Within walking distance

Is New Cross the new Camden? The Evening Standard asked the (rather lame) question at the end of last year when New Cross's Amersham Arms was relaunched by the same people as run Camden's The Lock Tavern.

I went there on Saturday night to see whether such claims might have a whiff of truth. The last time I went along it was to see the band Man Like Me literally bring the roof down on the old place as part of a rather shambolic but fun festival.

Anyway, the front bit of the Amersham Arms is now indeed rather like a pub you would find in Camden. Full of quite cool semi-scenesters winding themselves up for the night ahead.

Good place. Works well for a Saturday night. I'll check the back room one day soon, when I see a good gig to go to.

We stayed for a few in the Amersham Arms then moved on to another local pub, the Royal Albert, which has also been on the receiving end of a recent refurb.

It used to be known as the Paradise Bar for those with a longer memory. And the Six String Bar for those with an even longer one.

Now it is a nice place. A little bland but not in a bad way. It had a good range of beers, stayed open until after 12 and it is a 10 minute walk to my home.

The Amersham was more fun and did make me realise how New Cross does maintain a good number of quirky and interesting venues.

There are those that shudder at the memory of the Paradise Bar, while others remember it with fondness for its unusual and experimental nights.

Meanwhile, the Goldsmiths Tavern of old was a fairly crazy place if my addled memory serves me right. (It is the only place where I have seen a man thrown horizontally through a door onto the street, and by a much-pierced barman wearing a suit!).

There's a history to this: a glance at the culture section of the New Cross's Wikipedia entry shows how many alternative scenes have connections to the town, including some of the first house nights, Britpop and new rave. It was also where Vic Reeves first did a show with Bob Mortimer, which almost in itself makes it my spiritual home!

Getting people from outside the area to come for the evening remains a chore but maybe that is part of New Cross's charm. An evening there remains one for either the brave or the local, and that doesn't seem like such a bad thing.

Edited to add:

Coincidentally, fellow (and much more established) blogger Transpontine has written up a similar piece on New Cross on the back of a NME article, "New Cross is Reborn".

Hats off to the chap. And am particularly liking his Walking New Cross series.

I love Brockley

I have a T-shirt that was made for me that reads 'I love Penge', and it is one of the finest articles of clothing I have ever owned.

When wearing it I have been stopped in the street, talked to by random strangers, hugged and photographed.

The truth of the matter, however, is that I have barely stepped foot in Penge. The T-shirt was made for me because I had a plan to take advantage of people's aversion to the name Penge, buy a house there and then lead a campaign to change people's minds about the name. Hence profit.

But if I did ever love a place in London, it would have to be the town where I now live, Brockley.

I'm not so sure that it is really my heart's true desire, but it certainly is getting under my skin.

Some people that do love Brockley are the folk that run the local coffee shop, the Broca. They are organising a I Love Brockley Fun Run on 27 April.

Entry details are here. I'll be running. For Brockley!

Shopping and fetishes

Since I started writing this blog, around two months ago, I have changed my shopping habits. No longer do I rely on the once a fortnight trip to Sainsbury’s, filling the car up with the regular load.

Now I buy what I can, when I can, as long as it is from a shop within walking distance of my home. This is not because I loathe supermarkets, but because I wanted to see what would happen if I made the change. A very mild version of the film Supersize Me, the story of Morgan Spurlock’s month eating only MacDonalds food.

However, I am in a much better place than Morgan Spurlock because my choice is wider. I live in a large city and am surrounded by lots of shops to choose from.

This blog began because four food shops opened within months of each other, all within walking distance of my home. Given this, I felt it hardly fair that I should get in the car and drive to a hypermarket and spend my money elsewhere.

The four shops range in character: there’s a French place, a general delicatessen, a wholefood shop and a Tesco Express, the smallest of the types of outlets run by the supermarket. These four shops join a number of locally-owned and run convenience stores, with two of the largest under the Costcutter banner.

It is interesting to compare the Tesco Express to the Costcutter shops, as well as the other larger convenience stores. Walking past two to get to the Tesco this evening, they seemed very empty and rather drab. By comparison, there were queues at Tesco, which was new, bright and inviting.

In Andrew Simms’ book Tescopoly, he describes a visit to a Tesco store as an intimidating experience, one that he cannot wait to end. My visits to my local Tesco, on the other hand, compare favourably with those to the similar-sized convenience stores.

The food offering is certainly more predictable, the quality is assured (or at least has a large brand behind it) and the presentation is better. In particular, the meat range is of a much higher quality, the aisles are wider and more logically laid out.

Overall, however, the differences between the experiences are small. The staff are roughly the same in attitude and background, the food is slightly different, but not much; the only clear advantage of Tesco is that its cash machine is free (Brockley’s only one), whereas those in the convenience stores make you pay.

The point that Simms makes repeatedly is that shopping in supermarkets is alienating for all concerned – grower, producer, shop assistant and customer. But I look at the staff and food offering in the local convenience stores and see little difference.

I know this is not Simms’ comparison – his is between supermarkets and specialist food retailers such as farmers’ markets, greengrocers, butcher etc – but often modern people are not so organised as to get all their weekly shopping on a Saturday morning, or at the farmers’ market on alternate Sunday mornings, so the convenience store is the better comparison.

Simms not only makes a false comparison – between time-consuming specialist stores and time-saving convenience-orientated supermarkets – but also implies that food shopping should become a larger part of people’s lives.

But while eating properly and healthily is important, sometimes the focus on the ‘authentic shopping experience’ seems built upon such people’s (understandable) need for identity support. They wish to buy into – literally – an identity, one of caring about food, or environmental awareness, or French rusticity, and shops emerge to cater to them, at a cost.

Basic supermarkets like Tesco’s, on the other hand, are focused on convenience. Fast and efficient shopping, for the products you want, or think you want. Identity support takes a second place.

Two local restaurants

Brockley is lucky enough to have two very fine restaurants.

One of them is called Meze Mangal, on Lewisham Way.

It is an Turkish restaurant, serving a range of mezes and kebabs in warm, large, wood-panelled space. It also does take away (to collect).

With the take-away you would miss the atmosphere, which is buzzy but not excessively loud. However, you would have a less smoky atmosphere, the only negative I could find with the place.

It is certainly popular. I went along on a Monday night, which would usually be a very quiet night for a local restaurant. However, it was full and people began to queue at around 8.30, on a Monday night!

One reason for this is surely the quality of the food. The mixed meze for two (£11) was superb, and enormous.

Not knowing the size of the starter, we also had mains. Lamb shish kebabs of different varieties, both were fine. Mains cost around £9-11. We went with the house red to drink, and that was perfectly adequate, and £2.50 a glass, £10 a bottle.

Given the size of the portions, it would be easy to fill up on mezes and another starter. Or just the kebabs. You see? I'm already planning my next visit ...

I'd better get there early!

Oh, and the other local restaurant? I'll get onto that shortly!

(More reviews of Meze Mangal here on the Brockley Central site. Posters there say the restaurant plans to open a patisserie next door.)

Named and shamed: Wates Residential

Outside the house two doors down from me is a very large sign. About 10 times the size of a usual estate agent board, it towers up on stilts, declaring how the house behind would be another successful new development for Wates Residential.

The house has now been developed, and its three flats are on the market for large sums of money. But just like the unsold flats, the sign remains, presumably because Wates has little incentive to remove such a large advertising hoarding, especially one that it concreted in the ground.

But after a year of having my house known as 'the one near The Biggest Sign in the World', I have had enough.

So I phoned Wates in the first week of February and leave a message on the voicemail of the Customer Service Team, London Area. I am polite and leave a message asking for them to contact me.

I receive no answer so on 19 February I send an email to them, detailing my concerns and asking for a response. I cc into the email my councillor, Dean Walton.

Dean replies on 23 February, saying he has passed on my concern to the council's casework officers.

From Wates, I continue to hear nothing (as of 25 February, close to a month after first getting in touch).

I check the company's website and its statements about its social responsibility ring rather hollow. From my experience this real estate developer has little interest in the communities in operates in.

I continue to look forward to a response from Wates, and will edit this post if and when I do.

Winners and losers

Democracy is not pretty. Messy and unplanned, different groups, often acting largely out of self-interest, conflict with each other, grinding out necessary (and unnecessary) compromises.

Politics at the centre might be ugly, but its attraction is power, as well as money.

But in local government there is none of the acquired glamour of the centre, none of the real power, only the messy business of politics. The locality is the arena for clashing egos and interest groups, residents’ associations and aspiring politicians, cynical bureaucrats and a disempowered public.

All of these elements were on display last week at a local meeting in Isleworth, West London, part of a consultation exercise as part of the expansion of Heathrow Airport.

The airport lies five miles to the west of Isleworth. The planes tend to land following a flight path taking them directly over the town, as well as many other areas of West London.

This means that any expansion to the airport, particularly one that will see an increase to the number of aircraft taking off and landing, will have a big effect on the residents.

As a result, the meeting on Thursday was well attended, with around 100 people turning up to the local working men’s club (a hangover, if you’ll forgive the pun, from the relatively recent time when Isleworth was the site of a large brewery).

The curious overlap of self-interested groups attending the meeting was clear from the start. To sit down, I had to move a leaflet from the Conservative Party; the local Conservative parliamentary candidate had organized the event, and she chaired the discussion.

Five people gave talks. Four were opposed while the industry representative was the lonely voice in favour. He declared that he was a local resident also, but still supported the expansion. His argument focused on the economic advantage to the country that the expansion would bring, and he downplayed any concerns about additional noise.

The other speakers varied in quality. The local council’s aviation representative Barbara Reid was superb: articulate, factual, witty and rousing.

John Stewart, representing the campaign group HACAN, was also on form, willing to go toe-to-toe on the economics argument presented by both the government and industry.

A Friends of the Earth campaigner – whose name I did not catch – gave the weakest speech. It was incoherent and unplanned; the archetypal environmental campaigner, I’m sorry to say. The fourth speaker, a local councillor from an Isleworth-only micro-party, said little to add to the other contributions.

There was a question and answer session afterwards, in which a few of the local residents asked questions. However, at least half the questions were posed by other local politicians – including the local London Assembly member and the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate – as the Conservative chair played safe when choosing who would have the floor.

In conclusion, it is hard to be optimistic about the campaign to oppose the expansion. The key point, put most forcefully by members of the public, was that the decision had effectively already been made to expand the airport, even though it was a plan opposed by most of the area’s residents.

They – understandably – wished to know what point there was in further opposition, other than to make the process slower and more awkward. Unsurprisingly, they received few answers.

Over the last 30 years West Londoners have been regularly informed that there would be no further expansion of the airport, only for this to be proved untrue. Now, all trust has gone, and the residents, and local council, are simply opposed to any expansion. It is hard not to sympathise – Heathrow makes a poor neighbour.

And the answer? The most obvious is a solution rejected in the 1970s: a full replacement airport outside of London. Heathrow is unusual in that it is such a large airport so close to residential areas. Recent suggestions that this plan will end up coming to fruition one day, have the ring of truth about them.

Until that day it seems that West Londoners are going to be walked all over by national politicians who find the arguments of the aviation industry far more persuasive than the voices of locality.

But though their fight might ultimately prove fruitless, the experience and high public profile given to the aspiring local politicians fighting the cause may mean they are the biggest winners of them all.

Named and shamed: Steve Bullock

Edit: This post was edited on 22 February after I received a response from a representative of the Mayor. See below.

One of the main reasons why people do not act is because they do not expect their action to have an effect.

The police don't care about crime, and nor does the council care about the area; all politicians are only in it for themselves, and businesses are only interesting in exploiting people. They don't care about people like me or you.

And so a sullen oppositional mindset builds. Constructive engagement is pushed aside, with both sides of the equation expecting nothing from the other but a big waste of time.

People become alienated, driving them towards radical fantasists or cynical disengagement. Meanwhile, authorities and businesses become sloppy, uncaring and unresponsive.

Fortunately, there are ways in which such vicious circles can be stopped. And these actions do not all have to take a lot of time.

One way is just to start sending emails to people in decision-making roles, hassling them a bit about what they do.

It helps to have a bit of leverage when writing complaints. In some cases I mention this website and say that I will write about the situation.

The first email I sent was to my mayor, Steve Bullock. My council, Lewisham, is one of only 13 in England to have approved a recently-introduced system of having a directly-elected mayor. The idea behind the system is that the mayor has both the executive power and a direct link to voters.

So, six weeks after Mayor Bullock told a local newspaper he was taking a "personal interest" in a crime hotspot at the end of my road, I emailed him to ask what action he had taken. It was not a malicious or accusatory email. It was polite and enquiring.

Soon after, I received a response from someone called Andy Williams, who said he had received the email on the mayor's behalf and had forwarded my query to Geeta Subramanian, head of the council's crime reduction unit.

The first email was sent on 5 February. Today is 19 February and I've heard nothing further. So that's pretty poor.

I've emailed the mayor and Andy Williams again to let them know I am still waiting for a response. I'll update this blog when I do.

Edit:

21 February: I received an email from Andy Williams informing me that he would chase up Geeta for a response.

22 February: I received an email from Khurram Sheikh on behalf of the Mayor, responding to my original request for information.

In a fairly long email, he states two concrete responses made:
- a number of arrests were made immediately after the incident and investigations are ongoing.
- that a drinking control zone (DCZ) has been agreed in the neighbourhood. "This will tackle the street drinking and the associated anti-social behaviour taking place across the ... neighbourhood." This should become effective in March 2008.