Column: December 2017

Spoke ‘n’ words

There is a two-wheel paradox on the

estate. All around us are invitations

to get on our bikes. There are two

Santander cycle stations on Golden

Lane, barely 100 metres apart. Other new bike-hire schemes seem

to be popping up regularly. Nearby Old Street sees a daily rat

run of pedal pushers, speeding like

guided missiles to work and back.

They even have their own café,

Look Mum No Hands! And cycling

certainly fits the City Corporation’s

Air Quality Strategy.

Yet here inside the estate, there are

NO CYCLING signs everywhere.

The one on the wall of Hatfield House

is terrifying: “Action may be taken

against anyone ignoring this

request under the 1990 Environmental

Protection Act”.

The threat is backed by action.

Children on bikes are ordered to

dismount, and last month a bunch

of parkour stunt riders, having sneaked

onto the Great Arthur House roof

garden, were promptly marched off

the estate by police.

Draconian policies are unfortunate,

because the estate’s design is so

enticing to cyclists. It looks like an

urban playground, and despite

technically being a private estate, its openness is one of its most attractive

features. It is built on a series of

raised platforms, so heavy use

impacts on the underlying structure.

This is why attempts to control the footfall of marching City workers

and delinquent cyclists are not

entirely unreasonable.

A hint at a third-way solution arrived

last year when we got a community

cargo bike. Up to now it has been

used mainly as a fun ride for children

(and parents), but it has recently

come under new management so

maybe now it will be steered towards more suitable activities such as

ferrying shopping, bits of furniture

and bags of waste to and fro.

The success of the cargo bike shows

how strict rules can, with measured

regulation and cooperation, be gently

broken with no great loss to public

order or safety. In time we might

even get a few NO KIDS IN CARGO

BIKE signs, but that would be a

small price to pay to see wheels

spinning freely around the estate.

On the move...

Other forms of transportation have

found a niche locally. There is the

Baltic Street Chapter, a bunch of

motorcycle couriers who hang out

in the no-man’s land between Baltic Street East and Baltic Street

West, eating sandwiches and looking

tough; there is the early-evening

mass occupation of Kennedy’s fish

and chip shop on Whitecross Street

by black-cab drivers. And a yellow

minibus trundles around our streets,

leisurely picking up and dropping off

passengers.

This is the 812 hail-and-ride service

provided, strangely, by Hackney

Community Transport (hackneyct.org).

You wave it down like a taxi. Seniors

and children under 16 go free,

otherwise it’s £1 per journey. The route

takes in Golden Lane, then snakes up to Sainsbury’s at the Angel and

onward to somewhere around

Haggerston. Its friendliness is one

of the service’s best-kept secrets.

Branch out…

The Tree Council’s National Tree

Week passed recently without much

fuss hereabouts, but for die-hard

enthusiasts Golden Lane does have

a few quality tick-list specimens.

At west end of Bowater House there

is a monster Indian Bean Tree. At the other end of Bowater, on Fann Street is

a Canadian Sugar Maple. And in the

beds at Hatfield Lawn there is a

Judas Tree, the national tree of Israel.

Add others (Mexican Cherry, Cedar of

Lebanon), and on the Golden Lane

Estate you can practically travel the world in trees. If you did so, it

would not be without controversy.  

At the west end of Bayer House

stands what official documents say

is a beech tree. But one of my

Basterfield House neighbours is

adamant that it is not a beech but a

poplar. Now an expert has stepped

in to verify that the disputed tree,

planted in 1989, is in fact a beech, Fagus Sylvatica, a “fastigate

form of beech that typically grows to a height of 12 metres”.

Live and learn...

The Gresham College website

(gresham.ac.uk) is the place to go

for a juicy free lecture. There are

plenty on offer, both to attend at a real

college in Holborn and at other City locations, or to watch online. There

was a good one recently about how

Scotland tried to ban Christmas carols

in 1582, but I have become hooked

on two in particular: ‘From Mr Pickwick

to Tiny Tim: Charles Dickens and

Medicine’ and ‘A World Without News?’, by former Guardian editor Alan

Rusbridger. Bliss.

An edited version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper,
edition number 061.