson of the Wanstead Fringe. “And even though the days of elegant copperplate script are gone, we all have our own styles, each of which says something about us. “
Which is why the Fringe is inviting the primary school children of Wanstead to get their best pens and start writing, and show the rest of us what they can do. They stand the chance to be named as one of Wanstead’s best handwriters and to win prizes for their school, courtesy of our sponsors Petty Son & Prestwich.
The rules for the competition are simple. Any pupil up to year six can take part, whether as part of their class or individually. All they have to do is to write out the Lewis Carroll poem The Crocodile.
Submissions must be made by the end of July, and will be judged over the summer holidays. The winners will be announced during Wanstead Fringe fortnight, which this year is running from 10 to 25 September.
Full rules and the text of the poem are available at the Wanstead Fringe site here.
A couple of odd-looking items have appeared in Wanstead, including this weird yellow box on St Mary’s Ave.
There is also this strange item outside Wanstead Tube…
But we’re really hoping it’s going to be revealed as one of these Mayor of London water fountains, as seen here in Wimbledon.
