Green space for playing fields in Handsworth

Looking north across the planned playing fields off Crick Lane, Handsworth

Unused green space in cities, land on which no-one has ever raised a building, is always eyed by interested parties. Unsecured and accessible it becomes a magnet for flytipping, temporary accommodation for travellers, a place to dump old vehicles or to use for free parking, a convenient tryst for prostitutes and punters, dealers and users - neither no-man’s land nor a public good as farmland, allotment site, park or playing field. Builders covet it, having no need to invest in preparing their footings on the rubbled foundations of a predecessor. The green acreage just south of the Victoria Jubilee Allotments is just such green gold. I roamed it in the 1990s when it was still private allotments, campaigned for years to hinder an initial plan to build houses over the whole 7 hectares of the original allotments – set up by an alliance of private plotholders minded to swap their earth for the cash to be made selling it to a builder.

The VJA allotments next to the planned sports area

The compromise S106A saved over 50% of the area for the new allotments delivered in June 2010 and now 10 years after the developer, first Westbury, then Charles Church and now Persimmon Homes, got planning permission, the latter has promised delivery in the next 12 months of the rest of what was agreed in May 2004 – playing fields, a children’s play area, a sports pavilion. On 5 September there was a site meeting just outside the gates of the projected sports area on scruffy Crick Lane…

Ghaz Hussain and Bob Churn (BCC), Danny (VJA Chair), Simon Macdonald (Persimmon) and Syed Ahmed (BCC)

Clll Zaffar who’d prompted the meeting was at another meeting at the council house but asked to be kept in touch:

Dear Waseem. I think Syed Ahmed'’s report to the next ward committee, which I can’t attend, will be more than adequate, so I will not compose my own version of yesterday’s excellent site meeting in Crick Lane, beyond saying that the sight of the early stages of the long awaited children’s play area, ready in 7-8 weeks and approved by previous local objectors, and assurances agreed by all present (Persimmon plus officers of the council) that we would have football on the site by the New Year and cricket by the summer of 2014, was convincing. I may have egg on my face by the middle of next year but I think we are at last going to get our sports area and all that goes with it.
The challenge now will be finding a revenue stream to run and maintain these great new facilities, as Ghaz has already indicated, placing hope in the CDT.
Sted Wallen is interested in helping with the latter as it relates to cricket as  I think he has told you.
I’m away until 5 Nov but still in email contact.
On another matter. Working with HHH over the last year has been a learning experience - even for one who’s lived in the area since 1979. I would v.much like to have a chat with you about the security, social cohesion-waste disposal link. There are some depressing accounts in other parts of Europe, especially Italy, of how waste management once reduced (as is happening in Birmingham) and privatised, creates conditions for the criminalisation of communities. There is as much potential money to be made from selective waste disposal as from drugs and people trafficking. Best wishes, Simon

From Syed Ahmed’s briefing note to Lozells & East Handsworth Ward Committee on 9 Sept’13 on the Victoria Jubilee S106 Agreement in which he refers to the remaining parts of the 106 agreement awaiting delivery – items 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6….

2.1 In May 2011, the City Council (Legal Services) wrote to Persimmon Homes, reminding them of the S106 obligations and advised that legal action would be taken unless there was a new commitment to the satisfactory and timely completion of the S106 projects.
3 Progress / Action Outstanding
3.1 Affordable Housing Provision: 24 affordable housing units have been built and are occupied through partnership arrangements with Midland Heart and Family Housing Associations.
3.2 New allotments: These were transferred to the Council on the 11th August 2010 and £21,620 commuted maintenance was paid in September 2011.
3.3 Handsworth Park and Play Area Improvement: A contribution was received and work has been carried out as part of the Park’s major Heritage Restoration project. £25,000 was received for Play Equipment to enhance the Park’s play area.
3.4 Sport Pitches: Persimmon Homes have rectified all outstanding defects to the cricket square and will continue their treatment work for the next 12 months before the square can be used; expected completion date is summer 2015. The football pitch is complete but now awaiting completion of the sports pavilion before it is used, it is expected to be in operation by January 2015. The pitches will then be transferred to the City’s Children, Young People & Families (CYPF) portfolio.
3.5 Public Open Space: New design specification for a Natural Play Area agreed and work has now started on site with a final completion date of October 2013.
3.6 Sports Pavilion: Persimmon will start building the pavilion upon confirmation of planning approval and discharge of planning conditions. Expected completion date is January 2015.

Syed Ahmed
North West Planning & Regeneration, Planning and Regeneration, PO Box 2470 - 19, 1 Lancaster Circus, Birmingham B1 7DJ
+44 (0)121 464 9839 syed.ahmed@birmingham.gov.uk

Perhaps I was exposed to a familiar piece of planning legerdemain but when I phoned Syed at his office on the 9 Sept, before the Ward meeting on the 10 Sept when Lin and I were in Greece, he swiftly thanked me for correcting him and said ‘of course, 2014’.
I will have to wait and see the public domain document that went to ward committee. I cycled round from Crick Lane back into Victoriana Way and had a look at the children’s playground that is to be ready this year. It seems local opposition to this use of the space has ceased and everyone’s happy with design of an interestingly landscaped space, not full of play equipment, more a small hilly arena under the shade, on one side, of mature oak trees, for walking, sitting and clambering. Perhaps I can visit with Oliver before this Christmas.

*** *** ***
Lin’s been working a marble patchwork for part of the space under our veranda – marble off-cuts left in a steel bin for anyone to collect beside the road at a stone works near Lidl opposite Alikes Bay and Lazaretto Island.

We’ve also put up the doors on the wardrobe in our bedroom – two doors we’d recovered from where they’d been left by wheelie bins below the village. In May Martin had helped us line up the frame and the hinges. Now at last they’re in place - a shelf above on which I’ve fixed a hanging rod. The challenge now is to work out how to fill the remaining space along that wall, using Lin’s sketch as a guide.

**** **** ****

Agnos Beach and Astrakeri Harbour, silted with kelp sand-spits making entry by boat tricky

Last Sunday, our last day before surrendering the car for a fortnight, we drove to the north coast to have a late afternoon picnic finding the sea at Agnos Beach, a shore of reeds, hard smooth sand mixed with earth fringing a muddy sea in which floated semi-composted weed, between the new harbour at Astrakeri and a pair of well-maintained hotel buildings that have taken over, almost turning their backs on, the narrowing beach at the eastern end of Agnos, a wasted cluster of uncompleted villas...

...a couple of small boats and little used fishing gear – parched nets and marker floats. We wandered through this part ghosted hamlet, blighted product of the all-inclusive holiday – and through the busy hotel, by its tidy blue pool and long bar serving free drinks for guests most of the day. All notices, including the safety guidelines, were in English and German.
“You buy this holiday in UK or Germany" I said "A friendly guide meets your flight, shows you a short walk to an air-conditioned coach bearing the name of the hotel. No need for maps or directions. It brings you here in an hour. You're shown comfy rooms with lovely views over a blue sea to the great Albanian peaks...

Meals are served at convenient times from a menu in English and German. There’s a pool and a bar with 'free drinks 10.00am to 24.00’ – well, included in what you’ve pre-paid – and wide screen TV with the relaxing murmur of soccer commentary. Outside in a grassed area laced with tidy slabbed paths are loungers and umbrellas where you can relax by the pool or the sea, ordering drinks and snacks. There’s a playground easy to watch and a reliable perimeter hedge and fence around the whole. No need to think of prices, negotiating foreign menus or questioning bills and nothing in Greek. If all you want is to pay your cash and relax amid sea and sun and pleasant shade with reliable food and drink, it’s perfect, with every Friday some local culture, 'a Greek night - all hotel residents welcome’”
Getting to the hotel, we’d wandered through two crumbling abandoned tavernas – one with a fading for sale sign attached - and peered through the dusty windows of several empty buildings with large windows intended as shops whose owners had given up on them before they could be opened for trade.

"Angela Merkel's in Athens today"

On the whole Linda and I don’t go walking in Handsworth and other parts of Birmingham. I do. I also cycle in and out and around most of the city within a radius of about three miles, sometimes further when cycling along the canal towpath to Amy’s house on the edge of the city. Lin does not cycle. In the Highlands my walks, at least in the last few years, have been solitary but for the dogs as Linda doesn’t share my feelings for that landscape – “too bare” she said, preferring the pastures and woods and river banks of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire around our Rock Cottage in the Forest of Dean. It’s in Corfu starting with Ano Korakiana itself that we have recovered the pleasure of shared walks. We set out with our long olive sticks – gifts from Mark; mine he topped with a deer’s cloven foot for my thumb, Lin’s more crooked with a fork for hers. Leaving the house so equipped our neighbours nod 

“Βόλτα; a walk?”

“Ναι, βόλτα”

 Walking in and around Ano Korakiana is one of our pleasures. It’s thus we see its agriculture

Grazings below Ano Korakiana

“Angela Merkel’s in Athens today.”
Richard Pine reminded me over Tuesday lunch at Bellissimo – a place Lin and I like, in Lemonia Square, off Nicholas Theotoki, just across, as I’ve been told, from an old brothel and its annexe. It was unlikely that the troika would be anything but unhappy about progress on the – how many was it? – ninety-one – perhaps - reforms attached to the third bail-out
“Of which” said Richard “they’ve done part of about three...I'm writing another op-ed at once on the basis the excrement's about to hit the air-conditioning"
Our conversation - over a shared Greek salad, omelets, sausages and bread with house white wine - drifted through the events that would follow a refusal of more money for Greece from Europe; a national bankruptcy, civil servants unpaid; leaving their desks to find other ways to support their families; national stoppages, direct and indirect…we can’t add much; what’s it feel like to leave the road on a high bend? A moment, almost of relief, of a decision made for you, silence, floating in the peace, soaring into the unknown, then – gravity applies – and “the film cuts to the view of a spectator; a cacophony of things plunging."
Earlier in the morning I’d remembered that on the previous evening’s walk, as Lin and I came down the zigzag at the western end of the village, below Mougades, we noticed, inside one of the hairpin bends, opposite wheely bins and the last bus-stop, a broad concreted circle, ever so slightly convex, a parking space under branches, between shrubs and flowers.

“Could that have been a threshing floor?”
Lin looked at it having seen my photos of them – of an alon, ἅλων, signature of a pastoral economy.
“Maybe”
“No no. It’s a large well, covered over. A cistern perhaps. Convenient beside the road”
Our conversation in Lemonia had drifted to discussing agriculture. I’d liked Richard’s reference to the ‘idea of terroir… rootedness of people…intimate relationship between land and people…vines and their olives.’

Ο Παύλος - Ήταν στο πάρτι γενεθλίων μας

Earlier I’d asked an old lady if she’d always lived in Ano Korakiana which of course she had. In my ragged Greek I said “Where is the alon, the threshing floor”
Katerina wandered over and leaned on the railing on Democracy Street looking down
I repeated my question, doubting I was making myself intelligible
They discussed this and Natasha spoke to them from her upper window above us, from where she often has conversations with neighbours in the street. It’s why I was so glad we recovered our balcony - to be able to have conversations between the house and the street. I held up a crude drawing I’d made of a circle with two stick figures holding threshing poles, looking as if they were fighting
“To make corn” I said in English which she understands “From wheat”
“Yes I know. Alon”
There was a spirited discussion between the three women.
“Would Lefteris know?” I asked Natasha
“He makes wine”
Gradually my lack of observational skills sunk in. Of course, Ano Korakiana doesn’t make flour nor thresh out corn. It’s a village of vines and olives; of sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl, rabbits and geese and some pigs and donkeys. Natasha was already running down a long list, tapping the fingers of each hand as she leaned on her balcony
“Spinach.Tomatoes. Marrows. Squash. Melons. Peppers. Cabbages. Lettuce….”
“Of course" I tried to catch up "and oranges and lemons and…and bees…and nuts” I tried to recover.
“But there is no alon”
Later in town Richard, who I was telling about this, asked
“How much does it cost to process a kilo of olives?”
I prevaricated, describing the organisation of the machinery for extracting oil from olives as shown me by Sebastiano Metallinos last February at the Co-op. The farmer delivers his olives – say 50 kilos; they go into a hopper and are washed of leaves and twigs; washed twice, I think; the pomace piles up to be used later for compost and, in some cases, to be made into blocks for stove fuel. Did the olive stones go into the masher or were they removed into the pomace? I didn’t know. There’s no longer a circular grindstone. The mash goes through two centrifuges. This is kept for what? Olive paste. At the other end of the sequence a slightly turgid flow of green gold oil pours from a horizontal pipe into waiting containers.
“There’s not an olive press in Corfu that makes any money. I thought there was one up by you in Peritihia that I was told was a working business, but I’ve since heard it's a rich man’s hobby”
“So how much does it cost to get oil from a kilo of olives, say?” repeated Richard
“I forgot to ask about prices. I don’t know. How does any village make a business of agriculture now? Everything has to be vast, intensive, mechanised and regulated with the means of export to places across the world. We know all that. Ano Korakinia’s agriculture was always more or less local, sustaining the village. Now it looks as if we are surrounded by vegetable gardens, allotments, at best, orchards, small holdings – half an acre of olives here, a few rows of vegetable there, a small vineyard, a patchwork of roughly defined spaces, fenced, gated, with an apothiki."

That evening we were walking by the co-op when Sebastiano, who’s this year’s Chairman, drew up outside one of its double doors and got out out of a truck with a trailer. He was in dungarees, chatting with his passenger, one of the Co-op committee.
“Good evening, Sebastiano. I have a question”
“Go ahead”
“How much does it cost to process a consignment of olives?”
"Ahah, you only want to know the cost of something that is a matter of the heart”
He peers at me with a broad ironic grin holding a hand to the centre of his chest.
“Of course of course, Sebastiano. I have a curious friend. As you know I care only about matter of the heart”
“Of course, Of course. The price is in litres not kilos. Early in the season…”
“You mean now?”
“From now until next June even. The olives produce less oil at the start – only about 12% of the original weight becomes oil, and that costs 80 cents a litre. Later in the season the olives produce more like 35%-40% oil and then the oil costs 30 cents a litre.”
Lin remarked “They don’t half mark it up by the time it’s in the shops...but going back to what Sebastiano's telling you, “I still think the price is in kilos….which would work out at 10 cents a kilo year round."
"How do you mean? You know I failed 'O' level maths"
"At the start of the season when you’re getting 12% - about one eighth - it takes 8 kilos of olives to make one litre of oil. Later in he season - the best part - it only takes about 3 kilos of olives to make one litre of oil. 8 kilos at 10c makes 80c at the start of the season; 3 kilos at 10c makes 30c later in the season."
"Oh right. Yes. Hm?"
I pointed to the rusting machinery beside the Co-op that I’d noticed earlier in the year.
“That was the first machinery for processing olives?”
“Some of it, yes, but some of it was for grinding corn” said Sebastiano
I suddenly remembered when he’d been showing me round the co-op earlier in the year that Sebastiano had mentioned bread-making as well as a shop. He’d also shown me the space where the belt had run to the engine that had once generated Ano Korakiana’s electricity – in the 1920s, or earlier, the first village in the island, in the the country possibly, to have its own electrical power.
“So where did the corn come from?” asked Lin
“From hereabouts” He pointed downhill
So perhaps there has been a threshing floor in Ano Korakiana, an alon, and wheat harvested from flatter ground below the village was brought up to have the corn beaten from it.

Flatter land below the village

** ** ** **
 I had a salutary lesson from Mark about knots. It was supper in his and Sally’s house last night. along with her brothers Tim and Henry and R, an octogenarian mariner with a yacht at Benitses. We’ve been planning the arrangements for slipping Summer Song and replacing her engine. Discussing with R why a new engine was needed I confessed the stupid thing that I’d allowed to happen on the boat in a prolonged katabatic squall off Barbati three summers ago when we were motor-sailing back towards Ipsos through short steep seas, leaning over and getting wet. The jib sheet had slipped its figure of eight stop knot, pulled free of its deck eyelet, dragged overboard and wrapped round the prop-shaft. I’d glimpsed it over the windward side running taut under the water and knew at once what had happened. We reversed the engine and pulled it free.
Not good, eh? Worse to come. On the other tack the same thing happened; this time stalling the engine. We re-started in neutral, went into reverse and recovered a well ripped sheet end. I freed the rest in the harbour next day, diving beneath the hull with goggles.
“So what” I asked “is the normal knot to secure the end of a jib sheet?”
“Figure of eight” said someone.
I looked meaningfully at Lin who’d been on my court martial for this event - repeatedly.
“No. No” said the others, including Mark.
He fetched a length of rope; tied a figure of eight in it and banged it on the table a few times - just what a brisk breeze will do. His knot came loose in seconds.
“Give it here” I said, skeptical, and tied an eight knot tighter, banging it on my end of the table
“There, that’s holding”
Meantime Henry had tied a kind of three ring blood knot in the other end of the rope. I was looking at this doubtfully, continuing to bang my tight figure of eight on the table, when of a sudden I was looking at a clean end of rope. It had taken just seconds longer than Mark’s to unravel. I didn’t see it happen. One instant the knot was there, the next - gone.
“Jeez! Thanks Mark”
I was chastened. Lin looked vindicated. Seldom have I had such a salutary demonstration of the frailty of a device I’ve relied on since I learned to sail. I studied Henry's knot; Lin memorized it.

And now the weather's shifting towards autumn; leaves falling, and some rain, with the landscape now and then turning ochre as though viewed through a filter. The oranges below the balcony are innumerable, green - ready for Christmas - and our lemons are, at last, turning yellow. The thought of leaving is deplorable; feels almost like desertion.

*** *** ***
Syed Ahmed’s report dated 3 October - summarized - to our ward committee, followed a request for news about what progress on laying out sports fields, a sports pavilion and children’s playground next to the Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA).

REFERENCE:  VICTORIA JUBILEE ALLOTMENTS S106 Agreement (2003/01514/LA) – Persimmon Homes

Purpose 1.1 To update the Ward Committee on the delivery of the obligations arising from the S106 Agreement, (the Agreement) since the last briefing (18/07/2012).

Background  2.1 On 23rd August 2004, the City Council secured an Agreement for part redevelopment of the former Victoria Jubilee Allotments. The Agreement contained obligations for the developer, Westbury Homes (now Persimmon Homes) to deliver the following:  

2.2 In May 2011, the City Council (Legal Services) wrote to Persimmon Homes, reminding them of the S106 obligations and advised that legal action would be taken, unless there was a new commitment to the satisfactory and timely completion of the S106 projects. 

3 Progress / Action Outstanding  3.1 Affordable Housing Provision by Persimmon Homes. City project officer overseeing: Simon McDonald. Completed - 24 affordable housing units have been built and are occupied through partnership arrangements with Midland Heart and Family Housing Associations. 

3.2 New allotments: Overseeing city council service and project officer - Parks & Nature Conservation, Bob Churn. These were transferred to the Council on 11th August 2010 and £21,620 commuted maintenance was paid in September 2011. 3.3 Handsworth Park and Play Area Improvement: Overseeing city council service and project officer - Parks & Nature Conservation, Bob Churn. A contribution was received and work has been carried out as part of the Park’s major Heritage Restoration project. £25,000 was received for Play Equipment to enhance the Park’s play area.

3.4 Sports Pitches. Overseeing city council service and project officer - Children, Young People & Families (CYPF), Gillian Dovey. These have been laid out but have not been transferred to the CYPF portfolio, as there were defects. The Project Officer is in ongoing discussions with Persimmon Homes to rectify the outstanding defects. The Project Officer carried out a site visit on 28/09/2012 and confirms that work is underway on the cricket square and it appeared that the ground has been levelled. The Project Officer is now organising an inspection to finalise the completion of this project. 

3.5 New Public Open Space, incorporating a children’s play area. Overseeing service and project officer - Parks & Nature Conservation, Bob Churn. Project Officer has now received outline specifications of the scheme. The Public Open Space has not been laid out within the development, but Persimmon Homes have submitted draft design proposals, including an informal children’s play area. The Project Officer is now seeking detailed schemes specifications from Persimmon Homes. Upon completion the City Council will receive a commuted maintenance sum of £27,350 for this scheme. 

3.6 Sports Pavilion. Overseeing city council service and project officer - Children, Young People & Families, Gillian Dovey. Construction is outstanding. The Project Officer has requested a formal update from Persimmon Housing with timescale form implementation of its project. 

Recommendations 4.1   That the Ward Committee note the progress made since the last briefing and that further progress is reported to the Ward Committee in the future.

Contact Officer: Syed Ahmed, North West Planning & Regeneration Team (0121) 464 9839 syed.ahmed@birmingham.gov.uk

Plan of the VJA site showing the allotments next to the projected sports areas

I wrote back to our ward councillors on 8 Oct’12:

Dear Ward Councillors. I appreciate the latest news following the meeting between Ghaz Hussein and the Project Officers responsible for following up on the implementation of the 2004 S106A on the Victoria Jubilee.  Para’s 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6 in the 3/10/12 report to Lozells and East Handsworth Ward Committee describe a situation unchanged since you drew this matter to the relevant officers' attention in June this year.  

I’m not clear why para 4.1 states 'That the Ward Committee note the progress made since the last briefing and that further progress is reported to the Ward Committee in the future’. 

What progress?

We knew that the S106A payments described between para 3.1 and 3.3 had been made and their provision implemented. The issue raised in June 2012 (and indeed in 2011 on several occasions) related to the lack of discernible progress on the playing fields, play area and sports pavilion.  We heard over 18 months ago why these delays were occurring - state of the sports pitches (3.4), objections by a tiny minority of new residents on the Victoriana estate to the positioning of the children’s play area (3.5) and differences regarding quality standards for the projected sports pavilion (3.6).

These problems have been well rehearsed. Unless I’m missing something, Syed Ahmed’s report repeats what was already known - certainly to councillors and other interested parties.  Naturally we all hope that your representations on this matter will end the extended delay in the full implementation of the 2004 VJA S106A.

It may be that positive things are happening that are not referred to in the report copied to me, but nothing in it suggests there has been progress since this time last year or even before that.  Is it possible to elicit a date when the playing fields might be available to the community? Are we going to miss out yet another sports season in 2013 before these start to be used?

The attached report makes no mention of the matter of access to the sports area. It would seem that there are bound to be issues arising in making it convenient for schools and other users to get into the site via Crick Lane, especially in coaches and minibuses. Will the children’s play area be accessible from the Victoriana Estate or will parents from there have to leave the estate and walk or even drive from their homes onto Hamstead Road and back up Holly Road and Crick Lane? Has this matter even been considered yet, or does it lie in wait as a further excuse for delay? Yours sincerely, Simon Baddeley, Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG) s.j.baddeley@bham.ac.uk 

This is how it happens...

This is how it happens. A space entirely green – private garden, allotment with trees and hedges, playing field - is taken over for building a new estate of private houses. Local people campaign against this for a decade helping to win planning gain concessions which, as anticipated by the developer, reduces the original footprint of hard surface by 50% or even more. The houses are built and occupied. The original application included two 1930s houses on the main road. One was demolished to create Victoriana Way – the road that leads into the estate – the other was converted into a temporary sales office, its front garden hard surfaced to allow would-be buyers to park. This house, after the new estate was mainly occupied, was sold privately, but only after a new property with detached garage had been built on half of the old house’s rich back garden, and a double garage built into its other half. Whittle away, whittle whittle, whittle. The new owner of the old house has submitted a planning application to build another two storey house on top of this double garage which he declares ‘surplus to requirements’ – hardly surprising given the parking now available on his frontage - extending into the small space left behind his house for a lawn. Is this worth making a fuss about? Isn’t the main damage already done? Lin and I, since our road’s residents’ opinion has been formally requested, submitted an objection.

From: planning.comments@birmingham.gov.uk

Subject: Comments on 2012/05776/PA have been received by the council.

Date: 30 August 2012 18:35:39 EEST

Comments made by Simon Baddeley of Beaudesert Road Residents

Thank you for informing us about this application to build a two storey house at the rear of 179 Hamstead Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, B20 2RL - 2012/05776/PA.
We believe that approving the proposed building will be detrimental to the area and therefore object to the application. Our objection is submitted in the context of policies to enhance the ‘liveability’ of our city, safety and security partnerships, the restoration of parks, street improvement schemes and measures to generate housing markets and the importance of not approving planning applications which set precedents contrary to these policies.For some, getting planning permission to dispose of part of their back garden for building is tantamount to finding oil there – especially if they are minded to take the profit and live elsewhere on the proceeds, bequeathing the in-filling to their abandoned neighbours. Parks and allotments and sometimes playing fields enjoy some statutory protection. Far fewer incentives or disincentives exist to protect private green space. 

Relentlessly we see the whittling away of city green space, diminishing the aesthetic of ‘leafy suburbs’, depleting the wildlife these spaces support, removing the Co2 processing capacity provided by trees and the absorbency that lessens flooding. Car ownership continues to rise. Everywhere we see householders and landlords slabbing over front and back gardens for yet more parking, building single, and in this case, even double garages on them. The Council, whilst constantly proclaiming its commitment to a cleaner, greener city, helps accelerate the hard-surfacing of Birmingham by approving applications of this kind. One reason for our objection to this application is that this development will destroy yet more green space, in an area that already has substantially less than the minimum recommended percentage of such space per head of population. The loss of even small green spaces in Handsworth, when aggregated, contributes to the continuing degradation of the urban environment, taking away yet more play areas, opportunities for cultivation and the capacity to absorb rainwater, subtracting from the local store of precipitated water and encouraging flash floods inside and, in the case of Handsworth, eastward into Perry Barr and the Tame River basin. 

This application involves the construction of a property extending over a recently built double garage in what was yet another mature garden next to Hampstead Road in an area that has already seen substantial and unpopular in-filling over recent decades. Between 2005-2008, no fewer than 84 new properties were constructed by Westbury Homes, now Persimmon Homes (ref: No. N/01514/03/FUL) on a large part of the Victoria Jubilee Allotments. Prior to that some 21 properties were constructed around a new road backing on to Bowling Green Lane and before that further houses were built around Crick Lane on another part of the Victoria Jubilee Allotments site.Another concern is that the applicant, whether intentionally or unintentionally, has created a back garden beside a new double garage, which consists of no more than a small lawn, as a precedent for circumventing advice on maintaining bio-diversity contained in the City’s 2008 Mature Suburbs Planning Guidance. It is through actions like these - equivalent of environmental ‘death by a thousand cuts’ - that our community experiences a relentless whittling away of its remaining green space; in this case a back garden made available for another house, in many other cases, gardens - front and back - stripped of lawns, flower beds, shrubs and trees to create yet more car-parking; homes with such tiny play-spaces for young children that they drop out of the family housing market, and become more liable for multi-occupation in an area already acknowledged as being blighted by an overabundance of such properties.  On this basis we withhold approval of any further hard surfaces being laid on our limited supply of green space, much of which has suffered from intense development over the years, not least the aforementioned estate accessed by Victoriana Way which from 2004 was built on private allotments.
As an additional reason for refusing this application we cite the planned development application N/04912/05/OUT in the rear of 173 Hamstead Road, Handsworth, B20 2RL rejected by the Planning Committee in 2005, for reasons which include those contained in our present objection to this application.
At first sight this application, with its required design and access statement, would appear  to conform to the City’s 2008 Mature Suburbs Planning Guidance on controlling residential intensification. The building shown in the application’s accompanying documents seeks to fit the style of other houses recently built on the new Victoriana Way and will be built over a recently constructed double garage, and extending into green space which, for the time being, is the applicant’s own back garden. 

But this application is far from an example of ‘preserving what is good and not making worse what is less good’ (first principle of Environmental Policy Advice 3.8 in the Birmingham Plan). However closely the proposed building matches the local vernacular with existing access to Victoriana Way, the fact remains that it is being built in a back garden. It represents yet another of many attempts at getting a windfall development past the planning rules and is clearly yet another opportunistic attempt at in-filling in one of Birmingham's best known ‘mature suburbs’.

*** ***

Jacqueline emailed me with an announcement. She’s archivist for Clavering in Essex, the village where I and my sister were born at Mill End Dairy Farm. Last year, I’d sent Jacqueline mementoes of my grandmother, Bar, and my mum, Barbara, for use in her book: ‘The story of the people of Clavering, at home and in service, during the Second World War’. 190 pages. 200+ illustrations. Fully indexed.

BOOK LAUNCH COFFEE MORNING

Clavering at War by Jacqueline Cooper
Saturday 29 September 11am - 1 pm
Clavering Christian Centre (former URC), Stortford Road

All welcome for coffee and cakes and the new book!

Enquiries  from author tel 01799 550462

Email jacqueline.cooper@virgin.net

Books from 24 Pelham Road, Clavering, Essex CB11 4PQ   £10 + pp postal copies

I guess it shows that I’m buccaneering the truth when on other occasions I say that all I learned of the countryside came from growing up with my stepfather, Jack. My grandmother, Bar Maine, bought an old cottage in Clavering in the 1930s and turned it into a farm – with Jersey cows, hens – full size as well as bantams – geese and some horses. 

Me on Gypsy, Bar on the hay wagon around 1945

She continued to live in and visit London, but the farm was her home, the place where she died in 1969. Jacqueline tells me it’s now a riding school and that its owner would be happy for me to arrange a visit. I shall certainly buy the book. I’m not sure it would be a good idea to revisit Mill End, despite its owner’s generous offer. Some things are meant to remain in another country, always present in imagination.

****

On Wednesday evening we drove down to the city to see the Edward Lear Exhibition - oil paintings, watercolours, drawings and engravings - brilliantly curated by Despina Zernioti -ζερνιώτη δέσποινα - displayed in a wonderfully made temporary structure, with gaps through which one glimpsed the grand décor of the palace...

... intended by Sir Thomas Maitland to impress the Ionians under our benign protection, by a talented team of helpers and supporters inside the Palace of St Michael and St George at the head of the Liston. We were entertained by one of the city bands in company with an assembly of visitors, here to say farewell to the exhibition which had run since May. 

Once I had read the journals of his almost solitary travels across Greece and Albania, and  a DVD series made a few years ago, that followed his routes comparing his landscapes with the same places now, I had to stop thinking of Lear as I, and most of his admirers still do, as a writer of enduring nonsense rhymes. Compared to Lear’s artistry in evoking a fascination with and love of place – especially Greece and most of all Corfu - his unique contribution to nonsense, long before Dadaism and Surrealism, seems a side line, possibly a sort of self-ridiculing compensation according to a psychological appreciation – one among five brilliantly illuminating essays in the exhibition catalogue – by Anthony Stevens. 

The Edward Lear Exhibition catalogue

An endearing and memorable clown becomes a troubled and courageous genius, explorer and remembrancer, his pen and brush connecting his eye and heart to the places through which he travels, touching things, even the sky and distant prospects – pre-photographic images as accurate and truthful as the most advanced cameras. One small sketch shows the Parthenon looming in isolated majesty beyond a grove of trees, surrounded by broad meadows. Amid the enthusiastic chat and pacings around the lovely exhibits I stared at these delicate tantalising landscapes, securely framed, protected by glass, neatly titled, I could hear their silence; grieve for the unreachable magic that Lear almost allows us to touch, and see and smell. We left morose, as I suspect did others.

Παλαιοκαστρίτσα - Paleocastritsa by Edward Lear

“When choosing somewhere to live” advised my stepfather, “settle somewhere where you can’t be disappointed. Go somewhere that has been comprehensively ruined” 
We’ve tried to do that and by and large succeeded. 
The Pimping of  Panorea by Maria Strani-Potts....Maria used this parable about Corfu where she was born, a citizen of the island.

...For years they had hated hard work and had come to resent the fact that they had to work in the fields and on the sea in order to survive. It is not known who had the idea first, but the notion that the time was ripe to exploit Panorea and to benefit from her eternal qualities sprang up suddenly and quickly spread widely amongst them. They decided that if they turned Panorea into a prostitute, they would benefit enormously. Panorea was so well known in the world, so popular, that they would have no problem in selling her charms at any price; so one morning members of the clan woke up, determined to take the lead in becoming her pimps. This would be beneficial to all, they proclaimed. It was such an easy thing to do. Panorea had been a muse to poets, painters, and writers. Kings, Emperors, and Empresses adored her and visited her often, and many scholars studied her history.  Pimping appealed to them; it was neither burdensome, demanding, nor did it need careful planning. They needed neither a substantial capital investment nor much in the way of hard work. In a very short space of time Panorea was turned into a commodity. In the beginning, fresh and wonderful as she was, she brought vast profits and satisfaction to her clients.....

Maria's writing always echoes in my mind, almost sounding aloud over my shoulder as I wandered by Lear's pictures of Corfu. I imagined a refutatory paragraph...

The woman is claiming rape. I detest and refute her ridiculous allegation. Even though it seems hardly necessary, I 've apologised - fulsomely and sincerely - for any hurt she may claim to have experienced as a  result of our very brief liaison. I've leaned over backwards to respect her temperament and sensitivities. Not only that, I have paid, through my lawyers, a generous sum to ensure that her exaggerated and embarrassing allegations are never brought to court. I am more than aware of the seriousness of the crime I'm so unfairly accused of, and in that light I have also given a very large donation to a local rape-crisis centre and indicated my readiness to fund the woman's visits. I will even pay for her to have long term psychiatric care, if she persists in succumbing to the mental problems she's managed to get her advisors to define as the result of 'a traumatic assault' bearing no relationship to actual events or the circumstances of our acquaintance - if that is what it was. If anyone has suffered with the level of hysteria and fuss surrounding what some might even view as a formative and even exciting experience, it is me.