Column: September 2018

Summer slowed to a crawl this year on Golden Lane. The excitement of the World Cup and Wimbledon faded quickly and, once the hot weather arrived, a snail’s pace took over. The concrete repairs across the estate left behind a film of fine dust, so suffocation looked like a distinct possibility. But still nobody seemed that bothered. Even the ever-present bitching about the City Corporation and its serial crimes against happiness fell into a lull.

Then the weather changed, the exam results rolled in and the children began to steel themselves for a new school year. It was time to wake up and get moving. Now the new football season is back in full swing, 2018 has found its legs again. In Summer, our tennis courts are plagued by would-be Wimbledonians. But already the netball teams have moved into that space with their fierce tactical shouting and piercing whistles. I can feel hackles raising in Cullum Welch and Crescent House already, as those are the blocks within earshot. Angry postings to message boards are in the pipeline.

Sport is important for some residents, not so much for others. There’s a local tribal loyalty to Arsenal, which is a drawback (I support Liverpool), but even so it is fascinating to see attitudes to sport in competition: to spectate or to participate? For fitness or for fun, health or happiness, whose side are you on? In the corner of our estate at the junction of Baltic Street and Goswell Road is the People’s Choice cafe. Nowadays it is a sanctuary for stressed office workers and anyone just passing, but some years ago, I’m told, it was a resting place for off-duty training staff from Arsenal FC, who would be joined occasionally by squad players for impromptu team talks and mugs of stewed tea. I like these kinds of stories.

Yes, times have changed. Sport is now a serious business; spreadsheets, analytics, psychotherapy and a new pair of Adidas Predators are today's essentials. We have a number of betting shops locally, but I am yet to convince anyone that a flutter on the horses is as good as a frantic half-hour session on a rowing machine.

I’m not a slob, but I fell out with our estate's gym, Golden Lane Sport and Fitness (GLSF), for a number of reasons, the most serious being a failure to promptly repair busted machines. They also got rid of the punchbag, which really got my goat.

But all that has changed recently and new machines have just been installed as part of what is punted as an £80,000 refit. Residents harbour the suspicion that any investment in GLSF, which is run by the Fusion chain, is for City workers rather than residents – and that rankles.

GLSF does at least support health initiatives such as Exercise on Referral in partnership with GP surgeries. It also connects parents and children to Fit for Sport, which runs activities during school holidays, though these are charged at a market rate and are beyond the means of many. A discount rate is offered to over-50s in GLSF’s Young at Heart membership. And City of London Time Credits can be swapped for gym and swimming sessions.

I advise residents to use GLSF whenever they can. There is a huge variety and diversity of sports available, not only a gym staffed by skilled and friendly trainers, a swimming pool, a badminton court, two tennis courts and a multitude of classes in the ‘glass box’ studio. As I’ve stated already, the tennis courts double as netball pitches, the badminton court is also used in down-times for table tennis, the swimming pool has a hoist and occasionally runs assisted swimming sessions for the disabled. There's even the chance to learn the basics of scuba diving. The studio covers everything from the gentle (yoga, pilates, aerobics) to the more energetic reaches of individual sport (kickboxing, bodycombat, bootcamp fitness). If the cost is likely to be prohibitive, I point residents to City LivingWise for advice on free or low-cost exercising for good health. For the big team sports (football, cricket, rugby), there are few opportunities here in the City.

Aside from all this, the urge to be active will always find its own form of expression. Next to the Basterfield Rotunda tree garden here on the estate is a designated soft-surface ball-games space where football-fanatic boys (and girls, more commonly these days) practise keepy-uppies and precision spot kicks long after their parents told them to stop. In Cuthbert-Harrowing House we have a (reluctant) young basketball ace. Embarrassingly, his mother carries around on her iPhone a video of him effortlessly planting balls through the hoop from 20 metres. The scene plays on, over and over, until you start to suspect it’s all a stunt, some sort of trick photography. You are wrong. It’s for real. Her son is just monotonously good at basketball. He plays for pleasure, and that's what makes him a winner.

To have your say on the Mayor's city-wide strategy for sport, visit the Assembly's Talk London website. Billy Mann has lived on the Golden Lane Estate for 24 years. He is a City of London Community Builder and blogs about neighbourhood happenings at basterfieldbilly.blogspot.com.

An edited version of this column appeared in the City Matters newspaper, issue number 081.

Picture: North End, Birkenhead

Front and back

I made this after reminscing with Stuart at Headway East London about Birkenhead, where he grew up and where I had my first job, at Bidston Observatory. We were looking at a map and I noticed an interesting road pattern, so I nicked it. "Typical Scouser!" Stuart remarked. I gave the finished piece (a miniature postcard-sized thing) to Stuart as a gift. He was quite touched by the gesture.

Diary: August 2018

9 August, 2018, Hackney
For the third week in a row, Sari has remembered my name, stating it to me directly as a greeting, eg, “Hello, Billy, how are you?”

11 August 2018, London
At Tate Modern.

21 August 2017, London
The City of London Corporation is a systemic dictatorship. Discuss.

21 August 2018, London
On the train to Basingstoke.


It starts with a quote from HG Wells: “Who bears affection for this or that spadeful of mud in my garden? Who cares a throb of the heart for all the tons of chalk in Kent or all the lumps of limestone in Yorkshire? But men love England, which is made up of such things.”

22 August 2018, Moulsford, 03.45
RIP Margaret, 95.

23 August 2018, London
Great birthday message from cousin Jan in Florida, who called me an "old spinner of wicked tales". Put it on the headstone now.

30 August 2018, Hackney
Front and back.

31 August 2018, LondonAmong the story options for the Education Centre’s ‘Victorians’ primary workshop is one about an explosion in 1866 at the Oaks Colliery in Barnsley, Yorkshire. When I advise students how to write a good headline, I ask them to find an ACTIVE VERB that tells the reader what happened. This is not as simple as it sounds. The verb they choose will show emphasis and nuance. It will show the reader how they have interpreted the facts, the meaning they attach to what happened. ‘Yorkshire colliery EXPLODES’ is not wrong. 'Colliery explosion KILLS 361’ tells a deeper story.

But the word EXPLOSION is problematic. Nine characters, three syllables, it doesn't really pack much of a punch. I asked one Y6 pupil if she could think of a shorter word beginning with the letter B that could be used instead of EXPLOSION. I was hoping for BLAST. The girl put on her thinking cap, ran a few words through her head, then leaned slowly towards me, filled her lungs and shouted “BANG!” in my left ear.

I’m not even sure “Colliery blast kills 361” is the best headline for that story. The word BLAST has problems of its own. But the beauty of trying to find it with my shouty student was that I got to witness a young mind thinking on its feet in real time. And that goes to the heart of working in journalism. The headline might not have been quite as good as it could have been, but the experience was true. It was exciting and rewarding. It was also great fun.

Journalism is obviously an useful way to frame curriculum subjects in reality, and experience always trumps theory. The Education Centre’s workshops go to great lengths to show that. Deadlines are enforced strictly, bad spelling or grammar is laid bare for all to see. Trying to write the same headline six times is part of the job. Teachers squirm when I ask them cheekily, “Miss, how do you spell embarrassed?” The students love that one.

I get to see pupils from Y5 up. The younger ones are fabulously honest and wickedly funny. They call me Sir, which I like. The Secondary students are in search of identity, so attitudes and opinions bubble up. I spend more time helping them to find their own voice than on how nouns can be transformed into verbs.

But in all cases I am looking for talent and wondering how I can nurture it. Some students arrive with sound writing skills, some with a good knowledge of research and information gathering. The moments I cherish most are when I can tell a student (and sometimes their teachers) that they are secretly very good at one of the less glamorous but essential journalistic tasks. Spotting that a picture could be improved by some careful cropping, or that a standfirst or pullquote repeats a word already used in the headline; these are the tiny nuts and bolts of quality that matter much more than is ever acknowledged. One of my personal triumphs is when I helped an SEN pupil type their name at the top of the story. Something simple and basic to the many is a mountain to the few.

Bad moments are rare. I get frustrated in a small way when some pupils expect me to do the job for them. All teaching is a mix of show and tell, but the implied unspoken contract is that pupil and teacher are in partnership. I am there to HELP them, not to be their servant. I can be quite blunt in stating this, of planting a stern piece of advice then walking away to see what happens. To return later to find a wrong spelling corrected or a headline improved, is a delight. If my advice has been ignored, well hey ho, you can’t win ’em all.

I have been volunteering in the Education Centre for close to five years. I arrived in search of something useful to do with my life after suffering a stroke. Before that I was on the editorial team of the Guardian’s Weekend magazine for 20 years. The great moments I recall from my working life are matched equally nowadays with the joy of passing on my skills to younger generations. Sometimes I am staggered by the talent I get to work with. Not long ago, two Y9 pupils (students work in pairs) looked totally stumped by the empty space on their page waiting for a headline about France winning the World Cup. “France CLAIM World Cup victory” would have been good enough, but when I revisited their desk five minutes later, I saw “Football’s coming à la Maison”. Brilliant.

An edited version of this article appeared as a blog on the Guardian site.