Manor Park, East London
Where the ghost of Catherine Tylney still haunts!

The Manor Park end of High Street North has been transformed in the last year or so. The emply shops and failing businesses have been replaced by a vibrant new influx of cafés, take aways , restaurants, jewellers and fashion shops related mainly but not exclusively to the South Indian and Sri Lankan communities. The one pictured serves an excellent vegetarian buffet for the silly price of only £3.99 including chapati, poppadums and chutney. I filled my Thali platter twice over and washed it down with a salt lassi, wonderful. click here to see the giant family dosa!

Just a selection from the shops on the Romford road that were open on Xmas morning so that you can buy all those useful things.

On the Grumpy Old People blog, an inflatable snow woman spotted in Durham Road.

last Sunday it was clear and cold, and I ventured out to make the most of the daylight, noticing that the sun was already low on the horizon. At this time of year, instead of setting in the West somewhere near the twin towers, it surprised me how much further South it was. I wondered if the planet may have finally spun off it's proper axis, perhaps through 3 billion people in the East all jumping up and down at the same time. Here's a selection of photos from the last half hour of the day, spent walking around the duckpond on Wansted Flats, the nearest place with any approximation to natural beauty within walking distance. ( Also published on Andy Roberts blog )

This Manor Park resident is exhibiting a mixture of Nativity, Santa Claus and Disneyland in the front garden. A "must visit" after dark when all the lights are on!

The train operating company, 'one' has this week started a new schedule that sees more trains serving Manor Park Station than ever before.

Studying the schedule shows that:

1. There are now 6 trains per hour (instead of only 4) at off-peak hours, Monday to Saturday up to 10 pm. 
2. During morning and evening weekday rush hours there will be 5 trains per hour. 
3. On Sundays there will be 4 trains per hour (instead of only 3).

'one' took over the operation of the Great Eastern franchise, that includes Manor Park, since the beginning of April this year.  In recent weeks, Manor Park station had its ticketing systems updated.  Other stations, such as Goodmayes and Seven Kings, have seen renewal of platform passenger shelters.  Hopefully similar renewal and improvements will be made to the Manor Park platforms.

• Date: Tuesday 7th December
• Officer: Hannah Khemoh, 020 8430 3055 hannah.khemoh@newham.gov.uk, or Community Forum Freephone 0800 519 4015
• Time: 7.00 pm
• Venue: Green Hill Centre, 464 High Street North Manor Park

Planned Presentations:

1. Metropolitan Police - Chief Inspector Paul Morris
2. Public-Realm - Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour - John Page
3. Mayoral Advisor - Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour - Councillor Ian Corbett

The notice only arrived today.  It is incredibly short notice for a Public Meeting.  It's one way of keeping the numbers down, I guess.

I was amazed to see white-topped market stalls flooding the forecourt in front of the Stratford station today.   Apparently, this is the first time this market has been done.   It will be also there on Friday and Saturday, and 75% of the stalls are continental food specialists.  In particular, look for the dried sausage stall, which has a wide and varied selection, from your standard chorizo and black peppered sausages, to dried ostrich!  Sausages are 2 for £5 or you get 3 sausages plus a bottle of wine for £10.

The market looks even nicer in the daylight than in the dark. The organiser moves the market to Barnet on Sunday.  He told me of his website, but his English was somewhat unintelligible, so sadly I haven't gotten a meaningful address!

Tony Banks, the Labour MP for West Ham (and hence neighbouring Forest Gate) has apparently decided to stand down at the next election, according to the Times today.  He has been Sports Minister for a while, and is easily East London's most famous MP.  A friend tells me that he is the brother of fashion guru Jeff Banks, which I seek confirmation of.

He has finally gotten bored of his constitutents after 22 years, and finds their complaints "tedious in the extreme".

I think this is wonderful.  There are so many things here:

1. We finally have a bit of honesty out of a Labour MP, that equates to the secret sentiment carried by  all politicians and public service providers alike: "People, please go and learn how to wipe your own asses.  We may be your government, and we may need you to vote for us because of the rules of democracy, but all you want to do is take, take, take.   Until we ask you to take some responsibility, and then you start complaining"
2. More proof of the old saying that goes, "if you are young and you don't care, you haven't got a heart.  If you're old and you care too much, you haven't got a brain".
3. The opportunity of new blood in Newham!   Gosh, Tony Banks might be a marvellous individual, but Newham could do with some hardheaded behind-the-scenes engineering.  I wonder if Robin Wales will step down as Mayor of Newham and run for Labour MP in West Ham.   There is a tradition here, since Stephen Timms used to be Council Leader for Newham before he became Labour MP for East Ham.

Wow!  It's not often I have something to commend, being the cynical demanding hypercritic that I am compelled to be, but I just went to the Earl of Essex, aforementioned.

I confess, in 13 years of living here, to never ever having walked into that pub.  But since it's been done up, I intended to do so, and finally did.  Wandering in at 9.30 on a cold Saturday night that begs you to live locally, I wondered where was this "Live Music" that they boasted for every weekend night.  Slowly absorbing the eclectic, diverse but  divided atmosphere of a pub with Sky Sports showing the Barcelona v. Real Madrid match, I nursed my Kronenbourg, which I had to drink in the absence of any other notable drink than Guiness, which sadly I have never been able to stomach.  Oh why, oh why, can't they serve Poteen?  The clientele were as representative of the madness of Newham as you could imagine, with people from all parts of the world, speaking in languages that you couldn't hope to ever all understand.

So the band came on.  Two men on guitars, and a lady on the flute pipe.  The lead acoustic guitarist was a Black Irishman.  Pretty rare nowadays, and a lot of people don't realise that all the Mediterranean Pirate stock that delved into the coasts of the Irish Sea, was the reason why this singer was curly-black-haired, swarthy, and a rebel.  Once a pirate, always a rebel.

Ok, so they did cater to the very few diehard Irish that were in the pub:  "Do you want a Tipperary song, now, or shall we do one from Donegal?"...  But no one could deny, that the strength of their performing egos, to put over a very strong musical genre in the face of a lonely neighbourhood, to an audience that were absorbed in a football game, can only signal the truest dedication of travelling musicians.  And on some songs, when they indulged their art and went into the melancholic survivalist rhythms of the drippy, rainy, cold, gray, and wet West European Isles, they captured the history of this climate despite the presence of a Tesco Express not 200 yards distant.

The second guitarist was playing the bass, and he had a more tenor voice, which was used twice, and I hate to think what would happen if he was let loose to really let sing.  He just about let on what he was capable of.  The lady fluted voicelessly, adding the shrill pipes that seem omnipresent in every Irish folk song.

I daresay this is the most artistically cultural experience I have ever enjoyed in Manor Park.  And from chatting with whom seemed to be the pub manager, it seemed clear to me that this pub is trying its very best to give a little more than it gets in sterling coinage.  I can't think where in London I could have heard this act: in Kilburn still, maybe?  Otherwise, I think, at last, I have enjoyed something in Manor Park that I couldn't get anywhere else in London.  And on the rising edge of the wave, I hazard!