Weekly Update From Councillor Guy Lambert

I've been cross the river on a bike with no name

Active 360 receiving their award

On Thursday evening I hear tell of a mayor lurking in the area planning to dine with local resident councillor Salman Shaheen and extending the invitation to me. As the event was to take place in the excellent restaurant just round the corner from me - Caspari – how could I refuse? Good pizza, good wine and good conversation ensued and Tony told me of a local event he was attending officially on Friday morning and suggested I go along.

So on Friday I was down by the arches at Kew Bridge with the excellent people who run Active360, provide paddleboarding and canoeing etc services to the local populace and an occasional taxi service for seals. It turned out they had won an award from their landlords TfL as arch user of the year or somesuch and a bechained Louki was handing over the plaque.

Had a long conversation with the Active360 people and learned plenty: paddleboards cost about £1000 and all come from far away eg Thailand (wouldn’t it be nice if we could get someone making them locally?) Active360 have a prototype made from recycled plastic but it’s debatable whether it will catch on. You’d need a lot of bottle to launch yourself on that. I will not give up the day job to become a joke writer.

We were also able to persuade the TfL people in attendance to allow Active360 to use a currently empty arch (it will shortly become an underpass for the Thames path to stop people having to cross the South Circular or negotiate steps) for Tidefest which is happening this Sunday and where they expect to be extra-busy. They also shared a little dream they have with me. I’m not sure if it’s a dream that can come true but I’m seeing if there’s anything I can do to help.

I spent the weekend getting to know my new bike. It’s slightly weird but I find that I had developed a certain intimacy with Pegasus in a way that I have never before with an inanimate object. I am not talking about the type of intimacy David Cameron (allegedly) enjoyed with a pig’s head or that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (allegedly) enjoys with anybody who wears a skirt but that mutual acceptance that comes from having been through a few trials together.

Of course, I can’t really speak for Pegasus – perhaps he always resented me and has escaped of his own accord – but I find I miss him: for all his foibles and frequent breakdowns he was like an old comfortable shoe. The new bike – someone asked me if it has a name and I replied it has to earn one – is different. On my first date with it I wasn’t sure and found it quite uncomfortable. A nice man at Fudges showed me how to adjust the handlebars and it feels much better now. I have managed to take it on my regular medium distance rides – to Hampton Court in one direction and Putney Bridge in t’other without serious ill-effects and it’s already beginning to show foibles (the gearchange doesn’t work properly and it constantly creaks). So after several dates I can feel as if a relationship is developing nicely and may lead one day to a naming.

Sunday was the first in my new post-lockdown series of litter picks. Half a dozen turned up including a young lady from Morrisons bearing refreshments, and a number from Brentford Recycling Action Group.

We picked a (surprisingly not too bad) area around the back of Morrisons/Beehive and proceeded along a (definitely bad, thank you McDonalds and your scurvy customers) Albany Road. At the end people declared that they had had great fun. It is surprisingly good for the soul to spend an hour picking up rubbish so if you fancy some gentle company and very light exercise for the general good, put 2pm on the last Sunday in the month in your diaries and let me know of any hot spots you want sorting! We didn’t attempt to tackle inside the boundaries of the old police station – I’ve asked the landowner to get to that.

One of the many joys of walking or trundling between my flat and the High Street is to watch what’s going on at MSO Marine. Over the months, the rusting hulk of an old barge has been sitting in one of their dry docks and it’s now reached this stage. I’m probably too old and cumbersome to seriously contemplate a life afloat, and I doubt I could afford this beauty anyway but it’s a very tempting idea.

It was a very quiet start to the new week – lots of people I deal with have taken bank holiday week off, though my mailbox is very lively, as ever. So I was devoid of meetings until Wednesday, when I had a brief update with the Chief Exec about various Brentford development matters. Apparently the postponed public enquiry which deals with the proposed redevelopments of Watermans/Max Factor/Police Station sites is now due to commence on 14 th September and a lot of what happens hinges on the outcome of that. I’ve no idea how long it will last and, more to the point, how long it will take m’learned friends to come to a conclusion. And then I think it’s over to the Secretary of State, so we may not get an answer before the whole of Brentford is flooded as a result of global heating and the nearest dry land is at Blackpool (and that were on top of the tower).

In the evening, our regular update on the traffic changes. They remain controversial, but we are beginning to see a turning of the tide. Much remains to be done in terms of improving signage, enforcement, and the look of some of the schemes. We’re caught a little between these being experimental schemes and therefore done on the cheap and the fact that people will react more positively to a beautiful scheme than an ugly one. Time will tell, and keep your feedback going, or to me if you prefer.

Today, Thursday, I have an invitation to attend the {virtual) award ceremony run by www.rospa.com, where for the second time Coalo, our council-owned housing maintenance and improvement company, will receive a Gold Award. They are rightly very proud of this: it is rare for a young outfit like Coalo to achieve Gold, and they were particularly proud to get it on their first attempt last year, and repeat the success this year.

Later on, I have the regular Lampton360 board meeting (also online) so that’ll keep me on my toes.

Don’t forget, two local unmissables this weekend: Tidefest (see above) – paddleboarding and much, much more – and the first ever Chiswick Flower Market outside the George IV on Chiswick High Road. They tell me it’s the first new flower market in London since Wordsworth brought a bucket of daffs down from Windermere (or something like that). I’ll be at both, and my trusty new bike means that I’ll be able to bring home an aspidistra in the copious front basket if the whim takes me.

Cllr Guy Lambert

September 3, 2020