Let there be light...
A decision to improve the lighting around the estate is welcome. Crime is not a big issue here, and the poor lighting is more to do with the safety of residents and how secure they feel walking the estate after dark.
At least that was my concern when I raised the matter with our Common Council team at a group meeting more than a year ago. None of them seemed to think there was a lighting problem. I was dismissed as a fantasist.
But now the Corporation has decided to act. A consultation was set up. We sat and listened, moaned about how frighteningly dark it gets between the Shakespeare pub and Great Arthur House. A man from the police, an ‘architectural liaison officer’, told us how 'smart' lighting can be used to 'design out' crime, if we had any. An official from the Corporation's Built Environment department told us how, miraculously, funding had been found to upgrade the lighting and then described the ways our lives might be transformed with sophisticated uplighting and LEDs. There were diagrams to look at.
I looked down at my notebook. 'Is there a hidden agenda?’ it said on one page. The one that was screaming at me was that the Corporation anticipates increased footfall across the estate once Crossrail opens at Farringdon and the Bernard Morgan and Richard Cloudesley site developments are finished. And they want to make sure everyone knows which way to go. Oh, and Fusion gym wants it made easier for people to find their way to its front door.
The designation of 'private’ and 'common’ areas of the estate is a hot-potato issue and one the Corporation and the Golden Lane Residents Association have been wrestling with for what seems like forever. It is a fraught conversation and one I’m not sure any amount of 'smart' technology can bring to an early conclusion.
Centre of excellence
There are plans to redevelop our community centre, the flat-top building at the back of the yellow giant that is Great Arthur House. It has been a struggle for residents to get a say in the matter, but that has changed and a steering group of locals is now doing some proper steering. There has also been an effort to show that residents can - and will - organise and run successful events that benefit the whole estate: yoga, chess, knitting (see below).
Two in particular impressed me recently. In January a Hatfield House resident pulled some strings somewhere and a brass band took to the stage of the community hall one Saturday afternoon. Children wriggled and giggled around our feet as the band parped out old favourites such as the Floral Dance and The Typewriter, which featured a live typewriter: clickety-clack, ping, and all that. In the interval, the children got to blow a few horns. Top prize overall went to the band’s rendition of David Bowie’s Life on Mars. Some residents were visibly emotional.
More recently the hall was transformed into a restaurant and we were treated to a three-course meal of Caribbean food as actors from Off The Wall Players performed structured scenes (soup, main, pudding) based on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, the 1967 film starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier.
Like the film, the performance tackled themes of race, class and gender roles, but its centrepiece, served to our tables by members of the cast, was food. It climaxed in a petty squabble in which an idiot boyfriend gets coleslaw dumped on his head by his date. He staggers, spits out a few swear words, then falls over humiliated and dies. Just desserts, I thought, as we finished our main course.
The community centre will close at the end of the summer for refurbishment, but let’s hope that when it reopens, such sparkling events as these get a fair shout. They more than deserve it.
Animal magic
We’ve had displaced ducks stranded on Basterfield lawn. We have a sparrowhawk who arrives with a bearded handler to put the frighteners on the pigeons. And foxes are regulars. Some years ago we had a three-legged fox which, in spite of being seriously disabled, hopped around eyeballing innocent passers-by.
Now we have another fox. It has been named ‘Mr Fox’, but that is a bit dull, so if you have any better ideas, please let us know.
Wool meet again
Every third Tuesday in the month is Knit & Natter at the community centre. No prior skills or fancy equipment is required, just turn up, cast on and chill out. Hats for the Premature Babies unit at UCLH is the good cause.
An edited version of this column appeared in the London newspaper City Matters, issue 37.
