Tag Archives: hanwell

Controlled Parking Zone?

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parcometroThere’s a public hearing about a controlled parking zone (CPZ) in Hanwell town centre, are they nuts?

Oh no, they are not. Painting a few yellow lines, erecting a few new signs, and charging £75 per resident’s car per annum (£40 for a visitor’s permit), and cashing in on fines, is pretty attractive against any of the true solutions. Those include

a) create and maintain sufficient short-term car park space for shoppers and church goers or, more importantly,

b) make public transport so attractive that short term car parking problems go away.

This is not even a very well disguised money-making scheme for the council, given that there is no car park shortage in this area in the first place. The only occasional car parking problems arise from one of three local and easily identifiable sources:

  • Excessive praying at Our Lady and St Joseph can lead to a short-term car parking demand,
  • The car park at Gold’s Gym only takes a dozen or so cars, where the demand is probably three or four times that much at peak times, and
  • The Cambridge Yard building site brings work men during the day, and some stay in their cars over night.

Surely, church, gym and building site could be asked to make suitable provisions, and to encourage use of public transport. This is just the usual Ealing council hare-brained nonsense. All in favour of a cheap fund raiser for the council, without solving the actual problem, please vote Yes on the Hanwell CPZ Hearing.

Anyone with their head intact, please join me in saying No. You’ve got until December 23rd for the 120 seconds needed to fill in the form and return it in the free envelop provided.

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Something Fishy Tonight!

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Hanwell Fish MongerThis blog gets hit by local searches, so allow me to recommend a new local business: the Hanwell Fishmonger, 111 Uxbridge Road, Hanwell.

They also have a website, http://www.hanwellfishmonger.co.uk/. Didn’t work for me when I tried, but maybe its a work in progress.

Just go in there. They offer the full spectrum of while and oil fish, cuttlefish and crustaceans. Their strength is in fresh whole fish, not so much in the omnipresent cod and haddock fillets. We had King Fish streaks and Sea Bream from them so far; very reasonably priced and delicious on both occasions. The boys behind the counter also know how to handle fish; I asked them gut and clean the Sea Breams for me, and they did a nice and neat job at it.

Supporting your local businesses rather than the big supermarket chains is vital for the upkeep (or restoration) of our town centres. A town and its community can’t thrive on used washing machine and used Rolls Royce traders alone, so I encourage everyone to support the local shops. Hanwell is not very glamorous, but offers a number of appealing local businesses: butchers, baker, grocers, florists, fish mongers, newsagents, hair dressers, a pharmacy, several cafes, an ice cream parlour, a great number of pubs and some restaurants, and many more.

One pound in every £7 spent in Britain is already spent at Tesco.

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King Fish a la Grecque

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hanwellFishMongerHere’s a very nice and simple meal, ideal for summer, ideal to use vegetables from your own garden, and ideal to support your local fish monger (yes! Hanwell now has its own fish monger, hurray! You can’t miss it; it’s straight across the road from the Rolls Royce dealership, 111 Uxbridge Road).

So, they sell King fish, a large relative of the Mackerel. I bought two thick slices of 350g each, and prepared them like so:

Peel some nice firm potatoes. Here in the UK, we use Charlotte or Exquisa. Put in a pot, add a handful of flat leave parsley, a peeled shallot and a crushed glove of garlic. Half an inch of water and a teaspoon of salt. close the lid, bring to the boil and let steam until done; approximately 20 minutes. (Note I said “half an inch of water.” Do not drown your potatoes, as this just wash out the little flavour there is.)

Rummage through the garden. I found courgettes and cherry tomatoes. Cut the courgettes in chunks and fry them in a non-sticking pan – no fat, no salt – as hot as you dare to.

Meanwhile, clean the King fish steaks. Bring a generous amount of olive oil to moderate heat, season with a large amount of crushed black pepper (at least one tablespoon), two crushed gloves of garlic, one hot chilly, and lots of fresh thyme. Gently fry the fish steaks from both sides, about 4 minutes each side depending on the thickness. While frying, spoon some of the juices and fat over the top of the fish steak.

Toss your cherry tomatoes in with the courgettes, give them 5 minutes to heat but not to cook. Add a pinch of salt and and some fresh thyme, then remove from the heat.

Swiss chard would also have been nice, or fresh artichokes. Next time.

So, this is it. Remove the fish from the pan and plate out. Drizzle with lime juice and salt, add the steamed potatoes and some of the vegetables, and enjoy.

We never had King Fish before, but I certainly plan to have it again.

 

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Modern Times

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Heritage Design Streetlights It appears that every local area improvement committee, at least in our area, is ruled by conservative people. I recall that we couldn’t prevent the vote for heritage design in a Hanwell Steering Commitee meeting that we attended some while ago, but the outcome is now visible to everyone, and makes me cringe every time.

Does it make sense to mount brand new street lights that follow a 130 year old design?

Yes, it might, wherever there is similar heritage to protect.

Hanwell, however, is no such place. If anything, Hanwell should display an air of Modernism and a forward-looking attitude.

A clean, elegant, modern design could have done a much better job at improving the looks of Hanwell Broadway. Note that I didn’t even discuss the fact that the chosen light use outdated luminaries technology, and are ill-fitted for modern street lighting control, supervision, and energy management systems. Surely, thinking beyond heritage design would just be asking too much.

 

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My Lucky Day

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latymerSchool Good afternoon, Sir, I say, addressing the proprietor of M. S. Rayat & Sons, Tools and Hardware (and a million of related things), right here in the heart of W7.

The spring in my door handle is broken, I continue, would you have any replacement springs?

No, he replies, you must buy the whole pair of handles.

All right. A pair of handles then, please. I am not too fussed about the design as long as they are near enough.

He looks at me. He looks at the handle that I brought, and sais it might just be your lucky day.

Voila! He produces a brand new pair of mock-Edwardian door handles in an exact match to mine. £7, with screws, spindle, and all.

This gentlemen has only ever failed me once, in many inquiries. If you are in the area and require a tool, piece of hardware, ironmongery, or anything remotely like any of these, or something that you cannot even guess what it is and where it might be sold, please see your local business and my friend Mr. Rayat. It could be your lucky day.

The chain stores might have pretty young girls at the tills, but they won’t know what you mean, when you come in and describe an item by saying I don’t know what it is called but it is shaped like so (gesturing) and about that long (indicating), but must have a little hook at the end.

Or, if you ask for an exact replacement of a pair of mock-Edwardian door handles, as it happens. Fabulous.

 

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The Daily Paper

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villageStore It’s time to review our various subscriptions and cancel those regulars that mostly end up being thrown away unread. Done – two got cancelled.

In their place, we took on a subscription to The Independent. Arrives every day before 7am (actually, between 3 and 4am by the looks of it), and promotes the sitting down and taking a break proper, with coffee and newspaper, instead of having breakfast or lunch over email, sandwich in one and computer mouse in the other hand.

This is the plan.

There were start-up difficulties, though. Although every courier service operating in this country has managed to find our house, the milkman, the post man, the gas meter reading man, and many others, the newspaper delivery man does not.

Not on day one anyways, so I phone. Apologies and credit for the missing paper offered and accepted. Promises made for the next day.

No paper on day two. Apologies, and promises for the next day.

No paper on day three. Apologies, and a different person at their end, who sorts it out.

Apparently, they have been delivering to the wrong house in the right street. I am not quite sure how my delivery instructions could have been misread (or the house number), but what bugs me most is that someone in my street received an unexpected newspaper for three consecutive days, with my full name and address on an A4-sized label, and hasn’t bothered to forward it to me, or to phone or email the distribution company (contact details also on the same label).

What’s that? Rude? Dishonest? Anti-social? I am not sure what word to chose, but I hate it.

Day four and following: sit-down breakfast and lunch, with coffee and newspaper. Nice!

 

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St. Florian

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Bibliotheca Jardim (Lisbon) Following a campaign started by a local resident, the town elders have decided that the western part of Ealing needs a skate park, and have made plans to build it not far from us. Apparently, £200,000 are now set aside and consultation is open for a new skate park in Elthorne Park (http://www.westealingskatepark.net/).

You won’t be surprised to hear that those who are against everything (the “Hanwell Community Forum” in this case) also oppose this plan, with a series of the usual arguments. It’s too loud. It’s too remote. It’s too close.

Basically means to say “Yeah, skate park, right, well, if it cannot be avoided… but not in my front garden.”

On the upside, their leaflet doesn’t issue a blanket accusation of expected antisocial or criminal behaviour. Better than similar previous campaigns (by different groups).

I am not sure if a steel and concrete structure is the best possible way to provide young people with a means to bond, relax, grow-up, find purpose in life, but it sure is better than hanging out at the bus stop and smashing a phone booth for fun.

I suggest opponents of this plan should immediately remind themselves they were once young and might have children themselves, or grand-children soon. It’s hard enough growing up in the big city, nobody needs to be repeatedly told that he or she is unwanted on top of it.

 

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Knock-knock!

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A lovely front door, seen in the Vale in the Heath, London Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Delores.

Delores who?

Delores my shepherd…

It wasn’t Delores, nor was it an African Christian missionary. Instead, it was the guy from down the road. And he didn’t tell any knock-knock jokes either:

Do you know about the planning application for the Red Lion, he asks. No, I say. (The Red Lion is a derelict pub at the end of my street). He explains that this is the last day to object a planning application to convert the derelict pub into (his words) “an African church.”

Oh, that’s good news, I say, why would I want to object replacing a derelict pub with a church?

Because, he tells me, we have parking problems here already. There’ll be hundreds of cars every Sunday.

You’d have been proud of me, how I stayed calm and cool, and in the friendliest possible way explained that I’d much rather have car parking problems on a Sunday morning, compared to nightly drug and knife-crime issues (as we used to have with the Red Lion).

I should have also informed him that, even though car parking space can be tight late in the evening, in comparison with most of suburbia, we do not have car parking problems at all.

I welcome “the African church” to my area (and plan on a lie-in Sunday mornings anyway). Some people just have to object anything. Ealing Council doesn’t have a great track record at showing common sense, but I sure hope they dismiss this objection.

 


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That Smell!

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freeBeer02 Oh, welcome back. More about the past weekend as soon as I manage to find the words.

Something else came up last night though: While I was preparing the rubbish – mostly, of course, recyclable items –, I couldn’t help noticing that smell. Unmistakably that smell, and it wasn’t for the first time neither.

Years ago, when we lived in Park Royal and near the Guinness Brewery, we had that smell in the air every couple of days, too. I believe it occurs when they malt the barley (or whatever it is they do) when making that brew.

I wonder in one of the not-so-inviting Hanwell industrial estates features a brewery?

 

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