Greenwich Wildlife (8)
Posted in: Green Greenwich | Comments (3)
Haven’t had a Greenwich Wildlife pic for ages but there I was just walking along, and there was something I rarely see in the countryside – a little grasshopper.
To be honest I don’t know much about insects, especially grasshoppers, but this splendid fellow was about three centimetres long (not counting those magnificent feelers) and not going anywhere in a hurry – he hung around plenty long enough to get this photo.
The Greenwich Phantom @ September 2, 2010
Happy Memories
Posted in: Art | Comments (11)
I haven’t had a ‘then and now’ for ages, but something Warren sent me today reminded me that I have this postcard from, I’m assuming, around 1910 that I’ve been meaning to share with you. Sadly this one hasn’t been used, which I always find a bit disappointing – I love reading the sort of things people wrote on picture postcards years ago, but the various scenes are rather charming in themselves.
I have been meaning to do a similar ‘views of Greenwich Park now’ postcard, but Warren sent me his own take on multiviews of our fair town and it made me laugh, so I’m sharing that with you instead.
Of course I sepia-ised it for fun. Here’s the original:
I know I said I’d only do happy, silly stuff this month, but dark humour counts, surely…
I’m assuming that Warren’s annual calendar will be a little more varied when it comes out later this year.
The Greenwich Phantom @ September 1, 2010
Tailors
Posted in: Services | Comments (5)
Oh, that Dubois of Lewisham still existed. I’m sure that the Outfitters to Gentlemen and the Sons of Gentlemen would have been only too happy to help Ruth with a small alteration issue. She says:
I am looking for someone to alter a rather expensive coat. I don’t want to take it to just any tailor I find in the yellow pages, so I’m looking for a recommendation.
Sadly, now that the wonderful Valerie Dressmakerhas ceased trading I’m a bit stumped for truly marvellous alteration tailors. The guy who sits in the window of the excellent dry cleaners on Woolwich Road opposite Heartless East Greenwich always seems to be busy at his sewing machine, but although he once sewed up the frayed pocket of a suit jacket for me, I have no idea whether anything more complicated would flummox him or not.
Has he altered anything more specialised for you, or can anyone suggest another tailor?
The Greenwich Phantom @ August 31, 2010
Yet More Building Works
Posted in: Uncategorized | Comments (3)
It must be grim being a tourist coming to Greenwich just now. Nelson Road is under plastic. St Alfege’s is under plastic. The NMM is under plastic. Greenwich Pier is under plastic. The Cutty Sark’s been under plastic for years. The Old Royal Naval College is under scaffolding. One of the only bits that hasn’t been under plastic (so far) has been the Five Foot Walk.
Sadly not for long. The few square metres of green surrounding Bellot’s obelisk have proved just too tempting for the developers.
Now – this is ‘only temporary’ (if you count ‘a couple of years’ as temporary) as they create a hard-standing for people waiting for the ferry. The workman who spoke to Stephen (who took these pics) told him that the ticket office was to be moved to the grounds of the ORNC, which appears to be used more and more as a handy overspill for anything no one else wants.
I have to say that I can sort of understand in this particular case. I am assuming that this is the council creating their new-look Cutty Sark Gardens that they consulted about a few months ago, and, Lord knows, if there’s one area of Greenwich that does need a spruce up, it’s that. So for once I’m okay with this (though – two years? I don’t remember anything that radical in the proposals…)
What does bother me, though is that this is just the dovetail. If it’s going to take two years, that takes us to 2012. We will theoretically have a few months of clarity before the ORNC’s grounds are co-opted for something that really does bother me.
I have spent many Phantom-inches worrying about the ghastly market redevelopment proposals Greenwich Hospital are determined to impose upon us, and which have been soundly turned down by the council. But in a few days time they will be attempting to take the whole thing over our heads and go to appeal (the link with the ORNC is that they intend to relocate the market to the grounds while it’s being done).
No one has made it easy to object to the appeal, though I know quite a few of us did manage to circumnavigate the red tape when it was first announced, and I’m not sure if it is too late now to send a letter to the inspectorate in Bristol (they couldn’t get anyone local to agree to such a horrid thing) but I include the address just in case:
Alan Ridley
Planning Inspectorate
Room 4/02, Temple
Quay
Bristol BS1 6PN
Sorry – a grim one today. I promise that September will be full of light and lovely stuff.
The Greenwich Phantom @ August 31, 2010
Greenwich Weather Station
Posted in: Secret Greenwich | Comments (5)
I am, apparently, not the only afficionado of the lovely Maplin in Charlton, which always has that weird little battery that no one else sells (and helpful assistants that tell you the cheapest way to buy said battery is to get the mini torch on special offer and use the batteries out of that) a roll-up keyboard, peculiar burglar alarm spares and disco lights. I mean – no household is complete without a fog machine.
Julian agrees. He’d always wanted a wireless weather station – and who wouldn’t – and when he saw that Maplin are doing them half price, he snapped one up. Add a spot of free webspace and Trinity Grove Weather was born. It’s simple stuff, but rather fascinating…
The photo, by the way, is by Kathy, when she got up to find out what last week’s cable ship was called…
The Greenwich Phantom @ August 30, 2010
Ile de Brehat Cable Ship
Posted in: Events | Comments (3)
On Wednesday at 3.00am, Kathy was woken up by a humming made by a strange-looking ship. I have to say that this photo reminds me of the opening sequence from The Usual Suspects.I’m glad to say that there was no giant explosion but Kathy’s curiosity got the better of her and she got up again at 6.00am to find out what the ship was.
It’s Alcatel’s cable ship Ile de Batz, somewhat further up the river from where Alcatel’s submarine works live on the peninusla. I don’t know what it’s doing on Greenwich Reach pier; Kathy’s not seen a cable ship there before. I guess it could be – well – laying cable.
Wanna know how they do it? Check this out. I particularly enjoyed the dramatic music.
Sorry – this post should have appeared yesterday; I had some technical problems.
The Greenwich Phantom @ August 27, 2010
Under London
Posted in: Books, Not Quite Greenwich | Comments (2)
Alan Brooke, David Brandon, Pitkin 2010, £4.99
Pitkin aren’t known for their in-depth analyses of any subject, but that’s not what you buy ‘em for. They’re cheap and cheerful introductions to a place you visit on a day trip, with just enough info to entertain the casual visitor and pique the curiosity of the relatively few who decide to go further.
Having said that I have a Pitkin Guide to the Cutty Sark from the 1960s positively crammed with information – far too much for the MTV generation of today (admittedly including me) brought up on soundbites and sidebars. Grainy black and white photographs and large blocks of text don’t look particularly inviting, but they’re certainly substantial, and if memory of my parents grumbling serves, they were comparitively pricey back then.
I’m not aware that I have ever noticed Pitkin for years – certainly I haven’t bought anything (new, obviously – obscure second-hand volumes about weird things still make my spectral fingers itch) but my eye was drawn by Under London in Waterstones the other day.
Pitkin has hipped-up. Admittedly the subject matter was the thing that grabbed me about Under London but when I flicked through I was seduced by the glossy pages, the full colour illustrations – and yes, okay, by the fact that I needed something to read in the coffee shop and I could do this one cover to cover in the time it took to slurp a cappuccino. Oh – and the price. £4.99. You can’t really knock that…
What is it about things that are either very high up or buried beneath your feet? I guess it’s the lure of the unknown but it always seems to be the towers or the tunnels that sell out on Open City (this year on the weekend of the 18th/19th September – put it in your diaries now if you haven’t already…)
London seems to have as much underneath her as on top, and that’s where a guide of this size starts to run out of puff. It’s a really good looking book – lots of shiny photographs (I love George Formby singing about his little stick of Blackpool rock to sheltering Blitz Londoners) and quirky snippets, loosely gathered into themes – cemeteries, underground stations, murder, ghosts, plumbing and sewers – and there are things obscure enough to entertain an Underground London fan, but at 48 pages, this can only ever be a brief overview.
Greenwich, sadly, hardly comes into the picture at all – a fleeting mention of the Foot Tunnel, but nothing about the Swiss cheese that the town becomes further up the hill. I guess that’s forgivable since it’s a London-wide book, and it necessarily has to concentrate on the centre.
So. A handsome paperback, well-priced and with fun, funky facts and a breezy style. It’s not going to replace Antony Clayton’s Subterranean City(which itself could do with a bit of an update) and there is still a big yawning gap for a specifically Underground Greenwich book, but as a shiny intro to the delights under your feet in the City and beyond, it’s an entertaining light read.
The Greenwich Phantom @ August 25, 2010
Heartless East Greenwich
Posted in: Debates, News | Comments (5)
Jon asks:
On the page here Greenwich Council states that construction of the “Greenwich Centre” is due to start in December 2010.
I’d heard of the plans to build the Centre but I don’t recall seeing that date before.
Do you know whether this is part of the Heart of East Greenwich development? If so, has that date been announced officially? Are there now committed plans to do something with that site?
Andrew’s been worrying about this since May:
Whilst walking past the “New Heart for East Greenwich” today – something struck me as I walked past the blue boarded up former hospital site – if the E.Greenwich site were really in need of a new heart – it would be dead by now!
Perhaps the site is on an NHS waiting list ? I think it needs the kiss of life!
I truly have no idea what’s going on there. The Greenwich Centre is the one-stop shop for council services intended to go in the large empty space where the hospital was cleared, but any ideas about actual delivery are at best twinkles in eyes as far as I know.
In her latest newsletter Mary Mills says that at the June meeting of the East Greenwich Management Committee (not sure who this comprises of) it was decided there was “ clarification needed” for the New Heart of East Greenwich (God, I hate typing that name, it just sucks) but it “is understood a newsletter will soon be available for a developer.”
In June, apparently, this mythical ‘newsletter’ was ‘in the process of being produced. No sign of it yet, which doesn’t bode well for a December starting date.
One of the major problems appears to be that it’s not actually down to Greenwich Council what goes on on the site. It’s managed by (or at least it was last time I looked, but these government quangos seem to change with the wind) the Homes and Communities Agency (HACA) who recently lost their commercial partner, First Base. They now appear to have gone to the HACADPP (Homes and Communities Agency Development Partner Panel for those of you who don’t live in a Douglas Adams-esque world of bureaucracy) to try to find new development partners, which are pretty thin on the ground just now.
For the past – what – five, six years, there’s been a big hole in East Greenwich where the only thing that’s happened is that from time to time a new set of expensively-produced signs have gone up as the quango in charge has changed. My favourite was the jolly yellow set where small children talked about their dreams for the space – “fountains everywhere” said one young chap, who is probably in his twenties now (though unless they were going to reproduce the Tivoli Gardens – now there’s a thought – fountains ‘everywhere’ might be a tad impractical…)
Frankly I think it’s pretty unlikely that anything’s going to happen soon. In the meanwhile, East Greenwich library reels from the loss of the Meridian Music Centre, the Arches get just that little bit tattier and Woolwich Road continues to languish. I understand that the HACA are refusing access to anyone who might want to use the land for temporary purposes – as a sculpture park, for example, or temporary allotments. I’m assuming because they worry they’d have problems evicting people if they did.
The Greenwich Phantom @ August 24, 2010
All Change on the Western Shopping Front
Posted in: News | Comments (17)
There’s a Mitchell and Webb sketch about Richard Dawkins looking for a subject for his new book, the next thing (after God) that doesn’t exist. The question “Do Wimpy’s still exist?” gets the response “There’s still one in Greenwich. ”
Sadly that’s not true, though it wasone of the last old-style Wimpys to go and top marks for local knowledge on the part of M&W (the only working Wimpy I know of is on Margate seafront). Of course the dear old Wimpy beloved of a certain generation of schoolchildren, will live on forever (twice, actually) in the charming Bridge of Tiles but for now, at least, it’s yet another faceless all-purpose takeaway fried chicken place.
A number of people have been noticing strange things happening in that scruffy little shopping ‘arcade’ opposite the end of Royal Hill, though. There was the booze bunfight last year when Bottoms Up closed where yummy mummies kicked toddlers out of pushchairs to fill their buggies up with cut-price Champagne, and now there’s a presumably slightly-less-attractive-to-parents-of-under-fours closing-down sale of J&S Accessories (that’s the motorbike shop on the other side of the parade.)
Scott tells me the sign in the shop window of J&S says that Sainsburys have applied for a liqour license morning to midnight which sort of implies a mini market.
That must delight the Co-Op, still battling valiantly on in between the two…
And Richard has just directed me to the planning application for the old Bottoms Up – apparently it’s to be the expansion of a tour operator and a new School of English, which sounds inoffensive, if a little dull to me.
The Greenwich Phantom @ August 23, 2010
Weather Vanes (3) John Roan School
Posted in: Secret Greenwich | Comments (0)
We haven’t had a weather vane for aaaages, so here’s one I snapped the other day whilst walking past John Roan School up by the park. After some uncertainty it looks as though the school will now remain where it is rather than moving to the Peninsula. I guess there are equal quantities of people pleased and fed up about that.
The architects were the fabulously-monikered Percy Boothroyd-Dannatt and Sir Bannister Flight Fletcher, author of the seminal A History of Architecture, now in its millionth imprint, and costing a packet (though earlier editions are cheaper and well worth owning. I wish I did…) – and it was built by Bovis in 1926-8. Presumably it’s the Bannister Fletcher connection that makes it Grade II listed.
The listing doesn’t mention the weather vane, which is a shame, but it’s not hard to work out that the stag is a simplified version of the Roan coat of arms (three stags rampant topped by a stag’s head holding an acorn in its mouth and the motto, “Honore et Labore”)
I don’t have a fantastic zoom on my camera, so here’s as close as I can get.
The Greenwich Phantom @ August 20, 2010
