Art Is For Lovers

Leytonstone. A flower shop. It's St Valentine's day.

Geezer: "Aar much are these 'ere roses?"

Florist: "Four pounds per stem, sir. It will be very nicely wrapped."

Geezer: "Four quid!? It better be wrapped in a bleedin' Picasso for four bleedin' quid."

The Flat Earth

The 300-odd acres of sandy grasslands and mature trees that make up Wanstead Flats are seen as a bit of a sacred site in our part of town. It's where you walk your dogs, play footy, ride horses, fly your remote control 'plane, go to the circus, lounge in the sun, watch fireworks, bareknuckle box and (sometimes) poison the wildlife. Leytonstone locals hate the idea of any development, no matter how small (or 'temporary' like the mooted Olympics police HQ), encroaching on the flats. It took me by surprise, then, to find this spanky new cyclepath on my way home one evening. I can only think this was allowed because it was previously a muddy 'desire line' worn into the turf as a shortcut from Francis road to the boho crescent of Bushwood, which leads ultimately to the North Star (the boozer, not the celestial feature. It's not that long a road).


This being a Waltham Forest Council project, It's beautifully flat and smooth until it stops at Francis road, suddenly terminating in a compacted earth berm - what BMXers used to call a 'whoop-de-doo'. Oh well. It's hardly the start of a Copenhagenized E11 but it'll make getting back from the pub a bit easier.

From The Lions Mouth

Bad Leytonstone news and good Leytonstone news.

The good news. Lots of action at the Red Lion (which is now on Twitter) - and should be open by the end of march. Here's the latest release from owners Antic:

"I’m sure you have noticed our lovely builders getting stuck in at the Red Lion, work really is moving along and we are revealing more and more of the lovely old building all the time. Yesterday saw two false ceilings being removed from the bar area to really open the room up and the old kitchen being knocked out to make way for a brand spanking new one.
 
The pub now has it’s own Twitter account if you would like to be kept bang up to date with goings on: Theredlion_e11. A Facebook group is soon to follow.
 
I am also pleased to let you know that The Red Lion will be taking part in this years Leytonstone Festival. We will of course be looking for artists, groups, clubs or acts to appear during the Festival so anyone interested should either drop me a line or wait for the pub to open and pop in and have a chat.
 
Finally we are vey pleased to announce that we have appointed Mark Sprules the new General Manager  of the pub. Mark is currently the General Manager at  another of our pubs, Westow House in Crystal Palace and although he is sorry to be leaving the area,  is very much looking forward to the new challenge the Red Lion will bring. I am sure we can count on you all to make him feel very welcome when he takes up his new role in March. "

And the bad news? "Troubled" High Road landmark pub Lincoln's has had it. It's been bought by a housing association who want to demolish the place and shoehorn seventeen flats onto the site. When completed, this will give E11 the same population density as Hong Kong. Probably.

I haven't any suitable pictures, so I hope a Bavarian dog wearing sunglasses is OK.

The Lion In Winter

A big sign (hoho) that things are at last progressing for Leytonstone landmark The Red Lion (ex Zulus). Rumour has it that a lot more work is needed refurbishing the old place than was first thought, which may have put the reopening back a few weeks - so it'll be spring at the earliest. New owners Antic have set up a holding page for the pubs website, showing how it was in (I presume) about 1900 and hopefully how it might look again. Can't wait.

Paper View

It's got a lot of potential, Leytonstone High Road, and it's about to get two million quid's worth of 'improvements'. I've no doubt that this will amount to the railway bridge getting a touch-up and loads of new signs telling us how great our local council are.

My favourite building on the High Road has always been the Cuthbert-Dibble-and-Grubb fire station, now available as this marvellous tabletop version from Kingsway Models, just one of a range of unashamedly nostalgic card kits, which also includes Ferodo bridges, Great Yarmouth bus garage, Chadwell Heath Odeon and even Walford East Tube Station.



It won't be like this much longer, though - the fire station is no longer considered fit for 21st century purposes and is to be largely replaced by a 'predominantly glazed' building (it says here). I'm sure that'll look just lovely.

The Lion Thing

According to dismal hysteria-sheet the Waltham Forest Guardian, Leytonstone's best-known deceased pub Zulus will indeed reopen as the Red Lion, as I speculated a few weeks back. A bit later than expected, though - "february at the earliest" according to Max Alderman of developers Antic Ltd. This is due to squatters taking roost, something that seems to have become a bit popular round our way lately - this pic shows the old police station further down the High Road from Zulus, recently occupied by (according to my neighbour) 'crusties'. Now, there's an adjective seldom heard since the late 90s. The building is due to be sold for £1.5m, and they, their dogs and their henna may have been evicted by the time you read this.


“It is a little bit annoying" say Max with no little understatement "but hopefully the process won't take too long. We can't wait to get started. Our plan is to take The Red Lion back to being an old-fashioned style local pub with home made food."

Great news for our bit of East London - and gratifying to know that Antic think Leytonstone is "slightly up and coming". It won't turn the area into Marylebone overnight, but it's a start.

In The Red

Just recently there have been all sorts of rumours about Leytonstone's two most prominent dead pubs. Lincoln's, which dominates the middle section of the HIgh Road has been sold. Or it hasn't. Planning to convert it to flats has been rejected. Or it's been accepted. It's going to become a restaurant. Or it isn't. Whatever the case, the premises remain closed and increasingly tatty.

However, more substantial gossip concerns Zulus up the road. This was the Red Lion until 2002, when it became a theme pub aimed at E11's large population of young South Africans. It wasn't popular with local residents, some of whom grew familiar with splats of puke decorating their front gardens, pavements and cars. Zulus was part of a chain that seems to have gone belly-up early this year, when it suddenly closed. It briefly reopened as some sort of Eastern European night club before remaining tinned-up with the usual ALL ITEMS OF VALUE HAVE BEEN REMOVED signs. The Red Lion has a bit of an iconic status locally. During the late sixties and early seventies it hosted gigs by Yes, Genesis, Iron Maiden and was even the scene of an early outing by a youthful Led Zepellin. Since those glory days it's had a few incarnations - including a brief flirtation as a 'Salsa bar' named Cuba Bella. However, the pub was known as the Red Lion from at least 1754, and before that it was the Robin Hood. There has been a pub on the site since the 1600s, and the present building dates from 1891. It's a prime site in an area that's improving. Indeed, some even say that Leytonstone is (re)gentrifying.

Step forward, then, Antic Ltd who, it has been confirmed have bought the site and will be adding it to their brace of other London premises. Antic are chiefly famous for running the Dogstar in Brixton and the well-regarded White Hart in Stoke Newington. I'm not familiar with their other pubs, but a poke around their website seems to indicate that they're all about creating places with a bit of organic character, rather than the cut-and-paste refurbs of some other chains. No indication as to what the place will be called yet - but let's hope it's a welcome back for the Red Lion.

Round Our Way

I never thought I'd say this, but Stratford is changing from the ragged patch in the torn backside of the old trousers hanging in the dilapidated shed of the East End, into somewhere fairly ... nice. The pace of change at the Olympic Park is stunning, and the neighbouring Westfield über-development looks almost finished. It's even going to have a John Lewis, so at least the folks from Upper Leytonstone and Wanstead won't have to spend 20 minutes on the Tube to go to Oxford Street. They'll just spend 45 minutes sat in their Audis getting into Westfield's car park. The other day in Stratford's unyieldingly grim old shopping centre I heard someone say excitedly "We're going to be the Shepherd's Bush of the East". Damned with faint praise, but there's no denying that E15 is improving. It's improving from a very low base, mind.



These blokes were painting hundreds of tiny squares onto the new Angel Lane bridge. The mural is almost finished, and looks to be some sort of half-tone image, presumably celebrating 'the spirit of the East End'. Or something. I don't know what the men in hi-viz thought of the job, but one of them was whistling the Patsy Cline tune 'Crazy'.

Big Up

Leytonstone Festival's on at the moment. It's a series of events through july and august, mostly with an arty flavour. In the library tomorrow is the E17 Designers Market, a reflection that property prices in the traditional arty strongholds of Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Hackney are pushing creatives further East.

Last sunday we saw 6Music pleasers Cowbell play at the What's Cookin' Summer Picnic. Refreshments came courtesy of E11 favourites, The North Star, who were punting chilled beers from a dustbin full of ice. Very impressed to have the choice of an ale from St Peters rather than what is the norm at these sort of events - a wobbly plastic tumbler of lukewarm lager. With a wasp in it.

Given The Choice

The ebb and flow of pub closures continues in Leytonstone. Firstly, some good news. The Loaded Dog has reopened. This has had a pretty chequered past, even being run by Jamaican Yardies at one point, which resulted in a dramatic termination of licence involving stun grenades. For a couple of years after it was a good music venue, but got torpedoed when the pubco went bust. It was boarded up for a year or so, and now seems to be serving generic lagers to generic punters. Next door, the Britannia is being converted to flats. Kirkdales, a pub/winebar hybrid with a ravishing view of the bus station closed suddenly last year and has been replaced with The Olive, a mediterranean restaurant. Up the road from there is Zulus, one of the oldest licenced premises in E11, and for decades was the Red Lion. Apart from a brief flirtation with being an *ahem* Mexican cantina, Zulus was the boozer of choice for Leytonstone's large population of South Africans. At the moment, the building is tinned up - rumour has it that there's a refurb in the offing. Mind you, they said that two years ago about Lincoln's, which still sits like a beached cruise liner further down the High Road.

The Woodhouse Tavern is up for sale with a view to being demolished and turned into a four-storey block of flats. The pub dates from 1865, and has a nice lounge bar with wood panelling from a 20s refit, and a newer half with conservatory, rebuilt after a visit by the Luftwaffe. The landlord was interviewed recently, saying that they don't get many customers in any more. I hate to say it, but I'm not surprised. Clean and pleasant as it is, you do have to wonder what would make you go there when they don't even serve one ale, and the rest of the very ordinary fodder is much cheaper to drink at home. Where's the added value? I'm very happy to pay a premium for a good pub experience, and I suspect most people are, but I've no wish to drink Smoothflow to the sound of a ticking clock. I've been in about three times - I like to give pubs the benefit of the doubt - but each time the place was virtually empty, with all the atmosphere of a crypt. On my first visit, I went in with my dad. When he asked what was on their four handpumps, the barmaid looked surprised and said "Oh them? They're just for show".

Leytonstone has a large and growing middle-class demographic. A lot of drinkers spend their money in the West End rather than locally, because apart from the excellent North Star, there just ain't the choice unless you like Karaoke and Carling Premier (and I do, now and again). Much as I loathe so-called Gastropubs with their contrived blackboardery and gigantic plates, I'd be pretty happy if one opened round here, just for the variety.

21st Century Fox

Last night I bodged up a webcam to record our noisy neighbours. Apparently they live under a shed a few gardens away. I watched beetles and moths for about three hours until I realised that the bike cover (out of shot) was flapping around and scaring the cubs away. Here's the er, highlights.

Wildlife

Even before the recent attack just down the road in Hackney, there seemed to noticeably more foxes around than ever. (Incidentally, Hackney has a bit of a record of unfortunate incidents involving animals, not least the chimpanzee burglar.)

Where I grew up, on the edge of the Worth Valley's endless moorland you rarely saw a fox, though there are local legends of them attacking humans, like Ted Hughes' poem about the Midgely Moor standing stone Churn Milk Joan. Country foxes know Man is out to get them. Urban foxes have never been shot at, trapped or chased by dogs.

The foxes in our neighbourhood fear nobody. You see them all the time, often in broad daylight. A couple of weeks back I got up early for work, and a fox was sat right inside our front gate. He wouldn't even move out of the way to let me get my scooter out. I could hardly run the blighter over. There followed a ridiculous Mexican standoff, with Basil looking at me with a "yeah, so?" look in his eye. After ten minutes I was about to get a water pistol when he trotted nonchalantly off. Leytonstone's foxes are like those underage criminal kids who know the law can't touch them. On these hot nights, sleep isn't helped by them yowling from the roof of our neighbour's shed.



Apart from the week or so after my mum and dad have done their terraforming on it, our garden resembles one of those patches of scrub found in the middle of council estates with a telephone box marooned on it. It's not through lack of trying, but I'm lethal to plantlife. Consequently, we don't have much out there to ruin, so it didn't bother us much when the foxes dragged in these rather horrible shorts from God-knows-where, and tried to bury them in the veg patch. However, yesterday evening I heard our neighbour muttering darkly to his wife about "getting something done". On sunday night a family of foxes devoured all his cucumbers - which I later found puked up in our front yard.

Showbiz For Ugly People

Ah, polling day. Returning to the primary school you left years before, to find a place that once felt like the inside of York Minster has shrunk to the dimensions of a large garden shed. People wearing rosettes whom you've never seen before and will never see again asking how you voted. The distant sound of promises being shouted through speakers on the top of a car.

Anyway. I'm pleased to see that after being missing-presumed-binned for several years, someone's had a rummage in the caretaker's storeroom and brought back this woodface sign. Yes, that is my bike.

Rivetted

Leytonstone, home of Ten-Inch Villas is a good place to live. It's affordable, safe, and twenty minutes from the West End. It ain't a fashionable area, but having seen our old locale of Brick Lane go from a characterful backwater of Dickensian streets, leather workshops and artists quietly getting on with life, to a urine-soaked party zone for 25-year-olds with legs like Kermit The Frog, we'll cope with that.

Leytonstone High Road is slowly improving. It's still pretty dowdy, but up near the Tube Station some new restaurants have opened. There's a smart florists and a new jewellers shop. The old Woolworth's has been in use as an arts centre, but is reopening as an Argos. A lot of this inward investment is presumably linked to the £1.5bn mega-mall being built down the hill in neighbouring Stratford. Now, I used to think Stratford was the worst place I've ever been - and I've been to Lens - but the Westfield development is already making the place look much better. It's coming from a very low base, mind.


All this hasn't helped one of the oldest local businesses. Rivett's opened in 1889, giving it a claim for the UK's oldest motorcycle dealer. It seems to have sold only clothing, consumables and other bits and bats since the business changed hands in 1999, though a hint of former, oilier, skills can be seen in a surviving Dunlop sign above the door. Unlike Double S Motorcycles over the road, the staff of Rivetts didn't sneer if you rode up on an Italian Hairdryer to buy two-stroke, so they always got my custom if I needed any spark plugs or a new helmet. Sadly, the shop shut up for good last month, with a jam of punters picking over the remaining stock - bales of XXS Frank Thomas leathers and XXL Caberg Helmets. What will open in Rivett's stead is anyone's guess, but I bet it won't be half as useful.

Closing Time

Most towns have one. Some have more than one. Some unfortunate towns have nothing but them; rough pubs. I don't mean the type celebrated by tongue-in-cheek guides, with a meat raffle, a copy of the Racing Post left on a buffet and Karaoke on fridays. I mean the ones with a tangible sense of threat, like an unexploded bomb. We have one of those in Leytonstone - it's called Lincolns. Opened in 1872 and originally called The Elms, Lincolns is a handsome building about halfway up the High Road between the railway bridge and the parish church. A lot of the older community have fond memories of the Elms as a decent pub, but it's had a varied history. In 1983 - as the newly renamed Lincolns - CAMRA described the place as a "Young people's musically orientated establishment. Loud music in main bar". In the late 80s it was briefly renamed "Big Hand Mo's" and i'm sure it was a precisely as good as that sounds, especially as it was selling Webster's Bitter, perhaps the least-missed Yorkshire ale of all time.

In recent years there were complaints by local residents of blatant drug dealing and customers openly urinating and defecating in neighbouring streets. Vomit, used condoms and discarded tights became an unwanted feature of many a local garden. There was at least one stabbing and even rumours of firearms being waved around. A midnight punch-up could be witnessed at least once a week. There were some very intimidating characters hanging around. I'm no coward, but I often used to cross the road to avoid them and their stocky, snarling dogs.

The local Police have been proactive about this charming establishment, and spent some time quietly gathering evidence. What finally cooked Lincolns' goose was a copper actually being told on his undercover visit that he "looked like he might enjoy some coke" and that the dealer had "just popped out" but would be back. He was later offered counterfeit DVDs and treated to a lock-in. A court appeal revealed that the manager was actually too scared of his clientele to confront them about their behaviour. To the delight of everyone except the hoodlums who came from as far away as South London to make merry on our doorstep, the pub is boarded up. It doesn't end there though - the pub will reopen in autumn as a rebranded, renewed "community pub" selling real ale. Leytonstone could definately do with a couple more decent pubs - and I really hope that this will be one at last.


I haven't got a picture of Lincolns - so here's a supremely hoppy and fresh pint of Skinner's Betty Stoggs I enjoyed at the Bush Inn, Morwenstow, last week.

New Coat

The North Star - Leytonstone's best pub by a mile - has had a rough time lately. Some bureaucratic glitch prevented their licence being renewed, leading to about a month of forced closure. There was also a bizarre and unwarranted hate campaign on Beer In The Evening (warning - there's some bad language on that link) and to cap it all, some jackass smashed the fine etched-glass door to the main bar. Last night we had our first visit since the reopening, walking up Browning Road with some trepidation after being tipped off that the pub had been "refurbished". My experience with refurbished pubs has not been a happy one. I appreciate I am probably alone in loving wallpaper with an inch of sticky nicotine on it and chipped formica tables, but a lot of my favourite pubs have chucked the baby out with the bathwater when they've had the decorators in. What I liked about the North Star was the tatty charm of the tongue and groove panelling and the low key lighting. I was fully expecting to see a skip outside full of the pub's soul. I needn't have worried. All that's been done is some fresh paintwork and replacing the 25-watt bulbs with brighter ones, a good dusting and some new curtains. Apparently, much of the decorating was done by the pub's many loyal regulars. The main bar's door was boarded up while a replica of the original is being made. I did make a mental note of what was on their six pumps last night, but trying to keep up with my father-in-law means I can only remember Bombardier, Adnams Bitter and Broadside. There might have been a Woodfordes. It was a long night.