Community Meeting Update - Sept 2011

Pessimistic know it all gets proved wrong.

The latest community meeting has come and gone, and for the most part it was great. One of the best turnouts we’ve had, so no need for me to stomp off in a self righteous sulk. We’ve also had notice that demolition will begin in a couple of weeks so I’ve taken a few pictures to start charting progress. Also giant house spiders have started invading my house, but that’s not really relevant I just wanted to share.

aaaarrrrrrrgggghhhhh . . 

The meeting was very interesting, some new faces and some familiar ones. People are very concerned about the state of the neighbourhood, and I don’t blame them. Emotions were running high, a bit of a cliché for a community meeting, but watching your street become increasingly neglected with what seems like no hope of anything being done to ease the situation can lead to hot heads and frayed tempers.

However we had representatives from the police, Leeds City Council and housing associations so all in all there were nearly 20 people present. Some were a little disruptive, but I fully appreciate that they felt frustrated at how things have been delayed. Though I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s anxieties, and I agree that the community meeting is a good place to raise your issues, share your problems and express your frustration, criminal activity has to be formally reported to the police for it to be tackled. I also appreciate that regular foot patrols reassure residents, but unless the cops actually happen upon someone doing something criminal as they walk by, then they’re mostly just a PR exercise. My eyesight’s pretty shoddy, but even I can see a high visibility vest mooching up the street towards me, and I suspect that your average neighbourhood scrote can do the same.

preparing for demolition

Crime needs to be formally reported, if you’re seeing it and not reporting it you are not helping to resolve it. I also understand that fear of retaliation stops people, but I’ve filmed people nicking metal railings, stood up in court to give evidence, given statements to the police, kept noise diaries, rung the police and gone into the street to challenge antisocial and criminal behaviour; I’m not brave, quite the opposite, but when pushed I can stand up for myself, sort of, and I’ve yet to be threatened with any retaliation.

Residents it seems have also been doing some good stuff, tidying up the streets which are quite frankly looking like shit at the moment. It’s not gone unnoticed and people are very grateful.  Also someone’s dumped some lovely asbestos in one of the bin yards, which has hopefully been removed by now. Also alarmingly enough, there is asbestos in some of the houses that are going to be demolished, so let’s hope the HASMAT suits are broken out for that portion of the demolition.

what the streets near me might have looked like when they were built

It’s also been highlighted that it is unlikely that a developer will want to buy or develop the land, as it’s not been fully cleared and some of the properties will remain. But for me demolition is still the sensible thing to do, derelict property is not acceptable on a large scale as anything other than a short term situation.

Well that’s it for now, I’ve added some images here and on the pictures page, and I’ll keep adding as the demolition progresses, so if you’re interested keep your eyes peeled.

Half of my street is being prepared for demolition

just waiting for the wrecking ball . . .

Anticipating disappointment

Community groups without the community.

Another meeting has been arranged for next week. I’ve typed up the minutes from the last meeting, booked a room and a number of staff at Leeds City Council have designed a leaflet to invite residents and they will also help with the distribution. Leeds Federated Housing is paying for the room that we’ll use, it’s not a huge amount but it’s still a cost that they are generously covering. I’m very grateful for all the support, the group such as it is, wouldn’t exist without these people whose job it is to help. A lot of people who work in local regeneration and housing give their time to this group. I know for a number of them it’s their job, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be recognised for it – it must be soul destroying to have to keep giving up your evenings to attend a meeting that even residents couldn’t care less about.

When the community group first started we had a paid for community worker, let’s call her Bliss, who worked across many projects doing the kinds of things listed above that I am starting to find myself having to do now. OK so my role isn’t hugely burdensome, but I’ve got a hundred other things I could be doing instead just like we all have. So why don’t we have Bliss anymore? Many community workers’ roles were paid for by funding that had been bid for by Local Authorities, short term and often applied for very specific projects with specific outputs aimed at specific social groups or geographic areas this meant that when the swingeing budget cuts came in after the 2010 election, Bliss and people like her were easy targets for a quick way to reduce outgoings.

Bye bye community outreach workers, thanks for all the vital work you’ve done, don’t let the door hit you on the arse on your way out.

In the context of the Con-Dem’s Big Society it seems counter-intuitive to undermine the existing infrastructure by removing funding from the very people who worked in the community. Not only have we lost a great member of a community team but we’ve lost the experience and goodwill that she generated and I doubt that the knowledge that she acquired and the positive working practices that she developed have been preserved for the good of the community.

I understand how the Big Society will do well in communities that already have the determination to band together and work for common goals. At the moment it very much feels a bit like the Wellness clinics that popped up around the place a few years back. Envisioned to improve the health and well being of the general public, I suspect those that are already proactive about their wellbeing will be availing themselves of the facilities and those that are too preoccupied with making ends meet will be watching it all happen to someone else; as always those harder to reach are left behind.

My little community is most certainly not rising to the challenge at the moment, though I hope I’m proved wrong at the meeting next week. Maybe I’m being too negative but I don’t hold out much hope for the continuation of the Community Group. I don’t have the capacity, or to be fair the inclination to do much more than I already am, so it’s not like I’m setting myself up as a positive example because I’m quite lazy, but a few more people need to start contributing or else it’s destined to go tits up.

Well that’s it for today, small whinge over. I’ll update after the community meeting as hopefully we’ll get news about the demolition and the renovation of the remaining properties, tragically I’m looking forward to that. I can’t take any more fly-tipping, derelict houses and general decay, no wonder I’m such a miserable cow.

miserable cow

Nights out in Beeston

Ahhh Beeston,

It's 9.45 on Friday evening, so it must be time to get your kids dressed up and take them out for a night on the town .. . . . .

I have nothing more to add.

Lee and Lance

With recent 'youth' activity focusing heavily upon burning, raping and pillaging particularly amongst the greater spotted urban youth I thought I’d reminisce about two entrepreneurial young men who lived near us in London.  

We first encountered this dynamic duo when they were posting homemade leaflets through doors offering their services to clean cars to earn some pocket money. This was long before the days of drive in hand car washes and also before mobile phones were as ubiquitous as they are now in the UK.

What really caught our attention was Lee himself. He had all the patter and the charm of an East end market trader. Confident and a bit cheeky Lee introduced himself to us like he was a used car salesman with 30 years experience of ducking and diving, he also introduced us to his friend whose name we instantly forgot.

Harry Enfield was riding high in the comedy firmament, so these two young fellahs became known as Lee and Lance. They can’t have been more than 12 or 13, and they really looked like 12 year old boys, all skinny arms and legs and sticky out ears. In comparison the girls they were at school with would have seemed like Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. The telly characters of Lee and Lance were a couple of Londoners who had hidden talents and were barstool philosophers as the videos below will show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_O_HrEuhEY

The thing that really tickled us was the contact number on their promotional flyer, it wasn’t even theirs, they’d used a neighbour’s mobile number and hoped he wouldn’t mind – classic risk taking devil may care attitude from Lee and his partner in commerce.

They were instantly commissioned to wash my housemate’s car, a rather lovely 2CV, but were too small to carry the water bucket when it was full so we had to do that for them, but they did a good job and charged a reasonable price. They even waxed the car under the critical eye of its beady eyed owner.

Lee had explained that he wanted some extra money to contribute to his share of a family holiday or a computer game, and that seemed like as good a reason as any so we were happy to offer them odd jobs.

They were nice kids showing a bit of initiative and that deserved to be acknowledged and encouraged. Over the next few years we watched them grow up enough to be able to carry a bucket of water without adult supervision, lose teeth (this happened once whilst washing the 2CV, there was blood and there was panic; tea towels and kitchen roll were brought into play, but they still finished waxing the car – committed and professional to the last) and then they began to diversify into weeding gardens, washing windows and other useful odd jobs as they got older and taller.

Lee and lance were the acceptable face of trick or treating and carol singing, on one occasion after they turned up and mumbled the first chorus of “We Wish you a Merry Christmas”, like every lazy and undeserving carol singer does, though if I remember they also appeared in November which was a little premature, we told them that if they came back much nearer Christmas, sang three carols in full, and with enthusiasm we’d give them a fiver – an amount not to be sniffed at for carol singing in 1994. They did indeed return much nearer Christmas and they sang three carols in full, enthusiastically, if not harmoniously, and they were rewarded fairly as agreed. The shine was slightly taken off when they turned up the next evening in disguise for a repeat performance, we were not fooled and we sent them off with a friendly telling off, it was all good natured and as always we had to admire their initiative.

In comparison to the youthful, and not so youthful, rioters in the news recently I think it’s important to recognise that not all young people are scum, there’s a lot of positive behaviour out there, but it’s not sexy and it doesn’t sell papers or get headlines to report on nice kids doing nice stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrI4--a7oUA

Letters of note

After a very quiet couple of months with very little happening, hence the lack of posts recently, I've received two letters in as many weeks from the Leeds City Council.

The first politely informing me that I would be fined if I left my bin out on the street after bin day, as apparently this is becoming a huge problem in our little community. The second telling me that any remaining metal work left in the binyards attached to the remaining empty homes would be removed to stop our area being targeted by thieves.

Now I don’t like to be snippy but hang on a minute let’s just take a small step back. I’m going to address the second letter first. As someone who actually videoed the last gate on my street being nicked from a bin yard over the road from me about 11 months ago, I would suggest that this is a little like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.

Reasons of safety, crime prevention and recycling are quoted as being the main drivers for finally removing the few remaining bits of metalwork, though I would have thought that the collapsed walls that block the pavement and are just ripe for a small child to be trapped under would be as much of a motivation. Also removing the metal work whilst most of it still remained would have made better economic sense, but hey ho hindsight is a marvellous thing.

wall kicked over to remove metal work

And my little snipe about the bins being left out on the street, I’ll admit it winds me right up too as I always bring my bins back in but come on . . . . when this

A room with a view.

is the view from my house, and has been for over a year I’m not sure Leeds City Council are in any position to make demands about abandoned bins. A couple of them have been slung into the road of late, either by stormy weather (Lovely British summer) or by what the press would more recently refer to as yobs, I would call them bastards or little shits.

This for me raises the issue of blanket warnings, like those incredibly insulting messages about pirating films at the beginning of legitimately bought dvds that you can’t fast forward through. It’s like buying a bus ticket and being slapped in the face by the driver, just in case you decide not to buy one next time. I don’t leave my bin out all the time (sometimes when I’ve been away on holiday or for work I’ve had no option if I’ve wanted my bin collected, or I don’t put it out at all). I’m probably overreacting and I do understand that it’s better to give people a warning before you go in guns blazing, but it still puts my back up.

 I strongly suspect that some of these bins belong to the now derelict houses on the other side of the street, houses that belong to Leeds City Council. And yes it is annoying to have to step out onto the street to walk around someone’s pizza box stuffed wheelie bin that resides permanently on the pavement, but is it any less annoying than jumping up to your window every time an unfamiliar noise rings out down the street and your first conclusion is that it’s yet another scrote in a hoody kicking the door in of a derelict house on your street.

At least the bin yards seem to have been cleared of any recent fly tipping – the standard mattress appeared a couple of weeks ago on a parallel street, but at least the massive plastic jug of cooking oil that the kids were playing with in the street a couple of weeks ago seems to have been dealt with by what I can only assume was a biohazard team. Anyway, rant over for now. I’m trying to organise another community meeting for late August early September so we’ll see what news there is on the demolition front. It can’t come soon enough for me.

broken window

Sinclair C5 Man

It’s been pretty quiet here for the last few weeks. No movement on the demolition as yet so I’ll just have to wait until more news is forthcoming. So with no relevant news on the horizon I’ll delve back in time to retrieve a few memories of a rather odd neighbour we had in London. Yes another one, we really were blessed.

I’ve related tales of Wayne & Waynetta, Ricky and Bianca and the O’Learys so now we come to Sinclair C5 Man.

Whereas we shared actual walls with our other three nightmare neighbours Sinclair C5 Man lived over the road . . . . with his mum. He was a man with many talents, most of them were a little bit odd to say the least.

We first noticed his presence because; well quite frankly he was hard to miss. I think the first time I saw him he was wobbling around the street on a unicycle. Nothing says “I’m a socially awkward attention seeking tw*t” like riding a unicycle in front of your own house by yourself when you’re over 30. I mean fair enough if you’re a dreadlocked hippy in a home knit jumper juggling fireworks in Covent Garden, then oh yeah you’re most likely not that socially awkward, but the rest of the statement probably still holds true.

Over the next few months we saw him on many other forms of transport: bikes, cars, vans and the unicycle. He also had a dog (which he didn’t use for transport) and most importantly a big crush on one of my housemates and yes he had a Sinclair C5 too, hence the nickname. As nicknames go it wasn’t overly original but it was to the point and accurate. For anyone who isn’t familiar with this remarkable form of transport it’s one that is synonymous, at least for most Brits over 35, with the triumph of ego over reality.

Wheeee look at me on my C5!    No thanks Clive, you look like a tw*t!

Clive Sinclaire’s vision was to create something that was cheap and energy efficient, however it looked like a dust buster on wheels and was about as safe and practical as running blindfold round the M25 at rush hour. We already had motorbikes, scooters (for the Mods & Rockers amongst us so we could be energy efficient and cool) and pushbikes. The C5 was a master class in misjudging your market.


If you are in any doubt as to just how unsuitable they would be as a form of transport, here’s an advert from Hoover offering to service it for you. Reassuring isn’t it, we sell vacuum cleaner bags and fix your road worthy vehicles. C5 Man used to whirr around the streets in his Sinclair C5 in a rather sinister fashion eyeballing our house as he glided by.

A less than reassuring advert for C5 Servicing.

Most of Sinclair C5 Man’s appearances near our house coincided with the object of his affection’s proximity to our front door. We think his appearances were most likely attempts to demonstrate his love and worthiness as a suitor, on one occasion he even loomed over her when she was snogging her boyfriend on our front doorstep, not a very welcome or appropriate interruption. On another he leapt out of a skip to greet her as she walked home from a late night visiting her Gran across London, a heart attack is obviously the manly way to say “I fancy you!”. Imagine that ladies, it’s like a fairy tale isn’t it. I mentioned the dog because he also used to encourage his dog to leave deposits outside our house, not on the pavement which would have been disgusting enough, but actually on the doorstep.

You’re probably asking yourselves how she managed to resist such romantic overtures as random late night skip attacks, dog sh*t deposits and regular displays of random vehicular prowess, well she must have been made of stern stuff because she did. I should also point out that if I remember correctly this was the same housemate who engaged in regular conversation with a rheumy eyed old chap as he sat on a wall on our route home from Clapham Junction Station, until we pointed out to her that we avoided him because he had his flies unzipped and his knob out; though that could have been another housemate to be fair.

Dirty old man!

As an aside C5 Man wasn’t differently abled for those of you who are thinking I’m being mean to someone who seems so obviously unable to relate to other humans. Sinclair C5 Man was just a massively inappropriate prick with no idea of how to talk to women and all the passionate subtlety of a brick through a window, I suspect he would have been the boy at school who punched you in the head before he asked you out on a date. Mostly however even though his overtures were odd, irritating and a bit disgusting they didn’t start to get really alarming until after the object of his affection moved out.

Quite a while after she moved out my new housemates and I had friends round for dinner and were sitting in our living room having a nice chat when we noticed a red dot of light focussed on the forehead of one of our guests, the red dot then slowly moved round and settled on the forehead of every woman in eye line of the bay window in the front room. This was unnerving to say the least and it was obvious that the light was coming from C5 Man’s house and was some kind of laser pointer mimicking a sniper.

We went over to knock on the door, but there was no answer, so we called the police and they had a nice little chat with him about threatening behaviour and harassment laws and that was mostly that. This incident left us feeling anxious and not at all comfortable in our own house for a few days, knowing that someone was observing you and picturing training imaginary gun sights on your forehead isn't a nice thought.

After that we were rather less tolerant of his juvenile displays of machismo and challenged him if we saw him and his mutt approaching our front door and more importantly we threatened to tell his mum.

Of mice and men . .

Grrrr, Bad Community Activist!

Last year I really enjoyed the Beeston Festival and had an absolutely clear intention to go this year and contribute by baking a cake or just buying something from one of the lovely food stalls. However, as so often happens real life gets in the way – bloody real life.

I am currently in the midst of completing an assignment for a Masters course, which is proving a lot more difficult than I had intended, and writing this post is proving to be a welcome respite from writing about pedagogical rationales and reflective and collaborative learning.

After initially finding it difficult to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, it is 2011 after all) I now find that I have to cut 1000 words from my assignment.

So what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men? In the face of the above I completely forgot about the festival, about baking a cake (I love baking) and enjoying a bit of interaction with the fellow members of the South Leeds Massive and I am gutted and very cross with myself for being such a knob. I saw a banner advertising it and thought “oh I must go”, and then realised that it had taken place the day before, curses!

I’ve missed the hottest day of the year sitting at my laptop, grrrrr, and have become a virtual recluse in the last three to four weeks (I really don’t remember my last assignment being this difficult), barely leaving the house not even for beer and disco.

I have taken a fair bit of time off work however to write, so it’s been interesting to be at home during the week and seeing what occurs in our little derelict corner of the world. As predicted in other posts the summer weather, disappointing as it has been, has brought out the evening socialites of South Leeds. It’s the South Leeds Summer Lullaby – blaring music is short bursts (just long enough to pop outside and have a nice fag) and shouting to the person standing less than 2 feet away from you . . . . aahhhh, how lovely; squealing car tyres, screeching breaks and revving engines and yes the ever present bass-heavy throb of dub step.

Yesterday was Father’s day though I did manage to get a card, my Dad’s present didn’t arrive until today and I’ll be honest I didn’t really make a big fuss of him which is not great is it? So confessions and whingeing out of the way it’s back to work on my assignment and to wrap my dad’s belated pressie.

Hopefully I’ll have something interesting to report next time.

Community Meeting update - June 2011

Ok – just a very quick update about the latest Community Meeting. New faces this time, only one other resident but at least landlords are starting to get involved, sadly none of the regulars attended.

I was pleased that Leeds City Council have pretty much dealt with all of the issues that they said they would in last meeting, Fly Tipping and property checks were pretty high on the list. Both of these things have been addressed.

We also got another update on the progress of demolition. It’s going to take at least a few months before the properties that still remain occupied will be emptied and the residents housed elsewhere, and it might even take longer than that. There wasn’t anyone there from Leeds Fed so we didn’t get an update from them, however LCC explained the process in relation to the transfer of properties from LCC to Leeds Fed. This will clear all the remaining blocks of houses bar two or three. In these remaining blocks, where possible the empty houses will be refurbished and let to new tenants.

I also hadn’t realised that funding had been completely withdrawn from LCC to buy up the remaining properties, so private owners will have to sell their properties themselves if they want to move away. However, it’s doubtful that those properties will now be demolished.   Hopefully though refurbishment and letting of the empty properties that surround the privately owned ones should help to maintain property values and allow owner occupiers to sell for a reasonable amount. It should also help to make the area feel less abandoned. Hopefully demolition will start before winter, but we’ll wait and see.

Despite everything that’s going on here these houses are nice little start up houses so hopefully we’ll get a little movement on the property market over the coming months.

Lilly

I am disappointed that attendance was so low at the meeting, apart from me and the council bods no other regulars showed, though it was half term so hopefully that contributed to it. But if membership doesn’t pick up over the next 12 months I can’t see me still attending, though I’ll keep in contact with LCC and Leeds Fed hopefully, you can’t have a community group that the community doesn’t support. Umm, so both good and disappointing - next meeting to be arranged sometime late July or early August so I’ll keep you posted.

As an edit I've added a few floral pictures.

Rose and bug

Lavendar

Craggy Island

Well I’m back with another post in lieu of anything exciting happening on my street this week, other than a loud domestic one evening over the week-end that is. . It’s been a busy week in general for me, but we have another Group meeting next week so hopefully more news about actual regeneration then.

This post harks back to good old London town and some little anecdotes about yet another delightful couple move into an adjoining flat. As previously mentioned the house I rented with friends down in Battersea was flanked by flats on either side. On one side the improbably awful Wayne and Waynetta and the sporadically insane Ricky and Bianca above them – ahh the joy.

On the other side the ground floor flat was occupied by a lovely elderly gentleman, who for the purposes of this post I shall call Austin, and the upstairs flat that had been empty for some time. After a reorganisation of flatmates I moved to the upstairs main bedroom, which shared a wall with the living rooms of the upstairs flats on both sides.

About this time, I think possibly before I moved upstairs, one of my housemates, or it could have been me I genuinely forget now, bumped into Austin outside our front door. He was very keen to share the news that the flat above him was going to be occupied at last, but particularly pleased that his newly proposed neighbours had knocked on his door to introduce themselves and ask if it was a nice neighbourhood. 

Austin was delighted that they seemed to care about where they lived and wanted it to be somewhere quiet. This boded well for them he thought and he wanted us to be reassured, given the trouble we had with ‘the people on the other side’.

So the gossip was passed on and we awaited our new neighbours’ arrival. Soon enough they appeared, a middle aged couple who were pleasant and friendly and seemingly keen to make a good impression. They were really polite and always up for a chat when you saw them in the street for the first few weeks. Amazing, what could possibly go wrong!?

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the telly series Father Ted, but apart from being one of the funniest things on T.V.  ever, at least one lot of characters began to feel very familiar over the following few months. John and Mary O'Leary lived in the village on Craggy Island and ran a little shop. To the outside observer they were just like our new neighbours, polite and friendly and always happy to see you. But in private they were filled with a deep and destructive loathing of each other, just like our new neighbours. Yes you guessed it, another noise abatement issue had moved in next door.

It started off with the odd raised voice, mostly overheard through the wall of the upstairs bedroom which shared a wall with their living room, but gradually these altercations became more frequent and much louder. The intermittent bouts of domestic disturbance were fuelled by lovely alcohol but without any sound proofing on the walls to conceal it from their neighbours, we all got to listen in. The rows were abusive and vitriolic and the language, good heavens the language! 

“You effing C**t”, from her to him “You b**ch”, from him to her and “You lazy C**t” from her to him. Well mostly it was from her to him as I remember it. He was a man of few words; she was a woman who more than made up for his taciturn manner.

I think her liberal use of the ‘C’ word in private was all the more unsettling given her demeanour in public, which veered towards the Hyacinth Bucket when you bumped into them outside the front door. It was difficult to match up the public and private personas of the O’Learys but also because they were SO unlike our other challenging neighbours who couldn’t have given a toss what anyone thought of them, the O’Learys so obviously did care.

Though oddly they (and by ‘they’ I mean ‘she’) were less bothered about glossing over other areas of their private lives. I don’t know what it is about some people, but if a neighbour politely asks how you are they don’t actually want to know, unless they’re sitting next to your hospital bed or a very close friend. It’s a widely recognised social norm that this is a question that requires a non specific response. 

If you see someone on the street once a week and they say ‘Hello, how’re you?” for goodness sake DO reply “Oh you know, mustn’t grumble” (my Grandma’s favourite) or, “Fine thanks”. DO NOT go into great gynaecological detail about your latest surgical exploration – I DON’T WANT TO KNOW! Don’t use phrases like “stitches in my back passage” or talk about your prostate to a virtual stranger, Hell’s Teeth people preserve a little dignity! 

OK, now that’s out of my system let’s get back to the O’Learys. After a regular run down of her up and coming surgeries and his crippling back problems that rendered it difficult for him to work (though not too difficult to lift a pallet of beer out of the car I noticed on more than one occasion) we began to notice that his attitude shifted from the quiet down trodden hubby, to a man that realised he was living next door to three twenty something women in fancy London town. 

To be fair he wasn’t creepy, just excitable, particularly if we arrived at the front door at similar times say just after pub closing time. On a couple of occasions we had to step over him as he lay sleeping drunkenly across the doorstep or in his miniscule front yard, ahhh I feel quite nostalgic about it now. I’ve also just remembered the time I didn’t notice he was asleep outside his own house until my housemate pointed it out after I got in, he was tucked in under the hedge – bless.

We were generally less angry with them about their shouting than our other horrid neighbours, perhaps because we’re British and therefore too polite or maybe it’s just easier to confront someone you don’t discuss the weather with on a regular basis, but also because I think they so obviously thought it was a private matter. It didn’t spill out onto the street, well the drunken snoring stuff did but the nasty shouty stuff was all inside so we all just pretended that it didn’t happen. We even got used to it, the ever indispensible earplugs came in handy as did loud music with headphones on. The O’Learys’ disturbances were nowhere near as frequent as our other neighbours incidentally, they just added a little spice and intrigue to the mix.

Here’s a lovely link to a nice Father Ted O’Leary’s quote on IMDB

I couldn’t find a clip of The O’Learys but here are some clips on YouTube of Father Ted for those who’ve never seen it.

On Holiday

Charades

Newsletter

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks visiting friends and family up and down the country and have returned to cleared out bin yards, hurrah! It’s amazing how something so simple can make such a huge difference to an area, it’s taken a good few months but Leeds City Council came through in the end.  Hopefully the general levels of detritus blown around the street will decrease now too.

Also as the evenings are now lighter later my curtain twitching habit is surging again. It’s amazing how many little open backed vans trundle up and down our streets of an evening, peering into bin yards in the hope of a lovely abandoned fridge. With any luck the empty bin yards will stay that way and the trundling vans will fade away, rightly or wrongly I’ve assumed they’re scrap merchants looking for swag; sadly no rag and bone men any more.  Though I am almost certain I heard one calling out last year, he had a horse and everything when I had a look.

We’re also about to send out our first newsletter to the local community. It’ll update people on the future plans for demolition and refurbishment of the remaining properties, we’re also hoping to engage with more residents and encourage more attendance at the meetings and involvement in the area in general.

My task over the next few months, as well as finishing off a fairly large University assignment, is looking into the possibility of getting some funding to have wildflowers planted on the ground left after demolition. LCC can fund basic grassing of the areas which would be great, but we need to raise funds if residents would prefer a more aesthetic solution. There are other benefits to more diverse flora in an urban area too, such as encouraging wildlife back to urban areas and creating Bee Roads and there are potential sources of funding such as Plan Bee that I will be investigating.

LCC and Leeds Fed have done all the work so far to be fair, I’ve just set up a gmail account and searched for a non beer related head and shoulder shot of me to add as Chair of the group.  To say that I hate having my photo taken would be a huge understatement. I’m not the most photogenic person so it’s always a stressful experience looking at a picture of yourself and realising you don’t actually look like one of the cast of 90210 but as long as I don’t look like Ena Sharples I suppose it’s not too bad.

I’m also looking into a new community group meeting venue, our original venue has changed purpose (or got wise) so we can no longer use it and we have had to shift to a venue further away with no windows, so not overly conducive to comfortable discussion. I’ll wait to see what my enquiries bring.

Over the last month the sun has been shining which is very unusual for this time of year. Over the last two weeks in-between the sun shining the wind has also been blowing and the rain has been lashing down. Everything does looks better in the sun when it does shine and I suppose the rain has meant I haven’t had to water my tomato plants too much over the last 2 weeks.

My front yard is in a right state both my potted plants and the weeds are doing pretty well due to the aforementioned sun and rain. I’ve tackled the weeds with some nice chemicals and will try and tidy them up this weekend weather permitting; not one of nature’s gardeners me.  I also need to paint my front door, a task I have no idea how to start or even complete. I mean do you have to remove the door, or can you just clean and sand it in situ and hope for the best? And do I need special outdoor paint? I think that might wait until later in the summer.

Apparently you can often tell the privately owned properties in predominantly social or council owned housing estates by the state of their front doors. Privately owned houses are often in a worse state cosmetically, I’d certainly attest to that.

So I’ve mucked about with the Blog a bit too so if anyone is interested you can follow by email by entering your details in the little box provided and hopefully this means that you don’t have to set up a Google account if you don’t want to, though you may be added to a sinister database somewhere that could try to sell you Viagra and kidney transplants at a later date.

And that’s all the factual stuff for now so from Ena and me, hope you enjoyed reading and have a pint of stout on us (well we’re not paying, just buy it yourself).

Community Meeting update

A very quick update here.

We’ve just had another Community Group Meeting. A pretty good turn out by our standards and some new faces which was good.

It’s always good to hear that you’re not the only one with a particular gripe, fly tipping rates highly for everyone and the need to get the bin yards cleared, which is reassuring.

I was personally very pleased to hear that there are plans to bring some of the houses back into use. I think Leeds Federated Housing are looking into this I had a note to raise this as an issue, but had absolutely no idea how it would be put into practice so I’m delighted that someone better  qualified than me has already thought about it – good news for the Empty Homes agenda too.

There are plans for future demolitions which is a relief and even though things are not good for residents I felt like we were listened to and hopefully action will be taken. It’s gonna take time, but at least there’s progress.

Also looking into planting wildflowers on the cleared ground, but we’ll need to find funding to do this. And onto the next big news, to be able to apply for funding we need to become a formal group and that means setting up bank accounts and getting a resident Chairperson – which is me!! Gulp.

Hope I can do a good job.

Anyway more offensively swear ladened rants to follow

See ya

A spoonful of sugar.

Wayne & Waynetta

Hot of the press, there’s another community meeting next week. It’s an opportunity to unload to the Local Authority and find out how much money we don’t have to finish demolishing and developing our street, though to give them their due they are acknowledging the lack of progress and asking for our input, but it will remain to be seen if they are willing to take us up on any of them. But I’d better pace myself, it can’t all be forward thinking and positive. So after the delights of Ricky and Bianca in my last post, today I give you Wayne and Waynetta.

This charming couple lived in the flat under Ricky and Bianca with their unfortunate offspring, or rather Waynetta did. Wayne would visit his lovely lady-friend and their ill-fated spawn wearing his school uniform on the nights he didn’t have detention, and if this doesn’t give you enough of an insight into the general tone of what’s to come just read the next sentence. I often saw Wayne gobbing copious amounts of phlegm onto the pavement as he slouched his way towards Waynetta’s with his angry little fists shoved into his easy care trouser pockets his acne pitted brow furrowed in deep thought – or he could just have looked like that generally.

W & W were the couple most responsible for the never-ending and mind melting playing of Billy Ray Cyrus at all hours of the day and night, the sound turned up so loud it distorted and hurt your ears and for that alone I can never forgive them.

It was pretty shit living next door to them to be honest. Ricky & Bianca were bad enough but their disturbances were sporadic and at least they looked shamefaced when you saw them afterwards, but not our little white trash neighbours. These enchanting little scumbags contributed little to the local community, the economy or most distressingly for their progeny, the gene pool.

I became very familiar with the Peabody Trust who managed the flat next door. Waynetta was the main focus of the noise diaries that I kept. When she wasn’t screaming at her sweet toddling baby (and he was a sweetheart), smashing things in her flat, screaming at Wayne, standing in the street and yes you guessed it screaming, she was playing loud music and staggering about like an inebriated fishwife at all hours of the day and night.

I hope you can understand why I have zero tolerance for noisy neighbours, I really do feel I’ve had my fair share. It’s coming up to ten years since I left London so some of my memories of Waynetta are a little fuzzy but I do remember that it was pretty grim.

If I remember correctly my housemate S and I decided to contact Social Services about the obvious neglect that the little boy was subjected to on a regular basis. The final straw came when we found him wondering the street by himself at about 11 p.m. He can’t have been anymore than two years old. Waynetta was unconscious inside her pit and hadn’t bothered to lock the front door, or even shut it.

I recall that my flatmate was very disappointed at the reaction she got when she called for the Local Authority for advice, something along the lines of us being judgemental busybodies.  I mean what parent hasn’t got smashed off their tits on Benylin and Thunderbirds/MD 20/20 and abdicated all responsibility for her offspring leaving them unsupervised in the middle of the road at midnight?!

My biggest memory of Waynetta was one hot summer’s evening. She stood outside her house near to Midnight with her posse drinking Red Stripe lager and smoking fags and yes you guessed it shrieking with her mates. We were in the living room with the window open to let a welcome breeze into the house.

We were debating whether or not to move to the kitchen to avoid the intrusive drivel from outside. Waynetta’s little boy was staggering around her and we could hear him chattering and pleading away, “Mummy tired. Mummy bed” repeating it over and over, as toddlers are want to do and trying to get the attention of a ‘responsible’ adult. He could barely stand and just wanted to go to sleep.  Unfortunately for him the focus of his pleading couldn’t have cared less.

Her response was one of the most gobsmacking things I think I have ever heard a mother say to her child without a single hint of irony.

With a half baked expression on her face, a half smoked fag in one hand and a can of lager in the other she slurred her angry response to the little fellah’s cry for attention.

“F***ing shut-up Ryan. I can’t be Mary Poppins all the f***ing time!”

Let’s be honest Waynetta, just once would’ve been nice.

Rickaaaayyyyy!

So it looks like I’m focussing on noise for the next few posts; mainly because it’s too depressing to post about how Leeds City Council still hasn’t managed to clear all of the rubbish from their neglected bin yards yet. I mean it’s not like they have any influence over the refuse collection department is it . . . . . . oh.

Anyhow.

I lived next door to some of the more persistently annoying neighbours when I lived in London in my twenties. I shared a three bed roomed terraced house with two other splendid ladies on a quiet street in Battersea.

On both sides of our rented house the houses were converted into one bed flats, so we had two sets of neighbours on both sides, three lots of them were entertaining to say the least. Today I’ll concentrate on Ricky and Bianca. Not their real names.

Ricky and Bianca lived in one of the upstairs flats that flanked our house. Their living room bordered onto the main bedroom upstairs in our place. Ricky was a 40 plus year old black guy who thought he was a real gangsta – a real gangsta who drove a Lada and bought his trainers from ASDA that is.

Bianca wouldn’t say boo to a goose if you saw her in the street but when Ricky was resident in-between his many absences; she was a seriously forceful character. Reading between the lines, and not being able to avoid the eardrum ripping arguments that would occur, it seemed that Ricky was not the greatest boyfriend ever and to be honest he may not have even been her boyfriend, he could have been her deadbeat brother for all we knew.

Bianca seemingly had a regular job and possibly worked normal hours etc.

Ricky had a duvet in the back seat of his Lada.

There are two incidents that I can remember reasonably well. One was on one of the few visits my mum made to London.

I love my mum, but it was always interesting when she visited Fancy London. Bravely refusing to bow down to London peer pressure on the Tube by avoiding eye contact with complete strangers lest they be a serial killer or a religious maniac like any seasoned London traveller would, my mum’s right in there with full eye contact and a big smile and questions like “What’s that smell?” and “Why are there no bins at Kings Cross?” (The answer in case you’re wondering is that there are no bins in London so the IRA and latterly Al Qaeda can’t put bombs in them. Reassuring isn’t it.)

Anyway back to Ricky and Bianca. My Mum arrived in Battersea and we settled down for some tea, a natter and some lovely booze but as Ricky made one of his sporadic and unwelcome visits to next door and the fun started. We had to endure a hellish night of thumping music, screaming, shouting and the usual bangs and crashes that went on until the early hours, however we did eventually get to sleep.

The next morning we got up; wrung out from lack of sleep and nerves jangling I went to open the front door to find the most bizarre scene outside the house. The first thing to greet my weary eyes was a pair of (ugly) platform boots tossed haphazardly on our doorstep. As I ventured a little further into the street I saw that Bianca had been a busy girl during the night’s festivities.

Strewn across the road and draped over hedges and front yard walls were just about all of Ricky’s possessions. These included CDs, clothes (George at ASDA no doubt), foot wear and I’m pretty sure a telly – all topped off by a bleary eyed Ricky peering sheepishly from under a duvet on the back seat of his Lada.

I didn’t need my mum to see that first thing so I resignedly shut the door on the apocalyptic scene outside and went back to get the kettle on. Tea makes everything better.

By the time mum and I had caffeined up and set off on whatever cultural/retail activity we had planned for that day the street had been mostly cleared, not by a shamefaced Ricky I hasten to add, but by some kids with a shopping trolley. I like a young entrepreneur, and we had a number of them in Battersea.

The second memorable incident was another extraordinary public display of discord. I have no idea what led to the surreal tableau that was witnessed by residents and guests of our happy little home that evening, but it was glorious.

After hearing yet another Ricky and Bianca row spilling out into the street we peered out to see Bianca enthusiastically attacking Ricky’s beloved Lada with a large (and possibly rusty) hand saw and Ricky in turn defending his battered yet treasured car by tentatively hooking a golf club over Bianca’s saw every time she started in on the Lada’s bonnet, or he could have been aiming for her head.

I can’t remember how it resolved itself, I have a vague memory that she was screaming for help and we obliged by calling the police who trooped down and intervened.  Then we went back to whatever we were doing; waiting for the next enthralling episode to unfurl no doubt.

It sounds like we didn’t care but to be honest when it’s a regular occurrence you begin to lose any sense of moral outrage about domestic abuse and just start inwardly screaming “Leave him! Stop letting him in! Let me get some sleep!”

I look back on these incidents with sort of hazy fondness and a sense of detachment now, but at the time it was desperate. As I write this I can remember the diaries I kept for the Peabody Trust (the Housing Association that managed the bordering flats) and the disappointment I felt when their intervention turned out to be about as effective Nick Clegg/Viagra for pandas/a chocolate teapot.

Another testament to the dreadful impact noisy neighbours can have. Well at least I’ve got a few funny anecdotes out of it, lucky me eh?

Rita, Sue and Bob Too

Now I’m on a roll. I’ll admit to having a short fuse when it comes to noisy neighbours, but that’s only because I’ve lived next door to more than one. Noise disturbance and nuisance come in many forms.

There are the neighbours who can’t talk to each other without shouting and screaming, those who play loud music at unsocial hours, households for who drunken festivities are a normal outdoor activity, constant and repetitive door slamming, computer games without headphones on (explosions and gun fire) and my all-time favourite deliberate harassment such as banging on walls and screaming and shouting abuse.

And it’s not just the music, apparently some people haven’t worked out that the benefit of using mobile phones to communicate over long distances is that you don’t have to shout!  Especially between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. because believe it or not, not everyone wants to hear you arguing with your boyfriend about something unintelligible after midnight when they have to get up for work in the morning.

I particularly look forward enjoying those pleasant spring mornings or afternoons when I can turn my attention to tidying up my front yard, which admittedly at the moment is in a dreadful state, perhaps with the radio on; volume at an acceptable volume level of course. The sun will be shining. The one bird that lives in South Leeds will be chirruping from an overgrown gutter or a crap filled bin yard not far away and I’ll be waiting for the inevitable.

Because if you are a young tracksuit wearing male of questionable employment status or a cut price Colleen Rooney, these first glimpses of sunshine and temperate weather must mean that it’s time for hard core techno to be blasted out across the whole street!

It also means that once it’s warm and dry enough, you can stand outside your house all night smoking fags, taking drugs and binge drinking whilst blasting out yet more shitty music and debating the important issues of the day such as “What is your f**king problem?”, “I’m f**king wankered I am!” and the age old question “What the f**k are you looking at?”, as always at top volume. And why not if you don’t have to get up for work then why should you be concerned about anyone else getting a decent night’s sleep?

I have variously enjoyed being shouted at for the appalling affront of daring to be annoyed at a diminutive, staggeringly intoxicated, shifty eyed, fat-tongued teenager banging at my door at two in the morning and shouting “uuunnggghhhh opuuuuuuuun uuuuup uuunnggghhh”; I mean he just got the wrong door - how DARE I be angry at being woken in the middle of the night during the week!?

Also there was the time that I’ve had to listen to private conversations being shouted drunkenly to the drivers of various boy racer cars with blacked out windows (the most gangsta look for a three door Peugeot I find). Oh sorry, not the ONE time but ALL the times which are as always enhanced by the ubiquitous techno beat being blasted out of the car stereo with window shaking bass. What is it about stupid people and volume control; why can’t they just keep it sociable? It’s staggering how many people air their dirty laundry in the middle of the road at top volume and then look at you as though you’re the one aggravating them.

In a community with a steady population that was invested in the community, the people and the property you have the opportunity to build relationships with your neighbours or at the very least you might support each other to tackle problem neighbours. However despite quite a few of the properties in my street being privately owned, I doubt that many residents are owner occupiers. The population in my street seems to be very transient, in particular in houses that are next to one of the problem houses.

The residents of this house might be compared to the fabulously glamorous cast of any series of Skins, that is if the cast of Skins shopped at Primani, got drunk in Yate’s Wine Lodge on Bacardi Breezers and Wkd Blue and ate Pop Tarts for breakfast; their cheap stilettos are often heard clattering up and down the street on a Sunday evening like a 21^st Century “Rita, Sue and Bob Too”, without the incisive comedy and pathos.

We’re trying with a community group, but not too many regular members are attending, and why would you if you only rent???? I certainly didn’t. But that’s for another post. Anyway I meant to write about the people I lived near when I lived in London, who believe it or not proved to be even more entertaining than my current neighbours in South Leeds, but I’ll save that for another post.

Thanks for reading.