It's all about Worcester Park

Another perfect Worcester Park moment on Wednesday evening when I was trailing back from some late socialising in the City I spied a Porsche Boxster parked just outside KFC with it's lone male occupant tucking into a bucket'o'something. I don't know whether to congratulate him for being immune to class-consciousness by bringing his Porsche along to KFC or whether to point out that he was still class-conscious enough to eat it in the car outside and not mix with the regulars.

Ryan Gate, apparently under new management, has had a mini-refurb with some plastering work done in the cafe area and some nice new chairs and tables have appeared in there too. I haven't been in there since meeting the WPB to do our Santa photos so I'll have to go back soon.

Is it just me or has there been an increase in vans being used as on-street storage? We've got a few in Brinkley Road, one of which hasn't moved for months, and the owners just seem to appear periodically and take a few tools and then go off again. It's annoying because it does end up having an impact on parking in the road.

Monday night is the meeting of Worcester Park Residents Association at 8pm and there are a multitude of pressures on Worcester Park from air quality to the Hamptons, from planning decisions to leisure facilities so if you're interested in going then take a look at the website below or check out the details on the tree outside the Police Station on Central Road (or the numerous signs in Central Road shops).

Worcester Park Resident's Association
http://www.wpra.org.uk/WPRAMeetings.htm

Buddha of Suburbia

No, not the book, movie or anything related to Hanif Kureishi's original creation but I'm talking about the Buddha (buddharupa for the pedants) in the window of the closed down TV repair shop on Central Road. I paused to photograph it in passing the other day and then, it being early and my brain not yet being fully wired for the day's activities, my mind wandered off into pontificating about the metaphorical significance of having a plastic-wrapped deity in the window of a disused Worcester Park shop. Is it a sign that no matter how bad the financial situation on Central Road might get he's there to watch over us and guide us benevolently towards contentment and abundance, or is it that he's merely attracted to Worcester Park by the idea of having his shiny pate waxed at one of the many beauty salons? Being rather sadly enshrouded in a plastic bag does seem to suggest certain limits to his deity though and why he should choose the deserted window of a TV repair shop rather than that of,say, Model Road & Rail is indeed a deep mystery that I shall ponder until at least my next cup of tea.

In other news it looks like the Brazilian-run cafe run as part of Cafe Piccolo seems to have closed with the big "Closed" sign on the front door being the main clue and the lack of tables and chairs combined with the removal of their Brazilian flag from the window as supporting evidence. Someone mentioned the other day that the proprietor of Cafe Piccolo was looking to sell and move on though I haven't had any kind of confirmation of that but it'd be a shame as our encounters with him have always been pleasant ones. Could it be that the two-for-one offer that Pizza Express have been touting recently has had a bad impact on his business?

Rose Spa 2 go

After a busy weekend of Stuff™ we came home to find our doormat adorned by a leaflet from the Rose Spa saying that they now have a mobile service called "Rose Spa 2 go". That means that I no longer have to leave the house to have my underarm wax (£10.50) and should I be feeling hirsuite enough to warrant the Brazilian (£19.00) or the frankly mind-boggling Hollywood (£36.00) I can be pampered in the comfort of Brinkster Central rather than having to slog the few hundred yards down to Central Road.

You can contact them on 020 8337 5348 or check out their website (details below) and apparently they also treat women.

The Rose Spa
http://www.therosespa.com/

P.S. to Simon. Hope you enjoyed the impromptu tour of Brinkster Central!

Do you feel like Chicken Tonight?

And all year??

If you love eating chicken then the Harvester at the Plough has an offer for you. According to the "thisislocallondon" website their recent revamp has opened up the position of "Chicken Taster" so anyone who feel qualified to regularly pass judgement on the quality of their chicken offerings is invited to apply before the May 11th deadline.

"The winner and a partner of their choice will get to sample succulent chicken meals for a whole 12 months, with a complimentary visit to the restaurant each quarter.”

To submit your CV by applying for the role of official chicken tester, email contact details and the name of the Harvester to testers@harvester.co.uk
Applicants’ names go into a draw with one lucky winner announced after the closing date, Monday, May 11.

I think the expression "partner of their choice" is a dangerous one though as I don't think they intend it to sound as though the Harvester will set up adulterous trysts over a chicken dinner. Partner of my choice? If we couldn't find a babysitter it would be Stephen Fry or John Simpson.

This is Local London

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/4330347.Chicken_taster_wanted_for_boozer/

Yet another Friday update

It's been a busy couple of weeks in the Brinkster household and this weekend promises more of the same but I just had to pop by and point you in the direction of the latest Worcester Park Life magazine, which you can pick up from selected outlets in Worcester Park, as it contains the "Directors Cut" of my recent post on go-karting and The Noble Savage's excellent first article in there. You can find mine on page 18 and hers is on page 22 though if you can't find a printed copy you can browse the pages online at the website (details below).

I hope soon to be able to regale you with tales of The Midas Touch, a review of my new camera (Panasonic DMC-TZ7) and my recent journey on the X26, to name but a few.

One thing I've been hearing is that some of the Hamptons residents are suing St James Homes because of the poor build quality of their homes. Before I put anything else in print do you know more?

Worcester Park Life
http://ourkt4.com/

The Noble Savage
http://noblesavage.me.uk/

The Brinkster's go-karting post
http://brinkleyroad.blogspot.com/2009/04/surbiton-raceway-karting-surrey.html

Sutton Council at it again

You talkin' to me?? YOU TALKIN' TO ME?

Mrs Brinkster reported last night that De Niro's Pizza was shut and has a big sign saying that it's going to be opening under new management. Undoubtedly inspired by the Huntsmans Midas Touch transformation they'll be aiming to corner the market for Italian food at the top end of Central Road, as opposed to the bottom (La Mama) or the middle (Cafe Picollo, Pizza Express, Papa Johns).


Now for those Worcester Parkians in the Epsom & Ewell or Kingston council parts please excuse me while I rave incoherently about Sutton Council and mop up the blood spilled from the repeated concussion of my head against my desk. Just when I thought that they'd exhausted themselves in the money-wasting stakes with the horrendously conceived Sutton Life Centre they've managed to top it with, as the local Guardian reports, "Multimillion pound plans for a green Sutton High Street unveiled"
As we've seen with a variety of Sutton Council proposals they enter into a "consultancy" exercise worthy of the Vogons in "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" where they'll put up a turgid and uninteresting document (116 pages in this case) and when nobody can be bothered to read it and write in to object they assume that apathy is the same as enthusiasm. If you want to see the plans for yourself you have to go either to Sutton or Carshalton as they won't be visiting any other council-tax paying location in the borough.

For the sake of brevity I'll not go through all of my objections but will instead highlight point 9.12 which, to my mind, illustrates the gap between ideal and reality:
"Sutton town centre is served well by public transport services. There is direct rail access to London Victoria, London Bridge, Croydon, Epsom and Wimbledon."
Now I don't know about you but if I want to go shopping, and by that I mean proper browse-around-the-shops-have-lunch-and-make-a-go-of-it shopping, I'll go to Kingston. If we don't fancy the crowds we might vary that with Epsom or Wimbledon and if we have a particular need we'll head over to the Purley Way in Croydon but rarely, if ever, will we think of going to Sutton any more. If I was at London Bridge or Victoria I wouldn't be thinking to myself that a trip to Sutton was going to be a retail revelation and if I was at Croydon, Epsom or Wimbledon I'd just walk straight out of the station and go shopping there instead. Now that Woolworths and Gamleys have gone from Sutton there's precious little to bribe the little Brinksters with so as far as they're concerned it's akin to a desert wasteland in the "fun" stakes, which does not a good shopping trip make. For me the the only useful thing that Sutton has which the others don't is a Computer Exchange (CEX) which comes in handy sometimes but I can nip up to the Tottenham Court Road branch from work instead.

And if you read to page 72 of 116 in the consultation document you'll find how they propose to integrate trams into Sutton Centre, namely by sodding up the existing traffic arrangements. Trams around the one-way system? That'd be interesting.

Quite why the Council think that Sutton residents are going to welcome this is beyond me when even the chairman of the Sutton Environment Network has called it "wrong-headed" and coming from a corporate environment that has a honed and toned PR department this stuff wouldn't even have cut it in the 90s (or earlier) and isn't what they should be spending our Council Tax on (the outsourced PR, the outsourced research or the actual proposal).

For me one of the best things about the Guardian article was the first comment at the bottom, which I'll reproduce here as I love it:
"sfocata, Sutton says... 11:46pm Tue 21 Apr 09
So let's see... the Village Quarter is the scummy bit and the Exchange Quarter is, er... the shops. Then the Civic Quarter is the bit around the Civic Centre, and the Station Quarter is (I'm getting the hang of this now) the bit around the station! Just how much of these multi-millions was spent on this ludicrous branding exercise? Why not give each quarter its own unique swirl logo as well? Who's going to be first to submit an FOI to find out just how much has been wasted on all this "quarter" nonsense? It's a high street in a suburb, for God's sake! Make it green with proper policies, not with a rebrand worthy of Pseud's Corner."

Sutton Guardian
http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/suttonnews/4305351.Multimillion_pound_plans_for_a_green_Sutton_High_Street_unveiled/

Sutton Life Centre - The 'anti' Group on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=77008483054&ref=mf

Sutton Council - Sutton Town Centre Area Action Plan
http://www.sutton.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1398

Het is een mooie dag voor feesten!

The Worcester Park Blog already has a post about the new Acacia hair and beauty salon that opened last night on Central Road but didn't have a picture so if you're really that interested here's mine, and for the record the phone number's 020 8330 4164.


For our part the Brinkster Clan will be making the most of the fact that the trains are actually working today to go to Holland House 2009 this afternoon in Trafalgar Square to celebrate everything Dutch and the upcoming Koninginnedag (Queen's birthday) so while Brinkster Minor will be indulging his love for chips with fritesaus, the rest of us will be scoffing poffertjes and there may be beer... possibly... well, definitely.

There will be plenty of other things to do than eat and drink and whether it's taking a tour of the Dutch paintings in the adjoining National Gallery, meeting Bert and Ernie from SesamStraat (Sesame Street), listening to the live bands or watching the Dutch football skills there should be enough things to keep us out in the rather promising-looking weather. If you're at a loose end today and looking for something to do outside that's a bit different you could do a lot worse! Plus it's free.

Tot ziens!

Holland House 2009
http://www.holland.com/uk/hollandhouse2009/

SesamStraat
http://www.sesamstraat.nl/

No Bikehut? No problem

Readers who've been with me for a while may remember the whole Bikehut fiasco back in 2007 where they were due to open a store in the old M&S store by the Huntsmans Midas Touch and got as far as advertising for staff, only to pull the plug on the whole idea. Yes?

Well, it turns out it wouldn't have made much difference anyway as all of the Bikehut stores are either being closed or 'rebranded' as Halfords, their parent company. With a big Halfords in New Malden it's pretty certain a Worcester Park one would have got the chop. The Times reports on the whole thing, including some spectacular management-speak:

Halfords has scrapped its chain of standalone cycle stores just two years after launching the shops. The start-up formats — trading as Bike Hut and Cycle Republic — will either be rebranded as Halfords or closed at a cost of £1.2 million.

Prepare yourself for some euphemistic corporate-cobblers:

Halfords said the pilot chains “have been impacted by the increasing success of our superstores in the premium market segment and the migration of sales to the web, particularly for accessories. Consequently, we no longer believe that the stand-alone concept will deliver the absolute levels of financial return demanded for Halfords investments”.

We don't care, we've got Cycle Power!

The Times - Halfords axes specialist shops after two years
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article6103398.ece

Cycle Power
http://www.cycle-power.com/