So – IS crime actually getting worse round here – or are we just persuading ourselves it is?

Whatever – Sarah has just told me about flyers being handed out today for a police “surgery” tomorrow evening, between 6.00pm and 7.30pm at West Greenwich House (on the High Street) where we can talk to ‘the team’ about our concerns.

Ok, guys. I need your help here. I was reading a book last week, from 1975, which kept referring to the wonders to be found in ‘The Greenwich Barge House.’

The what?

The Greenwich Barge House. Which was, apparently, the home of all kinds of wonders in the ’70s. The book talks about its housing ‘an enchanting little model of the eighteenth-century ceremonial barge of the Shipwrights’ Company,’ which has a Noah’s Ark theme (apparently the Company’s motto is “Within The Ark Safe Forever.) On the roof of the cabin. gilded animals march along, two, by two.

The Barge House also housed examples of the wherries – ‘long, narrow and shallow in build – in which the Watermen plied for hire from the riverside stairs.’

We could do with one or two of those in a few months time. Stevie tells me that Pedalpower, the magazine of Greenwich cyclists, is bracing itself for a proposed eighteen-month closure of the foot tunnel. Personally, I find that hard to believe – I mean – how long does it take to replace a few tiles and add a cycle lane? Except that Tony of the London Cycle Campaign tells me they’re not putting lanes in, but barriers to stop cyclists. Now I’m all of a pickle – I have no idea what’s going on. And it opens a whole nestful of vipers where cyclists flame pedestrians and vice versa and this is a post about barges.

I reckon we’ve been given an outrageous closure time so that when we get a revised time that’s only bad, we’re all grateful. The foot tunnel is an official highway, and as such I suspect that we may well be entitled to a Barge Replacement Service. It will probably just be a shuttle on the DLR, but there’s no harm in asking for a nice boat ride. It could be manned by a waterman in traditional garb – scarlet knee-length skirted-tunic uniform with stockings and buckled shoes – that would cheer things up…

But back to the Greenwich Barge House. The great barges of the Livery companies (which date back to the times when the Lord Mayor’s Parade took place as much on the river as along the streets) are long gone, but I did at least manage to track down this model of the one with the animals on it at the NMM. I had a look, and couldn’t find it actually on show, but then very little ever seems to be on display at the NMM. I’ve never seen such a museum full of nothing.

I’ve had even less luck finding Greenwich Barge House itself. It was definitely around in 1975, as my book’s author is keen to tell me about the enlarged engraving of The Stationers’ barge on the wall of the entrance hall – again – now in the NMM’s hidden collection. I’m prepared to believe that it went when the peninsula was flattened to make way for the Dome – after all the Peninsula seems the likeliest place for such a place to be – but looking at Peter Kent’s drawing on the front of Mary Mills’s Greenwich Marsh – The 300 Years before the Dome, I can’t see where it could have been. Simon Jenkins says it was next to the Maritime Museum – but I can’t work out where it could have been there, either, given what’s there now.

Anyone got any clues – or even heard of the Greenwich Barge House?

SoC also reminded me a couple of days ago (and I STILL forgot) to mention that the first ten minutes or so of this week’s episode Waldemar Januszczak’s series about Baroque architecture deals with Greenwich – mainly the Queen’s House and the ORNC, from what I could tell.

Indeed it may cover more than that – I don’t know because I didn’t manage to see the rest of it myself this week (a pal called at an inopportune moment and I’m not tragic enough (yet) to choose telly over humans. The day will come, I’m sure.)

So you and me both have a couple of days left to nip over to iplayer and watch it again. Find it here.

Akanksha asks:

“Do you know of any good beauty places that I could possibly get my eyebrows threaded in Greenwich please?”

The Phantom replies:
Hmm. This one’s not quite my area, ‘fraid – far too much pain involved…

Anita at House of Beauty (Blackheath Therapy Centre, 184-186 Westcombe Hill, 020 8305 1719) does eyebrow shaping, I believe, but threading is quite a specialist thing, I don’t know if she does that.

Maybe someone can recommend a threading-person, while I shut my ears and say “la,la,la…can’t hear you,” very loudly.

If you don’t have a lovely, cuddly independent bookshop in your area, like The London Review Bookshop (good cakes if you’re ever in the Bloomsbury area) West End Lane Books (good contacts) or the very wonderful Daunts (fab selection and lovely architecture) – and let’s face it, it’s unlikely we’ll ever get another one now – what with the way modern publishing works, the internet and supermarkets – then what’s the next best thing?

Someone at the local Waterstones that actually gives a damn, that’s what.

Jayson has just started as the assistant manager at Greenwich Waterstones and, as a Greenwich resident, has started beefing-up the Greenwich and London section and making it much more prominent in the shop. He even tells me he’s had one book reprinted because he saw it was going out of print. He’s keen to stock excellent books about the area, and happy to hear suggestions.

I’m delighted to see this. Of course I’d like to see a lovely independent bookshop and before you remind me, yes, Maritime Books on Royal Hill is lovely – but it’s specialised – which is slightly different. So, too, are Greenwich Book Time which sells remainders and the second-hand guys at Halcyon.

Let’s get realistic here. We have someone – with clout – who’s prepared to go that extra mile for local people – and that counts for a lot in a world where chains usually just plough-along-quite-nicely-thank-you.

Now. Here’s the bit where The Phantom’s tricorn starts to strain at the band. In places where you sometimes see staff recommendations on postcards dotted around the shop, you may well start to see little “The Phantom Recommends…” postcards on some of the books – they will look like this:

They will be culled from the The Phantom Bookshelf initially (and yes, I AM slowly adding to that – but I’m doing it very unscientifically, working my way along the shelf, and it’s taking aaaages…) but I may well be doing a few specific reviews for Jayson. Needless to say, I’m not going to say I love a book if I don’t – the same rigorous Phantom standards will be applied to any reviews I write.

In the meanwhile, keep an eye out at Waterstones for a slowly-growing Greenwich section. Of course it can only ever be as large as there are books in print – and there are never enough of those, thanks to the economics of publishing (otherwise Olde Phantome’s Greenwich Almanack would have been out by now) but maybe, if a major chain is interested in stocking local books, more publishers will be prepared to take a punt at printing them.

I can only see this as a good thing. Here’s something I never thought I’d say. Go Waterstones…

Simon rightly points out that I should be reminding you about Greenwich Council’s Be A Local Tourist event which gives sundry money off things all week.

I confess I looked at it and wasn’t wildly impressed with the offers, but it’s wrong of me not to let you lot know about it. Simon pointed out that tomorrow there will be 25 DLR Rover tickets going begging from the tourist office and Thames Clippers are 2-4-1 on the daily roamer tickets. In fact, many of the attractions are two-for-one. That doesn’t help if you’re on your own. Maybe I should start a buddy-system for getting cheapskate Greenwich-lovers together to enjoy the freebies next year.

Other offers like the Picturehouse, giving non-members members prices are less interesting to most of us, I’m sure. I mean – if you’re a cinema-goer in Greenwich and you’re not a member of the Picturehouse, you’re probably too mad to be reading this…

This, my friends, is a sneak preview, courtesy of Rod, of the vintage whisky casks that Meantime have acquired to age the super-strength ale they’ll be brewing at the forthcoming brewery/brasserie at the ORNC. It’s all exciting stuff – even for a non-beer-drinking Phantom – and not quite as far off, time-wise, as I’d assumed.

Just to confirm, it is going to be in the wonky building next door to the Pepys centre (so all those gags about drunk 18C workmen building things on the squiff weren’t a million miles off the mark.)

It is, of course, a World Heritage Site listed-building – which, although that means it’s an even fabber concept than just yer bog-standard microbrewery, also has the flip side that everything takes ages, while the place is properly excavated for archaeological treasure and conserved in manners acceptable to English Heritage. Of course, that’s a good thing – but it does mean that Meantime don’t get to move in until October.

From that point it’s going to take – well – it’s not completely clear but probably a few months to fit-out the place with a microbrewery where punters will be able to chat to the on-site brewer, drink beer brewed as near as dammit to the exact spot the old 1717 brewery was, eat food (I don’t know who’s going to be doing the cooking-side, but I’m assured that it’s not Greenwich Inc) and even, on occasion, visit the cellars where the remains of the old well have just been discovered.

Of course, just because they can’t move in yet, doesn’t follow that Meantime are standing still on this one. As you can see from Rod’s pictures they’ve sourced some wonderful old wooden casks from a distillery in Scotland, and they’re busy brewing the first batches of ale (apparently it needs to be aged for, like, ever, to get the best flavour, so the very first pints pulled won’t physically be able to be brewed on site, unless we don’t mind a couple of years delay in opening…)

There isn’t just going to be one kind of beer brewed at the ORNC. There will be all sorts – including some pretty deadly-sounding extra-long aged stuff, some more easily quaffed brews (though according to Rod that’s still longer than most brewers bother to age it) and some other, edgier, things such as what the newsletter coyly refers to as “experimental” beer. The mind boggles – just what does that mean? Are they going to try turning – oh – I don’t know – bicycle inner tubes – into alcohol or something? Maybe they could have a go at Greenwich Lambic Beer. Now that would be ‘experimental,’ given the microbes in the air round here….