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?
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