Category: Planning and open spaces

That was February in Palmers Green – a round up of news and events this month

Post author By Suzanne Beard
Post date March 7, 2013
No Comments on That was February in Palmers Green – a round up of news and events this month

The posts on PGJITN were a bit thin on the ground this month but it was all happening in other parts of PG and environs.

Wood Green’s Banksy was chipped and shipped to a US auction house, then withdrawn from sale at the 11th hour after a vociferous campaign. New artwork appeared, and in proof that you couldn’t make it up, we heard Poundland declare that they were fans of Banksy’s. Who knew?

In Westminster, our MP David Burrowes was all over the press for his opposition to gay marriage, and in the local corridors of power (also known as Enfield Council), Bush Hill Tory Councillor Chris Joannides hit the national press after being suspended from the party for making inappropriate remarks on Facebook. Read more here

There was news that PG could become better connected (though there could be disruption ahead for our neighbours in the south) – this month London First published its report on Cross Rail 2, this time linking North to South, and with a terminus at Ally Pally. Strictly, this is not new, and there have been proposals for a north-south route since 1901. But the latest proposal echoes TfL’s 2011 recommendations and has the support of Network Rail. You can read the full report here

Still on transport, the latest exhibition at Space Art Gallery features 100 paintings of London Underground stations by Ross Ashmore. Ross is on a quest to paint them all before LU’s 150th birthday celebrations begin. The paintings look fantastic, so please take a look – you have until the Easter weekend.
There were three great film nights in February, all in the space of a week or so. The N21 Festival Crew, led by John Stewart brought us Some Like it Hot, then T W Murnau’s weird and fascinating Sunrise, A story of two humans in which a young wife forgives her husband for trying to kill her in a rowing boat, after which they hit the town in a surreal dream city. Fantastic stuff.

Meanwhile Talkies offered the Blue Brothers and in an amazing coup will be linking up with the Future Shorts Festival on 22 March for a special event at Baskervilles, who will be offering a special film night menu. More on Talkies shortly.

Looking ahead, depending on when you are reading this, there are just 175 sleeps to the Palmers Green festival on 1 September. Meanwhile, April belongs to the Grovelands Park 100th anniversary celebrations and there is still time to enter the Broomfield and Grovelands photographic competitions.

Dont forget also the next Poetry in Palmers Green event on 27 April. Poets taking part will include Nancy Mattson, Martha Kapos, Grevel Lindop, Graham High and Linda How. Entry is £5 (£3 for concessions) and the venue is the Parish Centre attached to St John’s Church.

Sadly, PG came nowhere at all in the list of London’s funniest locations . The nearest* was Muswell Hill, which in 1978 formed the backdrop to the not quite as good Porridge follow up Going Straight in which ex con Normal Stanley Fletcher (Ronnie Barker) tried life on the straight and narrow in Muswell Hill. If you cant be law abiding in Muswell Hill, where can you?

Not certainly in PG where we joined the seeming legion of houses which have heard the pitter patter of burglars’ feet. I don’t wish to cause alarm but Palmers Green Jewel in the North was nearly stolen. Surely vigilante groups would spontaneously have formed.

May spring arrive in your green patch soon.

Sue from PG

*post script. I have recently learned that On the buses was filmed in Wood Green. Funniness creeps closer.

Looking ahead

5-9 March Anything Goes at the Intimate Theatre, presented by Finchley and Friern Barnet Operatic Society

12 March History and Mystery of Oaklands Road: Geoff Jacobs talks about his voyage of discovery researching this history of his road at the Friends Meeting House Winchmore Hill (Southgate District Civic Trust History Group)

27 April Poetry in Palmers Green at St John’s Parish Centre

2 May A Serious Man. The Coen brothers film is the first of Talkies new First Thursdays cinema events at the Dugdale Centre

18-19 May Grovelands Park Centenary Celebrations

6 June The Wave (Die Welle) : Talkies First Thursdays cinema event at the Dugdale Centre

8-9 June Open Studios and Art Trail weekend, Southgate and Palmers Green

4 July Zero Dark Thirty Talkies First Thursdays cinema event at the Dugdale Centre

1 August Chungking Express Talkies First Thursdays cinema event at the Dugdale Centre

31 August Singalong to the Wizard of Oz Palmers Green United Reformed Church Talkies cinema event with fancy dress – part of the Palmers Green Festival event programme

1 September Palmers Green Festival, Broomfield Park

Community Palmers Green Planning and open spaces Uncategorized

Un’bird’en yourself!

Have you got an hour to spare on Saturday or Sunday?

This weekend people all over the uk will be taking part in the annual RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. To get involved all you need to do is make a note of the largest number of each species you see at one time in the period of one hour, and report your findings to RSPB. Not birds on the wing, we hasten to add– that way madness lies – but just those you spot in your garden.

Secretly we suspect that birds rather look forward to the Birdwatch weekend each January. Maybe a little more bird food gets put out, though its something RSPB advises we should be doing all through the year.

Up in the Northern reaches of Palmers Green, our birds like the usual bread, cake, suet, dried fruit, the odd leftover potato and rice. They turn up their beaks at niger seeds, which we optimistically put out in the home of luring in some finches. And they will only eat apples on sufferance. Maybe they go off them after the autumn glut.

The real mystery is what birds will turn up during the course of a year. In our first year in PG, we didn’t see a single sparrow or starling, only a standard lineup of robins, blackbirds, crows, jays, pigeons and various types of tit. But since then we have seen greater spotted woodpeckers, green woodpeckers, and, once, a redwing. We still haven’t seen any parakeets, though once they arrive we will probably loathe them.

What is the most obscure bird sighting you have had in Palmers Green? And did you take a photo?

Community Palmers Green Planning and open spaces

No sign of the sign

: The old and purplexing triangle sign image Hugh Humphrey

The electronic sign at the Triangle used to intrigue, with its odd, erratic and gap toothed messages. But then it was removed and it was a while before many of us noticed…..Hugh Humphrey of N21.net did, and he has made this short film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ww_KwM0A8

Bowes Park Community Planning and open spaces Shops Uncategorized

The road that roared

Our neighbours in Bowes and Bounds Green awoke one day last week to find that it wasnt the birds that were tweeting (though we do not doubt the mellifluousness of B&B’s streets), but its roads.

So here I am, on twitter. But why am I here, after all I am just a road? Well I will tell you…

began Myddleton Road @MyddletonRd_N22 in its first tweet.

I am more than a road. I am the heart, the lung, the brain and the soul of a community. This may sound pretentious, but hear me out.

If you cut me do I not bleed? No, I am a road. But if I am hurt then a community shares my pain. If I am abused then we abuse ourselves.

And I have had enough. No more. I will share my secrets so that the people who live here, love here and rule here can see what is done to me

And maybe something will be done. Or maybe it won’t but at least people will know. Know what? Of the abuse that brings me down.

Subsequent tweets have formed a diary of hopes, indignities, disappointments and calls to action occasionally broken by a rhyme and proud boast about a swanky passing Ferrari. Near the knuckle, risky and often brilliant, its worth checking out.

Now PGJITN is no fool, and suspects, like our partner website Bowes and Bounds Connected, that it is not in fact the road which is tweeting, but a person.

But who are they? And what would Palmers Green’s roads say if they could only tweet? Are some twittering away already? Tell us!

Planning and open spaces

Ally Pally confirmed as one on the nation’s favourite spaces

Post author By Suzanne Beard
Post date November 23, 2012
No Comments on Ally Pally confirmed as one on the nation’s favourite spaces

Alexandra Palace has come fourth in the the People’s Choice awards for the UK’s favourite green spaces – and no 2 in London.

The accolade was part of the annual Green Flag awards, run by Keep Britain Tidy. Ally Pally received more than 7000 votes, competing with over 1400 parks across the UK .

The park celebrates its 150th anniversary next year.

Community Planning and open spaces

Not in my back yard says Pinkham Way bidder

Post author By Suzanne Beard
Post date November 2, 2012
1 Comment on Not in my back yard says Pinkham Way bidder

The campaign against the waste incinerator at Pinkham Way has an unlikely new supporter. Sort of.

According to the latest communications from the Pinkham Way Alliance, a senior executive director of Veolia, one of the leading bidders for the contract, is reported to have remarked at a recent industry event, “I don’t think I’d want a waste facility near my home.” Apparently there is money to be made from putting one near ours though, eh?

This week, the Alliance published a new leaflet. If you are concerned about the plans for Pinkham Way, they ask you pass it on widely and “help us prevent what even the industry’s own leadership don’t want”.

PW Binbag leaflet for email

If you would like to assist the Alliance with their campaign, we have loaded posted this article onto the Facebook page so that you can share it easily.