More Broken Teeth in the Face of My Home Town

I got very emotional last week about the delay of redeveloping Charlton House. Well, I am emotional about it. I recognise this is a very difficult moment for redeveloping anything and I know the council officers and Cabinet members are keen for this to happen. But I'm afraid it was the chronic inability to do anything that looks like project management that has caused the real pain here.

Looking back, people who lived in Charlton House (not all of them, but certainly some of them) were kept there when new homes were practically available for many weeks in 'Block D' which we are now urged to call Sonnet House and the new houses on Windmill Road. And promises were broken with no compunction. This is unworthy.

My fear is that it will be a year or more before any work starts on Charlton House, so it joins the police station and Watermans and the delayed chunks of Ballymore as a broken tooth in the middle of my home town's face. At least the Heidelberg development is proceeding at breakneck pace (and the days of banging are it seems behind us!)

Good also to see the commercial units on the market, together with the former housing office which has been another broken tooth for at least 3 years.

We also have the former Max Factor bit of the Watermans Park building up and running and providing 'meanwhile' space to at least to three local artists who previously were chased out of Brentford

Back to the boring world of my diary. On Thursday evening I had two things on that are far from boring (for me at least!) A meeting of the FoodBox trustees where we now have a good team of trustees that really cover all the bases, though no plans to play baseball. We'll be working on plans to make our support more comprehensive - ie beyond emergency food etc support for people who are in a financial crisis. It is important that we support them to avoid recurrence of the problem which by definition brings misery. In reality because of illness this was postponed to Tuesday, but all the comments are unaffected!

Then it's a meeting of the potential trustees (if we succeed to register as a Charity) of the Brentford Heritage Harbour. Industrious people (ie not me) are putting together all the documents the Charity Commission will demand. I hope the change of government will have succeeded in getting the Charity Commission back to being functioning. I was involved in an effort to register a charity a few years ago in Boris Johnson's pomp and we could not get an officer appointed to deal with our case for nearly a year. We will be at the Canal Festival shortly and hopefully we will at least have a functional email address - it didn't work last year.

I was delighted to hear that we had a 'New Deal' with the very distinguished, handsome and genius American President Donald Crump (I may want to visit America sometime and avoid being deported to San Salvador) but I am worried about Louise Haigh. Her hair seems to have gone grey very quickly.

On Sunday we had our supposedly combined surgery in the Digital Dock. This time it came down to being just Katherine and me, and we had not a single resident looking for support. I doubt that nobody in Brentford has any problems with the council but my sense is that councillor surgeries are out of date. Most people email me (good) or text me (not as good as email) or phone me (not as good as text) but I do want to reach more people rather than those who already know me or the council approach. Quite often I hear of a problem from a different route which suggests they have issues but no idea somebody will try to help. I am going to experiment with printing letters and poking them through the doors of a street or two and inviting them to meet at a convenient place. Any thoughts?

After that I had a session on a bicycle with local historian James Marshall and the chair of Hounslow Cycling, who lives in Chiswick. James has written (and just updated) a very comprehensive history book.

There are lots of pictures in the book which I have plagiarised in the past, and it was great to spend an hour with him and getting the story from the horse's mouth, though James seems to me more like the Edwardian gentleman than the horse. I am busy writing a different blog which is specifically about car makers in Brentford (and later the whole of Hounslow and maybe surrounding areas). I'm hoping to publish that soon on The Chiswick Calendar as well as my own blog site guylambert.blog

I won't reproduce that here, but I thought I'd give a taster, from when state of the art cars were made in already Brilliant Brentford. So innovative, as you will see from the picture, this was the only car I've ever heard of that you could steer whilst looking forwards or backwards. If you tell that to the young people of today, they won't believe you.

On Tuesday I attended one of the highlights of my year - the AGM of Speak Out in Hounslow. Now normally if I see AGM my blood runs cold and I think of reasons like why my (mythical) dog has eaten the meeting papers. But this is a completely different matter.

There is so much talent, enthusiasm, happiness and love in the room that I come out of the Steam Museum with a smile painted on my face that lasts all day. The staff and the members are all a lovely inspiration. Do support them, they make a fantastic difference to people who have been dealt a challenging hand.

After the previously mentioned FoodBox meeting it was time for something completely different. I had been invited to a meeting of Refugees Welcome Hounslow - an outfit I have been lazily supportive of for several years (i.e. I did nothing). This was at the Brentford and Isleworth Quakers Meeting House place in the prophetically named Quakers Lane. I had never been inside there before but I knew where it was. Fortunately, because Google Earth marks this place as the Friends Meeting Place. It is in fact an unused and derelict Scout Hut. I remember suggesting to Steve Curran RIP a few years ago that it had some opportunities - fix it up for something or knock it down and build a few houses on the site, but of course nothing happened, though I hear someone else has had the same idea recently. I will not be putting my mythical mortgage on this happening. I expect Chalton House will be rebuilt before it. If it was my hut, I would sell it to a developer to do what developers do - develop - and provide 3 or 4 lovely homes and some funds for us taxpayers (maybe even council houses). But the hut belongs to the council. Enough said.

The real Quaker place is a much lovelier building with its own graveyard and all mod cons.

The lovely arrows give the game away: yes officer, I pinched it off Google Street View.

I spent a lot of time on Wednesday gardening. Well, what I mean is I spent time watching someone gardening, Well, what I mean is someone sorting out my balcony plants. I used my car to move stuff around from the garden centre and like an idiot I left the car parked outside my front door, where a zealous landlord of the private road sees his eye pupils replaced by £ signs. I expect a full diagnosis of the injury in about a week.

In the evening it was time for the bat walk. Twerp, I cycled down to Watermans Park because I was alerted by the Chair of the park friends, but I suppose he was wearing his Make Brentford Great Again hat as a Brentford Voice man. So I checked my invite and turned up 15 minutes late at the Digital Dock. A lot of Bat fanciers in attendance and a very iconic anglepoise lamp.

I was going to go looking at bats myself but I got worried about vampires and was persuaded to join a small group of conscientious objectors for a drink instead.

Now, I wanted to say something more positive about the Community Hib at Brentford Library which I was a bit sceptical about. I'm told by the senior officer responsible: "To use Friday 2nd May as an example, there were 36 residents who attended, this includes 9 who received direct support, 6 visitors accessing information, and 21 residents participating in a workshop specifically organised with Hounslow Seniors Trust for the Community Hub."

I have also seen a number of testimonials from residents. This one captures the sense of all of them: "Wonderful service. I hope it never stops". I suggested to the officer it should be better publicised as I suspect most people, including those who would be a priority for help, don't know about it. He's thinking about producing a video of the hub ‘in action’ and I think that would help a lot. Check it out this Friday at the library, 10 to 2pm

Was up at 5am one day recently. Gorgeous.

Councillor Guy Lambert

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