Al Jenat supermarket opens

Walking home last night the new Al Jenat supermarket was open, or appearing to be doing a very good impression of being open at the very least. I didn't have the chance to go and pop my head in to take a look but perhaps one of you could nip in there today and let me know how it looks?

Hopefully it'll encounter more success than the immensely short lived "Worcester Supermarket" of a few years back that eventually appeared after a prolonged gestation then disappeared only a few weeks later with hardly a customer having passed through the doors. It met it's demise on April 18th 2007 according to my own blog and I managed to turn a phrase or two in its honour.

"I know you've been gagging for your latest installment of Worcester Park life, as gagging is frequently cited as a reaction to the content. Apologies for that but I've been poorly so haven't felt like it, but hopefully this will make up for it. 

Yes, it's over. When I went to work yesterday morning the counter of the Worcester Supermarket had gone, together with all the valuable stuff, and when I came home they were boarding it up. That has to rate as the shortest and most spectacularly bad business idea to grace Central Road in living memory and I can't say I'm going to miss it. Well, I could, but I won't. Mr Ink next?"

Fabulous lack of hope and foresight on behalf of Mr Ink then?

It's another fogging Monday morning in Worcester Park!

Personally I quite like the slightly surreal glow of the lights in the fog as it momentarily makes me think I might be somewhere else....

....like work.... I'm going to be at work... oh bother....

Happy Monday wherever you are and whatever you're doing!

The crowds massed in Worcester Park

I've was passing Christ Church St Philips yesterday when the Boys Brigade Jumble sale was due to start and I couldn't believe the crowd that had gathered! For a minute I thought that Gary Barlow must be making a guest appearance or something and I've certainly seen smaller crowds at some "celebrity" book signings. Perhaps some people, taken in by the hypnotic lure of daytime TV and Antiques Roadshow are holding out hope of finding a lost Van Gogh or first edition of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" or maybe there is some genetic attraction surrounding jumble sales that I am blissfully immune to. Certainly queuing up outside one half an hour before it's due to start is not something I'd have thought of before though some words were muttered about 'dealers' but that was apparently in reference to hunters of vintage clothing rather than purveyors of recreational pharmaceuticals.

Perhaps my immunity to jumble sales is a product of my upbringing. When I was a lot, lot younger my mother would help organise jumble sales in the local church hall and I would sit behind the row of tables and whilst she fended off the heaving mass of humanity who would attempt to strip the tables bare I would test the limits of my boredom threshold by trying to find out just how much fun can be extracted from a set of coloured pencils and a pad of paper. When questioned she didn't seem to know why people went to them either but then I was probably around four years old then so any meaningful answer she could have given me would have gone entirely over my head..

Are there any jumble sale regulars able to tell me what it is that's so appealing? Cost? Opportunity? Necessity? Chance to have a good rummage?

Al Jenat supermarket - an update!

A kind reader sent me an email after my last post about Worcester Park's new Al Jenat supermarket that's due to open soon and the accompanying demonstration of my complete lack of any talent in understanding Arabic.

"Al means the in arabic and Jenat also spelt jinnat means Paradise or heaven it also means garden. so literally it means The Garden. I have also seen one man inside the shop shelf stacking and was told it will be open within a week"

Thanks very much indeed for sending that in! Does anyone else know any more?

Al Jenat supermarket due to open

So the mystery of the new supermarket from the earlier has become a lot clearer by the simple expedient of putting a sign up out the front. It's going to be called "Al Jenat" and due to the limitations of my education I'm entirely unable to tell you what that means and Google Translate wasn't much help either. If you do know what it means, and I note there are a few other food stores in the UK with the same name, then please do let me know.

Happily it's offering a 10% discount on opening so whatever it is they'll be selling will be temporarily cheaper, though how you'll be able to verify that I'm not quite sure as there won't be any point of reference. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth though so I'm looking forward to buying discounted stuff just because I can... It's be churlish not to eh?

Regressing slightly if you have any interest in failed translations then I can do little better than to point you in the direction of "English As She Is Spoke", a Portuguese to English phrasebook from 1883 which became an unintentional source of humour because, it's generally believed, the Portuguese author wasn't familiar with English so created the translations by using a Portuguese-French dictionary and then dragging them through a French-English dictionary. This has left us such lovely phrases as "Raining in jars" (raining buckets) and the phrase I used above about looking a gift horse in the mouth comes out as "A horse bared don't look him the tooth" but  Stephen Pile's "Book of Heroic Failures", which introduced me to this august tome, picks it's most evocative favourite as "To craunch a marmoset", which sits alongside such mysterious phrases as "To buy cat in pocket", "To make paps for the cats" and invites you to "Dress your hairs"!

Gas supplies cut in Brinkley Road

Back in the 70's T-Rex's Marc Bolan sung that "Life's a gas" but it certainly wasn't in Brinkley Road last night as there was a problem with gas supplies that could have been due to the heavy rain.

According to the gas man who arrived at Brinkster Central mid-evening to check our supply the problem occurred somewhere around 6.30-7pm in the evening and whether you'd retained your supply seemed to be dependent on whether your boiler was on at that time or whether it came on during that time.If it was the latter some kind of pressure back up drew water into the supply and cut you off.

This left households without gas supplies last night which for some meant no cooking, heating or hot water, which we can agree is some way the other side of mildly annoying. We were one of the lucky ones and didn't suffer any disruption but I'm sure we'll find out this morning how everyone else got on or you can let me know in the comments if you were affected and how good Southern Gas have been at getting your service back on line.

Nonsuch Mansion wins awards

It's no big secret that Nonsuch Mansion is one of my favourite places to go and I've been privileged enough to attend some events there so I'm pleased to be able to congratulate them on the three awards they recently won from Time & Leisure Food Awards.

Bovingdons catering manager Andrew Gray
receiving one of the awards

They were the winner in the categories for Best Service and for Best Coffee House then followed that up by being commended for Best Fine Dining.

Nonsuch Mansion really has come a long way from it's recent, and neglected past, so a lot of credit has to go to the team there for what they've achieved there and with the Friends of Nonsuch now having a fabulous model of the old Nonsuch Palace on show it makes Nonsuch Park a really special and unique place to visit.

If you've visited and enjoyed Nonsuch Park and Mansion then The Friends of Nonsuch would appreciate your help in keeping it in the fabulous condition that it now is.

Model of Nonsuch Palace

Planning application to fall flat again?

About this time back in 2008 I blogged that a certain Mr Hull wanted to turn 34-36 Brinkley Road into 10 flats but he failed.

"A developer has twice proposed knocking down two bungalows in Brinkley Road and replacing them with flats in a fashion not entirely dissimilar to the new Brinkley Court, which replaced the disused church/factory for those of you who ever saw it. Having been turned down by Sutton Council for first 18 and then 14 flats they've returned to the fray with a proposal for 10 flats"

Undaunted he tried again in 2009 and 2010 but after a year off he's back with an application for 9 flats which is uncannily similar to his last application. For the record here are the reasons the 2008 application were rejected so if you believe that any of those, or objections to the later developments, still apply then make your objection to developmentcontrol@sutton.gov.uk

Bringing down the barriers

On turning into Brinkley Road last night I was greeted not by the familiar green railings of yore by some very sad little heaps of squishy tarmac, a few plastic barriers and some displaced bricks. It seems that the latest fad in improving the street environment is removing anything familiar in the somewhat obscure hope that changing something will give people the feeling they're being looked after..... or not.

Thank goodness we're not in Camden where they removed those horrid, ugly, yellow lines in the road and replaced them with little signs which, if you didn't spot them, meant instant parking ticket:

"The lines on the streets around the British Museum have been replaced by small signs saying restricted zone and metal studs marking loading bays as part of efforts to reduce street clutter."

Even a traffic warden was willing to provide an opinion to the Evening Standard

"The warden, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “People just don’t realise they’re in a restricted zone. They removed the yellow lines, which means if people stop or park on what they deem the carriageway then it’s an instant ticket."

 So what does Camden council have to say about it?

"A council spokeswoman said: “The removal of yellow lines and lines marking out parking bays is part of significant public realm and transport improvements in Bloomsbury. Yellow lines are removed to reduce visual clutter and to reduce the visual segregation of the carriageway and footway"

Heaven forbid anybody would suggest they're selling the metal for scrap to continue funding white elephants such as the Sutton Life Centre or anything but I think my public realm was fine just the way it was thanks....

Something Ethnic This Way Comes

The former Nicholls Interiors furniture store on Central Road opposite the end of Brinkley Road vanished some time ago and only anonymous white pieces of paper have been left to mask the aftermath. I mistakenly assumed that nothing was happening but, tipped off to some activity by Mrs Brinkster, I stuck my phone over the top and the picture below is what I saw.

Taking the clue from the (apparently) Arabic (?) writing it looks like some kind of nicely turned out mega-Ryan Gate, though the location has precious little parking to its name so I'm not quite sure how the heavily laden are supposed to make off with their purchases.

I can't see any sign of a planning permission request for it so does anybody any more idea of who they are and what they're going to be doing?