Yeah, Seb, thanks for nothing. Your revised marathon route has been so well leaked that this confirmation comes as no surprise. But it's still a kick in the teeth for Tower Hamlets, having made so much fuss previously about how we'd all be able to participate and then whipping our special treat away.
So let's get this clear. The changed route is for purely operational reasons. Not because we're ugly over this side of London, but because it would get in the way of everything else you have to organise. Well, organise it better, then.
Sheesh, we've gone for the "operational solution", have we? You'll be claiming next that this this "optimises stakeholder potential efficiency" and "minimises maximal reputational damage". This is a risk-register-driven realignment, because nobody dares try something which might possibly fail, under a worst-case scenario, in front of the world's media. And sorry, but how does a marathon ending up in the Olympic Park 'disrupt' the other sports taking place there? Everything else has its own arena, surely? Events in the Olympic Stadium would have to pause to give a big cheer to the arriving athletes, but that's happened in every previous Olympic Games and the world hasn't ended. The runners would appreciate a big cheer, I bet, and they won't get that same roar on the Mall.
Stop me if I'm wrong, but Tower Bridge closes regularly anyway. It's the 'important artery roads' you're more worried about. Let's be very clear about this - the road from Aldgate to Bow isn't an important Olympic artery road. It's only part of the Alternative Olympic Route Network, to be used as a last resort in times of transportational crisis. The official Olympic Route Network runs down the A12 towards the Blackwall Tunnel (for North Greenwich) then into town along the Commercial Road. A brief overlap would occur on Stratford High Street, but send the runners over the Bow Flyover and there'd be plenty of room on the dual carriageway for everybody.
Bollocks. A significant part of the final mile of the marathon would have been inside the Stadium, where spectators could have helped provide the big finish the event deserves. The Greenway and the main spectator concourse could surely have been used to guide runners into the Park, and they'll be public enough on the day. And if you've been stupid enough to design a stadium without an appropriate entry route for the marathon, then you must have known about this fatal flaw years ago, so why didn't you scrap the original route then?
The normal London Marathon shuts 26 miles of roads for hours, and the city copes. The Newham 10K run fills local streets with 3000 straggly runners, and Newham copes. So how can a mere 80 athletes, all running at a similar pace, cause the mass paralysis that LOCOG claim?
No, the route has been developed so that it closes as few roads as possible (and mostly those that are quiet at weekends). The new marathon's a circuit race with three and a bit loops, so that only ten miles of London's streets need to be blocked off [map]. And OK, you might get to see the runners three, four, even six times, but you'll have to find some roadside space first. Judging by how crowded the Embankment gets on New Years Eve (and that's with people standing in the roadway), I wouldn't rate everyone's chances.
Apart from Leadenhall, all of those landmarks were already part of the original marathon route announced in 2004. The new route also covers relatively tedious thoroughfares such as Queen Victoria Street, Cannon Street and Eastcheap, so it's not thrills all the way. And it now takes some astonishing deviations through the backstreets of the City, including such narrow backways as Ave Maria Lane, Lime Street, even Little Britain, which won't exactly be spectator friendly. If all London comes out to watch this marathon, all London won't fit. Without an East London spur, the suitable viewing length's now 25% shorter.
And nobody realised this back in 2005? Nor indeed in any year since? Come on, one duff starting position may force a revised race solution, but it doesn't force this particular new route.
The Marathon route completely buggers up the Embankment, which is a lynchpin of the main Olympic Route Network. Presumably this doesn't matter. Most other Olympic events will be taking place in North Greenwich, which is completely reachable from Stratford without 80 runners getting in the way. And if there are other events at Wembley Arena or Lord's or wherever, quite frankly there are other ways to get there which might even involve leaving half an hour early.
Tower Hamlets is one of the five Olympic boroughs. It was promised the basketball, which got moved into Newham to save money. It was promised the walking races, which got moved into Central London on the quiet. And it was promised the marathon, which has just been whipped away for mostly operational reasons. Tower Hamlets is now an Olympic borough with nothing, apart from a big building site nextdoor and several traffic jams.
Right. No actual Olympic sports, but some 'opportunities'. One of those will apparently be the Torch Relay, which was last here in Tower Hamlets two years ago. In that particular LOCOG-organised fiasco, the flame whizzed through the borough unseen in the back of a bus, much to the disappointment of all those assembled to see it. Sorry Seb, your promise of 'opportunities' rings a bit hollow.
Well, there you go. If we want to see some action we can always buy tickets, just like people in Croydon and Warsaw can. And there'll be a new swimming pool, in Newham, and some new cycling facilities, in Newham, and some new homes, in Newham. Yes, we know East London will do bloody well out of the Games. We just wanted our corner to be a little part of it.
No previous Olympic City has had the supreme locational bonus of an Athletes Village immediately alongside the majority of its sporting arenas. And yet no previous Olympic City has had to divert its marathon away from the Stadium merely because it might screw up the traffic. Not just for the athletes, either. Look, Seb specifically mentions spectators too, i.e. the officials and sponsors who need to be driven around everywhere. So much for this being a 'green' games powered by public transport, because it's limousines and coach convoys that have scuppered Tower Hamlets' marathon dreams.
Yes, Seb, we know you're not going to change your mind. Yes, we know the new route is final and we've missed out. Yes, we're sure that Leadenhall Market will look better on the world's TV screens than Whitechapel Market. But what you did here was to promise us something unique and global, and then steal it away. What you did here was to prioritise unrestricted traffic flow at the expense of East End spectators. What you did here, through lack of joined-up thinking, was to generate a major PR own goal. You'll have to hope that Tower Hamlets either forgives or forgets.
Somewhere historic: Three Mills Britain's oldest, and largest, tidal mill is in Newham. It's the House Mill, at Three Mills. Unfortunately it's not open on Saturdays, so I couldn't go then. Thankfully I live ten minutes walk away, so I broke all the "random borough" rules and went there on Sunday instead.
There are only two mills at Three Mills, although there used to be eight in medieval times. One survivor is the Clock Mill, so called it has a clock on the tower [photo], and the other is the House Mill, so called because the miller's house used to be nextdoor. The House Mill's the bigger, and dates back to 1776 in approximately its current form [photo]. It was built to grind grain not for flour but for the distillation of alcohol, most notably gin. All that came to an end one incendiary night during the Blitz, and it took sixty years for the mill to be rebuilt and restored. A fine upstanding body of volunteers maintain the site and open it up once a week (once a month in the winter) so that visitors can take a look around. It's busier than it could be, but not perhaps as busy as it should be.
Unlike most modern visitor attractions, the café and gift shop are located on the way in. You can have a sandwich or a toasted teacake while your tour guide gets ready, and maybe watch the introductory video (if you can hear the commentary above the hubbub of raucous diners). It's all endearingly amateur, even the unlikely second hand book stall in the corner, and all the better for it. Eventually you'll be heading off up the metal staircase which links together the old and the new parts of the mill. The miller's house turns out to be the wholly new part [photo], containing offices and a penthouse conference room, although from out the front it's a terribly convincing fake. Up top there's a fine view of the tidal river, and how it splits in half to feed the two different mills on the site. You also get some idea of the grand scale of the Three Mills film studios nextdoor, once all part of the same refinery complex, and apparently a former distribution centre for Bacardi.
But it's the old mill you'll be wanting to explore. This is a splendid building, on several storeys, lovingly assembled from pine beams beneath a steeply pitched roof. Some of those beams are English Heritage replacements, but others (the chunkier, woodwormier ones) date back over 200 years. Health and Safety dictates you can't climb right to the top, but you can look up to see the wheel which hoisted sacks of grain to the high level bins. A series of hoppers and chutes directed the grain back down, ensuring it ended up between the right millstones at the right time, ready for the clunking machinery to whirr into action and get grinding. You have to watch your head lest you hit some wooden or metal protuberance, and watch your step in case you dislodge some trapdoor and open up a direct route to the floor below.
Eventually the tour reaches ground level, which is where the milled grain ended up and where the four waterwheels are. They're in two pairs, and also from completely different generations. The largest is a metal Victorian contraption, while the oldest is wooden and so fragile that the trustees daren't even touch it. All are controlled by their own sluice gate, and exist in a dark netherworld of decay and pigeon feathers. If there's ever any money going for further restoration, it's hoped that at least one of these wheels might turn again, powered as before by the ebbing tide. Alas, given that Newham can no longer spare any money even for local schoolchildren to come visiting, further regeneration may be several years off. by tube: Bromley-by-Bow
Somewhere random: Plaistow BestMate lives in Plaistow, and I always joked that when Newham emerged from my random jamjar I'd visit his hometown and try to find something interesting there. And it did. So I went. And I failed.
Plaistow's part of the amorphous blob of housing that makes up the majority of central Newham. It merges seamlessly into its surrounding neighbourhoods, having no distinct identity, only a vague focus. The name's widely known only because of the tube station (now properly pronounced 'Plahstow' rather than "Playstow' on passing trains). Plaistow's been luckier in this respect than poor old Plashet up the road. Almost nobody's heard of that, not least because the District line skips from Upton Park to East Ham without stopping. Plashet's quite interesting - prison reformer Elizabeth Fry used to live there, and it has an award-winning millennial bridge linking two halves of a school across a main road [photo]. Ah, if BestMate lived in Plashet, the stories I could tell. Plaistow, however, is more of a challenge.
Wikipedia describes Plaistow as "a mainly hoodrat area, including several council estates", which is at least semi-accurate. It's not somewhere renowned for its shopping. The main street has an Iceland, a Job Centre and lots of those takeaways that fry stuff, as well as umpteen pound shops with brightly coloured plastic baskets stacked up outside [photo]. But there's also a dedicated dolls house emporium, and a couple of funeral directors, plus an unexpectedly high number of shops with the name 'Grace' in their title. BestMate and I sometimes hide away in the Abbey Restaurant, which sounds posh but in truth serves up all-day breakfasts and tea beneath a reverential photo of Princess Di.
In an attempt to find Plaistow interesting, I tried hunting down some of its more interesting architectural features and street art. Not a great success. I couldn't find most of the murals, and the Tudor 'Hidden House' tucked behind the doctor's surgery alas lived up to its name. I did discover a cul-de-sac called Routemaster Close, built on the site of the old tramway depot, but that didn't exactly inspire. One local boozer (the 'D k f Edinburgh') had a supposedly interesting sign, but on arrival I discovered the place was instead being gutted. I was more taken by the Black Lion. This low-timberedhostelry packs a characterful punch, and its courtyard was allegedly a haunt of Dick Turpin. On my visit, however, the place was packed out with raucous West Ham fans downing a swift pre-match lager while their kids kicked footballs up a sidestreet. As kick-off approached they marched east to join further beery gaggles assembling up the road in Upton Park. Plenty of heart and soul, Plaistow, but all the action's elsewhere. by tube: Plaistow
Somewhere pretty beautiful: Itchycoo Park You remember the song. "Over bridge of sighs, to rest my eyes in shades of green, under dreamin' spires, to Itchycoo Park, that's where I've been." Small Faces, 1967. "What did you do there? I got high."Steve and Ronnie were clearly on something when they wrote it. But where is this Itchycoo Park of which they sing? Dreaming spires and a bridge of sighs hint at Oxford, but apparently not. Nothing's proven, but it seems that Itchycoo Park was the name of a patch of grassland near where Steve Marriott grew up. That's Little Ilford Park, close to the suburb of Manor Park, in the top right corner of Newham. Back in the 1950s the park used to be full of stinging nettles, allegedly, making recreational life unpleasant and earning it the nickname of Itchycoo Park. Nice story, might be true. Others say the 'park' in question was Wanstead Flats, which would fit better with the line in the song about feeding ducks because there's a big pond there. But the weight of opinion appears to stack up behind Little Ilford Park, so that's where I went yesterday.
"It's all too beautiful." Er, not quite. There are formal landscaped gardens with rosebeds and a pergola, but I guess they're not at their finest in October, and they're not terribly extensive either. Alongside is a much larger area of mown mud, sometimes ideal for cricket, but currently only good for jogging round. Presumably this was the nettly bit back in the Small Faces time. And then there's the North Circular Road, whose elevated dual carriageway lopped off the edge of the park a while back, and now whizzes by beyond the trees. Beautiful it is not. But running north along the A406 is a newer addition to the park - a thin strip of meadow called Webster's Land - and that's rather pleasant [photo]. It's been left to run semi-wild, with a few paths threading between the long grass and a carpet of wild flowers still blooming throughout. It was also very squelchy underfoot on Saturday morning, so much so that within 30 seconds my trainers were soaked, and I considered renaming this SoggyDew Park instead. As for "getting high", the only substance abuse in evidence was an anoraked lad drinking beer from a can wrapped none too convincingly inside a brown paper bag. He'd be rolling home later not to write a world-famous song, but for a long lie down. by bus: 147
Somewhere famous: The Royal Docks To the best of my knowledge, Newham's the only council to offer a series of podcasted walks on its website. One's based around Green Street, and that's the walk I told you about yesterday. Another's around Stratford, which I was studiously trying to avoid on my Newham day out. And the third's round the Royal Docks - the largest artificially-enclosed area of water in Europe. Tacked onto London's Docklands in the late 19th century, they were soon superseded by Tilbury downstream and finally closed to commercial traffic in 1981. Redevelopment brought new homes, a new exhibition centre and even a new airport. Today the area's very different to the rest of Newham, and well worth a wander...
» ExCel Exhibition Centre: As exhibition centres go, this is a whopper. Essentially it's a long shed alongside the Royal Victoria Dock, recently extended so it stretches all the way from one DLR station to the next. From outside it looks fairly striking, but inside it's nothing but a series of vacuous halls linked by a broad central corridor. Seven 2012 Olympic events will be hosted here, and normally there's some big exhibition (or three) taking place within. But on Saturday the place was dead, absolutely dead, bar a single Costa Coffee outlet attempting to sell hot beans at the western end. I walked from one end of the building to the other without seeing a single ExCel employee or security guard, past mothballed bars and umpteen shuttered food outlets. Most eerie. Maybe there's a recession on or something. [photo] » Royal Victoria Dock footbridge: The dock's over a mile long, so a footbridge was needed across the middle before any residential redevelopment could take place to the south. It's a massive footbridge - it has to be to permit tall yachts to pass underneath - so there's a slightly damp lift if you don't fancy hiking nigh 100 steps up and down. And theview from the top is great, especially up-dock towards Canary Wharf. If City Airport's open then miniature planes go whooshing right over your head, because the bridge is lined up with the runway. » Millennium Mills: The tall chunky building on the southern banks of the docks is Millennium Mills, a granary formerly used by Spillers for industrial-scale flour processing. It's been sealed off for years, not that this stops urbanadventurers from getting inside and taking photos. Yes Liam, that looks lots of fun, but also very naughty. One day it'll be flats, because everything is eventually, but hopefully that's still some way off. Indeed, there was scheduled be a world-class mega-aquarium called Biota! nextdoor by now, but funding fell through so there isn't. In the meantime, this forlorn corner of Newham lies fenced off and unintentionally preserved. [photo] » The Silvertown Explosion: One January evening in 1917, Britain's biggest everexplosion levelled a munitions factory on the banks of the Thames. 73 people were killed, and the blast was heard over 100 miles away. I'll come back some other time and give the story the detail it deserves. But I will say that the monument outside Minoco Wharf, which is two thirds war memorial instead, is woefully insignificant. [photo] » Thames Barrier Park: Now ten years old, this is one of London's newest parks, and a bit of a looker. Obviously it helps having the amazing Thames Barrier at the bottom, but the sunken garden that runs down to it is very impressive too. Waves of undulating hedgerow are interspersed with parallel beds of shrubs and flowers, and the effect is better with everypassingyear[photo]. But I'm a bit nervous about the Barratt Homes currently being built round the eastern perimeter, because they won't be quite so tasteful as the 30s-style flats to the west. [photo] » Brick Lane Music Hall: It's not in Brick Lane, and it's not quite a Music Hall. But it is home to a musical theatre company, now based in a deconsecrated gothicchurch in Silvertown. They run cabaret-style entertainment served with a three course meal (or full afternoon tea, depending when the performance is). And it sounds like just the sort of middle-of-nowhere place that my older readers might love to go if only they'd ever heard of it. » Royal Albert Dock: The terminating point for my walk, and another whopper. On one side lies London City Airport, which falls silent on Saturday lunchtimes to give local residents 24 hours respite from the noise. On the other is the London Regatta Centre, because the waters here are perfect for rowing, canoeing and other watery sports. Across the dock is the Connaught Bridge, which swings out of the way on giant cogs if necessary. And underneath the bridge is the Connaught Tunnel, formerly part of the railway line to North Woolwich and eventually to be reused as part of Crossrail[photo]. A world away from the bustling days of cranes, cargoes and dockers - London soon moves on.
The whole walk takes just over an hour, if you don't dawdle or stop for drinks anywhere. There being a lot of water about, the views are (mostly) great throughout. And if you've never been, other than to catch a plane or attend an exhibition, you've missed out on this unique riverside strip. by DLR: Custom House → Royal Albert
Newham's not your typical London borough. It has an extremely diverse population, most of whom aren't white and 40% of whom were born overseas. It's packed with young people. It's significantly economically deprived. It used to be the bottom left corner of Essex, although it looks irrevocably urban today. And it's hosting the Olympics in two years time. Don't worry, I gave the stadium a wide berth on my Newham day out.
Somewhere both retail and sporty: Green Street, Upton Park If there's one street in Newham which sums up the borough's diversity, it's the street down the middle. That's Green Street, and on Saturday afternoons a few steps is all it takes to cross continents. [Walk Green Street - audio tour]
There's no hint of what's to come at the northern end of Green Street, this could be any residential Newham street lined by Victorian terraces. And then the shops start. These shops cater very specifically to the Asian community, and they ramp up in importance the further south you walk. Tailors and sweet shops and restaurants to begin with, then more luxurious boutiques catering especially for loaded ladies. The window displays are dazzling - the store contents even more so [photo]. An entire wall of golden necklaces, perhaps, or a glittering parade of sparkly handbags. As for the high-heeled shoes, these are some of the gaudiest totteriest I've ever seen. Many of the shops stretch back quite some distance, giving space for women, couples, even entire families to stand around and select some object of innate gorgeousness for that next special occasion. I suspect a lot of bridal jewellery is peddled here, although the ladies wandering home with bulging carrier bags are more likely to have bought a special sari for that big night out. Not a single UK chainstore intrudes for a good half-mile, and the street clearly caters well for the everyday and not-so-everyday needs of its local population. Outside Southall, I've seen nothing else quite like it in London.
Queen's Market: Pass south of Upton Parktube station and Green Street has shopping of a very different kind. Queen's Market is a traditional East London market with a hundred years of history, although it hasn't always been housed in a concrete bunker beneath a first floor car park. It opens four days a week, including Saturdays, selling a wide variety of 'stuff' to an appreciative clientèle. Many of its 80 stalls sell fruit and veg, some in those ubiquitous plastic bowls, others more lovingly arranged. Spelling isn't always the stallholders' speciality ("corrianda", anyone?), but whether it's British, Caribbean or specialist Asian you want you'll find it here. There's not quite such a focus on meat or fish, but the longest queue I saw in the place was for the (non-halal) butchers. Blouses for two quid, hi-vis jackets for five, and well below salon prices for a restyle and blowdry. As markets go it's unpretentious and friendly, without ever feeling like it's stacked full of cheap nasty tat.
Unthinkable, then, that there were long-term plans to knock Queen's Market down and replace it with an 18-storey apartment block with an Asda supermarket underneath. Don't worry, the developers said, we'll make available some first floor market space which the displaced stallholders can move into, but not until three years of building work are complete. Normally these stories have an unhappy ending (for the public at least), but in this case the public protested very loudly indeed and were heard. The project was kicked into touch by the Mayor last year, which then led to the developers falling out with the council and the entire scheme being scuppered. Hurrah! Some other change will surely come along - the existing facilities aren't perfect enough to survive untampered. But in credit crunch times, in a community that's permanently credit crunched anyway, Queen's Market is an essential survivor.
Upton Park: Half past two on a Saturday afternoon, and the southern end of Green Street is a completely different country. Here the demographic is most definitely white, and very distinctly male, as West Ham's latest home match against Fulham approaches. Crowds of blokes pour out of the tube station and throng the pavements, many (but by no means all) dressed in telltale claret and blue [photo]. The Boleyn pub, across the road from the famous Bobby Moore statue [photo], has been rammed since noon and is slowly starting to empty. Other supporters have been downing pints at pubs in the surrounding neighbourhood, from Plaistow to East Ham, and now make their beery way through the backstreets to join the others. A chant of "Irons, Irons" goes up, but only from a few. Far more popular are the burger stalls lined up at the roadside facing the stadium, because it helps to be full of processed meat and ketchup before a good roar on the terraces. The Boleyn Ground's two fairytale castle turrets are calling the faithful to worship, and still they come.
Anyone for a West Ham garden gnome? There are plenty for sale in the stadium megastore, along with eggcups, shower gel and some "only a fan would want one" nodding dogs. For those who'd arrived much earlier, there was an opportunity to get members of the first team to sign their merchandise. The players' car park is alongside, and they're well accustomed to fans calling them over to scrawl their signatures on whatever's thrust their way. I spotted Portuguese defender Manuel da Costa exiting from his Bentley, shortly after tens of excited children yelled his name through the fence, then watched as he politely signed banners, programmes, even a rather grotty looking football [photo]. This exemplary behaviour alas didn't stop him elbowing Fulham's striker in the head later that afternoon, as a lively one-all draw played out.
Should West Ham succeed in taking ownership of the Olympic Stadium after 2012, this matchday hubbub will shift two miles west to the concrete piazzas of Stratford City. It's hard to imagine the Westfield shopping centre permitting a line of burger vans along the walk from the station, and I can't believe there'll be sufficient pubs in the locality either. The new stadium might be cutting edge, but it'll tear the heart out of a traditional Saturday afternoon in Upton Park.
See also (just round the corner, in Barking Road) The Who Shop: There's only one Doctor Who shop in the world, and it's in Upton Park. These are fairly new premises, which means more space to display books and CDs and Dalek miniatures and Torchwood 2011 calendars and all the other essential ephemera the true Who geek demands. Even better, they have a museum round the back, accessed through a plywood Tardis in the corner of the store. It's bigger on the inside than on the outside, naturally, but the single room isn't exactly huge given the £3 entrance fee. What makes it worth a visit, if you're so minded, is that the staff member who shows you round is a true enthusiast. She'll know where that Cyberman costume was last used, and why her husband was wearing it. She'll be able to identify the silky black dress as Jean Marsh's sorceress costume from Battlefield (Sept 1989) and the cheap wooden tube as a Drahvin gun from Galaxy 4 (Sept 1965), and know the story behind each. Me, I was most excited to come face to face with the actual blue crystal from Metebelis 3 that finally despatched Jon Pertwee, and to see the genuine mask of Sutekh that scared the willies out of me in Tom Baker's Pyramids of Mars. But then I'm sad like that. If you're sad like that too, then Who's for a visit? Newham Bookshop: There are too few proper independent bookshops left in the UK, especially on the eastern side of London. So three cheers for the proper independent Newham Bookshop, which survives an thrives in an area where it economically shouldn't. New books are crammed into every available space, often piled horizontally to get more titles in. And they're interesting books too - this isn't a Richard & Judy or Katie Price's memoirs kind of place. History, politics and sociology get a good look in, as well as a whole room of children's and teenagers' books in a separate room nextdoor. I bought the most relevant book I could find, given that I was on a random borough tour, and snapped up a light tome on psychogeography. [list of upcoming events and signings]
There are only two mills at Three Mills, although there used to be eight in medieval times. One survivor is the Clock Mill, so called it has a clock on the tower [photo], and the other is the House Mill, so called because the miller's house used to be nextdoor. The House Mill's the bigger, and dates back to 1776 in approximately its current form [photo]. It was built to grind grain not for flour but for the distillation of alcohol, most notably gin. All that came to an end one incendiary night during the Blitz, and it took sixty years for the mill to be rebuilt and restored. A fine upstanding body of volunteers maintain the site and open it up once a week (once a month in the winter) so that visitors can take a look around. It's busier than it could be, but not perhaps as busy as it should be.
But it's the old mill you'll be wanting to explore. This is a splendid building, on several storeys, lovingly assembled from pine beams beneath a steeply pitched roof. Some of those beams are English Heritage replacements, but others (the chunkier, woodwormier ones) date back over 200 years. Health and Safety dictates you can't climb right to the top, but you can look up to see the wheel which hoisted sacks of grain to the high level bins. A series of hoppers and chutes directed the grain back down, ensuring it ended up between the right millstones at the right time, ready for the clunking machinery to whirr into action and get grinding. You have to watch your head lest you hit some wooden or metal protuberance, and watch your step in case you dislodge some trapdoor and open up a direct route to the floor below.
Plaistow's part of the amorphous blob of housing that makes up the majority of central Newham. It merges seamlessly into its surrounding neighbourhoods, having no distinct identity, only a vague focus. The name's widely known only because of the tube station (now properly pronounced 'Plahstow' rather than "Playstow' on passing trains). Plaistow's been luckier in this respect than poor old Plashet up the road. Almost nobody's heard of that, not least because the District line skips from Upton Park to East Ham without stopping. Plashet's quite interesting - prison reformer Elizabeth Fry used to live there, and it has an award-winning millennial bridge linking two halves of a school across a main road [photo]. Ah, if BestMate lived in Plashet, the stories I could tell. Plaistow, however, is more of a challenge.
You remember the song. "Over bridge of sighs, to rest my eyes in shades of green, under dreamin' spires, to Itchycoo Park, that's where I've been." Small Faces, 1967. "What did you do there? I got high." Steve and Ronnie were clearly on something when they wrote it. But where is this Itchycoo Park of which they sing? Dreaming spires and a bridge of sighs hint at Oxford, but apparently not. Nothing's proven, but it seems that Itchycoo Park was the name of a patch of grassland near where Steve Marriott grew up. That's Little Ilford Park, close to the suburb of Manor Park, in the top right corner of Newham. Back in the 1950s the park used to be full of stinging nettles, allegedly, making recreational life unpleasant and earning it the nickname of Itchycoo Park. Nice story, might be true. Others say the 'park' in question was Wanstead Flats, which would fit better with the line in the song about feeding ducks because there's a big pond there. But the weight of opinion appears to stack up behind Little Ilford Park, so that's where I went yesterday.
» Thames Barrier Park: Now ten years old, this is one of London's newest parks, and a bit of a looker. Obviously it helps having the amazing Thames Barrier at the bottom, but the sunken garden that runs down to it is very impressive too. Waves of undulating hedgerow are interspersed with parallel beds of shrubs and flowers, and the effect is better with every passing year [photo]. But I'm a bit nervous about the Barratt Homes currently being built round the eastern perimeter, because they won't be quite so tasteful as the 30s-style flats to the west. [photo]
There's no hint of what's to come at the northern end of Green Street, this could be any residential Newham street lined by Victorian terraces. And then the shops start. These shops cater very specifically to the Asian community, and they ramp up in importance the further south you walk. Tailors and sweet shops and restaurants to begin with, then more luxurious boutiques catering especially for loaded ladies. The window displays are dazzling - the store contents even more so [photo]. An entire wall of golden necklaces, perhaps, or a glittering parade of sparkly handbags. As for the high-heeled shoes, these are some of the gaudiest totteriest I've ever seen. Many of the shops stretch back quite some distance, giving space for women, couples, even entire families to stand around and select some object of innate gorgeousness for that next special occasion. I suspect a lot of bridal jewellery is peddled here, although the ladies wandering home with bulging carrier bags are more likely to have bought a special sari for that big night out. Not a single UK chainstore intrudes for a good half-mile, and the street clearly caters well for the everyday and not-so-everyday needs of its local population. Outside Southall, I've seen nothing else quite like it in London.
Queen's Market: Pass south of Upton Park tube station and Green Street has shopping of a very different kind. Queen's Market is a traditional East London market with a hundred years of history, although it hasn't always been housed in a concrete bunker beneath a first floor car park. It opens four days a week, including Saturdays, selling a wide variety of 'stuff' to an appreciative clientèle. Many of its 80 stalls sell fruit and veg, some in those ubiquitous plastic bowls, others more lovingly arranged. Spelling isn't always the stallholders' speciality ("corrianda", anyone?), but whether it's British, Caribbean or specialist Asian you want you'll find it here. There's not quite such a focus on meat or fish, but the longest queue I saw in the place was for the (non-halal) butchers. Blouses for two quid, hi-vis jackets for five, and well below salon prices for a restyle and blowdry. As markets go it's unpretentious and friendly, without ever feeling like it's stacked full of cheap nasty tat.
Upton Park: Half past two on a Saturday afternoon, and the southern end of Green Street is a completely different country. Here the demographic is most definitely white, and very distinctly male, as West Ham's latest home match against Fulham approaches. Crowds of blokes pour out of the tube station and throng the pavements, many (but by no means all) dressed in telltale claret and blue [photo]. The Boleyn pub, across the road from the famous Bobby Moore statue [photo], has been rammed since noon and is slowly starting to empty. Other supporters have been downing pints at pubs in the surrounding neighbourhood, from Plaistow to East Ham, and now make their beery way through the backstreets to join the others. A chant of "Irons, Irons" goes up, but only from a few. Far more popular are the burger stalls lined up at the roadside facing the stadium, because it helps to be full of processed meat and ketchup before a good roar on the terraces. The Boleyn Ground's two fairytale castle turrets are calling the faithful to worship, and still they come.
The Who Shop: There's only one Doctor Who shop in the world, and it's in Upton Park. These are fairly new premises, which means more space to display books and CDs and Dalek miniatures and Torchwood 2011 calendars and all the other essential ephemera the true Who geek demands. Even better, they have a museum round the back, accessed through a plywood Tardis in the corner of the store. It's bigger on the inside than on the outside, naturally, but the single room isn't exactly huge given the £3 entrance fee. What makes it worth a visit, if you're so minded, is that the staff member who shows you round is a true enthusiast. She'll know where that Cyberman costume was last used, and why her husband was wearing it. She'll be able to identify the silky black dress as Jean Marsh's sorceress costume from Battlefield (Sept 1989) and the cheap wooden tube as a Drahvin gun from Galaxy 4 (Sept 1965), and know the story behind each. Me, I was most excited to come face to face with the actual blue crystal from Metebelis 3 that finally despatched Jon Pertwee, and to see the genuine mask of Sutekh that scared the willies out of me in Tom Baker's Pyramids of Mars. But then I'm sad like that. If you're sad like that too, then Who's for a visit?
