Clapton Pond Blog

Osteopathy And Leonard Cohen

How are they related? To find out, read on. 

A Postal Service Post

Breaking news about forthcoming further strike action by postal workers provides me with a lame yet convenient pretext for belatedly publishing some correspondence with a reader from earlier this year. She wrote:

We live on Upper Clapton Road - right across from the Crooked Billet - and have had problems for months with our post not being delivered. Two weeks ago we received a huge stack of post including Christmas cards (!) and a letter from Royal Mail explaining that an employee had been with holding post and this is subject to investigation. On Saturday, we received a plastic bag with two open and empty envelopes and another letter [from Royal Mail] saying the same thing [as the previous one]. I was so outraged that I called Royal Mail. Customer services told me that there are some 20,000 pieces of post for E5 that were withheld by a Royal Mail employee. Isn't that outrageous!

Yes, I'd say so. I received that email in April. Since then, my distressed reader has had at least some joy in seeking redress. She tells me:  

The issues have now basically been resolved...Apparently, the post office has their own power to prosecute, so things dont go through the normal court system. I'm an American, so I dont understand this part of the UK at all, but perhaps this is common knowledge to you guys... 

Not to me, actually. How interesting. 

....That being said, the customer service people were exceedingly uncooperative in our attempts to claim things that were missing. My husband had bike parts from ebay that never showed up. My mum sent me paperwork from America and all I received was a torn up empty envelope.

Perhaps it helped that Peter Sherlock at the Gazette had taken up the story, and managed to get it into the paper. His inquiries yielded the following statement from Royal Mail: 

Around 15,000 items of mail have been recovered for approximately 500 addresses (covering Upper Clapton Road, Seaton Point, Walsley Grove, Woodmill Road, Beaumont Court and Station Parade)in the E5 area. The items are dated from July 2007 to January 2009 with the majority from October 2008 to January 2009.

Royal Mail and its people have a zero tolerance approach to any instances of delaying the mail. We are working hard to ensure that mail which is still in a deliverable state is forwarded to its recipient as soon as possible.

An investigation with our security team is ongoing and Royal Mail apologises to those who have been affected by this incident. Customers with concerns should contact our customer services team on 0845 7740 740.

I wonder what happened?

PS: My postman is wonderful, by the way.

N16 Magazine

It contains an article (pdf) about E5!

A F*c@i!g Conversation On The Bus

I got on the 38 at the Pond the other day, and this elderly lady got on two stops down. She immediately bollocked the driver. 

You fuckin' this, you fuckin' that. 

I didn't see her getting on, but from what I could tell she was unhappy that he hadn't pulled in close enough to the kerb, or that he'd set off before she was ready and steady, or maybe both. She took a seat half way back and tore off a few more strips. Fuckin' this, fuckin' that. Deep Caribbean. Then the driver spoke.

Demon, he said.

Fuckin' this, fuckin' that.

Demon. Every bit as Caribbean, coming low over the intercom. 

Fuckin' this, fuckin' that.

Demon. Perhaps he knew her, or something.

She got off opposite Kings Hall. 

"Might as well have walked," said a woman with a baby in a buggy. There was a lot of grinning between the other passengers and little conversation too. One thing was agreed: that was the step up to the bendys is quite high. The doors are good for buggies as is the dedicated space inside, but it can be quite hard to lift them on board without help. Are double deckers easier? Boris's "New Routemaster", I should point out, is pledged to be.

I got off in the Narroway as did another old lady, this one very frail. I gave her a hand down. Did she think that the replacements for the bendys would be easier for her? I didn't quite catch her reply, except for: "It's a beautiful world, and all they do is spoil it."

Whoever they are, I wish they'd stop.

Hackney Homes Awards

I've decided to believe in the essential goodness of humankind. No I haven't been drinking, unless you count the glass of wine I sipped at the 2008 Hackney Homes Active Resident Awards dinner on Wednesday night. It was there that my faith in the species was restored. You know Hackney Homes: it's the "arms length management company" that manages and maintains the borough's council housing. Not everyone approves of ALMOs and, along with some real strengths, the Audit Commission found room for improvement in ours when it inspected it last year. But it seems to be on an upward curve - the expectation is that its rating will soon increase from one star out of three to two - and if the commitment and goodwill on display in the Town Hall Assembly Hall was anything to go by, the prospects for Hackney Homes and those it serves are good.

There were three categories of award: Young Resident, Resident Group and Resident. The first two were won by Ben Woodley and Jammie Dickens from Hawksley Court estate in Stoke Newington and the third by husband and wife team Jill and Vince Murrain from the Kings Crescent Estate near Finsbury Park. Runners-up in each category stepped up for prizes too, with the exception of elderly Claptonian Ron Devoti who has become very poorly recently. Though present, he was unable to step up to the podium. So after paying him a special tribute, Hackney Homes chair Rupert Tyson went down to Ron's table and embraced him, to a standing ovation from the other guests. Sneery journo I may be, but this was a very moving moment in an altogether stirring evening.

Other highlights were a farewell speech by now former Councillor Jamie Carswell, who's off to Tower Hamlets (and will, I was assured, be greatly missed) and a very funny one by youth worker and former boxer James Cook who, you may recall, recently received an MBE for his work in the Pedro Youth Centre. I met and spoke to some very good and generous people. Trudging home at around 10.00, I had the usual encounters with "saved" street evangelists and beggars and, slightly surreally, a couple of blokes in reflective jackets up to their necks in a hole in the pavement next to St John's churchyard: small reminders that this can be a sad and discomfiting place to live. But the earlier part of the evening had been a warm reminder that, at it's best, it is truly beautiful.

Farewell Fireworks (Possibly)

My youngest son took this photo from our back garden on the evening of 5th November. Yes, it's of rockets exploding in the distance. I like it that we've had only a firework week this year, unlike two years ago when I recall feeling as though the neighbourhood had been caught up in a month-long, all-out firework war. Mind you, at least one local shop still had some on display yesterday. And what was that loud bang I just heard?      

Discovering Stoke Newington

An interesting newcomer writes:

"we moved in last friday, to stoke newington, which has the cutest street in the world. filled with queers and well dressed babies and families. turns out this street also has an all organic farmers market every saturday through the entire year." 

Continues here.  

Royal Mail

One of these has been at the end of Thistlewaite Road for weeks and there's another on Nightingale Road. At first, I thought they'd been abandoned, but they haven't. Anyone know why they're there? I do.

The Hackney Podcast

It's Edition 3.

There's A Rat Under My Sink

My latest effort for Cif:

First there were faint scratchings and then some serious, badass clawing at the door. At least, it sounded like the door – the kitchen sink unit cupboard door - so that was what I kicked to make the evil creature go away. Too scared to open it, I swore a lot instead: "Shit, what a big bastard that must be." Such is the effect that rats can have. They turn socialised urban humans into inflamed yet cowering beasts. And when I spotted a damaged baby of the species crawling unsteadily across the floor my horror was complete. Fortunately, my six year-old was with me. "Oh look, Daddy!" she cried. "A baby mouse!"

Not a mouse, actually, sweetheart. I soon learned, though, that my younger kids are not yet immersed in the dark lore of the rat, whose ability to unnerve adult homosapiens is rivalled only by crocodiles, hyenas and wasps. Soon my daughter and her brother, aged ten (formerly eight) had provided the ailing infant with a piece of cheese, some soft bedding and a home in the vogue-ish form of a microwave plate cover. There was a moulded plastic anteater for company. "Wash your hands properly," I said edgily as the children prepared for sleep. They'd been warned that our guest would be ejected before morning. "It needs to find its mummy," I explained, glancing fearfully at the sink unit once more.