Winchmore Hill follows up the summer’s fantastic N21 Festival with the St Nicholas Fair, to be held on the Green on 8 December. There will be stalls, music, children’s activities, merriment, horses, reindeer, St Nicholas and snow….Festive events start at 2pm.
Award winning tour guide Peter Berthoud of Discovering London repeats his Bizarre Bowes Park walk at the weekend
Peter promises that the tour will take in “Ovi the dinosaur, an odd collection of eagles, London’s most interesting underpants, and a ramshackle “pop-up” church that has recently been saved and look at some interesting late Victorian and Edwardian architecture.” It will also include a stop off for a drink in one the area’s most interesting bars, an exploration of Bowes Park’s musical links and a chance to view the most disturbing window display in the entire city.
Peter has introduced an entertaining pricing system for this walk, and that alone is worth clicking through to make a booking.
The walk is on Sunday 30 September from 11-2 and starts at Bowes Green tube station.
Categories
Serpents at the church
West Gallery Church Music is what you would have heard in many churches up and down the country before it was common for churches to have their own organs.
There is a rare chance to hear west gallery music played live at Enfield’s St Andrew’s church on 27 October, when the London Gallery Quire give an evening performance.
The event is one in a series to support the restoration of St Andrew’s C18th organ, which is being taken away to Liverpool in a few months for a complete overhaul. “So we will be playing music to restore the organ, which was exactly the music that the organ replaced!” laughed David Holliday, one of the church organists showing visitors around the church as part of last weekend’s Open House .
West Gallery Church music is so described because it was often performed by a band of singers and instrumentalists from a gallery at the west end of a church. Explains the Quire’s website.
“It differs markedly from cathedral music, both in style and function. It was written for and in many cases by amateur musicians; professional performance was not usually envisaged. Much of the repertoire consists of settings of the metrical psalms; there are also hymns, anthems and canticles.
The music is often of a very lively and joyful nature; too lively indeed for the reformers of the mid-19th Century Oxford Movement, who sought to replace it with the more staid and solemn repertoire typified by Hymns Ancient and Modern”.
Born Melanie Ann Skinner, poet, short story writer and painter Melanie Ann Camp lived in Berkshire Gardens from 1957 until the early 80s when she moved to her grandmother’s house in Edmonton. Though she left the area completely when she married, she still has family connections with Palmers Green and is a regular visitor.
In her new book of poems, “A Penny in my Hand (Growing up in Suburbia)” Melanie captures happy memories of suburban life in Palmers Green during the 60s and 70s.
“The roads and avenues, then, were all lined with trees, shading the pavement from the sun on those long hot summers. Privet hedges and little walls surrounded each front garden and everyone had a gate,” she recalls.
The book is dedicated to Melanie’s father, Albert “Chick” Skinner (pictured), her mother and her grandparents.
Melanie has kindly allowed us to publish one of the poems in the book. Copies of A Penny in my hand are available at £5 plus £1.50 p&p. If you would like a copy, please email melanie.anne@ntlworld.com
Saturday Morning Shopping
Buying fresh bread at the local shops,
And talking to people in the street.
Watching vans deliver fish from the seas,
And meat from the farms,
Not so far away.
The newsagent and the sweet shop,
Full of children eager for a new comic,
Or a packet of sherbet.
Lazily walking back up the road,
Knocking on friends doors,
And going over to the park.
To feed the ducks.
Or just sit in the shade
Of the old Willow Tree
Beside the small lake
And in front of a beautiful old house.
Helium bread was one of the exciting delicacies offered at Goodall’s in Park Parade Palmers Green in the first years of the 1900s.
Leading medics of the day were testifying to its health benefits, including the King’s physician. And if you hadn’t tried it you were missing out, declared The Recorder in the housewives column of its first issue in November 1907.
I tried a four days’ old loaf the other day, and found it as moist as a few hours’ old household. There is no crust, merely a thin crisp coating. The shape of the loaf is such, that delightful pieces of toast can be made.
It was perfect for afternoon tea too, and look! no waste:
There is one thing about the bread: there never will be any waste; no odd crusts to throw to the birds.
Goodall’s version with added currants was, apparently, was particularly tasty.
Neither of Goodall’s loaves were the best thing since sliced bread however. That wasnt invented until 1912.
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The Recorder was published from 1907 to 1916. A searchable disc containing all 170 issues is now available from Southgate District Civic Trust
Pressure group 38 Degrees is urging local residents to sign a petition to help safeguard NHS services, following steps to set up new Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) up and down the country.
The groups will have the power to decide what health services can be accessed in local areas and who provides them, but 38 Degrees fears that doctors in Enfield and elsewhere will be under pressure under the new arrangements to hand out contracts to private companies – and that companies such as Virgin Care and Serco are circling with plans to win bids by slashing costs.
However, the new CCGs are in their infancy, and will have a legal duty to listen to local people. 38 Degrees say that this means there is an opportunity to ask doctors on the CCGs to use their new powers to protect our NHS, not privatise it.
38 Degrees is urging local people to sign petitions to demonstrate to their CCGs that they expect them to protect local services. They are also currently seeking legal advice to help local groups ensure that responsibilty to protect services is written into each CCG’s constitution.
Interested in signing the petition? Visit
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/CCG-petition
