Flip sides of a coin today, folks, or, to be more precise, flip sides of a block.

Some of the Phantom’s fave front gardens are very formal, others, I just love for their sheer exuberance – and this is one of them.

Here, in King William Walk, just by the Cutty Sark, lives a little house with owners that love to put on a show. Every inch of their garden, despite its having a grille over a basement, is covered in pots and tubs of colourful plants, both bedding and permanent.

Window boxes full of pelagoniums, tall tobacco plants, yuccas, trailers – all sorts, in all sorts of containers, offset by hedging and lush dark greens – and, of course, the fabulous Regency/post Regency buildings. A real joy.

Which makes me all the sadder when I turn the corner into College Approach. Same buildings; perhaps even better setting – but look at it. One measly creeper and a few bin bags, the sum total of front gardenry going on here.

This row of fabulous buildings could look absolutely amazing. But they don’t. What a shame.

…or not, as the case may be. As expected, I got a minion, sending me the email equivilant of a xeroxed reply to my letter about the Equestrian Events in Greenwich Park. I repeat it verbatim:

To whom it may concern

Thank you for contacting the Mayor regarding the use of Greenwich Park for the London 2012 Olympic Equestrian events. However the selection of 2012 sporting venues is solely the responsibility of London’s Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) with the agreement of the International Olympic Committee. The Mayor is aware of your concerns about the Park and has asked me to pass them on to LOCOG.

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic – hand-washing to the Nth degree.

Honestly. I don’t know how much more hands-off this new mayor can get short of hot-footing it back to Henley and using a rubber-stamp on the end of a very long pole.

This was supposed to be posted yesterday but – well, you know the drill by now. I couldn’t upload any pics. But in a way, it’s quite good. Edith had sent me some pics of Greenwich Observation Wheel on its way up at last, but in the delay, I’ve also had some pics from DC07703 and I’ve been down to look at it myself.

DC07703 made the point that the area’s so covered in trees “that the first 3 mins and the last 3 mins of the 12min trip you’ll be looking into the trees. So It’ll only be 6 mins of views.”

This bothered me a bit, so I thought I’d pop down to check the tree situation for myself. I got down there about 5.00pm and about two thirds of the pods were in place. I took a long look and came to the conclusion that we’ll probably be all right. There are trees, granted, but they’re comparatively low, and at around that point I shall be so excited I won’t notice. And if it’s anything like a wheel I went on in Manchester – it looks exactly the same – then we’ll go round several times anyway.

Yo! The shipping magnate Sammy Ofer, who gave all that cash to the Maritime Museum a few months ago, has been digging into his pockets again.

He’s smashed the piggy bank, checked the back of the sofa and looked in the glove compartments of his sundry cars and scraped together £3.3m to make sure the old girl can complete her restoration.

Ross sent me the link to the BBC News story

I seem to remember being slightly mealy-mouthed about Mr Ofer’s last offer, but this one? Well – hooray. The Phantom’s smiling now…

Since Blogger’s once again preventing me from showing you some rather fab photos of the Greenwich Observation Wheel going up, I thought we could have a little poll following from this morning’s post about Royal Teas.

Raymond Voce and the Men in Grey Suits spent some time discussing whether Raymond’s popular Cheesy Beans recipe consitutes ‘cooking’ or merely ‘reheating.’ They still didn’t come up with a definitive answer.

So I thought I’d conduct a (very scientific, obviously) poll to find out what readers think.

So here’s the dish:

Cheesy Beans with Marmite Soldiers.

So that’s beans – presumably out of a can.

Cheese. On top. Melted.

Toast.

Marmite.

So. Here is the question for you. Is Raymond cooking the cheese or reheating it? How about the beans? Warming them up or cooking them? And is he ‘cooking’ toast, or reheating bread rather fiercely on both sides at once?

Your shout.

Due to the vagueries of this site, it’s not easy for me to put a poll onto the main Phantom page, (besides, I’m running out of room) so I’m starting a whole new one for polls, serious and not so serious. You’ll have to click through to it to make your voice heard. The Phantom Webmaster has very kindly agreed to assimilate the new page into the main site in time.

For now, though, click here to vote…

Ok – a long – but important one today…

I guess most of you will have heard by now that Royal Teas have finally lost their long-running battle with Greenwich Council over their ability to run the cafe properly – or indeed at all, given the restrictions they will now be put under. If you’re anything like me, the thing had been rumbling on so long that you would have thought that the charges had been quietly dropped, but sadly not. Thanks to the small-mindedness of individuals, we are in grave, possibly imminent, danger of losing one of our best cafes.

I don’t know about you, but I managed to get myself very confused about this over the years – a bit like when you start watching a situation, then a crisis, then finally a war break out over a period of months in the news. You’re drip-fed info on a piecemeal basis – at first it seems like a storm in a Fair Trade teacup and you take little notice. By the time it’s got serious, you’re already lost in minutiae.

So I dropped a line to Raymond Voce, owner of Royal Teas, to get the record straight, which is why I didn’t talk about this as soon as I heard (thanks to everyone who sent me the bad news – I guess I’d always rather know than not.) I’m going to give you pretty much what he told me – the bits in greeny-blue are his words. The rest are mine. This isn’t quite over yet and there are things best whispered by a Phantom…

So, for the moment, over to you, Raymond…

“I have been at the cafe since 1999. From the onset I tried to get planning permission to knock down and rebuild our delightful toilet.

After a number of applications I got permission. Two weeks after getting this permission I received a letter from the Council saying I was not allowed to continue cooking on the premises. This is 2002. We appealed this decision and had a hearing at the Council in 2004. Before this we were required to draw up an extraction system for the kitchen, which we did and received a letter back from Environmental Health that our system was acceptable.

So the hearing took place no mention of the system was made by the Inspector during the eight hours – included a site visit – and we didn’t bring it up because we thought it was no longer an issue. When we received his report it stated that we had lost and the majority of it was about how our proposed extraction system was not good enough. We felt that the
Inspector was at fault because to our minds his job is to ensure all the relevant points are discussed which he didn’t do.

We had no chance to put our points across re this system. So we felt we didn’t have a fair hearing and took this matter to the high court.

Are you still with me? I know, it is kind of boring. We lost at the High Court last year. The judge said we should have known the extraction system was always an issue. Incidentally, this took so long to be heard because Greenwich Council took forever to get their paperwork in.

We next applied to the Court of Appeal. An intermediate judge gave the go ahead as he was very concerned about the Councils behaviour. That takes us up to last week where we once again lost.

This time the conclusion was that if I had represented myself at the original Council hearing I would have had a very good case against the Inspector but as I took along a planning consultant – a professional – the onus was on him to raise any appropriate points. So how I see it is, the Inspector’s job changes dependent on who else is there.

Doesn’t seem right. Our Barrister is thinking of challenging this decision in the House of Lords – our case has now set this new precedent. It never ends!

Back back back.

The Inspectors report when dissing our extraction system made references to Public Services division section blah point blah. None of us had heard of them and it took a number attempts ringing the Council to find out who they were.

Well, they no longer existed and were superseded by two Environmental Health Departments. We had only got approval for the system from one of them. You would have thought that when we sent the plans to the address we were given by planning that they would ensure all relevant departments would see it. My point being with regards to the Court of Appeal decision, the planning Department itself didn’t seem to know about this Public Services Department and the two new strands of the Environmental Department so how would an outsider, even if he is a ‘professional,’know?”

Phantom, here, guys…

So anyway, While all this was going on, various individuals started coming out of the woodwork. People living around, complaining. So we basically have people moving in right slap bang over/next to a cafe and complaining they live right-slap bang over/next to a cafe. Raymond points out:

“At no other time have we received any other written complaints while I have been there.”

Eventually the cafe got permission to extend – it’s not very big – really just to improve that toilet (though I have to say as tiny, creaky old loos go, I don’t hate it – there are far worse I could mention…) and maybe get an extra table (some pushchair space for those sodding buggies would do me.)But as Raymond says

“Obviously I can’t spend that sort of money while this uncertainty is hanging.”

So these individuals turned to moaning about the cooking smells. The main problem seems to be with the hideous smell of bacon. From a vegetarian cafe. Nice one.

Raymond Voce, admits that “Royal Teas does have a ‘no cooking’ condition attached to it.”

But – and stay with us here – “because we have no commercial equipment and the soups and lunches we make are done in bulk and then reheated as ordered we were able to continue. We had over the years any number of people from Planning down and we were told just not to extend the menu, which we never have.

After getting permission for the extension it seems someone saw our file and encouraged the Council to take action even though we had been doing this since 1990.”

The sundry individuals who hadn’t noticed that they’d moved in next to a cafe, suddenly had the shock of their lives. Heavens! It seems they’d accidentally moved in by a pub too!!! That pesky pub and naughty cafe were clearly hiding when these people went to view the property. So now, the brewery were involved. Raymond is throwing his hands up here.

“Myself and the tenants at the pub really do our utmost to keep the impact of our businesses minimal to the surrounding area. We are very good neighbours, even if I do say so myself.

So at the Council hearing we applied to remove this ‘no cooking’ condition or alter it and specify exactly what we would be allowed to produce. Both suggestions were rejected.”

So what now? – House of Lords possibly. Just to mention here that the Barrister has acted for us free of charge. He is an angel. The Planning Consultant after the Councils hearing also offered his service free of charge.

I am now in the process of trying to alter the menu. I need to hire a kitchen elsewhere in order to prepare the soups and lunches and I will also have to hire another person. Extra costs that are going to be difficult to cover. At the weekends when we make most of our money 90% of people will have one of the breakfasts that I am no longer able to produce.

At the Council hearing much was made of cooking and reheating and the distinction between the two. I am able to reheat I am told. We spent twenty minutes discussing whether cheesy beans on our menu was cooking or reheating. No conclusion was reached. It is difficult planning a menu when it is so vague as to what I am allowed to do. I have been told by planning that toast is cooking but I have also been told that it is ok for me to bake cakes. Makes no sense to me. We are listed as a tearoom and coffee shop surely I should be allowed to make toast.”

What to do, folks? It worries me that some kind of nasty legal precedent seems to have been set here, allowing mean individuals up and down the country to move in next to places and then force them to change because they don’t like it. All I can say is that I hope Raymond doesn’t give up on the legal process. I don’t believe he intends to.

“I love the cafe and our customers are great. There are not enough independent cafes as it is and so every effort will be made by us to keep this one going.”

Here’s one thought, Raymond – though it’s not a cheap one…

As a dedicated East Greenwich-er, I have to tramp through the Park (what a hardship) to get to you. There’s a lovely empty shop next door to Theatre of Wine (opposite the Arches) – why not have that as your “cooking facilities” – let’s face it – no one can complain about the smell – it used to be a fish shop. At the same time, open it as Royal Teas II (or some other wonderful pun – I’m sure my readers will come up with some corkers for you) – and maybe a lovely wine-tasting shop in the evening, in conjunction with ToW????

Ok, I’ll take my Phantom Fantasy Hat off now. Good luck.

In the name of Fairness, if any of those individuals who’ve been moaning about having moved into a place next door to a cafe and pub that were hiding when they viewed their new gaff want to tell me their side of the story, I’d LOVE to hear it…

I just have to crow a little.

Boo! I just got sent on a 120 mile round-trip for Real Work which ended up in absolutely nothing. A complete wild goose chase and a wasted day on a busy week.

Hooray! I discovered a secondhand bookstore on my way home, where I found both volumes of The Rev. A. G. L’Estrange’s sizzling classic The Palace and the Hospital – Chronicles of Greenwich, written in 1886. I confess I’d only vaguely heard of it, but it looks great – appearing to be a fascinating mix of hard fact, dodgy speculation, Victorian whimsy and salacious gossip. My kind of book. I shall be sharing snippets and clippits with you as I enjoy them.

Not only that, I found an original and pleasingly well-thumbed copy of Baedecker’s 1908 Handbook for London. I had been considering buying the 1900 version in reprint (Old House Books, a company worth investigating if you like difficult-to-find old books) but one that has clearly been used, complete with some rather strange newspaper clippings attached with a glass headed pin in the front is much more romantic.

So. A poor day for earning money. A good day for spending it.

Third in the nosy series where we look at Greenwich through other people’s windows, and today, our reverse Through The Keyhole, has us peeping out of the upstairs of Dave’s place.

The first picture is out of Dave’s bathroom window – and it’s just the sort of thing I’m looking for in this series. Not everyone looks out on The Old Royal Naval College or the Thames. Most of us get a much more personal image of our town – secret, even.

This is the sort of thing that will get lost in history. I have spent a looooong time trying to find any old pictures of my own road – and despite driving the people at the Heritage Centre potty, all I could find was one – and even that was wrongly labelled.

Dave doesn’t say exactly where he is, though I’m guessing somewhere around Pelton Road, from the pics. He mentions that this view is going to change considerably when the Lovell’s Wharf development starts to change shape. So these pictures are a little piece of Greenwich ephemera – and I love them.

Keep ‘em coming in, folks. Thanks for all those sent so far – I’ll be posting them all – but there’s always room for more…