Huzzah!!

At last! A spot of Brinkley Road specific news today from the Local Guardian!

"A noisy neighbour in Worcester Park faces fines and legal costs of more than £1,600 after ignoring council orders to turn the sound down.

Thomas Curd, 22, of Brinkley Road, was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay £650 in court costs after ignoring noise complaints and abatement notices for the past 14 months"

In other news one of the least interesting Worcester Park mysteries has been solved. Sometime in the last couple of weeks an enormous pole appeared at the end of Washington Road, and I noticed similar ones at the end of roads near Nonsuch Park.

On my way down to the station this morning I noticed that it's been adorned with one of Mayor Ken's signs announcing the edge of the low emissions zone and apparently prohibiting anyone driving lorries down there at certain times of day (I might be wrong but I didn't look that hard). If you've ever seen Washington Road you'd know that, as one of the oldest roads in Worcester Park, it's often harder to drive anything wider than a mini down there so that's going to be far more offputting to lorry drivers than Ken's minions can come up with.

It's an enormous sign as well, hence the enormous pole, so I wonder how long it'll be before someone has them in the back of a lorry on the way to a scrap yard.

And go here http://worcesterpark.myminicity.com/

Potty about Harry

Over Christmas and New Year I took the opportunity to read the Harry Potter books to see if Miss Brinkster might like them and ended up reading all seven. I have a tendency to steer clear of any sniff of hype, which is partly why I've avoided them in the past, but I did enjoy them and it gave me something to do over the holidays whilst nursing my chest infection. I'm sure that at this point you're struggling to see any relvance to Worcester Park in this but do bear with me...... all will become apparent.

Having steeped myself so deeply in Potter-lore so recently it was then quite a coincidence to see our fair town of Worcester Park mentioned in Google Blogsearch in relation to some Harry Potter fan-fiction. I followed the link in question out of curiosity (I know curiosity has a bad rap but the cat had it coming) but then became uncomfortably aware that this wasn't the work of some wannabe wizard but instead included some Ron & Harry erotic scenarios......... ewwwwwwwwww........... I won't link directly to it but those of you who are ninjas of Google-fu will know how to find it. I will now be spending the remainder of the year trying to purge the mental images from my mind.

For those of you who have Facebook you can find me on there as "Joe Brinkster", and remember to click this - http://worcesterpark.myminicity.com/

Rage against the machine

Every once in a while I'll feel the need to have a beef about CCTV so yesterday it was nice to see the Telegraph confirming what pretty much everyone knows "Police admit drunks not deterred by CCTV". Being the kind of guy I am I've reproduced the best bits here for you:

Surveillance cameras do little, if anything, to prevent late night alcohol-fuelled crime and violence on Britain's high streets, the country's most senior police officer in the field has admitted. Graeme Gerrard, head of CCTV at the Association of Chief Police Officers, said that although Britain was now a virtual surveillance state, cameras usually failed to act as a deterrent for drunken yobs. He told a parliamentary committee that while other countries were astonished at the scale to which Britons were snooped on by the authorities, the evidence suggested CCTV had little impact on levels of late-night violence.

"Some of them may get disappointed when the CCTV goes in that actually... it doesn't deter most crime. I think they are perhaps misled in terms of the amount of crime that CCTV might prevent. Before CCTV can effectively deter people, they need to know the cameras are there. They have got to be thinking about the consequences of their behaviour. It is very effective in places like car parks, where offenders are going out to break into cars, and are thinking rationally. In terms of town centres, where a lot of the behaviour is violent behaviour, often fuelled by alcohol, people aren't thinking rationally. They get angry, the CCTV is the last thing they are thinking about. Even the presence of police officers doesn't deter the disorder on the street, so cameras are unlikely to deter them."

I'm sure you can work out how this applies to to Worcester Park or Sutton in general but if given a choice of the two I'd rather have more bobbies in cars than people watching (or not watching) CCTV monitors.

Those who can, do...

I see Green Lane school is looking for new teachers so if education is your motivation and you want a job in Worcester Park then take a peek. It's all that money they've got from the Hamptons....

Being a lover and student of quirky small-town mentality this following article amused me so much I almost entitled this post "If Worcester Park was in Texas". Apparently Stephenville in Texas is currently the hub of UFO activity and the Telegraph has written article which is so telling of the state of local culture that I think the journalist in question must have had is tongue firmly in his cheek at times:

Amateur UFO investigators are to descend on a farming community in Texas where dozens of people reported seeing mysterious lights in the sky. A pilot, policeman and local business owners are among those who insist they have seen a large, silent object with bright lights flying low and fast over the town of Stephenville, 60 miles south west of Fort Worth.
...
Steve Allen, a pilot and freight company owner, said: "People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times."
...
Looking through the telescopic sights of his rifle, Ricky Sorrells, a machinist, said he saw a flat and seamless metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a field.

Obviously the connection between the fulfilment of Biblical prognostication and UFOs is well documented (isn't it?) but I thought that locals pointing rifles at potential alien invaders was the stuff of 'Independence Day' or 'Mars Attacks'.... apparently not. Let's hope they never find out about the Worcester Park Christmas Fair and Snake Man or I'll expect a similar drubbing in their local blogs.......

Oh yes, and click this:
http://worcesterpark.myminicity.com/

A word of advice

Thanks to Google Blogsearch I notice that Dan Matthew managed to come up with this gem about facilities at Worcester Park station. Ermmm..... thanks.

Looks like it's another grey winter's day of peering out the office window at City slickers chasing their hats across the road and disposing of the remnants of their umbrellas. As the rain hammers down on the real Worcester Park I've been looking to Virtual Worcester Park for amusement and I'm pleased to see that it's now got over 100 residents! For those minicity virgins all you need to know is that you can do one action per day from the following:
Increase the population by one
Increase industry
Improve the road network

If the bridge at the railway floods today do see if you can get a photo or two for me please!!

Is it me.....

.....or has it been a quiet week in Worcester Park? Although I've been off at the Doctors and the hospital and stuff I haven't really noticed much of anything going on and even Mrs Brinkster has had anything to from the local grapevine. We did go for a Brinkster Clan trip to the park in the Hamptons last Sunday but even though it hadn't rained for a while the bottom of the hill was waterlogged, which didn't seem good. Highlight of the trip had to be Brinkster Junior swinging on the monkey-bars and losing his grip, resulting in a face-first landing on the bark chips. He was understandably upset until he'd discovered I'd been filiming it on my camera and there was hilarious laughter from all, particularly him, as we replayed it several times. I'm a great parent. :)

In the news Worcester Park resident Phil Wicks stormed to another great finish in his latest race, even while suffering from a cold and sore throat, finishing 750m ahead of the nearest competitor.

Also local man John Dadds received an award for giving blood on 78 different occasions at the National Blood Centre awards dinner recently.

Lastly Worcester Park resident John Azah received an OBE in the New Years Honours list "for his services to community relations through his role as vice-chairman of the Independent Advisory Group of the Met Police. He was so shocked to hear of the honour he had to check it was true before speaking to reporters."

Oh yes, and remember to visit Virtual Worcester Park to bump the population count up. If you visit once a day it'll increase the population by one or add a new industry if you use this link instead.

More stuff

Slightly strange experience getting off the train at Worcester Park last night as there were two brightly attired policemen checking tickets as people left the platform, and not a SW Trains ticket checker in sight. There was also another burly gent near the exit who I suspect was one of their cohorts and I did get the impression they were looking for someone or something in particular rather than trying to while away some empty minutes. They were there when I got off at 4.50 but did any of you see them at other times?

Anyway I did promise to fill you in on the addition to the Brinkster Clan so here goes. Due to the imagination and resourcefulness of one of the Uncles Brinkster and the reluctant agreement of Mrs Brinkster it came to pass that on Christmas Day Miss Brinkster was presented with a foot-long, 4 month old corn snake, complete with vivarium and all the kit. Miss Brinkster is a great fan of all things reptilian, no doubt in some part to her exposure to the late Steve Irwin, so is unbelievably chuffed to have her own snake. For me it brings to mind doing my own snake man impressions on Central Road or possibly setting up Worcester Parks first, and only, snake-handling church. As corn snakes aren't venomous it'd lack the whole 'imminent fear of death' thing but would have a certain novelty value.

....... and remember to visit Virtual Worcester Park!! It's moved out of the Tudor era and seems to be close to Victorian Worcester Park now.

Take my breath away........

My most lingering gift from my relatives at Christmas has to be the lung-splittingly unpleasant cold which one of them gave me so my return to the world of blogdom has been has been delayed by sampling the full range of this year's must-have medications from Superdrug. Needs must though so I've struggled into work for the last few days to prop up our otherwise empty department and get some reading done on the train away from the little Brinksters.

Other than that it wasn't a bad bit of time off but I'll refrain from dissecting the corpse of Christmas Past for you just now.

In Worcester Park news I noticed on the way home yesterday that the hair salon by the station steps (Fiko I think it is) is closing for redecoration from the 7th of January but other than that I can't see much has happened around Central Road since I've been away?

Oh yes, there's been an addition to the Brinkster Clan as well but you'll have to wait for next time to hear about that......

......and please help me build Virtual Worcester Park!!