Clapton Pond Blog

Two Videos: Bendys End & Olympic Wick

I've recently made - well, helped to make - two video films for the Guardian. The first was about the last day that bendy buses worked route 38. I've recently been trained in using a professional standard video camera. As you will see, my technique is still pretty rudimentary - a polite word for "hopeless" - but I think this failing was more than made up for by the fellow Claptonites who kindly let me point the camera at them. The clip, which was edited together by Guardian video producer Rebecca Lovell, is necessarily very short and to-the-point, which means that some good stories about the old Routemasters, which preceded the bendys, were cut out. I've remembered them, though. And with the contract to build Boris Johnson's alleged "21st century Routemaster" to be awarded by the end of the year, I might yet have an opportunity to make use of them. I'd like to thank everyone who appeared in the film. Watch it here.  

The second film is about residents of Hackney Wick and their feelings about the approaching Olympics. This took much longer to make and my role was that of interviewer and provider of "voice over" in the Kings Place editing suite. The real work was done by producer Francesca Panetta of Hackney Podcast fame and photographer and cameraman David Levene. The result was the first of what will be a series of collaborations about the impact of the Games on communities bordering the Olympic Park. Watch it here. 

Kingsmead Eyes

The Kingsmead estate and its neighbouring primary school attracted an unfair share of bad publicity for a time some years ago. But Claptonite Gideon Mendel, a photographer of great renown, has conveyed a much more truthful image of these places: many images, in fact. He worked with 28 of the school's children over a six month period in which they photographed their own homes and community, family and friends, lives and times. He's also completed his own parallel project in the school and on the estate, which includes individually snapping every one of the school's pupils. The results of Gideon's and the children's endeavours, Kingsmead Eyes, can be appreciated at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green until 7 February next year. They include this beautiful video. Kingsmead has played a special part in my Hackney life as my eldest child, now aged 25, was a pupil at the school when I lived in Homerton before I become a Pond-dweller.    

38 Bendys End

Today is the last day that bendy buses will work route 38, one end of which (as you may have noticed) is a bus stop by Clapton Pond. Route 38 is the third to be de-bendified (following the 507 and 521) but the first long-haul one, terminating as it does at far-off Victoria. I'm a bit sad that they are going: not hugely so because it's daft to get too worked up about any kind of bus, but I'll miss their novelty shape and the smooth ride they provide. 

You'll be familiar with the arguments about them. Traditionalists, many cyclists and Ken Livingstone-haters dislike them for not being double-deckers (especially for not being Routemasters), for being hard to overtake and for being Ken Livingstone's idea. Admirers point to their high capacity and the fact that their replacements - double-deckers in the case of route 38 - will take longer to load because of having fewer doors, and be more numerous in order to maintain capacity. Both factors seem bound to add to road congestion at least to some degree, especially in the centre of town. 

There's also the question of cost - a particularly important one in view of Transport for London's financial woes. All buses need replacing eventually, but Boris Johnson's anti-bendy policy means that these are being replaced sooner than would have otherwise been necessary, resulting in TfL having to pay more to the bus operating companies. Those higher contrast costs would have been higher still had the London Mayor not been persuaded by TfL to only de-bendify when contracts came up for renewal rather than purging the whole lot straight away.    

Of course, the one thing almost everyone agrees about bendys is that their having three sets of doors make fare-dodging a cinch. A recent written answer (you might have to click twice) to a question by London Assembly member Valerie Shawcross about the cost of de-commissioning bendys - or, to be formal, "articulated buses" - factored in an anticipated increase in revenue resulting from less fare-dodging in future. Is this projection exaggerated? Shawcross thinks so. Would money have been better spent on providing more inspectors? I don't know, because I've yet to do the maths. Maybe someone else has. 

These debates will rumble on and time will provide the best test of them. My one firm opinion is that there are more important things to get worked up about, whichever side of the argument you're on. But I'll still mark the bendys' passing from Lower Clapton Road with a small sigh. 

       

Joys of Hallowe'en

That nice lady at the top end of Thistlewaite Road topped even her own very high standards this year with this fantastic Hallowe'en creation. The house was constructed from the packaging of someone's new bed, by the way. Genius. And it attracted small ghouls by the horde.

I love it that our neighbourhood embraces Hallowe'en with such enthusiasm. As well as being a lot of fun for the kids there's something valuable and satisfying about families occupying the darkened autumn streets. True, a did feel a cold shiver each time I bumped into a pint-sized and resolutely silent Grim Reaper, but in general the evening bore out the adage that a place feels - and probably is - safer when there are plenty of friendly people out and about.

I'm also grateful to Clapton's Hallowe'en - perhaps particularly the Millfields end of Mildenhall Road, where there seemed to be hideous jack 'o lanterns everywhere - for massively reducing my household's outgoings on confectionary for the foreseeable future.

See what I mean?