There's been a launderette on Bow Road for as long as I can remember, a long spartan space lined with whirling machines and a backroom you could imagine Dot Cotton fussing out of. But times change and suddenly it's earmarked for closure to be replaced by that staple of urban gentrification, a coffee shop. You can tell this because Tower Hamlets have slapped up one of their planning notices on a nearby pole. It's dated 8th June 2023 and it says Change of use from sui generis (dry cleaning) to E(b) (coffee shop). And it turns out PA/23/00995 isn't the first planning application they've put in because they submitted another last year and the council dismissed it because of fraud.
Mostly this is fine, the council said. "The new flue at rear does not impact the architectural and historic interest of Fairfield Road Conservation Area" and "The proposals by way of their size and nature will have little to no impact upon LBTH Highways". But someone in Environmental Health was clearly on the ball because they spotted the Noise Impact Assessment Report had been forged! It's been doctored from a noise report sourced from the internet, they said, an accusation they verified with Venta Acoustics who confirmed it was a fake and they'd initially produced it for a different site. I like to think I'd have spotted it too, the chief giveaway being the site context which said
"The site is located within a quiet village setting with residential dwellings in close proximity to the high street."
So they've tried again and this time their submission has a proper Noise Impact Assessment Report attached, correctly stating that "The application site is a two-storey property situated within a parade of shops on the A11." We have yet to see if the council accepts this but they probably will, and we also have yet to see if the new coffee shop will be a chichi takeaway with elite baked goods or, more likely for round here, a few tables and a squirty machine. Whatever, I can't see myself wanting to frequent a coffee shop that attempted to falsify its planning documents, so I for one will be sticking to my kettle just down the road.
WEATHER PHEW WHAT A SCORCHER!
With the temperature reaching 32.2°C at Chertsey, yesterday was the warmest day of the year so far. The following have also been the warmest day of the year so far.
It's unusual to hit 30°C so early in the year (and 25°C so late).
SHOWBIZ LAMBETH COUNTRY SHOW OPENS
Since 1974 the Lambeth Country Show has been one of London's best summer events, a free celebration of all things rural with a great big dollop of urban community chutzpah intertwined. Come for the sheep and enjoy the jerk roti. Come for the owls and end up watching Omar on stage. Come for the novelty vegetables and sink into a stupor with a flagon of Chucklehead cider. And it was always great but it was even greater before 2018 when they slapped a great big metal fence around it and stopped the free flow, this because searching everyone on the way in was deemed necessary by the police for health and safety reasons. It's never been quite the same since.
I've been many times and I went again this year but I went early and it hadn't opened yet. Normally it opens at noon, indeed before 'the wall' it just sort-of opened when things were ready, but this year it's been shunted back from 12-8 to 1-9. This timing may improve the evening vibe, indeed in this weekend's scorching weather it may be ideal, but it also meant I couldn't be bothered to hang around. I didn't fancy waiting until 1 o'clock and joining the patdown queues and then streaming over to the Flower Show tent to join the queues there and I bet they'd still be judging anyway and you can barely see the comedy sculptures since everyone got a smartphone, and it would have been sweltering on site and yes also absolutely marvellous but they've thrown up too many barriers over the years and it just isn't spontaneous joy any more.
Instead I walked around the edge of the Great BrockWall, joining all the other earlycomers who were doing much the same. I passed the truck delivering the motorcycle display team and two farmhands in Happy Herefords t-shirts returning from the supermarket with their lunch and two particularly cute goslings and a line-up of classic vehicles, so at least I saw those. I also got to help a performer trying to get inside who was yelling through the fence to no effect so I told her that if she followed the wall around the corner a gate was actually wide open and she thanked me and stoically tugged her blue wheelie suitcase uphill across the grass. And I'm not complaining here, I could easily had attended the show if I'd wanted to, but I am saying it was better when it wasn't the Lambeth County Enclave because most annual events get inexorably worse eventually.
SPORT HAMMERS VICTORIOUS
On Wednesday West Ham Football Club won a European trophy. They last did this when I was in nappies.
On Thursday they paradedthe trophy from Upton Park to Stratford on the top of a bus. It was telling they started near the old stadium and went nowhere near the new stadium.
I thought I'd pop down and have a look and my word it was madness. Broadway was seething with people mostly dressed in claret and blue well before the appointed time for appearing on the Town Hall balcony. They filled the street and sat on bus shelters and in one case stood on top of the timetables at a bus stop, many waving 'Champions' flags that must have been produced really rapidly or else some entrepreneur had taken a punt and it had paid off. And still they came pouring in, this the most ecstatic religious experience many had had for many a year, young and old, a lot of dads with happy kids, a lot of paunches, a lot of caps, very much not the usual Stratford demographic, more a diaspora spawning home.
I had been hoping to walk from Bow to Plaistow but it soon became clear this would be impossible because the corner by the Town Hall was impassable. I only just managed to squeeze past Santander against the rub of flow, my only hope of escape being through the mall, where first I had to pass the hungry hordes disgorging from McDonalds then battle past the laddish stream flowing raucously from the station, I-RONS I-RONS, and I only just made it through. I doubt anyone arriving much later would have seen much because Stratford town centre's not particularly permeable.
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I took the train to West Ham and my word there were even more giddily-excited Hammers fans pouring off trains from Upminster and Southend because it seems all the loyal fans have moved out east, and I didn't have the heart to say they'd never get near enough to see anything. At Plaistow fans were still standing in the street waiting for the bus to go by even though it was well late by now. Three helicopters were making an awful racket in the sky, and triangulating their locations it looked like the trophy must be close but it never seemed to edge any closer. So I gave up waiting and went round to BestMate's for Netflix and pie, and it was easier to talk once the choppers had shifted, and you'll never believe how busy that was I said.
