a spark in your veins – Page 47 – Ye who have a spark in your veins of cockney spirit, smile or mourn acccording as you take things well or ill;— Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter's Hill!

2nd June 2011

Free school in the news again

The Free Schoolers

The proposed free school for the area was mentioned in the newsshopper today in an article by Mark Chandler which reveals that the growing population of the borough is putting pressure on primary school places, with apparently 300 pupils still without a school place for next September.

…Mum-of-two Mary Pfeiffer, who is setting up her own Shooters Hill Primary School of Arts, said she was surprised, having been told by the council that the borough had enough places.

She said: “This is something that frustrates me.

“One of the main reasons for wanting to set up the free school is parents have been having issues trying to get children into their choices.

“My children are now in Bexley – we couldn’t find a place in Greenwich for them to go.”…

shooters-hill-population-predictions-(0-5-years-old).png

Oddly enough, the population projections in the 0-5 age range for Shooters Hill Ward predict a decline in numbers over the 2001-31 period.

greenwich-population-predictions-(0-5-years-old).png

The borough wide projections tell a different story however, with an increase of almost 10,000 under 5’s in the 2001-31 period (despite a population fall recorded in the 2001 census).

In any case, the pressure on school places is going up, and with youngsters from across the borough coming to schools in Shooters Hill, the predicted reduction in numbers of local pre-schoolers will probably not aversely affect the case for the opening of the Free School, which will not have an explicit catchment area, and will in all likelihood take pupils from as far away as their families are prepared to make a school run.

2nd June 2011

Poetry by the Park

The lyrical (and poetic) content of Georgie, which were pasted and posted yesterday, gives something of a tenuous link to today’s story, the event of a local (well Greenwich) free Poetry performance, which is, in a roundabout way related to this area via a local contributor who sent this in.

Poetry by the Park

The fortunate side-effect of posting this event is that it inspired a web search that revealed a bit of Shooters Hill Poetry: the romantic musings of Byron’s Don Juan as he approaches London:

Byron – Don Juan (1823)

So said the Florentine: ye monarchs, hearken
  To your instructor. Juan now was borne,
Just as the day began to wane and darken,
  O'er the high hill, which looks with pride or scorn
Toward the great city.—Ye who have a spark in
  Your veins of Cockney spirit, smile or mourn
According as you take things well or ill;—
Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter's Hill!
…
 Don Juan had got out on Shooter's Hill;
  Sunset the time, the place the same declivity
Which looks along that vale of good and ill
  Where London streets ferment in full activity;
While every thing around was calm and still,
  Except the creak of wheels, which on their pivot he
Heard,—and that bee-like, bubbling, busy hum
Of cities, that boil over with their scum:—

2nd June 2011

Georgie

Transpontine has just done a post on a local folk club, which led to another post from a year ago which mentioned Georgie, a Martin Carthy version of an old song, sometimes called called Geordie. The song itself is about a poacher operating on Shooters Hill.

Martin Carthy sings Georgie (performing in Deptford on May Day 2010)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC60IeNoXaw]

Once I had such a good little boy
A pretty boy quick as any
He would run five miles in one half an hour
A letter to pardon my Georgie

For what has Georgie done on Shooter’s Hill
Was it stealing or murder of any
Oh he stole sixteen of the lord judge’s deer
And we sold them down under the valley

Oh saddle em up cries my lily-white breast
Oh saddle me up cries my pony
With bright guns in his hand and a sword at his side
Would you spare me the life of my Georgie

And Georgie’s fathered six babes loved
There’s a seventh one into my body
But it’s with it part with all I have got
If you’ll spare me the life of my Georgie

And George shall be hanged in the frames of gold
For the frames of gold you won’t find many
But it’s with it part with all I have got
If you’ll spare me the life of my Georgie

For what has Georgie done on Shooter’s Hill
Was it stealing or murder of any
Oh he stole sixteen of the lord judge’s deer
And we sold them down under the valley

Wish you was stalled all in the grove
All in the grove standing ready
With bright guns in your hand and a sword at your side
I’d fight you for the life of my Georgie

Once I had such a good little boy
A pretty boy quick as any
He would run five miles in one half an hour
A letter to pardon my Georgie

The timing of this find is something of a neat coincidence as the header image was recently changed to one of a picture from the times when Shooters Hill had its own gibbet, which has been removed from the picture, allowing the viewer to instead concentrate on ye olde mobile mast, a telegraph relay.

Shooters Hill Telegraph and Gibbet

2nd June 2011

Street Parties (Now and Then)

Apparently plans to hold a street party to celebrate the royal wedding on Red Lion Lane had run on stony ground for a while, with various bits of red tape barring the way, that is until call-me-dave made his right to party speech…and hey ho, anyone that still had a job to go to, could not go to it for a day, and dance in the streets, or rather have tea and cake in front of the tellybox…in the Lane. The Red Lion Lane street party was extremely cheerful, Ruchita and the Red Lion Pub were very generous in their donations of food, and trestle tables were laid out with cakes and goodies making it a wonderful way to reclaim the streets. This may be a sign of the beneficial effects of less traffic too, as Red Lion Lane recently celebrated the extension of its one way (downhill) route, (from the Eagle pub down to Shooters Hill Campus), so it seems that reducing traffic (or at least moving it onto other nearby roads) enhances social cohesion.

Red Lion Lane 2011

It’s taken a while to get these photos out, and this story is extremely cold-off-the-press; the pictures were so poor that the whole thing was going to stay off-line, but whilst rummaging around in the archives, it was quite interesting to find some old street party photos taken during the VE day celebrations way back in 1945, so it seemed like fun to cobble them all together and see what happened. The most striking differences (apart from the colours) are the presence of injection moulded plastic chairs in the latter-day party, and significantly, the existence of the gazebo, which is now commonplace at outdoor parties. The common strand appears, unsurprisingly, to be the all important bunting, which is in evidence in both eras, although more modestly so in the wartime period.

Shrewsbury Park 1945

Donaldson Road 1945

2nd June 2011

Eaglesfield Lilypond

The Lilypond in February

This little panorama was made back in February and was (probably) taken within days of all the trees and shrubs (bar the mulberry) being cleared from the site of the old Eaglesfield Park Lilypond. It seems that this is probably to do with the restoration project, and confirmation from the foep may come soon, alternatively Andy Brockman (who is involved in the project) may be able to give some updates during his talk at the Shooters Hill Local History Group this Thursday at 8pm at Shrewsbury House.

2nd June 2011

Bowls Tryout

Recently I went down to try our local bowling green at the Woolwich and Plumstead Bowling club as part of their early season free bowling offer. The free games lasted for two weeks, and to bowl from this point on, one would have to join the club (£55 in the first year, £110 thereafter), with matches at weekends and open sessions in the week.

The idea of inviting people in for a try was to reach out to potential members, and during my go I felt very comfortable and welcome, and could easily imagine myself playing bowls to unwind after a long day.

The only downside from my point of view was the dress-code…but apart from that, £55 to be able to bowl any day of the week seems very reasonable.

2nd June 2011

SHAM update

It’s been quite a while since the campaign against the fire brigade mast on Eaglesfield Road has been mentioned on here, but they’ve been very busy petitioning the locals, and attending planning meetings.

Since the start of their campaign, the group have already achieved something of a victory in their ongoing efforts to get the mast moved to the woods. They somehow discovered that Orange (who share the mast with the firefighters) had set their mobile widgets higher up than they had been permitted to (apparently this makes a difference). Orange’s mistake apparently invalidated previous planning permission, which has subsequently led to them having to reapply – and so far they have been refused; hence the appeal.

According to the online planning website, the previous planning permission sought by Orange in 2002 was also refused, but apparently they won on appeal – so presumably Orange are hoping to pull of a similar feat this time round. Despite this, popular opposition to the proposal has now been mobilised by the SHAM group, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next month as the appeal proceeds, and any opposing comments are submitted.

2nd June 2011

Lambing Day Podcast (c/o In The Meantime)

The folks over at Meridian Radio‘s ‘In the Meantime‘ podcast have agreed for their feature on the latest Woodlands Farm Lambing Day to be rehosted on here; thanks! The podcast itself is transmitted on Queen Elizabeth hospital radio on Sundays, and comes out at some point the following day on their website.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/15154776″ params=”show_comments=false&auto_play=false&color=0003ff” width=”100%” height=”81″ ]

2nd June 2011

The Silver Wind

Interzone 233 cover

A new novella set in an Oxleas Woods of the future has recently been published as part of Interzone, a science fiction & fantasy magazine (issue 233, March-April 2011).

Shooter’s Hill had a rough reputation. The reforestation policy had returned the place to its original state, and the tract of woodland between Blackheath and Woolwich was now as dense and extensive as it had once been in the years and centuries before the first industrial revolution. The woods were rife with carjackers and highwaymen, and scarcely a week went by without reports of some new atrocity. The situation had become so serious that there were moves in parliament to reinstate the death penalty for highway robbery as it had already been reinstated for high treason. During the course of certain conversations I noticed that local people had taken to calling Oxleas Woods by its old name, the Hanging Wood, although no hangings had occurred there as yet. At least not officially.

4th May 2011

Who would be our AV MP

Today is the last day before the referendum on electoral reform, and although it looks like we’re stuck with the old ways (according to the pollsters), I did wonder how the politics in our constituency would now look if we’d voted using AV in the previous ballot.

I took the votes from the 2010 general election, and then began a process of wild speculation as to second preferences, based entirely on vague notions of the political spectrum: I assumed that right wing second preferences would gradually come in from the extremes towards the Tories (IND→ED→BNP→UKIP→CON); Green Party supporters would do likewise for Labour, and Lib-Dem second preferences would split 50-50 each way for the biggest two parties. Although this is mostly pie-in-the-sky thinking, the Green Party’s Shooters Hill candidate for the council election got more votes than their Parliamentary candidate; and since both elections happened on the same day, this suggests that Shooters Hill voters went for Green in the locals and possibly Labour in the nationals.

2010 General Election Results
Name	Party	Votes	%	+/-
Clive Efford	Labour	17,416	41.5	-0.7
David Gold	Conservative	15,753	37.5	+2.9
Steven Toole	Liberal Democrat	5,299	12.6	-4.7
Roberta Woods	British National Party	1,745	4.2	+1.6
Ray Adams	UK Independence Party	1,011	2.4	-0.4
Arthur Hayles	Green	419	1.0	+1.0
Mike Tibby	English Democrats	217	0.5	+0.5
Andrew Graham	Independent	104	0.2	+0.2
	Majority	1,663	4.0
	Turnout	41,964	67.0	+8.6

Well, based on rather crude apportioning of second preferences on a spectrum, and considering that Clive Efford didn’t get more than 50% of the overall vote in the first count, Andrew Graham (IND) dropped out of the competition at the end of round one. Part of his manifesto included bringing back capital punishment, so his second-preference votes got thrown in with the far right, and they went to Roberta Woods in round two, mainly as I’m not entirely sure what the English Democrats were campaigning for, only realising that they existed when I got to the voting booth. This reallocation didn’t make any difference to the overall picture, so Mike Tibby (ED) dropped out, and as before (according to an arbitrary political spectrum), his votes went to Roberta Woods, although she still wasn’t getting anywhere nearer to a 50% share of the vote. In round three the Green party votes went to Clive Efford (LAB), taking him up to a 42.4% share… again not enough for a win. And so to round four, at which point UKIP fell out of the running, and their votes went to David Gold (CON), taking him up by 2.5% to 40%. On to round five… here all the right wingers’ votes went to David Gold, and he nudged ahead of Clive Efford by just over two percent, but still not by enough to become our MP. At this point the Lib-Dems dropped out of the competition, leaving only two parties in the final round. I gave LAB and CON half each of the Lib-Dem votes, and because the CONs had previously benefited from more second hand support from right-wing voting, David Gold ended up as the 2010 (AV) general election winner!

Overall then, this (imaginary) vote count went right to final round, and was incredibly close in the end – I’m not sure that splitting Lib-Dem second preferences down the middle was a very realistic move. Equally, BNP support often comes from disgruntled Labour supporters having a protest, so giving their secondary support to the Tories may also have been a bad idea…

Since this whole trifle has been based on wild speculation about voting behaviours in Eltham, it would be a mistake to really make anything of it really. However, this being a marginal seat, it could be the case that voters who don’t initially support Labour or Tory candidates might get more of a say.