Wansteadium

In memory of a Wanstead legend, Billie Figg, a founder member of the Wanstead Society, who died last week aged 92. Though she lived in Wanstead for more than 50 years, she told the Wanstead Guardian in 2011: “I still feel like a newcomer here compared to a lot of people I’ve met down the years… there are families here who have been living in Wanstead for generations.”

Readers are invited to add their own comments and memories using the form below.
(Photograph by Richard Chambury @richfoto)

Has your office lost all its furniture and fridge? If it has, look closely at these items. Are there any identifying features? Look at that writing on the note. “Please ensure you wash up after yourself.” Ring any bells? If you think these items might be yours, or you know whose they are, you can pick them up from the grass by the side of Forest Rise, just beyond Forest School. Do try and be more careful next time. And don’t have nightmares.

Geoff Wilkinson writes on Wanstead Daily Photo:”I was walking along the High Street the other evening when this car passed by. I was intrigued by the L shaped package strapped to the roof. What could it have been, a small arm chair? Must be many other things that shape? Answers please….”

The long-awaited traffic calming measures for Nelson Road have now been put in place, along with footpath improvements including “tactile paving” to help blind pedestrians know they are about to cross the road. But not everyone is happy with the humps. Wansteadium reader Martin Scholar writes: “The speed bumps are absolutely hopeless – they are too shallow and are having no effect whatsoever in slowing down the traffic.” He invites anyone who originally lobbied the council for their installation to contact him via Facebook so the issue can be raised again. Others may however feel they do their job. Views are welcome.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s death, Wansteadium has been reading David A Thomas’s book Churchill The Member for Woodford, and blogging about it.

Episode Six. As the nation was on the brink of war, Thomas reports a delicious slice of Wanstead life. Deans the builders, he writes, were offering “attractive houses newly built on the Deyncourt Garden estate with all roads made up and shrubland at £695, available for the low deposit of £35”. Meanwhile, as a contrast to that note of optimism, voices were growing in Mr Churchill’s constituency that he had gone too far in criticising the government’s handling of Germany’s overrunning of Czechoslovakia. There were moves towards a vote of censure which – Churchill said – would have made him resign his seat and fight a by-election. He faced down his critics, but there has been speculation about how different history might have been had he lost the constituency vote, resigned his seat and then not been in Parliament for the start of the war. In the end he praised his “intensely patriotic constituency”. He still alienated people though, and was taunted for being in a “party of one”. It didn’t seem to worry him. He said: “If my words had been listened to, we should not have been waiting anxiously for each fresh speech made by one of the dictators. We should not now be making holes for our women and children to get into.”

PS. Thank you to Wansteadium reader and former Redbridge Deputy Mayor Tom Howl, who read in Churchill and Wanstead Episode five about the mace that Churchill presented to the new borough of Wanstead and Woodford. He confirms it is still in ceremonial use by Redbridge.

Wansteadium reader Michael Sumsion writes:
On Tuesday at the increasingly popular arts/social/craft beer hub that is E7’s The Wanstead Tap, one of British jazz’s most revered talents, Art Themen, performed two exquisite sets of lyrical bop and modal jazz with the sterling backing of bassist Mike Edmonds, drummer George Hart and guitarist Jeff Green.

The intimate, low-key railway arch venue in Forest Gate (warm, mellow, convivial and resembling a living-room) proved a perfect environment for the quartet’s rhapsodic explorations to take flight.

Themen’s CV encompasses work with such luminaries as Stan Tracey, Michael Garrick, Jack Bruce, Nat Adderley, Alexis Korner, Graham Collier, Joe Cocker, Mike Westbrook and Rod Stewart, and his smeared notes and Charles Lloyd/Coleman Hawkins/Dexter Gordon-inspired phrasing on evergreen standards such as ‘Body And Soul’, ‘Alfie’s Theme’ and ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ constructed buoyant patterns in a quirky, un-showy and economical demonstration of the saxophonist’s art.

He was ably supported by the sensitive, elegaic interplay of his fellow musicians, exhibiting a synergy and a selfless melodicism that enraptured and soothed the refreshingly heterogenous audience.

The band appeared noticeably emboldened and inspired by Themen’s authoritative bending of melody and free-associative playfulness, with Green’s crisp, Wes Montgomery/Grant Green-styled improvisations a particular highlight.

There was a shout out to his mother by Edmonds, a man who used to live within walking distance of this endearing locale, some E7 postcode-based humour and a rapturous sense of formidable musicians pushing themselves without spiralling into whimsy or self-indulgence. It made for a fascinating dialogue, a series of beautiful conversations.

(Not filmed at the Wanstead Tap).