Finding a Fast Right Back To Deal with Ealing's Mbappe

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back on his week

Northfields Library is run by volunteers

December 9, 2022

Ah Joy. Another bitter morning, another visit to Northfields Library. A bunch of Ealing libraries folks, a bunch of step-free experts from TfL, an Ealing MP who I last saw at the opening of the Boston Manor Road from BM station down. He was provided with a 4-wheeler bicycle and the rest of us bibiked and someone was taking a film from a drone which I think never saw the sight of day, well, sight of me anyway. All of them are after step free access to Northfields station.

There was also an activist – a lady who walked with sticks. She sat right in front of me and kept looking round to look at me with gimlet like eyes, which started saying they didn’t have any money and Hounslow must have loads and lots of people from Brentford caught trains there.

Hmm, sometimes you need a fast right back to deal with Ealing’s equivalent of Mbappe so I said we save all our money for the stations we need to link us to the luxury railways you all have for nothing like the Elizabeth Line. Followed up with all those buses going from Sky etc over OUR roads so that their staff can get to a zone 3 station, whilst we beg unsuccessfully to 3-zoneify Boston Manor.

We part friends, in that happy place where everybody agrees they are skint and it’s going to get worse for all of us.

Northfield library is run by volunteers. We don’t want that in Hounslow but I think we can learn a bit – I liked the way they had decorated the children’s bit for one thing.

Off to my doc (or their nurse) for a test in Chiswick Health Centre (such fun!) and in the evening over to Osterley for Seema Malhotra’s fund-raising dinner. Main attraction for me was David Lammy, a politician I have always liked, and he was great at the event. He was on the same table as me, though deafish people with only one hear aid don’t lively in particularly lively conversation.

Saturday’s bundle of fun was going to Kingston to take my defunct hearing aid to Boots. I loathe driving to Kingston because it’s such a pain on the roads but I decided I wasn’t quite up to cycling there, which is a breeze when you have some muscles. I got there, assuming they would fix it or replace it, but no, they have to send it via the (Christmas) (Striking) Royal Mail to the Manufacturer.

On Sunday I would really have liked to be able to hear properly as we had a memorial lunch (excellent roast) at the King’s Arms – drasically improved since it has come into my ward under like the Express that has gone to the dogs – to remember our friend Virginia Fassnidge who passed on during the year. Much missed, but a very likeable set of friends, many I had seen little of recently.

My friend Marylise persuaded me to spend the middle of Monday in the Watermans, having the really good Indian in the Guru on their lunchtime special, then a film called Aftersun. It was quite a puzzling sort of film, especially as I fell asleep briefly at the start and had to be digged to stop snoring. Anyway I caught up with it and it was intriguing. At the end a lady complained to me that I kept putting my head up and blocking the film. Blimey, two bits of ASB in 2 hours.

In the evening I was back yet again at vacuum Mecca, this time for an update on what the Footer Club are up to. They’re good at light freebies, a small mulled wine and my first ever Vegan sossidge roll. I doubt I would have noticed it was free of everything but it was pretty good. A good sprinkling of councillors there including some from Chiswick who presumably crossed the North Circular in a inflatable dinghy. I wanted to send them to Rwanda but they Rwanda people wouldn’t accept them. Poor old Marina looked a bit affronted at being pictured, but Amy looks beatifically calm after I told her she was not heading to Rwanda.

On Tuesday I challenged my arms and legs that they could make it by cycle to Hanworth, where I met the new(ish) marketing person for Lampton Leisure at, you’ve guessed it, the Leisure centre. Very good meeting and she’ll be an asset.

Talking of assets, I started cycling home, think I had it all cracked, until the bit of metal that holds the gears on had it properly cracked as I tranversed Hounslow, falling apart noisily outside Halfords. But when I looked at Halfords, it wasn’t but some bargain shop. Googlr took me to a bike works nearby, but when I got there it was just a terrace house in a residential street. But when I called the number, a very nice man emerged from the door and took the bike in to its latest hospital (trying to trump me).

I winged home on the good old 235, just in time for a Teams meeting with all the head honchos of Lampton – Group MD and all the subsidaries MD;s plus the Finance Director. This was quite challenging, and just what I wanted with Lampton. Lots still to do, but this kind of conversation proves and moves into further improvement.

Ah, the topic of the week has been the pothole at the entrance of Morrisons, where I had heard a small dog and somebody’s grandad had been lost in there. Nobody could persuade Morrisons to fix it despite it being in their carpark. The landlords, who have just started archaeologying wouldn’t do it either so I persuaded Hounslow Highways to do a quick safety job. Bootiful? Well no, but a definite improvement, first thing on Wednesday.

The Morrisons pothole before and after

Every say seems to repeat because Wednesday was another doctor test in Chiswick and a dinner in the evening. This was a staff ward getting service awards (not a million pound but £0 and a trophy thing). These type of competitions are difficult (to those who have to judge) because so many have done a lot but I was pleased a couple of my favourites – the one who fixes PCs for me, the excellent park team, and the lady who is getting containers all round the borough to stop most of those hideous purple rubbish bags muck our shopping streets up.

This morning, my regular update with the Lampton chair via Teams, then a little toddle up to Brentford library. Didn’t see any ice when I got up until I saw my bike saddle, so the benefit was an air-conditioned bottom all the way to the library. I met the cabinet assistant for libraries, who happens to be a librarian herself. We moved down to the Spire café – much better than it used to be, I’ve been unfair about it by not going sooner - and we chewed over some ideas to improove libraries across the borough.

Then quickly home via Morrisons. I couldn’t make my mind up whether these were Roman relics under the old Blue Bag parking spaces, something form the very early Goddard Era, or the toilets consructed when they ran the shop before Morrisons (is it only me who’s old enough to remember the slogan “Nice people, nice prices, nice toilets, International.” Actually I might be wrong about the toilets but I will sing the International jingle for a small fee)

Then a teams about Lampton finances with the Finance man in LBH, and I finished the afternoon in the 235 (again) with about 740,000 school children to pick up my bike. I always like cycling home from Hounslow because nearly all of it is slightly downhill, like all of us they say, after about 18.

Councillor Guy Lambert