Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

Getting turned down for a non-job and being a bag carrier at Griffin Park

Cheered up after a long journey by this picture

After a few rather frenetic days of iLabs and Recovery boards and trips to Feltham railway station and all sorts, this week has largely been very calm, denoting another storm brewing, no doubt.

Of course, a councillor’s life is never all meetings anyway and I was actually feeling rather burdened last week – every time I turned my PC on there seemed to be 50-odd unread council-related emails and in the nature of things, I spend all morning dealing with them and find I still have 48 unread at the end. Some of them have matured like a decent claret by the time I get to them (not that I could tell a decent claret from any other bottle of plonk) so if I’m slow answering sometimes, sorry, and don’t be afraid to nag.

My casework this week has covered leaseholders in council-freehold properties with unexpected charges, parking queries, noise and dust from the Ballymore development (not my ward actually – I say sayonara and pass these on to the Syonistas), housing, planning issues, troublesome neighbours, bin related queries, over-enthusiastic trees – everyone loves a street tree, provided it’s outside somebody else’s house – and over-enthusiastic tree felling. There’s never a dull moment as a councillor (well, that’s not quite true) and even after 5 years of it I am still frequently confronted by things that are quite new to me and which I have no idea how to deal with. I like to think I get there in the end, often with advice from colleagues, though some things are beyond a mere councillor to solve.

Thursday evening I was persuaded to attend a Hounslow Cycling zoom meeting: they are pleased with some of the changes but point out there’s still a long way to go before parents with children feel safe to go about their daily business on a bike. There is also some criticism of the way changes have been implemented. This is fair comment, but our small traffic team have actually worked wonders making changes across the length and breadth of quite a complicated borough under extreme time pressures at a time when everybody in the traffic game is competing for resources, from designers to traffic cones. It is nevertheless very noticeable how many people are using bikes now and I mean ordinary people just going about their business dressed (as Chris Boardman would say) for their destination, rather than for the ride.

Friday morning I actually had a job interview. Not for a ‘real’ job but for a non-executive board member role. This was quite a bizarre experience because other than grillings by the Labour party to decide if I was fit to be a councillor (if Donald Trump and Boris Johnson can hoodwink people into believing they’re suitable for office, so can I) this is the first job interview I’ve had since about 2014. I was never much good at them back then, and it turns out I’m still not much good as I got the ‘Dear John’ phone call in the afternoon.

On Saturday the ridiculous car got its fortnightly outing, as I went to visit a friend of mine who lives on a posh estate in Epping, Essex. Posh enough that the neighbour has a Bentley on the front drive together with several other daft cars. Google Maps took me round the North Circular, which was far busier than I ever remember it before the present hostilities. In fact, from what I’ve seen so far the ‘rush hour’ is quieter that most of the rest of the day and some random roads – the A4 coming past Hammersmith, the road through Hampton Wick by Kingston Bridge – seem to me to be busier than they ever were during the afternoon. It made a very nice change to be out in the sticks, though always a pleasure to come back to Brentford and get back in the swim, as some others clearly agree – thanks to Active 360 for these charming pics.

Tuesday lunchtime I had a secret assignation in Griffin Park. BBC news were coming along to film and interview The Melvinator about his 67 years enjoying the honey – sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter – produced by the local Bees. He was in need of a bag-carrier, a role I am well-suited for, so I toted round his goodies – no less than 3 souvenir shirts, a signed ball, a photograph of Mel as the referee’s mascot, his headphones and his hat and scarf and asked the questions for this interview for the Hounslow YouTube channel. If you watch the video you will see the sprinkler which chased us around all afternoon and eventually caught me and Yag, the photographer, for a full drenching from the back of the neck downwards.

Mel was interviewed properly by BBC sport reporter Joe Wilson and I believe he was featured on the 6 O’Clock news, but I’m afraid I missed it.

I must say, the atmosphere within Griffin Park, and indeed across Brentford was strong on Tuesday and I was as eager as anyone to have them win, for my friend Mel, for all the supporters, and mostly for the town, which really deserves some good news. It was a real privilege spending a couple of hours on the ‘hallowed turf’ with one who has such a strong affection for, and from, Brentford and it made me appreciate him all the more as a friend and colleague. Sadly, the Premier League dream has to be deferred for another 12 months, but they’ll get there in the end. The Grauniad found an excellent excuse to spend Tuesday evening in The Griffin collecting some suitably pithy soundbites though that from ‘Brentford fan Claire’ cannot be reproduced in a family blog.

Back to normal life on Wednesday, with a meet outside The Verdict with the chair of Brentford Voice talking, amongst other things, about the town’s identity and how we might present this place which we both love more effectively. It was also my daughter’s birthday and she selected One Over The Ait for a celebratory meal - a very pleasant way to spend a balmy-ish evening, especially as the 98% chance of rain managed to miss us.

Cllr Guy Lambert

August 7, 2020