Shepherds Bush – the end of Ginglik

 

Shepherds Bush Green

I’m sure somewhere there’s a society whose aim is to get time and tide to stop and wait for someone. There’s probably one dedicated to getting moss to grow on stones that are constantly being turned over.

Then there’s certainly a group called The Shepherds Bush Common Improvement Project. These people have been granted funds and rescourses to improve Shepherds Bush.

The individuals behind it have no doubt been on expensive two-day courses called ‘Buffing Excrement, It’s All in the Wrist!’ and ‘Let’s Throw that Lovely Shiny White Thing we found in that Shelled Sea Mollusk in Front of a Female Pig – To See What Happens!’

I actually saw the presentation the designers and archictects of the SBCIP gave when they first propose their Improvements. It was held in front of Peacocks in the Shepherds Bush shopping center and involved some boards with pictures on.

The pictures showed a sort of buzzing café society with elegant people sat on neat benches, chatting and relaxing, bathed in a golden West London sunlight, on a re-landscaped corner of Shepherds Bush Green; the sharp corner, opposite Argos.

Architects really (really!) think it will look like this

These pictures did not depict the three lanes of grid-locked traffic constantly in attendance on either side of that end of the Bush, nor the fug of gray, polluted air. Neither did they show any heroine users flopping about like Dali drew them. There were no police in full riot gear arresting 12-year old stabbers, no radial splat patterns of vomit or cardboard clusters of temporary shelters for the homeless.

Bad things stop when you build benches in the middle of a traffic jam.

Ginglik bar

One thing these improvements will certainly achieve, however, is the end of Ginglik, perhaps the only establishment around Shepherds Bush, besides The Polish Restaurant, that lends the area any real character.

Ginglik lies under the proposed project area and so it has to go.

Ginglik, a well-loved underground venue for live music and comedy, is basically a converted public toilet. It oozes character and is very well run. Closing it down so that concrete benches can be bolted onto the end of the Green is, in reality, an act of turning it all back into a toilet.

Local MPs and councillors - all currently trying to put new, unnecessary bus routes through quiet residential areas - are backing the project (all…except MP Andy Slaughter).

I suggest you complain.

Holland Park – Photo of the Week

The Castle - Holland Park Avenue

W11 Welcomes Gelato Mio

Sometimes everything falls into place in Holland Park. A BMW dealership closes down and an ice cream parlour opens up.

And not just any old ice cream parlour. This one is the real thing, all proper Italian, fresh and homemade.

In something of a first for this blog, I sought out the owners (Carlo and Simone) and asked for an interview. My thinking being that if it went well, maybe there would be some free ice cream in it for me.

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Gelato Mio - 138 Holland Park Avenue

So, this is a husband and wife operation? Yes, this has become our joint project; an attempt to change careers and be our own boss. The initial idea was mine, but without Simone nothing would have been possible.

Are you really Italian? Yes, I am 100% Italian, coming from the Alps. As most Italians do, I love good gelato and while living in London I was really missing it. So I decided to give it a try and left my previous career in finance in order to start Gelato Mio.

What is your happiest memory of ice cream? Well, the opening of Gelato Mio is surely the happiest memory so far involving ice cream.

How comes you know so much about ice cream? Apart from my personal passion for ice cream, I’ve got two veteran Italian ice cream makers helping us out with all the technical aspects of ice cream preparation.

Did you pick Holland Park because it’s so fantastically rich and well-to-do? I’ve been looking at a number of locations for several months before discovering Holland Park. I fell in love with the area as soon as I saw it the first time and I’ve tried very hard to secure a shop here. I love the area so much that me and my wife also recently moved here.

My favourite flavour so far (I’m working my way through them) is Strachiatella, but I thought that was a type of stringy cheese? LoL! No the cheese is stracchino. Stracciatella is a popular Italian flavour made with pure milk gelato and Belgian dark chocolate shards

The ice cream

Which are your favourite flavours? And are you working on any new ones? My favourite flavour is stracciatella too. However I love to try new flavours and owning an ice cream parlour helps me a lot in this. We try to introduce new flavours every week. For example, this week we just introduced green tea gelato and we improved our tiramisù recipe.

Is everything really made in-house? All our ice cream is made in our ice cream kitchen at the back of our store. If something doesn’t get sold after 4-5 days, we organize an ice cream based party for all our staff. However we only had to do this a couple of times since the opening, so there is no danger of getting bored of gelato.

Do you think you could teach Mr Pumpernink how to make a pizza? For pizza I have a secret family recipe, but I would get into trouble with my mamma if I shared it.

Do you know who Mr Whippy is? I saw his van once or twice, but I’ve never met him in person.

www.gelatomio.co.uk

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Maybe our good luck will continue. Perhaps an estate agency will go belly-up and be replaced with a toy shop. Fingers crossed.

Holland Park – Photo of the Week

Statue of Saint Volodymyr

Scenes from the Park #1

In normal parts of the UK, it wouldn’t be all that odd to find an abandoned car in the local park.

In some parts of the UK, it wouldn’t be odd if the abandoned car had a dead body in the boot and a roof-rack full of Vimto-flavoured ecstacy pills.

This is modern life. In fact, if it wasn’t smashed up and set on fire, the local council might actually incorporate it into the park, as something for the kids to jump on, or the heroine addicts to sit behind on windy days.

Old car pushed though Holland Park

In Holland Park, W11, however, the sight of four youths pushing what appeared to be a discarded Fiat was just bound to have a more innocuous backround story.

‘Did some joy-riders dump that here?’ I asked, as the youngsters shouldered the jalopy down the pathway.

‘No,’ came the polite reply. ‘It’s a prop we’re using in our production of Tosca.’

a prop for a production of Tosca

Holland Park – Photo of the Week

C Lidgate, Butchers on Holland Park Avenue

Hurry, Grab Some Prime W11 Real-Estate

This sums up Holland Park…

Unmodernised garage with pitch roof and double doors, £100,000.

I like that the description claims that it ‘…is within easy reach of the amenities on Holland Park Avenue, such as Tesco and Starbucks.’

As if there’s a garage in the whole of Britain that isn’t within easy reach of a Tesco and Starbucks.

Bargain W11 Garage, unmodernised

Holland Park Residents Demand Shepherds Bush Be Moved Further Away

Not really, but they are hopping mad about Buses.

The Royal Crescent Residents Association is fighting a plan that would see a second bus route (presumably full of poor people going to work) passing through the their Grade II listed environment.

To be fair, the southern half (quarter surely?) of Royal Cescent has become somewhat of a rat-run for speeding traffic and, sadly, there have been two deaths and two serious injuries at the junction with St Ann’s Villas in the last nine months.

The Crescent (where a garage costs £100,000) used to be zoned as a residents-only road. The campaign aims to not only halt the new bus route but also reroute the exisiting 295 bus service to make the crescent quieter, cleaner and safer and, of course, posher.

more: TFL’s plans for new bus route.

To The End Of The Line – Holland Park

Here’s an excerpt from To The End Of The Line – a blog by Ian Jones, which is a tour of every London Underground station…

Stepping out of Holland Park you can, ahem, smell the affluence. The building itself seems to exude a certain well-to-do mentality. It’s eerie to emerge here just one stop on from the pell-mell patchwork of communities that is Notting Hill. And you can forget your currency exchanges or taxi cab firms sheltering next to the station; here they have a nutrition clinic.

Read the Central Line: Bond Street to Ealing Broadway in full.

Shepherds Bush Roundabout, Blue Thing Explained

Having stared at it on and off for nearly 10 years, I thought I knew what this odd looking thing was.

Plonked on the edge of Shepherds Bush roundabout, like some giant chemical toilet, I always thought is was simply a solar-powered water feature.

Sun shines, blue water cascades. That simple.

I’ve also heard many people explain it away as something Thames Water built to reflect the level of water available in London’s reservoirs.

But that’s not it either. It is called the Thames Water Ring Main Tower (this title may have caused the confusion) and was built in 1994 to celebrate the completion of a giant ring main which serves London.

It is actually a (wait for it) fifteen metre high barometer. So now you know.