1. Well, the contrast between political life in Wandsworth and in Westminster could hardly be greater and starker than it is now; dead as a Dodo right here and total mayhem in Parliament! But let’s start in Wandsworth. On 6th January, I went to the Battersea Society Annual Dinner: it was an enjoyable, social occasion but not party political in any way.

2. On 14th January, I could have gone to the Honorary Aldermen appointments evening “ceremony” in the Town Hall, but that is one bit of “municipal tom-foolery” that has never appealed to me. I don’t really see why one should be appointed an “honorary alderman” just for having been a councillor for ten year, which is the current qualification – count the years, never mind the real contribution. If my fellow councillor of the last eight years, Wendy Speck, had been appointed one, as I incorrectly said last month, then I might have gone. (Wendy had only been a councillor for 8 years and not 12 as I had thought).

3. On the 16th I went to Sacred Heart School primary school to see an Exhibition of the proposed “improvements” to Falcon (Banana) Park. It was well meaning enough, but, I thought, very much at a detailed level of planting and design – not, I think, an appropriate level for consultation. I hope the works get going before too long because at the moment, as locals will know, the Park is at a muddy, wintery preparations stage – as indeed is the all-weather pitch.

4. The Planning Applications Committee was on 24th January, and once again, had no large development applications of any note. There was, however, one interesting smaller application and that was for a four-storey block of flats behind All Saints Church, Wandsworth High Street. Whilst struggling with the traffic, most of us hardly notice this splendid church (built between 1630-1841). The Committee members wanted to re-assure themselves that the proposed new block of flats would not interfere with the view, unlike the block on the left in this photograph shown here. Most of us agreed that, unless one was on the top-deck of a double-decker bus, the view was safeguarded.

5. Meanwhile, whilst nothing much appears to be happening on the official, formal front of the Council (I mean in Committees or Council meetings), there is plenty of real politics bubbling along under the surface. Latchmere’s Councillor Kate Stock is helping the campaign to save all the facilities at the Children’s Centres in York Gardens and at the Yvonne Carr Centre. Depressingly, under the Tory’s crazy austerity policies, that looks a difficult task. Meanwhile, I speculate that the Tory councillors are wondering just how they are going to manage within next year’s government-reduced budget, without making politically damaging cuts – I doubt that they can do it. Come March/April I suspect that we will see many more cuts, and, I hope, more protests, too. Austerity is clearly damaging our society and we must do what we can to resist it.

6. The community is, however, re-acting to Government failure in many small ways. Last month, I mentioned the litter-picking group, Plog-olution, – a new group responding to the cuts in local authority parks cleaning services. Similarly, this month I have had a leaflet from another litter-picking group called Pick Up, which is leading a people’s campaign against single use plastics. If you are interested then visit them @pickuptheplasticnow, though I have to admit I did not find the website very user friendly.

7. What else? On January 2, Pen and I went to Ross-on-Wye to present a book, Time and History in Pre-history, to Ionwen Williams. How come? Well a couple of years back we went to the Hay Festival and on the way back I saw a sign to Arthur’s Stone in Herefordshire. We drove to the top of a nearby hill, where we found the “pre-historic” remains of the so-called Arthur’s Stone. I got out to take some pics and Pen struck up a conversation with a local farmer, who had personal memories, dating from the 1930s, of walking up to the Stone as a school-girl with her class and singing hymns to purge the pagan spirits. Pen was fascinated by Ionwen’s story so wrote an essay, on the stone’s five and a half millenia story. The essay, accompanied by a couple of my photographs, was published on 1st January in a book of essays by archaeologists.

8. Ross-on-Wye, by the way, is a pretty little market town on the Welsh borders and well worth an over-night stay, if you happen to be passing that way. On a cold and frosty 3rd January, the town looked a picture!

9. Since then, I have had a busy, but mildly disappointing month of shows and films. It started appropriately eleventh day of Christmas with Swan Lake at the Colosseum, lovely music, terrific dancing but stuck in a time warp; went on to the film called The Favourite, enthused over by many, including some of you, but not, I am afraid, by me; I was not prepared to suspend my credulity that far; then Anthony and Cleopatra at the National, which I thought wildly over-directed and over-acted rather as if the Director did not trust the writing, work of some bloke called Shakespeare; and finally to Tina, a homage to Tina Turner. I realise that modern musicals are meant to be loud and screechy but did it have to be quite so loud and screechy? I sound a bit curmudgeonly, like, “It wasn’t like that in my day!” But to be fair, I should say that, most of the audience loved the sing-along finale.

10. Finished off the month with a delightful week-end in Winchester but under-lying everything is my total pre-occupation with and concern about our political mayhem. The Tory party and government are leading us into what I consider to be a complete catastrophe – the beginning of the end of the United Kingdom. As I see it, our position in the world will be much diminished both politically and economically – and just because the Tories have not been clear-sighted enough to throw off the antics of a few Brexiteers. It is remarkable, isn’t it, that most diehard Brexiteers cannot keep a job in the Cabinet for more than just a few days, before they are overwhelmed by the contradictions in their own policies. It also staggers me that the Tory councillors I know on Wandsworth Council blame Labour for the mess!

11. Mind you, I am not suggesting for one moment that the Labour Party, and my colleagues in Parliament, are a clear-sighted, brilliant group pursuing a credible set of political positions. But knowing that the Labour position nationally barely stands examination doesn’t help my mood much either! I think, we will see much soul searching in the next few months.

12. Still March 29th is not only Brexit day, it is also really into Spring and lighter evenings and maybe with the daffodils, these political fears of mine will all turn-out to be unfounded. One compensation may be that, after this farce, we can look forward to the final demise of charlatans like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Watch this space.

My Programme for February

1. On 6th February, there is a Council Meeting but not I am afraid a very interesting one. It is rather a comment on the sclerotic state of local government that at the very time that this “Austerity Government” is cutting school budgets and destroying the Welfare State, that we 60 councillors will be failing to have any meaningful discussions but rather simply rubber-stamping largely procedural matters.

2. Interested councillors, and certainly me, are going for a guided tour round the Power Station on 7th. And in the evening, I will be at a social for new Labour Party members at the Commons and hosted by our MP, Marsha de Cordova.

3. I have a meeting with some of the design staff at the Power Station on 12th.

4. The Planning Applications Committee is right at the end of the month, on the 27th. Another quiet month!

Do you know?

Last month, in honour of Charlotte Despard, the radical, left-wing suffragette, commemorated with a plaque on 12th December, I asked how many could name more than one building or institution in Battersea named after a woman – excluding the Virgin Mary?

I was inundated with responses. Here are just a few: Gladys Dimson Hall on the Somerset Estate, the Yvonne Carr Centre on the Patmore (even if actually just in Lambeth, it is nonetheless on a Battersea estate), Joan Bartlett House (Prince of Wales Drive), (Caroline) Ganley Court, Clark-Lawrence Court, Doris Emmerton Court (York Road).

Talking of those women my question is do you know anything about any of them? Can you tell me something about three of the six women named? And if this helps, then as a clue I knew three of them and many of you know roughly how long I’ve been in Battersea. It would also be interesting to be told something about the other three!

1. On 5^th December, there was a Wandsworth Council Meeting, which has become, I am afraid, inconsequential. Why so? Both the frequency and length of Council meetings have been much reduced since I first became a councillor. Hence all the business has been taken out of them, and they have been cleansed of all the controversy, and all the interest, and all the drama.

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2. Since Tony Blair’s disastrous reform of local government structures, Council Meetings are the only political forum where the Leader can (sort of – it’s like Prime Minister’s Questions, like May, Wandsworth’s Leader doesn’t really answer the question) be held to account or, if you like, challenged to justify his/her policies. The Leader of Wandsworth Council, Councillor Govindia, is not on any Committee, where he can be given the kind of grilling that is the life-blood of traditional British politics.
   
   

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3. The old Council Meeting procedure may have been an out-dated process but nothing has replaced it. Govindia is indeed, what Lord Hailsham predicted 40 years ago, an elected dictator (of the Council). PS This is not a party-political point! Labour Leaders in other Boroughs are in a similar position, as indeed is Labour’s Leader of the Opposition, my Latchmere colleague Simon Hogg. We must either restore the old functions of the Council Meetings or put Leaders back into Committees. We must make Leaders regularly accountable once more – and not just at an election, once every four years.
   
   

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4. The next day Battersea Labour Party ran a Battersea’s Got Talent competition at the Labour Club in Falcon Road. The judges were our MP, Marsha de Cordova, and Yours Truly masquerading as Santa Claus. Frankly, I was really surprised by the high quality of some of the performances, especially from our juggler, Ben. It was such an unusual display but, unfortunately due no doubt to a lack of practice, there were a few dropped catches. So, we decided to award the first prize to our saxophonist, Pete Lyons, and his accompanist, on the trumpet, Martin Linton – formerly Battersea’s MP.
   
   

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5. On 7^th December, the Labour councillors had a Christmas dinner at Latchmere’s Fish in a Tie restaurant. I was persuaded to join the wilder, and maybe slightly younger, spirits of the party for further drinks at the Revolution Bar in Clapham Junction. I was rather surprised to be accosted by the bouncers with a demand for my ID, it being some time since I had to prove that I am over 17. But having got “my party” in, I must confess that I decided to walk home and leave them to it.
   
   

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6. A group, called the Friends of Christchurch Gardens, organised an al fresco morning barbecue on Sunday, 9^th December. The aim of the Group is to help tend and care for the Gardens on the corner of Cabul and Battersea Park Roads. It is, of course, the Council’s responsibility but, especially in these “austerity times” it is also for the local community to respond – and the community has in this case; 30-40 people turned up. Good luck to the Friends in the future.
   
   

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7. Talking of which, have you come across a Group called The Plog-olution? I don’t like the name, either; but it is an interesting local development. According to its web-site this group started in Putney and was a spontaneous public reaction to the parlous state of our public spaces. I came across maybe 20 of them, all tee-shirted, jogging around Clapham Common, collecting bags and bags of litter as they went. They have scoured the Thames riverside and Putney Heath, amongst other local public spaces. It is a fast-growing and spontaneous reaction to cuts in public expenditure – look them up at www.plogolution.com.
   
   

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8. The Planning Applications Committee, on the 13^th December, was dominated by an application for a large development on the corner of Lombard and York Roads. Readers might know the site because it is currently occupied by a Halfords Store and a Pet Store. The proposal is to demolish the existing buildings and replace them with a six storey self-storage facility, including artists’ studios and so-called flexible office space plus a 4, 6, 8, 13 and 20 storey development of 168 residential units with ground floor shopping and 71 office spaces on the first and second floors. The proposal would also include 64 basement car parking spaces and 344 cycle parking spaces, plus ground floor parking and loading space for the self-storage building and surface level access and service areas. At the same time there will also be landscaped areas including the formation of a new square on Lombard Road and widened, landscaped footways. You might like me, wonder how all this will fit onto this relatively small site. I am not quite sure even having seen all the plans!
   
   

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9. The Lombard/York/Plough Road junction area is clearly destined to become, or already is, the centre of a number of very sizeable developments. The area will soon be very different from what it was five years ago and a good job too. Then it was, one has to admit, blighted and ramshackle. But I am concerned that we do not get simply more expensive and largely empty “boxes in the sky”. If the current down-turn in the property market continues beyond Brexit, as surely it will, then these massive developments are in danger of becoming expensive white elephants, loved by some but very unpopular with many.
   
   

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10. On 14^th December, our MP, Marsha de Cordova, unveiled a blue plaque to Charlotte Despard on the Battersea Labour Party’s office at 177 Lavender Hill. Despard, who stood as the Labour Party candidate for the General Election exactly 100 years earlier in 1918, donated 177 to the party. During her long life, she was not only a suffragette but a doughty campaigner against many right-wing and for as many left-wing causes. For those, who are interested you can read ‘Why is the Remarkable Charlotte Despard not Better Known?’ in P Corfield’s blog at https://www.penelopejcorfield.com/monthly-blogs/.
    

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11. Afterwards there was a party and speeches just across the road in the Battersea Arts Centre. Speakers included Polly Toynbee, seen speaking here, Battersea’s own feminist campaigner Jeanne Rathbone and Sara Apps(Linton). It was a very successful event.
    

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12. One day in mid-December, I was going along the Latchmere Road where I was captivated by this sight of a magnificent Steam Train, quietly sitting on the bridge. It was puffing gently, rather like a senior citizen relaxing with a big, fat cigar. It didn’t stay very long and, when it burst into action, it gave one just a little flavour of what Battersea must have been like before electric trains replaced these romantic but filthy monsters! This particular example regularly pulls an excursion train on trips out of Victoria.
    

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13. 20th December was a busy Christmas event day for me with the Battersea Park Rotary club lunch and the Battersea Society drinks in the evening at the Duke of Cambridge. It was encouraging to see lots of new blood at both events and both organisations seem to be in rude health.
    

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14. On Boxing Day, we went to Winchester to see daughter and son-in-law’s new house – very nice. In the afternoon, we walked, along with what seemed like every other resident of the city, up and over St. Catherine’s Hill, a steep if small hill commanding a great view over the Itchen Valley, the city and the cathedral. At the top there is an iron age fort and a charming cut pattern in the grass called the MizMaze, pictured here. It is old, but not so old, with best estimates suggesting that it was cut in the seventeenth century. It is a continuous 624 metre-long walk. I walked every step of the way – as you can see from the picture it was easy but did call for some self-discipline! However, I am afraid, St. Catherine’s Hill is so popular and so trampled on that I do think it is time someone started thinking about the need for ecological protection of both fort and Maze!
    

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15. We had actually done the same walk with the family on 2^nd December. But then, it had been very wet and slippery on a firm chalk base. So, guess what? On the way down, Penny went head over heels and landed head first, fortunately, in a patch of soft, if soaking grass; and, immediately afterwards, I fell over and gave myself a black eye – and I wasn’t laughing at the time, as some unkindly suggested!
    

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16. Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, we have been to a couple of shows, Company at the Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Lane, on 28th and The Double Dealer at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 29th. Pen was a bit disappointed with the first, protesting that a musical really should have some dancing – she can be so traditional! But I must confess that I wasn’t smitten either. It was very cleverly staged and superbly directed, handling the constant change of players and sets with smooth professionalism. The quality of the songs and performances could not, however, make up for the lack of plot or character development.
    

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17. The Double Dealer was, however, completely different. Congreve’s Restoration Comedy (1693) is, like all Restoration Comedies, bawdy, slap-stick, enjoyable and wildly improbable. The plot changes with manic rapidity and is far too complex to follow – at least by me. A review of the play will appear shortly in the Criticks [sic] section of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies website at https://www.bsecs.org.uk/.
    

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18. The Orange Tree Theatre itself is a very intimate little theatre and one is literally in touching distance of the actors, who all seemed to be having great fun playing their parts. The theatre also has the great advantage of terrific convenience – for Battersea residents. You can easily be at Clapham Junction, platform 6, and in the theatre within 15 minutes and as the play runs until late January, why not give it a try?
    

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19. In the quieter period since Christmas I have done a bit of gardening and some thinking about the mess that the country and the political parties are in about Brexit. There seem to be very few options. I reckon that realistically there are four: a delay and extension of Article 50; May’s deal; a no deal Brexit; or an about turn engineered either by Parliament or a Second Referendum.
    1. The second option is May’s deal. It might work because everyone can see that it is, at least, a possibility, even if it is a worse option that staying in the EU as we are now. Any Labour fantasy that Jeremy Corbyn will be able to negotiate a better deal is precisely that – a fantasy, that surely not even the Labour Leadership can take seriously.
    2. The No-Deal Brexit option, once so beloved by Boris Johnson, is no longer taken seriously even by Liam Fox. The majority of Labour members especially here in London would be horrified. There is so much opposition to this option that it is likely, but not certain, to be a non-runner, but either way, Labour has no interest in it.
    3. Lastly, the About-Turn option could happen like a flash of lightening as MPs realise that this issue is bigger than their individual careers and ambitions. However, an About-Turn seems unlikely without either a Second Referendum and/or a General Election. In the event of either of those, then Labour’s position is likely to be decisive but only if it comes out with a strong Remain position. If Labour doesn’t do that, then it will be playing second fiddle, at best, to the Government and the Brexiters, and hence failing the primary duty of The Opposition and that is to oppose and pose an alternative for the public to choose. If Labour does come out for a strong Remain position, however, there will of course be serious issues to address in many parts of the country outside London, but these issues need to be tackled anyway. If Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party do not wake up to this challenge, then, in my view, we will never be forgiven.
    4. But there is one version of the About-Turn, which no one has addressed. In the nineteenth century Disraeli reversed traditional Tory Party when he famously and infamously “dished the Whigs” by stealing their policies and subsequently winning the General Election. What if May, similarly, suddenly declared that she had genuinely tried her best to deliver Brexit but could not command a majority in the House of Commons; that in fact the Leave campaign had not been proved viable; and that she was now going to keep the UK in the EU. My guess is that she would win the day!
    5. Given the terrible state of our politics, I guess we might well go for the first of these options – i.e. kicking the can further down the road. And maybe the EU will let us get away with that for a while. But just why should it; the EU has business to get on with too and Britain will soon be forced to decide between the other options. In this short-term play, the Government is likely to be the only player whilst others can only watch and comment.
       

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20. December has been a bad month for my old pal, Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, but an even worse one for senior management at Transport for London or TfL. Early in the month it was announced that Crossrail was going to be delayed by nine months – perhaps no surprise on such a mammoth project. But this announcement was so sudden and so late that questions need to be asked of TfL. Then at the end of the month, it was announced that the Northern Line Extension to Battersea Power Station was also delayed – this time by a year. I can’t help thinking, with Oscar Wilde, that one major delay might be bad luck but two seems like bad TfL management.
    

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21. I can’t help recalling too that, before it was abolished, the much but unfairly vilified GLC managed to build the equally massive Thames Barrier to time and under budget. I hope that the Thames Tideway Tunnel, which is having such a big impact on North Battersea follows the pattern of the Barrier and not those other projects! (Personal disclaimer: I worked for the GLC and am proud of it.)
    

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22. My colleague, Latchmere Councillor Kate Stock, is getting more and more concerned about the future of the York Gardens Children’s Centre. The Council is not as yet being very explicit about its future but it is clear that the services will be much reduced. I know she would appreciate support from you. So, please write to Councillor Govindia, Leader of Wandsworth Council rgovindia@wandsworth.gov.uk, copied to cllr.k.stock@wandsworth.gov.uk, I know she would appreciate it.
    

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23. Finally, I was pleased to hear that Victoria Rodney, of the Mercy Foundation, Falcon Road, received an MBE in the New Year’s Honours List. I was asked last spring to write a reference for Victoria in support of her nomination and was more than happy to do so. Victoria, largely out of her own pocket, established the Mercy Foundation to help and support some of the most disadvantaged people in our community, with teaching in English, basic IT and other skills. She is both a warm-hearted and loving person and a woman of considerable tenacity and drive. Congratulations, Victoria.

My Programme for January

1. On 6^th January, I have the Battersea Society’s Annual Dinner.
2. On 8th January there is a meeting of Wandsworth’s Conservation Area Advisory Committee.
3. And on the following day there is another lunch-time Opera Recital given by the international students of Wandsworth’s National Opera School. It is held in Wandsworth Town Centre and is usually about one hour long. It is some of the highest quality entertainment that can be had – entirely free!
4. On Monday, 14^th January we have the Honorary Aldermen Ceremony at the Town Hall. I must confess that I am a bit conflicted about this. Honouring councillors merely because they have been councillors for eight years, or is it 10 seems to me to smack just too much of what one old friend of mine would have called municipal tomfoolery. I have never been to the occasion, but as this year one of the recipients is my old Latchmere colleague, Wendy Speck, I might just make an exception!
5. On the 24th January the Planning Applications Committee will end what, for me, is a light month.

Do you know?

My question last month was as the Battersea Chess Club claims to be the oldest, continuingly functional chess club in the country, when was the nearest date to its foundation 1850, 1900 or 1950? The club was actually founded in 1885 and so the correct answer was 1900.

And this month? In honour of Despard, name more than one building or institution (e.g. school or hospital) in Battersea named after a woman – excluding the Virgin, Mary?

Dietrich

Natural  Duty

A  One  (Wo)Man  Show

Went to Wilson’s Music Hall last Saturday to see this one man show, written and created by young actor Peter Groom – and it was a show and not quite a play, a 75 minute, no breaks, no interval show – what an evening, what a show.

Groom recounts a short version of the most traumatic years of Marlene Dietrich’s life and sings a dozen of her songs. He starts by mimicking Dietrich brilliantly and convincingly but over the course of the show he seems to think that evoking the sensuality and abstraction of “Marlene” is more important than slavish imitation. He is right. Groom’s androgynous manner and slim figure equip him to “be” Marlene with absolute conviction. He has mastered a feminine walk and Dietrich’s bold, almost aggressive stance.

Dietrich, a German woman, was plucked from the Berlin stage in 1939 by Hollywood director Josef von Sternberg and taken to the city of dreams, Hollywood. There she lived the nightmare of a patriotic German, who, loathing Nazism, took American citizenship, inevitably deserting her mother until after the war. Groom played Dietrich as a person displaced from her nation but also displaced from her personality, her loves and life. Her appeal to men emphasises this “quality” of abstraction, including abstraction about men, who she sees as subservient beings of a lower, more vulnerable order.

If you have never been to Wilton’s, it is a genuine, restored nineteenth century musical hall, which is well worth the visit, even if the Wapping location is not easy from Battersea. There is a bar and bar food, well at least pizza; the environment is very informal; the clientele was, at least on Saturday, 24^th November 2018, fairly young and fairly gay.

And to make the perfect evening I got back to see Spurs thrash Chelsea 3:1 on Match of the Day and it should have been 6, 7 or 8:0. A very satisfactory end to the day.

Peter Groom was a five-star performer in Dietrich at the 2018 Edinburgh Festival and is apparently repeating the performance at the 2019 Brighton Festival. Go and see him/her.

1. To start with a serious point on building control. Once upon a time Building control regulations and their application were overseen by the state, or an arm of the state, in this case local authorities, with the result that most of us could live in peace and accept that any building works happening in our area were shall we say “kosher”. But in the last few months I have had a worrying increase of cases, where constituents have complained of damage consequential on neighbours’ building “improvements”. One constituent complained that not one room in his house was unaffected by the extensive works next door – walls were cracked, windows and doors open and close less easily than they did before, foundations damaged, etc. And in the last month another constituent has reported being seriously worried about the standard of workmanship in a neighbour’s back extension.
   

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2. It was Mrs Thatcher, in her dogmatic “escape” from the “Nanny State“, who removed the need for “independent”, state, building controls, when she allowed architects and contractors to employ their own building inspectors. It was in future to be self-regulation – the kind of system that we have seen fail in the City and everywhere else that the Tory party has rebelled against so-called “red tape”. Of course, the system did not collapse immediately after Thatcher introduced her so-called reform. But, with time, the temptation to cut costs has become too great for some.
   

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3. So, my current case, in a Victorian street, not a million miles from the Latchmere pub, concerns “Authorised inspectors” from a “building control” company, who have withdrawn from the job, mainly I think because they did not have the clout to impose decent standards on the builders. They were only “authorised inspectors” in the sense that they were being paid to do the job and the company is a somewhat grandiosely entitled small company founded in 2006. I am sure that it probably does a good job and has good professional standards. It does not, however, have the enforcement powers that the local authority has. Hopefully Wandsworth Council will now step in and enforce decent standards, but not until after my constituents and their families have gone through agonies and quite possibly considerable expenditure.
   

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4. We are, collectively, paying a dreadful price for the anti-red tape ideological revolution that the Tories are unleashing on us. Most people will know of the destruction of the Probation Service, the chaos of the Benefit System, the mayhem in the education service, not to mention of course the Health Service, but my point is that it is rampant in even the most unconsidered corners – building regulations!
   

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5. The Council’s Building Control unit does occasionally have great successes. Here, for example, is a pub, which used to be called the Artichoke, on St. John’s Hill. It was almost completely demolished, without planning permission, when the Town Hall got working with its enforcement powers. I don’t know when it is due to be re-opened but it doesn’t now look too long into the future. The moral is: if you see some cowboy developments, complain to your local councillors. S/he can’t solve everything but there are still some building standards to be enforced.
   

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6. Enough of sermonising! July was, of course, spectacular for the heatwave and fortunately we did not have a heavy load of Council business, other than the “usual” business meetings, of which the Council Meeting on 11^th July was outstanding. It was a big occasion for quite a few members as they were making maiden speeches. All of them were very good but I think my favourite was from the new Queenstown councillor, Maurice McLeod. I had never heard him speak before but he brought a distinctive and powerful voice to the debate, making the important point about lack of diversity amongst councillors.
   

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7. Two days later we went off for 10 days in Devon and Cornwall, with the kids, and then off to Shallowford Farm. The farm, pictured here, provided the farm animals you may have seen in Falcon Road, this summer and works with Providence House Youth Club. By which I mean, that up to 18 youngsters at a time visit the farm on Dartmoor and have a great time learning about a rural life, a million miles from Battersea; about feeding the animals, mucking out their sheds, etc. Providence House and Shallowford Farm do a great job, expanding the horizons of many Battersea kids. If you want to know more then consult: www.shallowfordfarm.co.uk.
   

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8. From Dartmoor, we went on to visit one cousin in Newquay and another in Polzeath. The weather was sensational – so sensational that I actually swam in British waters four times in 8 days. Quite something.
   

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9. I did, however, come back for the day on 19^th July to attend the Planning Applications Committee. There were a couple of interesting applications affecting Battersea. One was in Gowrie Road, off Lavender Hill, which was an application to demolish the whole house, except for the façade of the house and build inside it a completely new house twice the size of the current one. The street scene will be unchanged and so there are few grounds to refuse the application, but inherently with such major works, there must be potential for cracked walls and complex party wall agreements – see earlier paragraphs.
   

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10. The second was an application for further development at the Royal College of Art campus, at the corner of Parkgate and Battersea Bridge Roads. This was an improvement on an already agreed development. It is a major educational establishment of London-wide importance but might turn out to be hugely controversial for some residents!
    

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11. The largest application related, however, to Springfield Hospital. It was for 829 properties, a new park, and a school, but it included the closure of the nine-hole golf course. It turned out to be fairly uncontroversial but opening up the grounds of the old Springfield Hospital for new housing and a new park could/should transform this part of the Borough.
    

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12. Residents of Clark Lawrence, Shaw and particularly Sendall Courts will be pleased to know that the Council has, at last, come up with a solution to the perennial flooding problems that hit the lifts during and after storms. Indeed, my last note from the Housing Department said, “The drainage works at Sendall Court are nearing completion so we will shortly be testing them to reassure ourselves that they will be effective before undertaking the same works at Clarke Lawrence Court and Shaw Court.”

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