Digitally Removing My Flat Number to Thwart Assassins

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert reports back

Brentford West councillor Guy Lambert by his front door

November 22, 2024

Blimey O’Reilly. For some years I was the Treasurer at the FoodBox, and latterly treasurer at Hounslow’s Promise. I had previously banked at Lloyds myself from when I was a kid (my dad’s best friend worked at Lloyds in Liverpool) until I escaped in about 2006. Anyway, I had 2 ½ hours this morning trying to sort out access. I will never get those hours back and I still have no access so don’t ask me for a sub.

Ah banks. The next one in my sights is Metro. With a colleague we have been trying to start a charity account there (see last blog). Now they have decided that I know my name but now claim I don’t live where I have for 10 years because they have asked Equifax. Equifax think I live somewhere else. Metro believe Equifax rather than me. I will send them a selfie taken outside my flat door. Actually a neighbour was passing so she took the picture for me. I have shown my technical skills by redacting the number from my door. You may not remember when someone said on social media he would shoot me if anyone told him my address. The one I sent to the bank was not redacted.

Still in one piece and getting to my blog.

In the afternoon we had a Data Practitioners Session. Well, Data Practitioners did. It was a bit too much for my small brain so I said they were doing very well and went on. I make a very poor imitation of Young Mr Grace in every respect.

In the evening it was the Mayor’s fish and chip quiz on behalf of the FoodBox. Well attended, good quiz and some decent prizes in the raffle. It was obviously fixed and I kept ringing people to see if they could find me 20000 extra votes. No, wrong movie. Anyway nobody on my table won anything but I’m pleased to say the table which was made up of FoodBox volunteers won twice, so there’s some justice in this world. I did write to Mr Trump and told him I would be a good appointment for Secretary of Education but he said my wrestling was not up to scratch and I had been to an elite college (North East London Polytechnic, second in prestige to Harvard, obviously) so was not suitable for his cabinet. Well we didn’t win the quiz because we didn’t fix it properly with the judges. I had a vegeburger because I am always suspicious of fish. They often give me an old-fashioned look.

On Saturday I visited an old friend, Gunnersbury Park. In the good old days it used to be in Brentford but has recently emigrated to Chiswick. People with a bit of taste have migrated in the opposite direction but I mustn’t be too smug.

There’s an exhibition about Southall in the 70s, a place I frequented from time to time on Anti-Nazi League and similar business.

A bit of nostalgia for you

Never caught on here but it is one of our export successes and is now taking over the market in the USA, it seems. I always get a bit grumpy in Gunnersbury Park because I always think it is too Ealingianish. It is in Glorious Hounslow but that old rogue Rothschild sold it half to Brentford and Chiswick and half to Acton and Ealing so they think they own it.

Anywhere, my research moved on a step. I saw this picture of the Brentford lions (or are they griffins?) in an old picture there. There they are, in a good observation point, scaring off shoplifters from the old Brentford Market.

On Saturday night I was out again. When I was a kid we called such people a dirty stayout and I was up in Chiswick at the expensive but very comfortable cinema. This was a special night because Bridget Osborne, editor of the Chiswick Calendar (excellent local online news outlet) was interviewing James Ivory, the Ivory in Merchant Ivory. Ismael Merchant went on to meet his maker nearly 20 years ago but James is still very much with us, despite being a sprightly 96 and an American to boot. It was great to see him and his observations were very sharp. Philistine as I am I had not read Howard’s end or seen the film before but it was excellent. It is claimed by Chiswick because the author EM Forster lived there and there’s a blue plaque to prove it on Arlington Park Mansions on Sutton Lane North. Not sure what it has to do with Arlington Park, which as far as I know is in Norwich. But I digress, How improbable, you say.

On Monday afternoon I visited Clifden Road. I knew the contractors who had put in the sleeping policeman bumps when they resurfaced the road decided that the policeman required was slim and fit. The residents (and councillor) were not impressed – they wanted a policeman with a full figure, like me perhaps. Whatever they were back on Monday with infernal machines. I popped in to say hello to one of the residents who had written to me about a number of road issues, particularly the local sport of breaking into cars with blue badges and pinching them. It had happened at least twice to this man and he is impatient (me too) that the plans we told him about many months ago to replace with electronics has not yet happened. I hate to be a spoilsport but there’s a place and a time.

Anyway, this gentlemen told me that in the 1970s he’d been a rally driver with an Escort Twin Cam. I talked about my sister who was in the same game at the time and I’ve been trying to find the picture I have somewhere of her winning a Rally in North Wales. Can’t find it so you’ll have to put up with my dad in the Monte Carlo Rally in 1955. Morris Oxfords are rarely spoken of as icons of rallying history, which is very disappointing I’d say.

On Monday evening I was double-booked and could have been treble. There was a Labour Group meeting which I rarely miss, a Brentford and Chiswick history society thing about Sanderson, which has come back to Chiswick with I imagine new wallpaper, and the Railway line meeting at the Holiday Inn. Being a dedicated Brentford boy (except boy) I opted for the choo choo. Somebody has done a great job scoping up this potential improvement. If you’re not familiar, it is the old line of the railway that used to serve Brentford Dock before someone decided to put up gates to keep the trains out (actually I suspect it was really Dr Beeching’s work). If you want to know where it is, here’s a clue.

Carrera Worx is in a couple of the arches which took the railway to the High Street before it fell down (I think someone pushed it). It goes up between the Syon estate and the industry on Commerce Road and stops just before you get to the A4. One day, there might be a Great West Station to take us all up to the Lizzy line at Southall. The railway line is still there but only takes freight, including a lot of the rubbish from Hounslow and other nearby boroughs from round here by train down to near Bristol where it gets cooked into electricity. One of our local iconic industries in Brentford, up in Transport Avenue. Nobody can call our business activity rubbish. Or maybe they can.

The plan is to make the old railway line accessible, perhaps as a nature reserve, perhaps as a public green space. I made the comment it would be nice one day at it becomes a route for us to take across the A4 to get to the station if it ever happens. Whatever, it is a bit of genius from Brentford Voice to get a plan going on this place which has been completely inaccessible for I think nearly 70 years. However it ends up it will be a real asset to the town.

Tuesday my old oppo Lara was in town. Hadn’t seen her for ages and she told me why: she has moved to Liverpool, very near my old stomping ground. Her charity has progressed – she now has 6 staff I think – and living in Liverpool gives her a one-bed flat, a great piece of progress after an attic room in Chiswick. Someone I still feel very warm to, who was a wonderful councillor for far too short a time and who will continue to make a big impact on our world. Hope to see her down here again soon – I miss her as a colleague and as a friend.

Then I was down to the Townmead Road tip near the Mortlake Crem. It is more convenient for me than Space Waye in Feltham and I don’t have to be loyal now. Not that my old clothes, timber, Christmas wrapping and storage boxes are a great asset for Hounslow so I am not at all guilty. I have also found a new home for a chest of drawers and 4 paintings (or prints really) which I’ve managed to find a new home in Ferry Quays.

Wednesday night we had a Member Development event at Hounslow House. This was mainly about the potential of floods but also about how the council and other authorities (and humble ward councillors) should respond if disaster strikes, whether it is flood or something else like the wind that destroyed the roof of my friend’s house in Jersey earlier this year. Interesting evening and I hoped to have some pics but nothing usable.

Well today, Thursday, it was banks all morning and the doctor in the afternoon. Nothing terrible – I had some funny spots but they have sorted themselves out in the meantime but she told me to use more gunge cream on my back. So it was fun day all through. Too darn cold for having much fun cycling but I persevere.

Councillor Guy Lambert