Quintain's public relations company has been keen for Wembley Matters to publish details of the new park in the Wembley Regeneration area. Claims that it is the first 'new park' in Wembley Park are not quite true as we have the excellent Chalkhill Park in the locality, but on the other side of the railway line, which is maturing very nicely and really well used by the local community.
I responded that I would like to see the park for myself rather than base a story around the photographs and CGIs provided.
However, any green space is welcome amongst the concrete of the Wembley regeneration area. The southern section, south of Engineers Way, has a considerable amount of concrete and we are promised a 'more rugged design' for the northern section on the site of the current Yellow car park on the other side of the road. (See LINK)
Today when I visited it was chilly despite the sunshine and there were few people about so the area seemed rather dead but I imagine on a warm day children would be having a great time in the fountains. A nursery will be opening soon on the edge of the park and they will be making use of it as an outdoor play and nature investigation areas.
It was rather disconcerting to see so much water after I had led a walk on Saturday highlighting the danger of flooding in parts of the regeneration area!
Quintain say:
UnionParkfeatures a revolutionary water run-off system, which carries rainwater from around the area, filters it, and then releases it into one of the southern section’s lakes. Water features have been an important component of WembleyParksince it was first laid out by Humphry Repton in the 1770s, with the Wealdstone Brook and Brent River framing the then-manor and now-neighbourhood.
The park features a quotation from Humphry Repton on the side of what resembles a shed but is perhaps a pumping station, that is not entirely legible:
It reads:
'The character of a place will take its distinguishing marks from the unified consideration of its situation and the extent of territory surrounding'
This gives the reader and visitor a yardstick with which to make up their mind about the park.
Quintain's press release said:
The first part of thepark, which is open now, features amenities including a playpark, paddling pools, outdoor gym equipment – which will be an extension of the super-gym right beside it – and a multi-use games area which will enable people to play a number of sports in view of the world-famous Wembley Stadium arch.
There is an adjacent cafe at the foot of one of the high rises which is welcome but given the continuous sound of water, which is likely to induce a sense of urgency in bladders, and the need for a place where wet children can change into dry clothes, a public lavatory might be useful.
The park is not yet finished so there may well be one planned.
If you would like to see the park for yourself go along Olympic Way from Wembley Park Station and turn left along Engineers Way. It is a short walk to the Yellow Car Park and Union Park South is opposite.
I would be interested in your comments on the park.
Philip Grant has left a comment below and asked me to publish these images by way of explanation.
Postcard showing the North Entrance Gardens at Wembley Park in 1924
Painting of the gardens at the east end of the Lake in 1924/25 (now the southern section of Union Park)
In a surprise announcement the only Liberal Democrat on Brent Council has resigned from the Budget Scrutiny Taskforce. Cllr Anton Georgiou said, "
With regret, I have decided to resign [] following serious concerns about the way in which
elected members’ wishes, actions and agreed work direction have been blocked by
senior officers at Brent Council."
The resignation comes after last year's skirmishes with Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt over Georgiou's attempt to put forward alternative ideas for the 2020-21 budget which Butt denounced as ill-informed. LINK
It appeared that his inclusion in this year's Task Force would enable Cllr Georgiou to make a contribution early in the process but he now feels that the Task Force has been rendered powerless and the different roles of officers and councillors blurred.
Statement in full
In Local Authorities, where the governing party
has such a large majority, it is crucial that there are ways in which
councillors from different parties can come together to provide thorough and
detailed scrutiny and that there is maximum transparency over decisions,
spending and service delivery.
No one party, or group of people have a monopoly
on good ideas and policy, which is why it is critical we hold decision makers
to account at every step of the way - especially when it comes to decisions
around spending taxpayers money.
With regret, I have decided to resign from the
Budget Scrutiny Taskforce, following serious concerns about the way in which
elected members’ wishes, actions and agreed work direction have been blocked by
senior officers at Brent Council.
It is my view that democratic scrutiny in Brent is being curtailed and undermined by those who it exists to
hold to account.
Recent actions by senior officers suggest a
contempt for scrutiny which makes it hard for effective scrutiny to take place
in our borough. I believe challenge, disagreement and independence of thought
and action are discouraged by those who hold the most power within the organisation.
It is crucial to define the different roles
elected members and officers should be playing in the scrutiny process. In
Brent I have seen that lines are too often blurred which results in elected
members not being able to carry out key parts of our responsibilities, that we
are elected by residents to do.
My decision to resign from the Taskforce comes
following interventions by senior officers, including the Chief Executive,
which put pressure on elected members to redefine an already agreed to work
programme of the Budget Scrutiny Taskforce. This work programme had been democratically
agreed to by councillors, with officers present.
At the insistence of senior officers, public
engagement with the Budget Scrutiny process has now been taken off the table
completely - which makes me feel deeply uneasy and raises a number of serious
questions.
The decision to redefine the remit of the group
in this way will effectively render it powerless. The outcomes will likely be
limited and recommendations made will make no difference to the budget that
will ultimately be rubber stamped by Labour Councillors at Full Council early
next year.
I will continue to work with others who share
the view that effective and rigorous scrutiny is essential in our borough. I
sadly believe that there is an endemic problem with the way scrutiny is
understood and respected by those at the top of the organisation.
Brent Council consists of 59 Labour councillors (one who has the whip withdrawn), 3 Tories and one Liberal Democrat.
A local family took action yesterday in support of the London Parklets campaign asking for the right for residents of the capital
to create small green and socialising spaces on their street. A contrast to all those fuming motorists queueing for petrol over the weekend!
A small table, three chairs, a tomato planter and a houseplant :
that's all it took last Sunday afternoon for a Harlesden family to create a
parklet on a space normally used for car parking.
For two hours, Amandine Alexandre-Hughes, her husband, Ben and their 4
year old son, Barnaby, invited neighbours and friends to come and have a cup of
tea and a biscuit in their temporary parklet.
Amandine Alexandre-Hughes, Ben Hughes and their son on September 26th.
The family is asking for the right to create a permanentparklet outside their house.
Photo by Mary Mitchell
“We grabbed the opportunity of The People Parking Day, created by London
Parklets Campaign, to catch up with neighbours whom we had not
talked to properly in a long time”, Amandine told us.
“We also received very positive feedback from passersby. It’s not
surprising considering the obvious benefits of parklets. They create a space
for spontaneous and friendly interactions between people. Those do not happen
otherwise because our streets are dominated by cars, that cause noise and are a
major source of air pollution”, adds the parklet enthusiast who is also a clean
air campaigner.
“Although half of Harlesden residents don’t own a car, the
neighbourhood is dominated by them. Also, green spaces are few and far between
in our area and trees are sparse. We desperately need parklets”, insists
Amandine Alexandre-Hughes, a Clean Air ambassador for Harlesden Neighbourhood
Forum and Mums
for Lungs activist.
Among the people who enjoyed the
pop-up parklet created by the Alexandre-Hughes family on Brownlow road was
fellow Harlesden resident Mary Mitchell and her youngest daughter.
“I was delighted to have the
opportunity to chat with other neighbours, drink tea, and bring some greenery
to the realm. More thought-provoking acts of reclamation like this are
necessary to bring about a cleaner, healthier, and happier community in our
local areas”, Mary said.
On top of being
community-friendly, People Parking Day organisers highlight the fact that
parklets can help address the climate crisis by increasing biodiversity,
breaking up heat islands and providing extra storm drainage.
Campaigners are calling on the
London mayor, Sadiq Khan, and borough leaders to allow residents to apply to
create parklets in the streets where they live, with an aim to have one on
every road in the capital.
This is the second and final part of Philip Grant's Guest Post on the Macari music shop. The first part can be read HERE.
Welcome back to this
concluding part of an Ealing Road music shop’s story. In Part 1 we met two
Alans, a vocalist and a guitar player, who started a skiffle group with school
friends, and regularly visited Macari’s Musical Exchange. We join them again as
a “beat” group in the early 1960s.
A Musical
Exchange advert from the 1960s. (Image
from the internet, courtesy of Tony Royden)
Alan Hayward and the Haymakers usually practised
at Lyon Park School, and mainly performed at a club based there. One day, while
rehearsing at the school, a teenage drummer called Keith Moon came to hear
them. He showed them what he could do on his drums, and managed to move
the drum kit as far as the door while drumming! The group was not impressed with
him (nor he with them).
The young Keith Moon, from Chaplin Road, was a
hyperactive boy, who joined the local Sea Cadets aged 12, and learned to play
the bugle. On his way home from Alperton Secondary Modern School, he often used
to go into Macari’s Musical Exchange, at one time learning to play the trumpet.
Glo Macari used to see him in the shop, and he
must have been quite an attractive teenager. She used to go with her cousin to
a nearby greengrocers (probably Smith’s Fruiterers at 40 Ealing Road) to buy a
couple of pounds of potatoes, just to see him sweeping up at the back! Keith then
decided that drums would be his instrument, and Glo remembers him buying some
drum sticks from her grandfather. He was allowed to play on drums in the shop,
and took lessons from a local professional drummer, Carlo Little.
[In the early 1960s Carlo was a member of The
Savages, the backing group for Sudbury “singer” and performer Screaming Lord
Sutch (if you’ve ever heard a recording of his one minor hit record, “Jack the
Ripper”, you will know why I have put “singer” in inverted commas!). Carlo
Little was a well-respected musician, and even played a few times for the
“Rolling Stones” in 1962, when another Wembley drummer, Charlie Watts,
was not available because he was still employed as a commercial artist.]
An Macari's advert from the 1960s.
(Image from the internet, courtesy of Tony Royden)
Keith Moon
left school at Easter 1961, not quite 15 years old, and got a job. His earnings
helped him to buy his own Ludwig drum kit. By the end of 1962 he had joined a
semi-professional group, The Beachcombers. They all had day jobs, but played in
the evenings and at weekends. In April 1964 he went to the Railway Hotel,
Wealdstone, to hear a group called The Who playing. They needed a replacement drummer,
and Keith grabbed his opportunity. The rest, as they say, is history!
Keith Moon drumming with The Who.
(Image from the internet)
You can hear The Who singing “My Generation”,
and see Keith in action on the drums, here:
Gary was another young Wembley musician who
often visited the shop. He remembers Rosa’s husband, Derek, being the manager
there at the time, and that Grandpa Macari would sit in the shop with his
accordion. He sometimes played along with customers, and Gary once joined him
on guitar as he played “Under the Bridges of Paris”. Gary recalls seeing Keith
Moon practicing there, and being told to calm down in case he damaged the drum
kit. One of the instruments Gary bought in the shop was a second-hand Fender Stratocaster,
for about £60 – this iconic guitar would cost a lot more now!
A 1957 Fender
Stratocaster guitar. (Image from the
internet)
Gary worked as a courier, and the shop would
call him if a customer needed help getting purchases home, such as large
amplifiers. He remembers that the Macari’s bought the shop next door (46a, on
the corner, which Rosa ran as Derosa Ladies Wear), and them making a recording
studio behind the shop. He helped with the work on this, sticking dozens of old
egg boxes to the walls as soundproofing.
Glo Macari told us the recording studio was in
a room at the back that her grandfather had originally used for giving
accordion lessons. It had three booths, and wires going up through the ceiling
to a control room in the flat above. There was a two-track machine that
recorded the music and songs straight onto demo discs. Groups would send these
discs to local agents, to get bookings for gigs, or even sometimes to record
companies, in hope of something bigger!
By the early 1960s, Glo’s father Joe and Uncle
Larry were working at Musical Exchange branches at Denmark Street and Charing
Cross Road during the day, and playing some evenings in hotels or for wedding
receptions. She began going along with them as a singer, and made some demo
discs in the Wembley studio herself. In the Spring of 1965, still aged 14 and a
pupil at St Gregory’s R.C. School in Kenton, she got a recording contract.
Glo Macari
singing for some friends in the shop, March 1965. (“Wembley News” photo, courtesy of Glo!)
This photograph of Glo Macari, singing in the
Ealing Road shop, appeared in the “Wembley News”, with a story about her
contract, and her musical family. Her first single, released on the Piccadilly
label, was “He knows I love him too much”, written by Carole King and Gerry
Goffin, and recorded with the Ivor Raymond Orchestra. You can listen to Glo
Macari singing this song here:
Glo’s records never made it into the “Top
Twenty”, but she went on to be a successful songwriter and musical arranger.
Some of the songs she wrote were recorded by 1970s groups such as Smokie and
Racey.
Record label for
Glo Macari’s song “Boy Oh Boy”, a 1979 single by Racey. (Image from the internet)
Not all of the musicians helped by Macari’s
Musical Exchange in Ealing Road could be recording artists or become rock and
roll legends (or experience the problems that came with a “superstar”
lifestyle). Most just played for fun, for their friends and contemporaries, or
might have made a small amount from playing at dances in youth clubs, church
halls or pubs. But playing a guitar, in a group, you were part of the beat
music scene that made such a difference to popular music, in this country and
beyond, from the 1960s onwards.
Alan
Hayward and the Haymakers, playing at Lyon Park School c.1964.
L-R: Alan Clarke, Roger Horsborough, John Hammond, Alan Hayward and Pete Scott.
(Photograph courtesy of Alan and Barbara Clarke)
Alan Hayward and the Haymakers had a small
popular local following. This picture of them, playing in a classroom at Lyon
Park School, was taken by a Wembley Observer photographer in 1964. Around that
time, they were allowed to play several songs during the interval at one of the
Saturday night ballroom dances at Wembley (later Brent) Town Hall.
One day, around 1967, Gary got a ‘phone call
from a friend who was at the shop, telling him to come down straight away with
his guitar. He arrived and joined in with a “jamming” session in the shop which
included Pete Townshend of The Who, Eric Clapton of Cream (whose drummer,
Ginger Baker, lived in Wembley Park at the time) and two members of Status Quo.
A modern picture of 46 Ealing Road, now Kenya
Jewellers. (Image from the internet)
I’m not sure when the local branch of Macari’s
Musical Exchange closed, but it was probably around 1970. By the early 1980s,
Ealing Road was becoming a centre for businesses run by families of South Asian
origin, from East African countries, where they had been made unwelcome after
independence from British colonial rule. The two combined shops at 46
Ealing Road became Kenya Jewellers, and they still are.
During it’s time in Wembley the Macari’s shop
had encouraged many young people play musical instruments, at the birth of
modern Pop Music in Britain. The business continued, with its main shop in
Charing Cross Road, before moving out of London, but is still run by
the Macari family and supplying
instruments to musicians today.
I hope you have enjoyed reading these two
articles, and listening to some music from that time. If they have brought back
any memories for you, which you would like to share, please feel free to add a
comment below!
Philip Grant
Editor's Note - These articles have provoked considerable interest along with earlier ones by Philip. HERE you can find a personal account of the enduring friendship between Ginger Baker and Charlie Watts.
ice&fire –and Matthew Schmolle Productions are
delighted to announce the London tour of a brand-newall-immigrant
variety show.WE LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE ITis performed by a clown collective of
immigrant performers, who take the audience on a journey of variety and satire.
grapplingwith our decade’s stickiest subject; immigration. It’s a
show where karaoke meets moral philosophy, incorporating a stand-up pigeon
double act, smorgasbord of characters, plenty of juice, plenty of biscuits and
plenty of food for thought.
ice&fire have established
themselves as a theatre company renowned for their use of performance to
explore human rights issues, in WE LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT, the cast do just
that. Because while Brexit is now ‘done’ it seems we are
still far from done with the age-old immigration
‘question.’This
all-immigrant variety show, has been created by Olivier award winner Donnacadh
O’Briain (Ireland) and playwright Amy Ng (Hong Kong), with a company of
actors; Jahmila Heath (Jamaica), Tomoko Komura (Japan), Gaël Le Cornec
(Brazil-via-France) and Sergio Maggiolo (Peru). Collectively they are over
29,000 miles from home.
Touring to every corner of London, including in Brent visiting
venues in Wembley, Willesden
Green, South Kilburn, Harlesden and Neasden, and serving up jokes, songs
and satire, the performers ask;‘What is behind our societal
acceptance of immigration control? What does it say about us and what do
those who have come to the UK from somewhere else want to
say about it?’
Christine Bacon from ice&fire says:‘As
a company, ice&fire have for some time been concerned with the here
and now of human rights stories and what can be done to make current
systems more fair. With this project, we are trying to take a big step back and interrogate how and why immigration controls are seen as a common sense and 'natural' feature of our world. But with clowns, so it will make you smile.'
Matthew Schmolle says:‘We are passionate about getting
this show out beyond the traditional theatre-world-echo-chamber, getting
it in front of the broadest audience possible and seeing what all those
people have to say about these over-looked issues which underpin so much of modern discourse
around immigration’.
