events – Page 20 – a spark in your veins

7th October 2012

Oxjam at the Pelton Arms

Katy from the Greenwich Oxfam Fundraising Group asked me to let people know about their Oxjam events at the Pelton Arms this week. She wrote:

This October the Pelton Arms pub is holding a week of charity events and gigs featuring the best local talent as part of the nationwide Oxjam music festival.

There will be a variety of events & people involved, from the best local bands & DJ’s to a music quiz and the pub’s knitting group. The week opens with an “Oxjam Pub Quiz” on Tuesday 9th, and closes on the Sunday with afternoon entertainment from local band The Los Dawsons. Both Friday and Saturday night will feature evenings of music, with Tom Minchin of The Dirty Reds & Andrew Abbott of Star Witness kicking the weekend off on Friday, and then Charlton rockabilly band Ronnie Ripple and the Ripchords start the music on Saturday followed by the Bob Dylan Experience with the night ending with some authentic rhythm & blues from Kit Curtis & The B3s.

Oxjam is a month-long music festival that takes place throughout the UK during October to raise money for the charity, Oxfam. Since the first year of the festival in 2006, Oxjam has raised over £1.75 million for Oxfam’s causes.

Katy, Chair, Greenwich Oxfam said “We are really excited to be putting on a whole series of events for Oxjam this year, they are incorporating a variety of local talent and should have a real community feel. This will be our best Greenwich Oxjam yet!”

There will be events most nights from 9th-14th October and entry to all gigs is free. To get the listings for the week and news as it becomes available, follow @OxfamGreenwich on twitter. You can donate online to Greenwich Oxjam at http://www.justgiving.com/Greenwich-Oxjam-2012

The line up is as follows:

9/10 – Pub quiz (£1 from each entry donated to Oxjam)

10/10 – Rock n’ Roll Knitting and a DJ set from Blackheath Panda Scooter Club

12/10 – Acoustic sets from Tom Minchin (The Dirty Reds) & Andrew Abbott (Star Witness)

13/10 – Kit Curtis & The B3s, The Bob Dylan Experience, Ronnie Ripple & The Ripchords

14/10 – The Los Dawsons

All monies raised go to helping Oxfam’s work in countries around the world.
For more information, visit http://www.oxfam.org.uk/oxjam

4th October 2012

Million Meal Appeal this weekend

Last year shoppers’ donations helped food redistribution charity Fareshare beat by 200,000 its target of collecting enough food for 1 million meals – a total of 1.2million meals. They are hoping for similar success this weekend, 6th & 7th October, when their Million Meal Appeal takes place at Sainsbury’s supermarkets across the UK.

FareShare‘s usual way of working is to collect food that food retailers such as supermarkets are unable to sell and would otherwise throw away – 3,600 tonnes of food last year – and then distribute it to a network of some 700 organisations in the UK, such as church groups, hostels, women’s refuges and school breakfast clubs. Last year they fed 36,500 vulnerable people each day. They typically get fresh but perishable food, and they don’t usually get many non-perishable items such as pasta, rice, tinned food etc. The Million Meal Appeal asks shoppers to buy an extra food item from this list and donate it to the FareShare trolley on their way out of the supermarket. Last year Sainsbury’s matched shoppers’ donations.

Fareshare have recruited 600 volunteers for this year’s appeal, though they still need more. Volunteers greet customers, give them the shopping list and encourage them to buy an additional item of food for FareShare.

Last year shoppers at Sainsbury’s in Woolwich and Greenwich filled many shopping trolleys with food donations; hopefully this year we will be just as generous.

18th September 2012

Woodlands Farm Apple Day on 14th October

The excellent Skinner’s Rats will be playing at the Woodlands Farm Apple Day on 14th October, and with luck there will be some Pitmaston Pineapples to try and buy too. Maureen from the farm e-mailed me details of the event:

The Woodlands Farm Trust Apple Day is on Sunday 14th October 2012 (11am-4pm) at 331 Shooters Hill, Welling DA16 3RP.
All are welcome at the Woodlands Farm Trust Apple Day. Come and celebrate National Apple Day with a variety of activities, including crafts, a treasure hunt and apple pressing to make delicious juice. There will be stalls selling local produce, including honey, home-made jams and cakes. Live music will be provided by Skinners Rats. A great day out for all the family.
Entry is free, but donations are welcome – all money raised helps us to care for our animals.

Should be a good day at the farm as usual.

24th August 2012

London Open House Coming Soon

I’ve been a huge fan of Open House London for many years – what’s not to love about the opportunity to look round the inside of some of London’s iconic buildings, both ancient and modern, famous and comparatively unknown and all for free! However the weekend has become so popular that patience and a willingness to queue have become essential qualities for anyone participating, and many of the most desirable architectural opportunities, those which have to be booked in advance, have not been accessible.

This year Open House is the weekend of 22nd/23rd September, and the web site opened for bookings last week …. and promptly crashed, presumably due to the number of people trying to book. As a result of irresolvable “technical difficulties” the organisers have changed their method of allocating places at the bookable events from first-come-first-served to a ballot system, whereby there will be a random draw from the names of everyone who has registered their interest before the end of Wednesday 29th August. We can register our interest on the Open House London 2012 web site.

The bookable buildings and events include some amazing opportunities; for example the Institute of Civil Engineers’ (ICE) Engineering East London boat tour described here last year, and the ICE Tour of the Emirates Airline Cable Car (more usually known as the Arabfly Dangleway). The booking web site describes these:

Engineering East London: ICE Boat tour to the Hoo Peninsula – max 2 per application only for this event. Ballot that opened for this last week still stands hoopeninsula@open-city.org.uk
Sun 11am North Greenwich Pier (the O2), Peninsula Square SE10 0PE
Duration 5 hours. On board bar with light refreshments and sandwiches. Max 80 on tour. D R T E
Discover how engineers are shaping east London on a Thames Clipper river tour from the 02 to the Hoo Peninsula and back again, with live commentary from London’s leading engineers and regeneration experts discussing landmarks including the Thames Barrier, London Gateway and the proposed Thames Estuary Airport.
Tube: North Greenwich; 129,161,188,422,472,486

ICE tour of Emirates Air Line cable car cablecar@open-city.org.uk
Sat 10am, 11am, 12noon. Meet: outside North Greenwich tube station, 5 Millennium Way, SE10 0PH. Part of tour will be outside, bring rainwear. Max 18 per tour. Duration 1 hour. D E
The tour will explore the civil engineering achievements of the construction of the cable car and the regeneration of the Royal Docks. Led by the Emirates Air Line project director and ICE regeneration and sustainability expert. Organised by ICE. 2012.
Tube: North Greenwich

Other bookable tours include the Arsenal Emirates Stadium, the Canary Wharf Crossrail Station Construction Site, the Heron Tower in the City of London and the Shri Sanatan Hindu Mandir in Wembley. Something for everyone, so get booking now!

Most of the Open House buildings and events don’t have to be booked in advance. All of them, and there are more than 750, are listed in the Open House London 2012 Guide, which is available at the moment free from Woolwich Library, while stocks last, or for £6.50 from the Open House web shop, and they can be searched for online. Amongst the local buildings open are the Royal Artillery Barracks, the ruins of the Garrison Church of St George and its Marvellous Mosaics, the Tudor Barn and Woolwich Town Hall, though some are open on the Saturday only. Severndroog Castle won’t be open, but there will be talks on the hour between 10am and 3pm about the history of the building and progress on the restoration plans.

Slightly further afield, one of my favourites from a previous Open House Weekend is the Crossness Engine House with its stunning brightly coloured iron work and working beam engine. There was quite a long queue to get in – but it was well worth the wait. In central London there are far too many favourites to list them all, but I’ll never forget the imposing imperial murals and marble work of the Foreign Office and India Office, the living history of Westminster Hall and the money-perfumed Bank of England. However I still haven’t made it into the Gherkin – the queues have always been just too long.

I’ve hardly scratched the surface of the all the Open London architecture so far, with luck there’s years more exploring to do.

Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret

19th August 2012

Eaglesfield Pond Tidy-up on 26th August

The Friends of Eaglesfield Park are holding the second of their monthly meetings at the Lilly Pond on Sunday 26th August from 11.00am to 1.00pm. They are looking for help with the maintenance of the pond and its surrounding wild flower meadow, and there is an opportunity to do some pond dipping. Madeleine from the Friends e-mailed me the details:

Responding to enthusiastic suggestions by members of the local community attending the opening of the restored pond, we have begun meeting regularly on the last Sunday of the month between 11.00 am and 1.00pm and would like to invite anyone to join us to help with weeding, planting, litter clearing and pond dipping activities.
Our first “Tidy up/Pond Dipping Session” was on 29th July but sadly only 4 FOEP committee members arrived. Although the sun did make an appearance, the weather was very unsettled and we finally abandoned our efforts due to heavy rain. However, before the rain, we were delighted to welcome a family with young children who enjoyed the opportunity to try out pond dipping. They were very successful, including 8 newts and various other “things” yet to be identified. We are all beginners as far as pond dipping is concerned and pictures and charts are not always very helpful! If anyone has any experience or knowledge of identifying pond creatures, we would be very pleased to have the benefit of their expertise!
The wildflower meadow has certainly changed since it was seeded in March. With so much rain everything has really grown fast, and we need to make sure the unwanted weeds and brambles are removed. In early autumn the meadow will then be cut down and raked off to allow the wildflowers to develop for next year. Unfortunately about a third of the meadow was not seeded in Spring due to the volume of rain we received making the ground unworkable. We hope to complete the seed planting in early autumn and again the area will need good preparation (digging, weeding, raking, etc).
Keeping to our commitment to meet up on the last Sunday of the month, we have planned another “Tidy Up/Pond Dipping Session” on Sunday 26th August – 11.00 am – 1.00 pm (weather permitting). Even if you are unable to help with gardening, why not come and have a go at pond dipping – it’s great fun for all the family – we have the fishing nets! Come and see us – even if you are just walking your dog! We would very much like to hear your suggestions regarding the future development of the park and how we can best ensure the unique environment of the park and the newly restored pond and meadow area continue to flourish and provide a haven for wildlife and a space for contemplation and tranquility for local residents and visitors.
We really do need your help though! Without the very basic management, the pond and meadow could soon, once again, become overgrown, unattractive and unable to sustain the variety of flora and fauna we are aiming to establish. Please join us. Whatever time you can spare will be appreciated. If you have any comments or suggestions regarding Eaglesfield Park, we would like to hear from you – email: foepse18@hotmail.com.

Eaglesfield Park must have the juiciest blackberries around at the moment, and lots of them in the lower part of the park, so it’s well worth a forage. You can also see the first Lilly flower on the recently refurbished Lilly Pond!

First Lilly flower on Eaglesfield Park Lilly Pond

18th July 2012

Summer Holiday Activities at Woodlands Farm

Hannah, the Education Officer at Woodlands Farm, sent me details of their summer holiday activities for children:

The Woodlands Farm Games

Tuesday 31st July — Wildlife Challenge

Are you wild enough to face our wildlife challenge and become a wildlife champion. Sessions from 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm. Booking is essential, call 0208 319 8900. FREE

Wednesday 1st August — The Big Orienteering Challenge

Drop by between 10am and 3pm to join our big challenge. Can you navigate your way round the farm using only a compass and a map? £1 per child.

Friday 3rd August— The Farm Games

Can you face our farming challenges—cow milking, welly throwing and egg and spoon races. Will you be the winner? Contests start at 11am, 12pm, 2pm and 3pm. Meet at the bottom of the farm yard. FREE.

Tuesday 7th August — The Big Orienteering Challenge

Drop by between 10am and 3pm to join our big challenge. Can you navigate your way round the farm using only a compass and a map? £1 per child.

Wednesday 8th August—The Farm Games

Can you face our farming challenges—cow milking, welly throwing and egg and spoon races. Will you be the winner? Contests start at 11am, 12pm, 2pm and 3pm. Meet at the bottom of the farm yard. FREE.

Friday 10th August—Wildlife Challenge

Are you wild enough to face our wildlife challenge and become a wildlife champion. Sessions from 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm. Booking is essential, call 0208 319 8900. FREE

Summer Activities for over 8’s.

Tuesday 21st August — Wild about Wildlife

Are you wild about the different wildlife on the farm, and love searching for different animals around you. Then join us for a day of wildlife surveys and see what you can find. Sessions from 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm. £2 per child. Booking is essential, call 0208 319 8900.

Wednesday 22nd August – Bush craft

Join us for a number of bush craft activities including shelter building and making nettle cord. Sessions from 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm. £2 per child. Booking is essential, call 0208 319 8900

Friday 24th August — Fascinated about Farming

Ever fancied being a farmer? Well this is your chance. Get involved with a day in the life on the Woodlands Farm team. As well as seeing the daily jobs there will also be a chance to get involved with lamb weighing. Sessions from 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm. £2 per child. Booking is essential, call 0208 319 8900

Parking is limited, please use public transport where possible.

For further details visit our website: www.thewoodlandsfarmtrust.org or Tel: 020 8319 8900

Woodlands Farm is located on the borders of the London boroughs of Bexley and Greenwich. At 89 acres, it is the largest city farm in the UK. Our priorities are education and conservation, and we are part of the Natural England Higher Level Stewardship Scheme. Our education programme attracts visitors from pre-school to third-age groups. The Trust aims to involve local community groups, schools, volunteers and businesses in farming and conservation, helping to bridge the current town-country divide.

We are open 9.30am-4.30pm, Tuesday-Sunday (except Christmas Day). There is no entry charge except for special events, though donations are always welcome.

Nearest tube: North Greenwich

Nearest BR: Welling

Buses: 486 and 89

We are a farm so sensible shoes and clothing are recommended! We do allow dogs, but please note that these must be kept on a lead and not taken into any farm buildings.

If you visit the farm, there are some more new arrivals to see – some Irish Moiled cattle – “one of our rarest and most distinctive native cattle breeds”. One of them is in calf – due any day. I haven’t got any pictures of them (yet), but here are the Saddleback piglets in training for the Olympic synchronised sleeping event.

14th July 2012

Midnight Megawalk on the Green Chain

View towards Central London from Green Chain Walk in Eltham

Keen walkers among you will jump at the chance of a 22 mile night hike along the length of the Green Chain Walk from Crystal Palace to Erith, arriving at Shooters Hill in time for sunrise. Ian Bull who’s organising the “Midnight Megawalk” sent me the following details:

* Friday 20th July – The ‘Midnight Megawalk’.

A very leisurely 22 mile stroll over the most popular sections of the Green Chain Walk from Crystal Palace to Erith, but with a difference, the walk is nocturnal!

Meet outside Crystal Palace railway station at 22.30pm. After the first five miles we enter woodland for a pitch black stroll. Quite amazing! By the time we get to Eltham we’ll see wonderful views of London at first-light. This was so good last year that we spent about 20 minutes watching. At 05.00, after much more dark woodland we arrive at Shooters Hill for sunrise, and there’s no where better to see it as the view extends right over Essex and the estuary. The rest of the walk is almost entirely in woodland and I assure you, it does look lovely at that time of the morning. We arrive at Erith and the Thames at about 07.30 for plenty of trains home.

The walk was very successful last year but I must stress that the event is wholly unofficial and just for fun. If you take part you do so entirely at your own risk. For further information please contact Ian Bull – ianbull at btinternet dot com

Ian is also organising the seventh daylight version of the walk for Saturday 29th September and will send more details when they are available.

Interactive map from Green Chain Walk web site — Map from Green Chain Walk web site – click to go to interactive map

13th July 2012

Bat Walks at Woodlands Farm

Another opportunity for bat enthusiasts, following the successful Shrewsbury Park bat walk, Woodlands Farm are holding a series of bat walks over the next few months, part of their recently launched Heritage Lottery Funded Farm Conservation project.

The walks will be held on the evenings of:

19th July at 8.30p
14th August at 7.45pm and
6th September at 7.00pm

and will cost £1 per person. Contact the farm Wildlife Officer, Lorraine, on 020 8319 8900 to book a place, or e-mail the farm at wildlife@thewoodlandsfarmtrust.org

Incidentally this weekend is the Bat Conservation Trust‘s Sunset/Sunrise Survey weekend. This is a survey that anyone can take part in, and doesn’t need any specialist equipment such as a bat detector. Details are on the BCT website:

The Sunset Survey couldn’t be easier! Simply spend the evening in your garden and watch out for any bats that fly past. Record how many bats you see, which species they are (if you think you know) and, most importantly, which direction they are flying from.

The Sunrise Survey involves going out just before dawn to look for bats swarming before they return to their roost. If you have already done the Sunset Survey and saw bats flying past, you should walk in the direction from which most of them seemed to be coming.

This survey is aimed at beginners and is an excellent way of contributing to the monitoring programme if you don’t have any previous experience of bat surveying.

I’ve heard that one of the bat species that can be seen at Woodlands Farm is the Daubenton’s Bat, which hunts its insect prey over the ponds there. So here, to whet your appetite for bat viewing, is a fascinating clip from Springwatch of Simon King filming Daubenton’s Bats hunting.

3rd July 2012

Dance for Severndroog Castle

A barn dance in aid of the Severndroog Castle Building Preservation Trust will be held on Saturday 7th July 2012 in the barn at Woodlands Farm. Tickets are £10.00, obtainable through the Woodlands Farm Office on 020 8319 8900 or via the trust at info@severndroogcastle.org.uk .

The SCBPT has successfully raised the significant sum of money needed to restore the castle, but needs further funds for ongoing running costs. The barn dance is part of the fund-raising campaign. As Dr Barry Gray, Chair SCBPT, says:

The Severndroog Castle Building Preservation Trust have the funding in place for the restoration and are very close to clearing the last legal hurdles. We hope to sign the lease on the castle with Greenwich council in the very near future. The tendering process for restoration can then begin. We have raised and have promised almost £900,000 for the restoration, including an extremely generous grant promise of more than half a million pounds, from the Heritage Lottery Fund. However, we are still in desperate need of more funds to sustain the project and the barn dance is one of a series of events to allow the local community to make their financial contribution to the restoration. We hope to make further announcements about the signing of the lease at the barn dance, and we are very confident that within the next couple of weeks Severndroog will once again belong to the community when the Severndroog Castle Building Preservation Trust obtain the lease on the castle. Donors can find out more about giving to the restoration fund by going to our website at http://www.severndroogcastle.org.uk/

The band for the dance is the very entertaining Skinners Rats, who have performed at other Woodlands Farm events, so it should be a lively affair. Bring your own food and drink.

25th June 2012

A Murder of Crows?

Crow is the third Handspring Puppet Company production that I’ve seen, and it’s very different to the other two. In War Horse it was easy to forget the people operating the horse puppets, and marvel at their subtle rendering of small details of horse behaviour that made it possible to suspend disbelief. In Or you Could Kiss Me the puppeteers were harder to overlook as there were three for each three-quarter life sized man puppet and they sometimes seemed to be part of the play, like a medical crash team around a dying man. But sometimes their use of puppets put a spotlight on an aspect of reality such as the frailness and creakiness of old age.

In Crow the different crow puppets highlight different aspects of Ted Hughes poetic vision of the Crow, from a frail, skeletal creature struggling to be born to a nightmarish priapic wingless man-bird engaged in aggressive sexual pursuit. The word puppet just doesn’t do justice to these creations. In Crow the puppeteers are completely engaged in the action- dancing and reciting the poems as well as manipulating the Crow creations.

It would be impossible to present the whole of Ted Hughes long and multifaceted mythic masterpiece in just over an hour, but I think Handspring have created a congruent synthesis of poetry, music, movement and setting that captures its essence. The set is bleak and monochrome, post-apocalyptic, with a central hill composed of a kind of metamorphic material that might have been melted in a nuclear holocaust and re-solidified. Ben Duke’s choreography is not graceful, but is danced with hugh energy and commitment, complementing Hughes’ poems. During Crow’s birth it reminded me of tribal dancing seen on a holiday in India, and there was a hint of deep didgeridoo tones in Leafcutter John‘s sparse music which added to the ancient primitive feel. Later a courageous, dangerous leaping embrace at the top of the hill was the perfect match to Lovesong‘s story of obsessive, competitive, dangerous love.

Although the production of Crow is dark and stark, Crow is ultimately a survivor …. the final lines of Examination at the Womb-door:

Who is stronger than hope?      Death.
Who is stronger than the will?     Death.
Stronger than love?     Death.
Stronger than life?     Death.

But who is stronger than Death?

Me, evidently.

Pass, Crow.

Handspring UK’s production of Crow is part of the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF). It is on at the Borough Hall in Royal Hill until 7th July 2012, tickets from Greenwich Theatre. Not to be missed.