WATCHING THE DETECTIVES

Police Activity

On Monday afternoon it became clear that there had been an incident at the west end of Shirland Road, near the children’s playground. I was in the Office when police cars and vans started charging in that direction, and the police helicopter hovered overhead for an hour and a half. I had a call to make in that direction, and tried to cycle that way but was thwarted by incident tape closing the road. As I cycled back along the Harrow Road it appeared that someone was being arrested in Portnall Road, but of course they might not have been connected. It’s not unusual for the Police to visit known troublemakers before Carnival, but that was clearly not what was happening here. It seemed a lot more reactive. Apparently, I later learnt, a person on a motorbike shot at a white car which hit a tree on Kennet Road, and the gunman then took off into the adjacent special school. No-one hurt, apparently. The word is that this was in retaliation for an attack with a hammer in the vicinity of the playground on Shirland Road. So there were two incidents, but connected. A drug house was also mentioned. All perfectly normal for a Monday afternoon in August. It only got onto the BBC London news on Wednesday, as one of a series of five incidents involving guns in the past three days.

Register Office

Now, the Westminster Register Office used to be in what the City Council called “Westminster Council House”, on Marylebone Road, the former Marylebone Town Hall, a fine neoclassical building by Sir Edwin Cooper, begun in 1914 and not completed until 1921, and adjoining his Marylebone Public Library of 1939, but a few years ago the City Council tired of the upkeep of these distinguished buildings, and so disposed of the library to a business school. The Old Town Hall has been in the hands of the builders for four years, and I gather that it has now been refurbished, but in the interim, the Register Office moved out to Harrow Road, to a set of council offices near the (former) police station, which started life as the Paddington Board of Guardians offices, and which is in St Peter’s Parish. It’s not a bad building (Edwardian) but can’t have been as photogenic as the Old Town Hall, not least because some horrid automatic doors had been installed during its time as the Council’s “one stop shop”. As Anglican clergy are ex-officio registrars we are required to submit quarterly returns to our district register office of marriages conducted in our parishes, and it gave me great pleasure to cycle up to the office and hand in my nil-return forms in person. However, I’ve just had a nasty shock; an email from the Registrar to the effect that she hasn’t received my last two sets of returns. I may be a bit flaky about these things, but I am quite clear that I remember taking them to the office and handing them in at the front desk, in person, in an envelope addressed to the Registrar. A mystery.   

Tapering

I am tapering my training; that’s the correct phrase, I believe. My charity cycle ride to Paris (with my brother-in-law) is next week, and one is supposed to ease off one’s training in the final week. The trouble is, of course, that I am so idle that I am naturally terrified that I have simply not done enough, and so tapering off seems counter-intuitive. Still, there comes a point, as with exams, when rationally you know that you can do no more. I was unable to ride round the Park on Monday anyway, as the east side was closed. I had seen the advance notices and wondered why, but then on Sunday evening it became apparent, as a string of horse-drawn vehicles (minus horses) were parked outside Cumberland Terrace, and obvious film security men were hanging around. On Tuesday it became clear that they had put tan (or something) down on the road there, as the road was still coloured (and men were jetting down the entrance to Cumberland Terrace) and there was a pungent smell of dung. I wonder what period marvel it was?

The ride is for Christian Aid, in memory of Helen, and you can find details on the “A Light in this World” section of their website.

AUGUST DESPATCHES

I am Reconnected

The bit that I hadn't appreciated about the gas board was that it was still going to require two separate people to visit. One came on the Wednesday morning, as advertised, so off went my gas, but then when he left he told me that he had booked the next man to purge and relight, and that he should be along shortly. That was at lunchtime. He finally came at 8.15pm, and of course I had been waiting at home throughout the intervening time, frustrated at not being able to go out and do things. Still, it happened. I got my gas back. Everything is working, and it was our contractors' fault in the first place, so I mustn't moan.


Eviction

"Celebrity Big Brother" is back this week, and there "eviction" is a big part of the fun. It's rather less fun in real life. A housing association tenant has come in with a letter telling her she is to be evicted, or rather that her housing association are going to go to court to obtain possession of her flat. Since she is functionally illiterate this is all a bit of a problem for her, but someone has told her what it means. She asks for my help. Mostly she just wants me to go to court with her, which of course I can't promise without knowing when it will be; there is a date on the letter which she has assumed is the court date, but that's only a date before which proceedings cannot start. My view is, therefore, that this is an invitation to engage with the housing association before that date, and so that's what I try to do for her. But of course it's not that easy. They simply don't answer the phone. I need to have her here when I phone, because otherwise they won't speak to me anyway (which is not unreasonable) but she won't sit still for long. There's also a problem with her gas, and I try to talk to the housing association's gas contractor, but they have to refer it back to the housing association. The same happens with the gas supplier. Nothing comes from the housing association. I emailed the housing manager a week ago, but have had no response. Now I can understand that they are busy. I can even understand that they might want to get shot of this particular tenant, but this is not reasonable. She is making an attempt to talk to them, but they evade talking to her. Other people tell me this is entirely par for the course from this particular housing association.


New Season

So, football is back, after seemingly no break. I was well impressed with Manchester City's new change strip, in dull navy with a widely-spaced pinstripe in sky blue and yellow fluoro, worn with navy shorts and yellow fluoro socks. I also liked Chelsea's simple buttercup yellow with blue socks. But what was going on with West Ham? That appeared to be all off-white, which is not a good look. It's apparently their third kit, and has faint impressions of claret and blue on shoulders and hips, which are invisible on my television. I like Watford's new kit, of black and yellow stripes, with a simple black collar, and no fussiness, but their away kit is deeply terrible, in an implausible shade of green, with lime green details; the shirt is plain, but with one of those lamentable "shadow" patterns, checks, but not just simple checks, but stripey checks. I should also register my distaste for Manchester United's red-fading-to-black affair; that's just a bad design. It always looks undignified (see Barcelona's yellow and orange affair a few years ago) and it's also incoherent. Barcelon's yellow to orange at least makes sense, as does Team Movistar's horrid current cycling jersey, mid blue to navy, but red doesn't turn into black as you get darker, there's an awful lot of maroon in between.    


Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Today I cycled past a herring gull killing a pigeon. That's not supposed to happen. The gull is a scavenger, so it's supposed to wait until things are dead. This was happening surrounded by a crowd of pigeons, who seemed curiously unconcerned. All in all a very unsettling sight.


Training

I am trying to cycle more than usual, as I get closer to the date of the great ride. My brother-in-law and I are cycling to Paris, in memory of Helen and to benefit Christian Aid Education, so I'm supposed to be training. The extreme heat did rather slow down my progress, but at least I'm doing more now.

VEHICULAR ACCESS

'Twas On A Monday Morning...

Or rather it wasn't. Cadent didn't come back to fill the hole in my garage floor, so our groundworkers did it, which was fair enough since it was them who'd cut through my gas supply in the first place. The concrete dried nice and quickly in the heat. But then our Site Manager told me that Cadent were coming back anyway because they needed to replace the section of main from which my supply branches off, where the original damage took place, so could I give them access to my garage on Monday for them to do it? Of course. That suited me because I was taking my good bike in for a service, so I wouldn't have to lock it up somewhere. So, yesterday morning I went out to bring the car out of the garage, and saw a Cadent van waiting in the road, but before I could do anything our Site Manager told me that the Cadent man had just told him that he was going away again, but would be back again this morning at 8.30, "Without fail". You can guess what comes next.

Apparently he's off sick, and they're short-staffed because of the holidays, and as our Site Manager says, someone else is shouting louder than we are. So tomorrow morning I shall move the car and the bikes again, hope triumphing over experience.


Yellow Lines

Yesterday afternoon I narrowly avoided being killed, and it would have been the fault of delivery mopeds parked on a yellow line. This is what delivery riders and minicab drivers seem unable to comprehend; that yellow lines are about safety, and if you park on them you are putting other people at risk. So, I was heading north on Great Western Road, and there was the usual queue of traffic back from the Prince of Wales traffic lights, so I (on my bike) came inside the queue to get further up the road. Because of the curve in the road I couldn't see that there were two delivery mopeds parked on the yellow line outside a takeaway shop a few yards back from the junction, so I came up behind them, with a bus stationary alongside. I went to go past, which would have been perfectly possible had the queue remained stationary, but as I began the manoeuvre the lights changed, and the bus began to move, its angle shutting the gap. Fortunately I was able to stop, and the next bus in the line let me out. Not a very close shave, but not pleasant. I don't suppose the first bus driver ever saw me.

Meanwhile, on the east side of Regent's Park, the early evening sees a significant number of black people carriers parked on the double yellow lines on the Outer Circle. It seems to happen every day at the moment, and sometimes there's the odd 4x4 or black Mercedes as well. It's on the stretch between the Mosque and the Business School, but it doesn't seem to be anything to do with either. The stupid thing is that it usually happens when there are plenty of legitimate parking bays available a few yards further on. I counted seven vehicles on the double yellow lines at the same time the other evening. The worst offenders park on the end of the line of parking bays just south of the junction by the Mosque (one day recently the first in line was actually a Royal Parks vehicle) back towards the traffic island at the junction, and load and unload there. In fact, the other evening I saw a people carrier double parked just there, alongside another vehicle on the double yellow lines. Incredible. What does this tell us? That Westminster never send Civil Enforcement Officers there in the evening or at weekends (if ever), and that some apparently "professional" drivers hold parking regulations in contempt. The attitude that the rules don't apply to you, because you're only waiting for a while, not actually parked, or that you've got your job to do, is just not good enough. Sorry!  


Sign of the Times

I went out for a ride in the East Anglian countryside with a friend last week. When I was a boy in that part of the world you would occasionally see in the gutter at the side of the road a sugar beet or a turnip that had fallen off a trailer. Last week, as I cycled along, in the gutter I saw a pink grapefruit. Thus has England changed.