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.
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