The Transmitter Issue 4

FREE

THE MAGAZINE FOR SE LONDON

ISSUE 4 FEB 2009

WHITE HOT Valentine’s Jewellery

NO AIR

Tales of scuba diving and girls in wet suits

GOOD VIBRATIONS YOGA PILATES CYCLING BELLY DANCING

COOKING

with Celebrity MasterChef Winner Nadia Sawalha

We ve got your New Year s

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The Spa at Beckenham Tel: 020 8650 0233

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Pavilion Leisure Centre Tel: 020 8313 9911

Walnuts Leisure Centre Tel: 01689 870 533

West Wickham Leisure Centre Tel: 020 8777 5686

ISSUE 4 FEBRUARY 2009

THE MARTINI EFFECT TRANSMITTTER GIRLS IN WET SUITS AND WATCHES

CONTENTS 8

18

WHO IS PILATES? THE HISTORY OF PILATES

11

GOOD VIBRATIONS COVER GIRL ANNA VIBRATES FOR US - KUNDALINI STYLE

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SCANDALOUS SHE’S DARK, SHE’S SENSUOUS, SHE’LL TEACH YOU TO BELLY DANCE!

14

RE: CYCLING WE MEET UP WITH SOME OF THE GUYS AT THE C AFE ST GERMAIN

20

CORRIED PARSNIPS CELEBRITY MASTERCHEF NADIA WATCHES CORRIE INSTEAD OF COOKING

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TAKE IT TO THE BRIDGE JUSTINE FINDS FRIENDLY FOLK TO FEED HER FUSSY FAMILY

24

VALENTINE’S BUBBLY ROMANTIC CHAMPAGNE

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HISTORY OF THE SPORTS SHOE LIZ CLAMP TELLS THE STORY

32

STEINBERG HOWARD MALE AT THE DULWICH PICTURE GALLERY

26

VALENTINES SHOPPING TRANSMITTER GIRLS IN WHITE HOT JEWELLERY

34

PALACE PATCH SUE GROWS SOMETHING HARDY IN A MOIST ENVIRONMENT

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BELLYDWELLERS THEY’RE B ACK, AND THIS TIME THEY’VE FOUND SOMEWHERE TO STAY

40

THE BOOKSELLER JONATHAN’S FIRST B ATCH OF BOOKS FOR 2009

43

THERE’S A WORLD OUT THERE HOWARD MALE SEES WHAT COMES OUT OF THE CULTURAL BLENDER

44

CATHY’S COLUMN STUFF FOR KIDS

FITNESS AND HEALTH

FOOD AND DRINK

FEATURES

REGULARS

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ABOUT US Editorial Editors Andy Pontin Sub Editor Jonathan Main Regular Contributors Digging the Garden Sue Williams Digging the Music Howard Male Eating the Food Justine Crow Making the Food Nadia Sawalha Retail Therapy Liz Clamp Design & Production Art Director Nick Keeble Photography Smash Bang Wallop Printing AD Print Services Ltd Contact Advertising sales@thetransmitter.co.uk Listings listings@thetransmitter.co.uk Editorial editor@thetransmitter.co.uk

DISTRIBUTION

Copies of The Transmitter are delivered door-to-door in most of SE19 and quite a bit of the adjoining area. We also distribute the magazine through a network of high street shops, cafés and local libraries that are kind enough to help us to get copies out to everyone. We also have selected stockists where you can be sure to get a copy:

STOCKISTS Crystal Palace Triangle Bookseller Crow Mediterranea Glitter & Twisted Bambino Coconut Trading Smash Bang Wallop Upper Norwood Library Penge Penge Library

50 Westow Street 21 Westow Street 25 Westow Street 32 Church Road 73 Church Road 85 Church Road 39 Westow Hill 186 Maple Road

East Dulwich Mrs Crow@the Market ED Warehouse Indoor Market Zenoria Street

COVER Anna Lempriere and friend Photography: Smash Bang Wallop

The Transmitter is published by Transmission Publishing Ltd Registered in England 6594132

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WELCOME From the Editor

Ok, we admit it, 2009 could be a toughie.

So what are we going to do? Lie down and take it up myjumbie? No! We’ve got to go back to our corners, get a bit leaner, a bit fitter, and then come out fighting.

If you need a bit of help, this issue is packed with people who might just be able to give you a kick start to a fitter 2009. As you know, we normally have zero toleration for the kind of woolly thinking that tends to accompany anything associated with eastern mysticism (our motto being “if it looks like old Sanskrit and smells like old Sanskrit, it almost certainly is load of old Sanskrit”) However, giving full due to the seriousness of the current predicament and in the interests of national unity, we are temporarily suspending hostilities.

Plus, these people look really FIT! Enough of the stupid metaphors, what about all this credit crunch stuff? Well, if we all completely stop spending then the economy will go to hell in a hat-stand. What we have to do is spend, but spend with discrimination, with care and above all...SPEND LOCALLY! This issue is packed with a cherry picking of local businesses who have great things for your body, your house, garden, valentines date, kids tummy’s etc....what these folk need is a bit of local spending; it’s in all our interests to keep the area vibrant and alive..anyone for a boarded up ghost town?

Oh, and don’t forget to ask anyone advertising in this magazine for a small “Transmitter discount”, No, we haven’t arranged it with them but it’s worth a try and if they won’t give you one, tell us and we’ll name and shame them for not meeting you halfway after you made the effort! Just email localskinflints@thetransmitter.co.uk By cosmic coincidence, comedienne and grumpy old woman Jenny Eclair tells us in the January issue of Living South magazine that she cooked up some parsnip soup to help make ends meet (sounds as if she’s not being paid enough for her column guys) - but she didn’t like it. Well, I am sure, had she used Celebrity Masterchef winner and Transmitter regular Nadia Sawalha’s recipe for that selfsame dish, (page 20) she would have loved it - we did.

Nadia’s diary piece tells us how hard it can be to meet the diverse dietary requirements of one’s nearest and dearest.

Justine Crow has the same problem with her tribe - but finds a different solution, see page 22.

And just in case you think we’ve never been here before, you might want to check out this issue’s poem, Roundabouts and Swings written in 1917.

LETTERs

Come on you lot!

Send us your views.

Only Tim and Mary could be bothered this month! Surely there’s someone else out there with something to say?

A thorny issue

A long standing transmitter fan Dear Transmitter I have lived in the Crystal Palace area all my life (almost sixty years) and can remember when the transmitter was being built (1950s).

I always feel quite overwhelmed when I spot it in the distance or when it comes into view.

I have made up a poem about it.

Hope you like it, and that it doesn’t sound too corny.

Mary (Crystal Palace)

Dear Editor One reads with dismay of the Revd Rumseys’ decision to have a pop at Thornton Heath between the pages of your esteemed organ. This is not the first time that he has been guilty of publishing such slander.

One wonders whether Andrew’s continued doing down of the area might be the outward symbol of a repressed desire to live on the Heath of Thorns itself. Could the ongoing restrictions of his work forcing him to live in the vicarage - be smothering the possibilities of fulfilling his boyhood dreams?

Luckily, help is at hand. Although the economic climate will cause straightened circumstances for many, opportunities always arise for some. I suggest Andy could rent out a number of rooms in the Vicarage on the increasing domestic market and use the funds raised to sample the many opportunities to “Live in Extraordinary Beauty”.

Crystal Palace Tower There she stands so tall and regal On the hill just like an eagle Whether skies are grey and blue Always there to welcome you.

She can be seen from far and wide Even from the London Eye. I hope she never disappears.

She’s stood there over fifty years.

Don’t ever let her go.

POETRY CORNER Roundabouts and Swings It was early last September nigh to Framlin’am-on-sea, An’ ‘twas Fair-day come to-morrow, an’ the time was after tea.

An’ I met a painted caravan adown a dusty lane, A Pharaoh with his waggons comin’ jolt an’ creak an’ strain; A cheery cove an’ sunburnt, bold o’ eye an’ wrinkled up, An’ beside him on the splash board sat a brindled tarrier pup, An’ a lurcher wise as Solomon an’ lean as fiddle-strings Was joggin’ in the dust around ‘is roundabouts and swings.

‘Goo’-day said ‘e; ‘Goo’-day,’ said I; ‘an’ ‘ow d’you find things go, An’ what’s the chance o’ millions when you runs a travellin’ show?’

‘I find,’ said ‘e, ‘things very much as ‘ow I’ve always found, For mostly they goes up and down or else goes round and round.’

Said e’, the job’s the very spit o’ what it always were, It’s bread and bacon mostly when the dog don’t catch a ‘are; But lookin’ at it broad, an’ while it ain’t no merchant king’s, What’s lost upon the roundabouts we pulls up on the swings!

‘Goo’ luck,’ said ‘e; ‘Goo’ luck,’ said I; ‘you’ve put it past a doubt; An’ keep that lurcher on the road, the gamekeeper’s is out’;

Only time will tell.

‘E thumped upon the footboard an’ ‘e lumbered on again To meet a gold-dust sunset down the owl-light in the lane;

Best Wishes

An’ the moon she climbed the ‘azels, while a night-jar seemed to spin That Pharaoh’s wisdom o’er again, ‘is sooth of lose-and-win;

Tim Eveleigh Woodside

For “up an’ down an’ round,” said ‘e, “goes all appointed things, An’ losses on the roundabouts means profits on the swings!”

Patrick R. Chalmers (1872-1942)

Send your letters to editor@thetransmitter.co.uk

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trading places

A ROUND UP OF LOCAL BUSINESS INS AND OUTS

OUT Blue Mountain Cafe

What? Nice coffee shop (like the ones in Sydenham and East Dulwich) Where? Gipsy Hill Word on the Street: “People couldn’t be bothered to cross the road from the train station to get a coffee..”

IN Funky Junk

What? Retro bits and antiques Where? Westow Street Word on the Street: “a little bit of Islington in our own backyard”

Woolworths

What? You know.

Where? Westow Hill Word on the Street: “Everybody liked having it there but it would seem we didn’t spend enough there.”

Feast

What? Chocolate and beer shop Where? Westow Street Word on the Street: “Didn’t get things quite right somehow..”

Bright Hand Car Wash What? A car wash, surprisingly.

Where? Westow Street Word on the Street: “left my paintwork a bit streaky”

Crystal Palace Jewellery What? Budget price Jewellery shop that “Buys Gold” Where? Church Road Word on the Street: “Hmm”

Braziliana

Yak and Yeti

What? Indian/Nepalese Restaurant Where? Church Road (where Mehfil was and before that the Hungarian joint that was featured in revelatory News of the World Article - those special nights in the basement were really, er, special...)

Word on the Street: “not the most auspicious spot but good luck!”

Right Hand Car Wash

What? A “new” car wash.

Where? Same place as Bright Hand Car Wash used to be.

Word on the Street: “You can still see where they peeled the ‘B’ off the signs”

What? Interesting deli specialising in Brazillian food and supplies - not opened yet as we go to press.

Where? Westow Hill (used to be Sergio’s) Word on the Street: “Fingers crossed”

Open Access Screen Printing in West Norwood Having completed an MA in Print at Camberwell College of Arts and consequently discovering a lack of facilities to continue her fine art practice in South London, Lucy Bainbridge has fixed the problem by opening an Open Access Screen Printing Studio in West Norwood.

Over the last three months the workshop has been transformed from a cold derelict space to a thriving artists community.

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A collection of diverse practicing artists already use the studio, creating a supportive and critical environment. The open access screen studio runs on a10 day pass scheme or key holder membership,

with individual studios also available.

A gallery at the front of the workshop will be opening in spring 2009 so keep an eye out for that too. bainbridgestudio.co.uk 07970 929645

Stop Press Upper Norwood Library Launches New Website uppernorwoodlibrary.org

Crystal Palace Festival

Next Fest Saturday 28 March Watch This Space!!

White Hart How great was the last Crystal palace Festival?

SUPER!

Gipsy Hill Artists December saw the enterprising folk at The Gipsy Hill Workshops in Paddock Gardens, SE19 open their doors to Jack and Jill public for the eighth successive year.

Sell It Mama!

Gipsy Hill Mother & Baby Fair Local mothers unleash their inner trader to beat the credit crunch, selling quality second-hand clothes, toys, baby equipment and maternity wear to cash-strapped parents.

Just £20 will get local mums a stall for the afternoon where they can sell little Johnny’s No Added Sugar wardrobe or that old Phil and Ted’s stroller that’s cluttering up the shed.

Commercial stalls also available for baby-friendly local businesses.

For further details please contact rachel.dcruze@btinternet.com Saturday 14 March 11am - 4pm Christ Church, Highland Road, Gipsy Hill, London SE19 - £2 entry (includes raffle ticket and donation to Cancer Research) children free.

Building on the success of previous years the show offered a diverse range of work from nine artists and designers working in a wide number of disciplines including jewellery, fashion, sculpture, fine art, illustration and ceramics.

More details of the artists and craftspeople and their work can be found at gipsyhillworkshops.co.uk

Mr Cenz a.k.a Julian Phethean has been scribbling on surfaces since 1988. As well as still frequently painting murals on legal spaces throughout the UK and Europe he now also runs a community art company’ Positive Arts’ who specialise in education based Graffiti art projects with vulnerable young people. As well as his work on the White Hart pub in Crystal Palace, you can see his graffiti art at: mrcenz.com

Monster Print Sale Smash Bang Wallop are having a Print Sale.

There are big discounts on all framed and unframed prints for two weeks only From 31 January. Lots of evocative locally themed images and moody pics of the dinos!

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Fitness

Morris dancing

The Spa at Beckenham

tends to get a bad press and is routinely mocked. The Transmitter thinks this is grossly unfair, whilst accepting that these guys need to have a sense of humour.

We hear that there are excellent and entertaining local teams around.

One such is the Old Palace Clog team who hosted a Day of Dance on the South Bank last summer with a big finale outside the Royal Festival Hall. They are planning a similar event for 2009 and frequently take part in local Events such as the Crystal Palace Park Victorian Weekend. They have also taken this living example of ancient English culture out to Johnny Foreigner, having danced in Spain, Ukraine and the Czech Republic Old Palace Clog are hosting a Taster Session/Workshop on the evening of 29 January - see What’s On for details.

Has had a recent investment and development. They now boast a new impressive two level gym with over 100 work stations, full range of sessions and classes including personal training, PHIT (11-15yrs), GP referrals and primetime sessions of the over 50’s.

Get FIT

There are five state of the art studios with over 90 group exercise classes a week ranging from Aerobics, complete conditioning, Boxercise, BTS classes, Pilates and Yoga plus many more all at various abilities.

There is an eight lane 25m fitness pool and a smaller teaching pool with a moveable floor to create a greater range of sessions and activities such as lessons, lane swimming and Aqua Fit. For the children and families they have a wide range of buzz activities with coaching courses, crèche facilities, and soft play centre – Buzz Zone and holiday sessions.

In the near future there are more plans to develop the old health suite into a health and beauty spa.

For more information bromleymytime.org.uk 0208 650 0233

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Fitness

WHO IS pilates?

“Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness. In order to achieve happiness, it is imperative to gain mastery of your body. If at the age of 30 you are stiff and out of shape, you are old. If at 60 you are supple and strong then you are young.”

Joseph Pilates

Pilates is an exercise method,

designed to elongate, strengthen and restore the body’s balance. It has become increasingly popular in today’s culture especially with praise from so many celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston and Sarah Jessica Parker.

In 1880, the Pilates creator, Joseph Pilates, was born near Düsseldorf, Germany. Joseph was known to be a frail child suffering from many illnesses such as asthma, rickets and rheumatic fever.

In 1912, Joseph was living in England working as a circus performer, a boxer and a self-defence instructor.

During the first world war he managed to further his technique of physical fitness. Towards the end of the war he worked in a hospital on the Isle of Man. Here he helped patients unable to walk by attaching bed springs to the bed, which supported the patients’ limbs. This

led to his famous invention, ‘the Cadillac’, which, although slightly adapted, is still used today among other pieces of Pilates equipment.

In the early 1920s Pilates and his wife emigrated to America, where they opened a body conditioning studio. It became very popular, especially with the dance community as it offered a chance to enhance physical strength or recover from injury.

Many celebrities visited the studio, including legends such as Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn and Jerome Robbins.

In 1932 Pilates published a book called Your Health; he followed this with another book, Return to life through Contrology, in 1945. Through these writings his methods were able to be passed on after his death in 1967 at the age of 87. His method of exercise was originally known as Contrology but after his death it became known as Pilates.

Hannah Pontin

A Secret RETREAT Once, with a spirit of adventure and just because it was there, I went to a yoga class in an airless, windowless, sweat-filled room in Camberwell and stood next to Jenny Eclair. The walls of the room were so pink that it made your teeth ache and at the start of every instruction our teacher said, ‘Jenny and the rest of the class go into downward dog’. Or, ‘Jenny and the rest of the class do a standing forward bend’, whilst somewhere outside the room a succession of

increasingly frantic police sirens wailed by. At the end of the class, Jenny and I and everyone else were the colour of the walls and even though it was only 11.30 in the morning I wanted to stamp on the foot of one of the nation’s favourite Grumpy Old Women, torch the building and go to the pub. My chakras, dear reader, were, it’s fair to say, shot to sh*t.

This wouldn’t have happened at The Secret Retreat, because

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Secret Retreat Continued this has to be one of the most gloriously peaceful places in all of South London. Located at the White House, a grade II listed mansion situated in the rolling green parkland of Norwood Grove, the house was originally built in the1840s by Arthur Anderson the joint founder of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. known to you and me as P&O.Vandalism and neglect - partly through scratching around for a contemporary purpose means that much of the house has seen better days, nevertheless it still retains a tatty grandeur and at times so quiet and serene are the surroundings that you have to remind yourself you are in fact at the top of Streatham Common.

Just over a year ago, Taryn MacGregor gave it that sense of purpose when she and her team began offering Yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi and other classes here on a daily basis. There are also weekend workshops - with lunch in the Orangery cooked by Taryn’s chef husband - ranging from Ashtanga Yoga, to meditation, self-hypnosis and life coaching. Full details of these and other courses can be found at thesecretretreat.co.uk.

020 8767 0791

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CHRIS RUNS FOR SHELTER

Before The Transmitter began transmitting many readers will remember that there was the Palace Magazine which covered a similar patch and whose publisher Chris Thomas will be a familiar face to many around the Triangle.

We caught up with Chris recently, which was no easy task as he’s about six foot twelve and was in the middle of training for this year’s London Marathon. What madness is this? we asked.

Chris explained, “It’s been about eleven years since I ran the London Marathon, so I am a little rusty. But in 2008 I was determined to get fit and do something for a good cause.

Therefore, running the London Marathon seemed the ideal option.

So far I have lost 3.5 stone in weight and the training is going well.

I’m up to 15 mile runs so I’ve past the halfway mark with four months to go.”

(Although he has been spotted in the White Hart near closing time this is the exception rather than the rule!).

Not only that, but Chris is running for a very good cause. After seeing the significant rise in repossessions with the credit crunch and the lack of affordable housing in London, He decided Shelter would be a very worthwhile charity to raise money for, because, as he says, in 2008, there is a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the housing haves and have-nots. Housing is now the key factor determining a person’s health, wellbeing, and prospects in life. Because of Right to Buy and a lack of new building, 1.8 million households in England languish on council waiting lists, and the numbers stuck in temporary accommodation have soared. If you can’t afford to buy, and can’t get a council house, renting privately may be your only option. But this is often unaffordable to people on low incomes. The slums of the 1960s are gone, but the housing crisis still

exists. Shelter has achieved great things in its history, but its work won’t stop until everyone in Britain can access a decent, affordable home.

If you would like to sponsor Chris and help him raise his targeted £1,600 please go to his Just Giving web page at: http://www.justgiving.co.uk/ christopher_thomas

FUN RUNNERS Rumour that the editor of The Transmitter, not to be outdone

by Chris Thomas (see above), will be attempting next year’s London marathon dressed as Waterhouse Hawkins riding an Iguanadon have so far been described as ‘wide of the mark’ but should he decide to do so then a sensible move would be to join up with the Crystal Palace Fun Runners who guarantee that nobody gets left behind.

A small yet enthusiastic local running club, established over 30 years, it is dedicated to encouraging fun and participation. They have a wide variety of members catering for all levels of runners from those just looking to get fit to the serious marathon runner.

They meet on Mondays (beginners night – when run/walkers are welcome) and Wednesdays at 7.30pm by the Paxton head statue near the top car park in the Crystal Palace sport complex.

If you would like further information please contact: Jean Murdoch on 020 8656 7055 or jeanmurdoch@yahoo.co.uk They also have a brand new website; crystalpalacefunrunners.co.uk

GOOD VIBRATIONS

Anna Lempriere has been

teaching Kundalini yoga in South London for over five years.

“I work with all the community and believe yoga must be accessible for everybody. Kundalini Yoga works on the nervous system, immune system and builds a wonderful feeling of vitality and inner strength.”

Recently Anna has been working with children at Paxton Primary School. “I am helping build their sense of self, strength and focus.” She also works with small groups at home and has a mother and baby group in Dulwich.

“The mother and baby group came

about when I had my daughter seven years ago, I wanted to exercise and not leave my new baby at a creche or have the bother of organising someone to look after her every week. It’s hard enough to get ourselves to exercise, in this day and age it’s easy to get distracted, “ Then Anna heard of a class in Peckham where people could take their babies.

“I loved the class so much that it inspired me to begin my journey as a kundalini yoga teacher. I now teach a similar class where the babies come and soak up the atmosphere too and the Mums get the friendship, strength and relaxation they need.”

“I also coach confidence in communication in the city (those bods are going to need a confidence boost this year - Ed) and I run one to one sessions for both yoga and confidence with speeches.”

“For the New Year whatever we focus on and vibrate in January sets the tone for the rest of the year” So if you’d like to build strength and peace and keep this throughout 2009 call Anna on 07971 290464.

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“I was first introduced to Belly Dance when I saw a dancer at Glastonbury festival dancing with a pretty far out hippy band.” Recalls Colette Dolan (stagename Amira) as she dutifully spins once more for the Transmitter photographer in a rather cramped and makeshift ‘studio’ space.

“I looked for classes in my area and that is how it started. I had been to Irish dance classes and dabbled in tap dance when I was little but this was very different. I was hooked.

When I had enough experience and felt confident enough I decided to try my hand at performing.

I got a job in a small family run restaurant in Streatham. I was so nervous I spent the entire performance staring at the floor but I was thrilled that I had had the guts to do it.”

Once Colette had overcome her initial nerves she spent the next twelve years dancing in restaurants in the west end and performing at festivals, parties, corporate events and Arabic weddings, which were her favourite.

“At the reception the dancer leads the bride and groom along with eight or ten drummers around all

the guests until they reach their table. All the ladies sound the zagareet (a traditional high pitched excited sound) it really brings everyone together and puts a smile on everyone’s face - a great ice breaker.”

Colette was not a newcomer to performing when she discovered

It’s a great way to exercise every part of the body, not just the belly!

Belly Dance - she had appeared in the hit movie Scandal (as one of Murray’s Dancers) and had also been a dancer with Adam and the Ants.

Seven years ago Colette began teaching at Anerley Town Hall and her classes have been popular right from the beginning.

We have fun whilst learning a beautiful art form which is truly feminine “Most people have no dance experience and are just looking for something different but once they start shimmying to the infectious music they can’t help but get into it in the same way that I did years ago.

I teach absolute beginners and more experienced dancers. It’s a great way to exercise every part of the body, not just the belly!!!

It builds confidence and improves posture. I have young and old in my classes and every shape and size. We have fun whilst learning a beautiful art form which is truly feminine.”

No arguments from us!

Classes Anerley Town Hall (business centre) 174 Anerley Rd, SE20

Andy Pontin

Wednesdays from 11 February mixed level 6.45pm beginners 7.45pm intermediate 9pm Call Colette 07930 331718 020 8653 7735 amira@loveray.demon.co.uk

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RE: CYCLING (and where to do it) If you’re up and about early(ish) on a Saturday or Sunday morning you may have noticed a gathering of cyclists in their most colourful lycra kit at the ‘French café’ at the top of the Parade.

Crystal Palace has long been a hub of cycling activity - the gateway to the rolling hills of Kent where many of South London’s racing cyclists do their regular training rides. Within an hour, you can be riding through country lanes, tackling the testing slopes of Ide Hill and Toys Hill, or racing through the sleepy villages of Hever and Chiddingstone. A number of cycling clubs are located in the area, the main one being Dulwich Paragon, who describe themselves as “an easy-going SouthLondon-based club with no hangups.”

The Paragon (as they are known to local bikies) organise the sociable Saturday ride that gathers at 9am every week at Café St Germain, leaving 15 minutes later for “a 2-2½ hour ride at a steady pace … aimed at road cyclists just getting into group riding, those looking for something fairly gentle and racing cyclists looking for an easy spin before their Sunday race”. Nonmembers are invited to come along and have a few taster rides, but if you are going on a regular basis you will be expected to join the club.

This ride aims at a 15mph average speed and the route is fixed at a 30mile round trip out through West Wickham and into the country lanes around Downe. There is also

an earlier Saturday ride aimed at the racing or ‘sportive’ (semicompetitive long distance events that are becoming hugely popular in the UK) cyclist, leaving Café St Germain at 8.15am and covering 50 to 60 miles at a fairly brisk pace.

Other rides, which bring together a broad range of local cyclists, set off from the same venue on a Sunday morning, around 9-9.30am. If you arrive around 9ish with bike and kit you should be able to discuss the options over a coffee and croissant.

Other local clubs include Sydenham Wheelers,VC Londres (VCL), Anerley BC, Catford CC, Brixton Cycles and the massively popular Addiscombe CC who boast the “UK’s biggest weekly bike ride”, regularly attracting over 100 cyclists on their Saturday morning training ride that starts further afield at Coulsdon South railway station.

If you want to race (either road, track, time-trialling or cyclo-cross) any of these clubs will be able to point you in the right direction. The local race takes place in Crystal Palace Park on Tuesday evenings throughout the summer. While catering for different levels of racing experience, you will need a racing licence from the British Cycling Federation (BCF) to compete.

Down the other side of the hill is another gem for South London cyclists - the famous Herne Hill Velodrome, home to track cycling events at the 1948 Olympics and

now a frenzy of cycling activity on most evenings and Saturday mornings between March and October. The stadium, in Burbage Road, is managed by the VCL club who provide highly experienced coaches to run all training. The Saturday morning sessions are the highlight of the week and are open to all, starting with induction at 9am for those new to track cycling and continuing with a novice and youth training and then a more serious session for the headbangers from 10.30am to 1pm. Special track bikes can be hired at the venue and there’s a great little café doing bacon sarnies, tea and cake for resting riders and spectators.

These sessions will start again on 7 March 2009. There are also special sessions for road bikes (Tuesdays) and women and kids (Fridays) throughout the summer. Many of our top cyclists started out here, including Olympic Gold Medal hero Bradley Wiggins, and some of them can be seen racing in earnest at the annual Good Friday meeting (look out for a special report in The Transmitter soon).

The velodrome is also home to the Herne Hill Youth Cycling Club, for boys and girls from 6-16yrs, who use the area around the track for mountain bike racing and training on a Saturday morning (from 10am, starting again on 17 January 2009) and who also organise rides and events further afield for kids and their families.

Bob Townley

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SOFT-SHOE SCUFFLE A HISTORY OF THE SPORTS SHOE

As

with most inventions it’s us Brits against those across the water (both America and France) who believe they were responsible for the first sports shoe and its early development.

What is for certain is that although the Americans may have been first with a superior version and the French a more chic one, the bog standard Plimsoll was developed and produced right here in Britain.

Since then, the sports shoe has evolved into a very complex bit of kit.

The first recording of such a shoe is from the 1830s, when the leisured middle classes began visiting the English seaside and required footwear for strolling on the beach. The first company that began producing these was the Liverpool Rubber Company and it is likely that these were developed from the Brazilian sailors’ rubber shoes. The problem with the first canvas and rubber shoes were twofold; first the rubber disintegrated and secondly the rubber didn’t adhere to the canvas very well.

A son of a coach-maker Thomas Hancock saw the potential in rubber to provide waterproofed clothing for his father’s business.

Joining forces with Charles Macintosh the pair saw a future in providing the British with waterproofed clothing. It is said that Hancock discovered vulcanisation, a process to stabilise and mould rubber.

American Charles Goodyear, owner of rubber factories in Boston, also sought a patent for his vulcanisation process and

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challenged Hancock’s patent on the grounds that Hancock had had access to Goodyear’s earlier discovery. Hancock patented his process on 21 November 1843. Both Goodyear and Hancock showed at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Hancock had a huge array of goods including his waterproof fabric and rubber shoe, Goodyear installed great pavilions built entirely of rubber and filled with rubber goods.

From 1843 onwards Goodyear challenged Hancock through the courts. During this time fellow American and entrepreneur Henry Lee Norris noticed that a patent hadn’t yet been lodged in Scotland. In 1856 Goodyear and Norris set up the North British Rubber Company in Scotland. They brought over employees from Goodyear’s Boston factory to supply America with waterproof shoes. It was this company that went on to produce the Hunter Wellington.

In England, with a later patent for adhering canvas to rubber, the

Liverpool Rubber Company began selling this shoe. The Bank Holiday Act of 1871 ensured the growth of the seaside tourism and the need for a cheap shoe to wear. In 1876 a sales representative came up with the idea of naming them

Plimsolls because the edge around the shoe looked like the plimsoll line on ships. This company was to become Dunlop and as well as patenting the pneumatic tyre it also provided the new leisured classes with branded Plimsolls.

They made a name for themselves as the Plimsoll of choice for the middle classes, particularly with the huge take-up of tennis.

In America, the Plimsoll became known as the sneaker; urban legend has it that this was because they worn by sneak thieves. It is also said that they were labelled as such by a marketing executive keen to extol the shoes virtues

to parents. Whatever the reason this non-brand name became the name used.

The Goodyear company began producing the canvas and rubber shoe in 1892 in America, settling on Keds as the best name. Keds was the first mass marketed American athletic shoe, aimed directly at the burgeoning middle classes. It associated itself right from the beginning with tennis, sponsoring national competitions; it was clean living footwear.

Meanwhile, basketball had been invented to be played at High Schools and it became an almost instant hit with young Americans as it swept across towns and cities. In 1908 Marquis Mills Converse began producing simple cheap rubber-

impressed Chuck Taylor, the most famous Basketball player at the time, and in 1923 he added his name and the basketball shoes became known as Chucks.

Chucks were cool. In those days many basketball courts doubled up as dance halls and so once a game had finished the players, as much stars then as they are now, were seen and photographed wearing their Chucks. Converse’s fate was sealed when a young James Dean, highlighting the spirit of the age, was photographed wearing his Converse in Rebel without a Cause and the brand went global.

During the same period PF Flyers (Posture Foundation) also developed a basketball shoe patented in 1933 because of its moulded insole. In the 1950s, basketball player Bob Cousy, well known and well regarded for his anti-racist stance, put his name

stars, PF Flyers targets the wellheeled Varsity and leisure market.

Keds saw their market share shrink dramatically in the 1950’s, as young Americans switched to Converse, and launched their Basketball shoe the Pro-Ked. However, Keds never really succeeded in the style or cool stakes, today they are fronted by Mischa Barton of The OC and were also famously worn by Barack Obama.

Back in the UK, Dunlop have never had a serious UK competitor. Dunlop’s Green Flash shoes were developed for the tennis courts in the 50s and although championed by Mods in the 60s, they have stood the test of time as a serious sports shoe right up to the present day.

The French brand Springcourt, favoured by the beatnik in their quest for all that was foreign and chic, are still peddling the fact they were worn by John Lennon and remain the leading French brand.

As with anything we wear, the brand defines who we are and as the sports shoe has crossed the divide from leisure shoe to sports shoe and back again, branding has become ever more pertinent.

sided work shoes. These were bought by the working classes and doubled up, particularly amongst African-Americans, as basketball shoes. Taking note, Converse realised the potential of linking themselves to the sport, launching the All Star in 1917. The shoe

to the shoe. The company still markets the Bob Cousy shoe today.

However, whilst Converse has moved from the sports shoe to being worn by film stars and rock

The simple canvas and rubber shoe has continued to cross social and age barriers with a price and brand for every pocket.

Liz Clamp

17

Liv wears Orange Cressi Comfort wet suit £128 Watches Sunto Vyper 11 £295 & Silver Freestyle £60

18

Hannah wears Mares Origin wet suit £130 Watches - Suunto Vyper £209 and Mares £120 & Silver Freestyle £60

“It’s a sport, not a mission” asserts James Deane, proprietor of Amphibian Sports in West Norwood, although occasionally during his amiable chat about derring-do on the high seas and the fate of some of his amigos, my thoughts turn more towards James Bond films than World of Sport.

Originally opened in 1975, Amphibian Sports specialises in diving equipment sales and servicing, and is also the hub of a diving community consisting of a number of clubs in the area, principally the South London Underwater Swimming Club (SLUSC).

James has owned the shop for the last seven years and is an active member of SLUSC (pronounced “slush” by members), helping to organise not-forprofit diving trips for both novice and experienced divers.

take a dive Martini anyone? Or perhaps you would prefer a bottle of beer?

Trimix (Helium and Oxygen) The main enemy of the scuba diver (apart from drowning) is Nitrogen narcosis, or rapture of the deep, a temporary alteration of consciousness caused by the affect of breathing compressed air from a tank. The condition becomes noticeable when divers go below about 100ft. At that point, they experience an altered mental state similar to alcohol intoxication.

Nitrogen narcosis has also been called the martini effect because for every 50ft of depth beyond the initial 100ft, the effect is something like drinking one

So if you fancy getting fit swimming underwater or just think that wet suits and watches look really cool (we do!

-Ed) why not check out Amphibian Sports in West Norwood; they are a really friendly bunch and if you want to take it further you can join SLUSC and go on one of the exciting dives planned for 2009.

Dives can be from 5m to 100m and they have included the Red Sea and D-Day Wrecks off the coast of Normandy. The big one for 2009 is to dive the German wrecks of Scapa Flow - see below.

Amphibian Sports 44A Chapel Road West Norwood London SE27 OUR 020 8761 2458

scupper flow

The shop stocks everything a diving enthusiast could want, from watches to spear guns. At one time (before the internet kicked in) the shop was the biggest UK retailer for Suunto, the leading specialist manufacturer of sports watches and compasses.

They also service diving equipment, particularly the breathing gear and gas tanks. They can fill these with any of three types of gas mix: Air (the stuff you and I breathe) Nitrox (Air + Oxygen)

Martini on an empty stomach.

Trimix helps avoid this effect by replacing the nitrogen (in air) with helium, which is less narcotic.

Decompression sickness, or the bends, is another potential danger. If a diver resurfaces too quickly, nitrogen bubbles in the blood can lodge in parts of the body. Pressure underwater forces nitrogen into the body’s fatty tissues.

When the diver comes to the surface (that is, moves from a greater pressure to lesser pressure), the nitrogen comes out of the tissues back into the blood stream. This is like a bottle of beer being opened. The gas is kept in solution by the pressure under the cap; when this is removed the gas bubbles out.

Getting this nitrogen out of the tissues at the correct rate is the challenge for divers.

“A pal of mine got the bends in 3m of water” quips James.

On 21 June 1919, at Scapa Flow in Orkney, one of the most extraordinary events in naval history occurred. To the astonishment of those who witnessed it, the German High Seas Fleet, the world’s second most powerful navy, deliberately sank itself. 400,000 tons of shipping went to the bottom of Scapa Flow that day and nine Germans were shot dead (the last kills of WWI) although nobody was drowned.

Various salvaging operations over the years have removed almost all the German wrecks. The remaining few lie in deeper waters, up to 47m, and there has been no economic incentive to attempt to raise them since.

19

Food and Drink

CORRIED PARsNIPS

CELEBRITY MASTERCHEF WINNER NADIA SAWALHA FINDS THAT COOKING FOR HER TRIBE IS AS TOUGH AS ANY TV COMPETITION really perfect. No! I say it because I’d much rather be sipping cocktails with my feet in my brand new foot spa, watching the Christmas episode of Corrie.

I swear

on Father Christmas’s life that I have spent no less than six hours a day (every day) for the last two weeks in the kitchen. In equal measure I have chopped, sautéed, boiled, fried, baked, flambéed, peeled and poached to within an inch of my life.

As a direct consequence of these creative culinary activities, my never-ending quest for a tidy kitchen has also kept me slavishly scrubbing, sweeping, polishing, wiping, and ... washing up. Good grief ... the washing up! It’s never ending, and so monumental is my failure in comprehensively doing it, that at the end of every day, my kitchen looks more like a crime scene, rather than the scene of domestic bliss I so ache for!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I adore being in the kitchen and I love feeding my bonkers family. BUT, what I’d truly like for Christmas would be for my family to sometimes (just sometimes) ALL eat the same bloody thing!

I say this not so that I can concentrate on getting one dish

20

You see, my lovely lot have a list of dietary needs and dining foibles as long and as tall as the Crystal Palace Aerial Mast! (hmm, that sounds like a great name for a local magazine - Ed) First, there’s my sister (Julia) who generally crashes into the Christmas dining table in a puff of dramatic exhaust smoke and an explosion of presents, having just hurtled up the M3! Julia is a N.W.E.V. (a non-wheat-eatingvegan), so, I’m sure you can imagine the culinary complications she brings with her!

Next up, there’s my nephew Zak, who is the family’s current “Atkins Nazi” of the day, who believes the best way forward in life is to simply eat meat...or...Nandos; although on Fridays he will allow himself chips.

Then there’s my two children who are completely and utterly ‘green-bits-phobic’. No matter how or where I smuggle green bits on to their plates – they will sniff them out and (in my 18-month old baby Kiki’s case) hurl them quite extraordinary distances given how small she is! My 6-year-old Maddie much prefers adopting the UN diplomatic peace-keeper approach of negotiating her way out of broccoli and green bits by emphasising how brilliant and delicious all the other coloured things on her plate are!

Moving round my Christmas table, there’s then my two stepdaughters (Issy and Fleur) who, for some bizarre reason, have become obsessed with Quavers

and cucumbers for the past week.

So extreme is their fixation on these two ingredients that they’ve managed to convince their Dad (my husband, Mark) to fix them up Quaver and Cucumber sandwiches for lunch ...every day! With each mouthful they take, he tries to convince me that given how much air there is in the Quavers, that this is actually quite a nutritious lunch!

Next it’s the ‘wrinklies’ – the grandparents. To my left, it’s my mother in-law! Not only will she eat anything and everything put in front of her, but she will in fact eat anything and everything, a couple of times in a row, meaning that I have to always keep a keen eye on both the volume of food and... the hamsters. I mean it – she’ll eat anything.

best hide these chaps, granny looks peckish...

My mother, Betty, on the other hand, is a true gourmet and absolutely nothing gets past her posh palate unless it is utterly delicious.

So, every meal I pop in front of her gives me terrible stomach churning flashbacks to when I was being judged in the final of MasterChef.

As I serve up her food, her face quite literally morphs into the bald

Food and Drink head of Gregg Wallace (MasterChef judge) and a cold sweat breaks out on my brow.

The one and only Grandad is my father (Nadim) who, as a screaming mad hypochondriac diabetic, loves everything so long as ‘it is a stew’.

You see – for my father – the notion of food that has been cooked for hours on end takes on a strangely medicinal quality – as if it has in fact earned its healing credentials by dint of boiling on a stove and being stirred regularly.

Finally, there’s my poor long suffering husband, Mark, who simply eats what he is given whilst rolling

his eyes at the insanity of it all!!

Bless him, he is always suggesting that I cook one meal rather than catering to everyone’s needs.

Well – today – I called his bluff!

As everyone in the house was preparing to leave and start 2009 properly from their own homes, Mark and I decided to have a big festive meal to bid a final farewell to 2008, as well as a sad but fond farewell to most family members (many of whom live next door!).

As Mark settled into reading Nigel Slater’s column in The Observer, he asked those fateful words, “So, what’s everyone having – you poor thing?”

Pop!!! With the fizzing sound of bubbly fresh in my ears, I handed my husband a scrap of paper, before grabbing the Ferrero Rocher and quickly diving into the lounge to join my new best friend, Mr. Sky Plus! “ Where are you going?” He asked innocently.

“Oh. Just to lie down and get quietly sozzled’ I slur.

Looking down he sees, clutched in his hand, my recipe for Curried Parsnip Soup. By all accounts I hear he made it beautifully. As for me, I simply can’t recall a thing ...

THE RECIPE

Curried Parsnip Soup Ingredients • • • • • • • • • •

Three tbsps oil One tbsp of butter (if you dare) Two medium onions Eight parsnips One medium apple peeled and chopped One tbsp curry powder (or I use madras curry paste) One dsp flour 1.2 litres of chicken stock (I prefer concentrate to cubes) Two tbsps nigella seeds (optional but lovely) 100ml of cream (if you are not on a new years resolution)

Method In a large heavy-bottomed pan gently heat oil and butter.

reduced to mediocrity simply by under seasoning).

Add the onions and fry till they get that lovely glassy look. Now put in your powder or paste and stir until they emit ther exotic aroma. Sprinkle in your flour and stir into your onion mixture for 30 to 40 seconds.

Add the chopped parsnips and apples and stir. Pour in the stock and season well (many a potentially great soup has been

Cover and let it all bubble away gently until the parsnips are tender - about 30 mins.

Whizz in the whizzer till smooth then stir in the cream if you are one of the lucky ones.

If you have some nigella seeds fry them in a little oil until they start to pop and then drain on paper towel before sprinkling on the soup. Serve with heavenly crusty bread and butter. Enjoy. x

NADIA SAWALHA

21

Food and Drink

A WALK In THE PARK

Justine dines at a posh pub en famille

Full

of New Year courage the bookseller and I decided to include the children in this edition’s review.

Thus, some careful consideration was required before we plumped for the recently refurbed hostelry clinging to the downskirts of the park, the Bridge House Tavern.

I admit, we were nervous; partly because we really value our headto-head dins without the kids constantly knocking over our drinks and partly because our progeny, whilst not necessarily inheriting the saloon bar gene, are big, discerning eaters with very little in the tact department (can’t think where they get that from). They are also all completely different food types.

Though very hungry, we resisted the ‘snacks’ and starters that featured two kinds of meze, smoked haddock & leek fishcake, steamed mussels and warm goat’s cheese salad, and hit the mains running. Then I poured out the hastily ordered though happily swiggable house white and transfixed them with tales of my waitressing days at a concept restaurant near the Commission in Brussels called Upstairs Downstairs where sometimes the only thing going up and down in the dumb waiter was a single After Eight mint.

“Oooh, I like this!” remarked Willa, ten years old and sporting a Duffystyle railwayman’s hat on our ascent of the Southern Belle-ish staircase to our thankfully spacious table overlooking the nicely done loungey bit below. I realised I had made a

Soon, to their undisguised relief, the house burgers with caramelised onions, rocket and hefty chips (which both the bookseller and Crow Jr badly needed) arrived, cooked exactly as specified, the condiments served in a painter’s

“I don’t like pubs..” Fred, our eightyear-old, commented helpfully on the way.

22

mistake in not mentioning that our reservation included three kids when we were reminded graciously that we’d have to be gone by seven fifteen at the very, very latest. Given that it was booked for six o’clock, the logistics were going to be interesting…

pail. Constance, our willowy eldest, vegetarian since the day she was born having witnessed first-hand the gore of the labour ward, went for the Portobello mushroom, halloumi and roasted tomato burger. Willa, after much anxiety caused by the fact she had the best view of the clock and therefore, was going to worry endlessly about the kitchen rustling up her tea before the curfew, decided on the Thai yellow curry with vegetables that, like her, packed a fragrant punch (and her plate looked like a Tracey Emin installation by the time she’d finished troughing). We came to the intelligent conclusion – while the boys discussed the Leicester/ Palace game – that the best sort of vegetarian dish is the kind that meat-eaters would bite your arm off for too.

Being a fan of the roast, I had a tough job deciding whether to go for the pork, honey roasted potatoes and red cabbage (as I write, my tummy is pining) or the panfried seabass, which I don’t get at home in spite of the book bloke’s proficiency with a skillet. I had the latter, two slices of light firm fish

Food and Drink

As welcoming as a Victorian South London boozer but done with an elegant twist with crisp little shoulders slouched over the sweetest, butteryiest crushed new spuds that I have ever encountered in such close proximity to two fellas in long overcoats downing pints at the bar.

That seemed to be the key to the charm of the place: it was as welcoming as a Victorian South London boozer but done with an elegant twist; beer and grub but lots of white wood, wallpaper, muted chandeliers and mixed floral china.

The chaps didn’t look out of place however, and neither did my kids.

Indeed, they do ‘kid size’ sausages or fish fingers at a smaller price for the fledgling gannet, as well as offering children’s portions of the Sunday roast for around a fiver.

Meanwhile, determined to get their money’s worth out of the experience despite their diminishing belly space and increasing anxiety that their parents would embarrass

them by not being ready to leave at the required hour, my three shared some artisany ice-cream and a portion of home-made apple & berry crumble with custard. There was also chocolate & orange fudge cake that sounded too good to be wheat-free as claimed, and mulled wine poached pear too.

Our dinner had easily been delivered and devoured (actually, it didn’t touch the sides) before we were consigned to hell and damnation, so it was tempting at this point to shut them outside in the car with cokes and straws and head back in for the heavenly liqueur coffees on offer. But as it

was dark and cold and wild things were no doubt hiding among the trees and loitering beneath the eponymous – stunning, I might add – railway bridge, we decided to be kind, paid the extremely reasonable bill and went home lightly thrilled and somewhat giddy by the success of our family dinner. It was so successful in fact that, astonishingly, I would do it all over again. No, really.

Bridge House Tavern 20 High Street Penge 020 8778 2100

23

Nicolas Feuillatte Rose NV A lively, balanced and fruity Champagne, there is simply no other rosé Champagne like this cuvée from Nicolas Feuillatte.

Blended from 90% red grapes with a dollop of Chardonnay, this wine explodes in the glass with vivid aromas and flavours of raspberry, strawberry and redcurrants. Just the thing for getting fruity with your Valentine’s date.

Oddbins £29.99 Waitrose Direct £30.39

24

Heidsieck & Co Monopole Blue Top NV A non-vintage bubbly from one of the most prestigious Champagne houses. Pinot Noir dominates in this glug full of rich fruit character.

Blue Top was the official champagne aboard theTitanic, so perhaps best avoid sea food for your Valentine’s night out, just in case!

Oddbins £25.99

Billecart-Salmon Brut Reserve NV

Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut NV

This straw-coloured Brut reserve is light and refined with fine bubbles and a touch of citrus on the finish. An intricate blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier grapes from three different vintages - a recipe that’s remained unchanged since 1945. A real Valentine’s treat this one. Let’s face it, she’s going to be impressed.

Oddbins £35.99 Thedrinkshop.com £28.86

Founded in Epernay in 1811, the house of Perrier Jouet is known the world over for its high quality champagne. The Grand Brut is a smooth and elegant, well-priced Champagne. Light and easy-drinking, it’s perfect for a Valentine’s treat of caviar, smoked salmon, scallops or oysters. Maybe slip a pearl into the mix as well for a great Valentine’s surprise!

Oddbins £27.99 Majestic £29.99

Valentine’s BUBBLY 25

Food and Drink

Food and Drink

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ANDY

Jewellery Editor

LIZ

Make up by

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Slinky earring £44, white crystal ring £25, slinky bangle £110 Smash Bang Wallop

27

Shopping

Mother of pearl & silver pendant ÂŁ38.99 from Coconut Grove

Mother of pearl earrings (with pendant not shown) ÂŁ29.99 from Myjumbie

Shopping

Vintage diamante necklace ÂŁ22 from Vien

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Vintage mother of pearl and blue diamante necklace ÂŁ24 from Vien

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31

Arts

STEINBERG Saul Steinberg at the Dulwich Picture Gallery A modern art exhibition that’s fun for all the family? Unlikely, yes, but Saul Steinberg is no ordinary artist.

Why aren’t humorists taken more seriously? I’m serious! I mean, Steinberg’s line is just as fluid, unerring, and wildly inventive as Picasso’s. His approach to the very nature of art is as conceptually inventive as Duchamp. And he challenges our very notion of what a picture should be, can be, and actually is, with the same lucidity and directness as Magritte.

The answer is partly down to context: many of this Romanianborn, New York artist’s most famous works were originally published in the pages of the New Yorker. So for over half a century (he died just before the turn of the millennium) he was defined as a New Yorker cartoonist. And cartoons aren’t considered art.

But then most cartoons aren’t art, they’re just cartoons.

Steinberg operated on quite a different level: he may have had a job to do (to entertain middlebrow America), and it was a job with well defined parameters, but he constantly subverted those very parameters.

For example, take his fondness for making images out of words.

One image in this exhibition, ‘I Do, I Have, I Am’, says so much about Steinberg’s philosophy it’s worth dwelling on for a moment.

The words ‘I Do’ hover in the sky, emanating heat and light like mini suns. Below those words are the words ‘I Have’ which are made up of a precarious washing line of nailed-together planks. And this crude, shaky structure stands on the solid ground of the monumental

32

words ‘I Am’. In what is ostensibly just a simple cartoon, Steinberg is telling us about the thrilling beauty of spontaneous acts (I Do!), the ephemeral (and therefore unimportant) nature of possessions (I Have), and the grounding reality of just ‘being’ (I Am).

But is it art? Of course it is! And thanks to the fact that someone at the Dulwich Picture Gallery has recognised this fact, we South Londoners don’t have to trek all the way to Tate Modern, or the Serpentine, or the Hayward to see these mind-expanding ecstatically involving pictures. Some of the freshest, most visually daring images of the second half of the twentieth century are just down the road!

So why isn’t this great artist up there with Warhol, Rothko, de Kooning or Pollock, his American contemporaries? I think it’s because once something is seen as amusing, our culture sees it as having less importance. To solemnly contemplate, for example, one of Rothko’s gloomy abstracts is considered a more noble activity than to smile pleasurably - or even, God forbid, giggle - at one of Steinberg’s whimsical visual experiments.

Yet Steinberg constantly plays with the same ideas about pictorial representation that many of his more respected contemporaries played with.

The only difference is that

Arts Steinberg’s images are direct enough to open wider the eyes and mind of an eight-year-old child as well as the eyes and mind of a professor of philosophy, and that the contemporary art world is decidedly suspicious of art that’s easy to relate to!

Consider ‘Woman in Tub.’ The most simply rendered pen and ink drawing of a woman is superimposed on a photograph of a bath, yet despite the deliberate naivety of the drawing, we willingly go along with the idea that this is a real woman enjoying a real bath Steinberg draws around the line which changes our perception of it.

that is the power the visual image (any figurative visual image) has over us. Steinberg is the best art teacher we never had, and it’s all there in the work.

One of the star exhibits in this exhibition is the simply amazing (or amazingly simple) work ‘All in Line’ which spans almost the length of one of the gallery walls: it’s so long it has to be viewed a section at a time. At one end of this long scroll of paper are, in pen and ink, a pair of eyes, a nose and a mouth. This rudimentary face is suspended in the air above this person’s hand, which holds the pen, which appears to have created the ten metre-long

strip of a drawing that unfurls from this simplest of beginnings.

Directly flowing from the end of this pen is a straight, horizontal line. As you study this complex yet playful drawing you will see that this line is all things to all men, and creatures, and gravity, and matter, and space: it’s the surface of a stretch of water in which some preposterously grand buildings admire their own reflection, it’s a humble washing line, it’s a bridge over which a train passes, it’s a table top complete with place setting, and it’s a desert horizon topped off with palm trees and pyramids, and so on. The line remains a constant, and so it’s what

Which other artist could say so much with just a straight line?

This is showing off at its most charming and playful. And there’s a lot of wonderful showing off in this exhibition as this prolific artist takes thousands of other fine lines on jazzy journeys: deftly crosshatching strange characters into existence, showing that chairs can be far more interesting than the people sitting in them, making buildings look like ostentatious ladies’ hats, making cats look like people and people look like cats and ... well, just go and see for yourself. And take the kids along.

With most art exhibitions you might think twice about following that last piece of advice, but trust me, not with this one.

Saul Steinberg : Illuminations continues at the Dulwich Picture Gallery until 15 February 2009. See dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk for more details or call 020 8693 5254

Howard Male

33

Gardening

Prunus Pruning “January, sick and tired you’ve been hanging on me” as Pilot famously (and annoyingly - Ed) sang in the 1970s. The beginning of the year is a bit of a challenge in the garden, with its short, dark days, bare trees and empty borders.

But never fear - The Patch has some stunning winter plants to keep the gardening flame alight in those Norwood breasts.

a truly stunning winter plant Prunus x subhirella “Autumnalis” is one of my favourite trees. It is more commonly called the winter flowering cherry and that is exactly what it does - from late autumn

to early spring it produces semidouble, pink-tinged white flowers in abundance.

Generally in our temperate London climate the tree flowers constantly during the winter months although a prolonged cold snap would hinder flowering. The bark is also interesting - shiny and bronze coloured.

Prunus - the ornamental cherry - has more than 200 different species and provides excellent specimen plants for the smaller garden.

It is fully hardy and will grow in any moist but well drained soil. Pruning is best carried out after flowering and prevents the tree spreading too much.

From cherry to hazel for my next winter wonder-plant. Corylus Avellana Contorta or the Corkscrew Hazel is also known as Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick (see main picture). I’m not sure who Harry Lauder was (he was a Scottish comedian who performed using a crooked branch as a cane - Ed) but it is a truly stunning winter plant with strangely contorted and twisted shoots flailing out in all directions. As with all types of hazel, the ‘Contorta’ produces long pendant yellow catkins in spring followed by ovate green leaves in summer. It is fully hardy and can produce straight stemmed suckers from the base which should

be removed . This plants strange beauty is best appreciated in the winter as its summer interest is not great so site Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick accordingly.

There are not many perennials which light up the border in winter but the Schizostylis coccinea “Major” or Kaffir lily is a marvellous splash of crimson in mild winters. A friend gave me a clump of this evergreen plant a couple of years ago and it is a marvellous and surprising ‘doer’. It hails from the damp meadows and river-banks of southern Africa and it is ideal as a marginal around the garden pond where it throws up showy, gladiolus-like spikes of open cup-shaped scarlet flowers. As most marginals die down in winter the Schizostylis shines bright in the winter border.

On a general note, January and February are ideal months for tree planting and bare-rooted hedging – although avoid planting in frosty periods. The dormant winter months allow the roots to slowly establish before the plant begins to create foliage.

Happy Gardening.

Sue Williams 35

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Books

the bookseller

JONATHAN’S FIRST BATCH OF BOOKS FOR 2009 Until a couple of years ago the celebrated novelist and short story writer Shena Mackay was a local resident and regular customer in the shop and her latest book of new and selected stories The Atmospheric Railway (Jonathan Cape £17.99) features a number of stories set in our part of South London. Indeed the title story features a couple researching the life of a distant aunt Florence, who had been in the 1860s a teacher at a private academy for young ladies on Beulah Hill, and who later founds a garden school for sickly children. Florence, we learn, may have had a romance with a Scottish navvie who lived in Norwood New Town and who worked on The Atmospheric Railway – the short lived experimental railway

that ran for just a few months in 1864 between the Sydenham and Penge entrances to the Crystal Palace Gardens - that gives the story its title.

Staying with Sheena Mackay I would also recommend – particularly if you are in a local reading group - her last novel Heligoland (Vintage £6.99).

Published in 2003 this is the story of an ageing artistic community living in a strange architect-designed building (somewhere close to Crown Point) shaped like a chambered shell called The Nautillus. It is set at a time when the Crystal Palace Campaign was fighting off the multiplex cinema development and features a leading character named Gus Crabb who owns Crabb’s Antiques on Church Road,

between a restaurant site that is always changing hands and cuisines and a shop dealing in secondhand biker gear.

The story The Atmospheric Railway also includes a reference to The Phoenix Suburb by Alan Warwick long regarded as the best history of our area, but out of print for a number of years. It is now due to be imminently republished

by The Norwood Society, and is a must-read for anybody interested in the local past.

The Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson, who died aged 50 in 2004, was one of the world’s leading experts on anti-democratic, right-wing

Books

extremist and neo-facist organisations. In what should have been mid-life he began writing crime thrillers and the first, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Quercus £7.99) an exciting, dark, multi-layered story has now sold more than five million copies worldwide. It has been one of our bestselling books of last year and the good news is that even though it is 538 pages long it is only the first volume in the Millennium trilogy, the second book of which, The Girl Who Played With Fire (Quercus £16.99) is 569 pages long and has just been published in hardback. We sold five the minute we opened the box and put one in the window.

The American writer Richard Yates has been in my personal top ten for the past 25 years, when, for much of that time his

books were out of print. Now with the release of the film of his most well known book Revolutionary Road (Vintage £7.99) - although I don’t really buy Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as Frank and April Wheeler - he will hopefully, finally, get the wider readership his books deserve.

Revolutionary Road was first published in 1961, the same year as Catch 22 and was beaten to the American National Book Award by Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer another, largely unknown (in this country) masterpiece and itself a major inspiration for Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter (Bloomsbury

£7.99). There can be no denying that Richard Yates’ dissection of the American Dream can be a little, bleak, but it is also utterly compelling. If you go to see the film and want to read more, I would recommend The Easter Parade (Vintage £7.99) which Julian Barnes claimed was the best book he had read all year (which year, I haven’t the faintest idea) and the Collected Short Stories (Vintage £12.00), whose first volume, the title of which, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, should give you the general idea.

Jonathan Main

SERVICES

5:39 Page 1

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London-Central Heather Morris @ The Hair Clinic John Bell & Croydon 50-54 Wigmore Street, W1 020 7935 9200 www.the-hair-clinic.co.uk

THE OVERSPILL 4 COOPERS YARD CRYSTAL PALACE LONDON SE19 1TN TEL: 07764 196 284

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Music

THERE’S A WORLD OUT THERE! HOWARD MALE CONTINUES TO BE YOUR GUIDE TO THE MUSICIANS AND BANDS WHO PUT IT ALL IN A MULTICULTURAL BLENDER TO SEE WHAT COMES OUT THE OTHER END As my musical tastes tend to lean towards the eclectic and innovative (despite still liking a good tune!) it’s only natural that I continue the same theme as my last Transmitter column, which looked at a few acts who were successfully mixing several different styles and coming up with music which was much more than just the sum of its parts.

One artist I’ve mentioned previously is the new Brazilian singer, CéU (pronounced like ‘cell’ with soft ‘l’).

Her quirky genre-crossing debut album went on to become one of the fastest selling Brazilian albums of the summer in both Brazil and the US. But CéU is clearly someone who’s not content to rest on her laurels, because hot on her interesting debut’s tail comes her involvement in a collaborative project with a number of other well known Sao Paulo musicians called Sonantes (Six Degrees Records.) And if anything Sonantes (both the band’s name and the album’s title) are even more adventurous and eclectic.

They dish up a ragged collection of songs in which one minute they are exploring an off-kilter sonic

landscape similar to Tom Waits, and the next minute they are pastiching cheesy sixties samba with the Hammond organ turned up to the max.

Her quirky genrecrossing debut album became one of the fastest selling Brazilian albums of the summer in both Brazil and the US And it’s all done with a knowing twinkle in the eye. For more twinkling eyes, you could also do a lot worse than to check out Waitless by multicultural collective Empty

Boat (Poo Productions.) And, yes, that really is the name of the label but for a very good reason: if you buy their CD of samba meets South African township jazz meets sixties psychedelia, you’ll also raise £1 for Pump Aid which, astonishingly, is enough money to provide sanitation for one African individual for life. So don’t go and find somewhere on the internet where you can download it for free, or there’ll be trouble!

Finally, the Romany Gypsies are another group of musicians who like to mix it up, which is hardly surprising with their culture having roots in Eastern Europe, North Africa, India, Spain, Turkey - the list is endless. Peckham resident Garth Cartwright has put together a wonderful compilation which carries the same name as his critically

acclaimed book on Gypsy musicians of a couple of years ago, Princes Amongst Men - Journeys with Gypsy Musicians (Asphalt Tango Records.) It’s a much more satisfying CD than many of the more dance-orientated efforts which have been cashing-in on this fashionable style of music for several years now.

There are some wonderful majestically sombre tunes here alongside the galloping brass-led party numbers.

Howard Male

43

FASHION COMPETITION WINNER For the competition in the last issue we asked you to design a T-shirt. Esme Seber sent us this lovely design that tells us something about her personality.

Well done Esme, you’re the winner!

Write us a poem about sport.

It can be any sort of verse you fancy, a sonnet, a limerick, or even free verse. It can be as long or as short as you want.You could write about your favourite or even least favourite sport.

Send your poems to Poetry Competition The Transmitter PO Box 53556 London SE19 2TL Please write your name and address on the back of the paper.

The winner will have their poem printed in the next edition of The Transmitter!

44

I love the market in Haynes Lane. It’s a treasure trove of wonderful goods with nice shop assistants (mostly!). However, I have a complaint! Kids are not allowed in without their parents. My parents are always busy so I can’t go!

If you’re like me and think this is extremely unfair, then let us know. Or maybe you’ve got another burning issue you would like to air?

Send your thoughts to cathscolumn@thetransmitter. co.uk

WHY NOT ADVERTISE YOUR RESTAURANT HERE? 0753 0450 925

sales@thetransmitter.co.uk

45

What’s On

WHAT’s ON Music/Comedy/Dance The Goose is Out! 020 8693 1316 thegooseisout.com

Friday 23 January DHFC Edgar Kail Way (next to Sainsbury’s), off Dog Kennel Hill, East Dulwich,SE22

Alasdair Roberts - His second

album “Farewell Sorrow” was one of the Observer’s top albums of the year (note - that’s top albums, not top folk albums!)

Freedom Of Expression II Christ Church, Highland Road Gipsy Hill, SE19 1DP 07721 074073

Siobhan Parr Theatre

Tobacco Brown

...are travelling the world in search of fast women and loose cars...soft acoustic, to dirty rock to funk disco.

Jeremy Ayre

Two piece (guitar/vocals/drums), playing brand of acoustic punk, with a hint of folk and a lovely bit of pop!

Friday 20 February DHFC Folk Legend Martin Simpson,

Tuesday 27 January 8.30pm

8.30pm. Tickets £7adv/£8 on door Friday 30 January

Chris Addison, Gerry Howell, 2 New Acts, Mc Holly Walsh

Friday 13 February

Richard Herring, Colin Owens, 2 New Acts, Mc Brett Goldstein

Friday 27 February

Dan Antopolski, Edward Aczel, 2 New Acts, Mc Terry Saunders

Your event not listed?

Tell us about forthcoming events in March/April (next issue out in March) e-mail: listings@thetransmitter.co.uk

Wednesday 28 January

Friday 30 January 8pm Admission free

The Peryls

Gypsy Hill Comedy Black Sheep Bar 23 Westow Hill, Crystal Palace 07758 521 378 gipsyhillcomedy.co.uk

Open Mike (No, that’s NOT Karaoke)

freedomexpression.co.uk

Friday 30 January Hoopers Bar, Ivanhoe Road (behind Dog Kennel Hill), SE5 8DH Wizz Jones - ‘musician’s musician’ and local legend, plays guitar with Simeon on Sax, Flute & Harmonica.

This event is FREE!

Olivia Chaney, Run

The White Hart 96 Church Road, Crystal Palace 020 8771 9389 Sunday 18 January Gatling Guns - Acoustic set Wednesday 21 January Wei San - Female Stevie Wonder!

Sunday 25 January

Creaky, sinister, dark, lyrical pop.

Tales of deranged doctors, dancing bears and doomed experiments...

St Mark’s Players The Stanley Halls, South Norwood Hill, SE25 6AB smplayers.co.uk

020 8393 3640 OR 020 8240 9378

Tickets: £6.50. Group Discounts.

Sat 24 January 2.30pm & 7.30pm Sunday 25 January 2.30pm Friday 30 January 7.30pm Sat 31 January 2.30pm & 7.30pm

Cinderella

Dick Pearce Quartet

South Norwood based musical theatre group, celebrate their 50th Anniversary. With a wonderful musical score and glittering costumes, Cinderella promises to Car Boot deliver heaps of fun with plenty of jokes, slapstick and the ever-popular audience participation.

Tuesday 24 February 8.30pm

South London Theatre 2a Norwood High Street, West Norwood 020 8670 3474

Jazz @ The Golden Lion

116 Sydenham Road, SE26 5JX Modern Jazz last Tues of the month.

Featuring: Alex Hutton, Chris Dodd, Mark Flethcher

Cecilia Stalin Quintet Old Palace Clog Church Hall, Cobden Road South Norwood SE25 5NQ 020 8656 3399 oldpalaceclog.org.uk Thursday 29 January

dance workshop

8pm -10 pm evening of fun!

FREE OF CHARGE wear trainers or similar footwear Westow House 79 Westow Hill, Crystal Palace 020 8670 0654 Saturdays Resident DJ Mondays Salsa, Bachata & Kizomba classes 8 – 10pm. Dancing 10 – 11pm.

More details dancebachata.co.uk or 07946 620702

Tuesday 20 January to Saturday 24 January

Meeting Joe Strummer

by Paul Hodson

Tuesday 3 February to Saturday 7 February

House of Demons

by Aeschylus (trans Ted Hughes)

Tuesday 17 February to Saturday 21 February

La Bête

by David Hirson The South London Theatre is a private members club.Tickets can only be bought by members and their guests.Tickets/membership must be applied for 48 hours in advance of the performance you wish to attend. Details of how to join at: southlondontheatre.co.uk/membership.php

What’s On Art/Photography Dulwich Picture Gallery Gallery Road Dulwich Village SE21 7AD 020 8693 5254 dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

Friends InSight Lecture Series 10.30-11.30am in the Linbury room Series of 3 £25, £20 Friends Single lecture £10, £8 Friends

Saul Steinberg: Illuminations Ends 15 February The comic genius of modernism unmasks the 20th century.

Wednesday 28 January Penny Martin traces the origins of contemporary innovations in fashion photography through editorial shoots and advertising dating back to the 1930s. Iconic works by Madame Yevonde, Beaton, Avedon, Bailey and Guy Bourdin will be discussed alongside the work of present-day giants including Tim Walker, Nick Knight, Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin and Stephen Meisel.

Neapolitan Paintings Ends 14 June This display focuses on The Locksmith and The Return of the Prodigal Son, the only two Neapolitan paintings at the Gallery.

Paolo Veronese :The Petrobelli Altarpiece Reconstructing a Renaissance Masterpiece 10 February - 3 May In the late 18C this huge altarpiece was butchered for the art market.

Three large sections have survived, one each at Dulwich and the National Galleries of Scotland and Canada. We reunite these fragments for the first time - along with a newly discovered fourth fragment Sickert in Venice 4 March - 31 May

Contextual Lecture Series

Sarah Atkinson 020 8299 8732 or s.atkinson@dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

Tuesday 27 January

Death in Wartime and the Welfare State: Changing Attitudes and Practices 1939-56

Dr Peter Jupp, author

Tuesday 10 February After the Abdication:The Royal Family in Turmoil Hugo Vickers, Royal Historian Tuesday 24 February

The Barbarisation of War: WWII and its Aftermath in Britain and the US

Professor Joanna Bourke, Professor of History at Birkbeck College.

Tuesday 10 March Beaton and the Blitz: Aerial Warfare and National Identity Dr Neil Matheson, Senior Lecturer in Theory and Criticism of Photography at the University of Westminster.

Current Fashion Photography through the Lens of its Past.

Wildlife Photography, a Natural Eye

Film GalleryFilm Sociable film screening evenings!

Programme begins 7.45pm, bar opens from 7.30pm Linbury Room £8, £6 Friends of Dulwich Gallery Monday 19 January Good Night And Good Luck

They took on the Government with nothing but the truth - Dir George Clooney

Monday 16 February Housewives’ Choice: British women on the ‘home’ front, 1926-1955 Series of short films from BFI National Archive, including documentaries, cinemagazines, propaganda films and ads exploring the lives of British housewives.

Monday 23 February Far From Heaven (2003) What imprisons desires of the heart?

Dir - Todd Haynes.

Wednesday 4 February Heather Angel shows spectacular photos of pandas, Siberian tigers in snow and other rare animals taken during her 2007 trip to China.

Walks

Sports Photography: Catch the Moment

Sunday 15 March 2.30 - 4pm

Wednesday 11 February Eamonn McCabe reviews his life as a sports photographer for 10 years with the Observer, asking whether the photographer is observer, taking advantage of situations, or director, creating the situation.

South on Dulwich Village

Meet outside North Dulwich Station This walk will reveal some of the fascinating history of the houses in Dulwich Village, both past and present, and the personalities that lived there. £4, £3 Friends of Dulwich Gallery

Dulwich Decorative & Fine Arts Society (DDFAS)

Sunday 5 April 2.30 - 4pm

6th form lecture theatre, James Allen’s Girls’ School, 144 East Dulwich Grove

Casino Estate

Monthly illustrated lectures Refreshments at 7.30pm for 8pm start.

Free to DDFAS members; visitors £7; students £1.

Thursday 12 February

The Barbizon School And French 19th Century Paintings Dr. Kathleen McLauchlan lectures at the V&A, Birkbeck and heads the Visual Art Department at Morley College.

Thursday 12 March

The World Of Carpets This lecture will explore oriental carpets. Roderick Taylor has collected and studied textiles for 50 years.

Meet outside North Dulwich Station

Casino Estate, shortly to be listed, a ‘Homes Fit for Heroes’ estate built just after WW1. £4, £3 Friends Sport Crystal Palace Indoor Bowls Club 183a Anerley Road Private members club open 7 days a week from October through April, 9am to 10.30pm

Business Directory

Art & Ents Blockbusters 020 8653 9908 62Westow Street Crystal Palace Museum 020 8676 0700 Anerley Hill Dulwich Picture Gallery 020 8693 5254 Gallery Road, Dulwich Horniman Museum 020 8669 1872 100 London Road South London Theatre 020 8670 3474 2a Norwood High Street

Handy list for your needs...

NOT LISTED? If your local business is not listed here, email: listings@thetransmitter.co.uk

For a more comprehensive listing of local business services: crystalpalacelocal.co.uk

Cars (Taxis) Borough Cars 020 8776 5555 25 Anerley Road Crystal Cars 020 8771 9682 122 Church Road Eagle Cars

020 8670 9000

13 Crystal Palace Parade London Cars 020 8778 3000 1 Station Approach

Community Crystal Palace Park 020 8778 9496 Phoenix Centre 020 8771 6023 66 Westow Street Upper Norwood Library 020 8670 2551 Westow Hill

Creative Antenna Studios 020 8653 5200 Bowyers Yard, Haynes Lane Arcade78 07813 985970 Degas Guruve 07960 998012 Grange Road Fairplay Designs 07970 605361 14 Paddock Gardens Fourth Passenger Video production 020 8670 3689 Pylon Design Consultants 020 8771 3400 91 Church Road Words and Pictures 020 8653 5203 25-27 Westow Street

48

Feeling Poorly?

Chemists Fairways Drug Store 020 8761 1017 11 Westow Hill Hamlet Pharmacy 020 8778 7529 45 Anerley Road Makepeace Pharmacy 020 8778 8657 264 Kirkdale Perfucare 020 8669 3172 136 Kirkdale Sefgrove Chemist 020 8670 5198 3-5 Westow Hill

Doctors Lordship Lane Surgery 020 8693 2912 417 Lordship Lane

Dentists Bandlish Surgery 020 8670 2296 5 Gipsy Hill CP Dental Practice 020 8761 6252 88 Westow Hill

Opticians Crystal Eye Centre 020 8766 7476 20 Westow Hill

Food & Drink

Cafes Alistairs 020 8771 3729 3 Westow Street Blackbird Bakery

Westow Street Blue Mountain Café 128 Gipsy Hill Café Nero 10 Westow Hill Café Sol 020 8771 4078 61 Westow Street La Bruschetta 020 8771 7478 52 Westow Street Little Palace Café 020 8670 0123 49 Westow Hill The Café 34 Westow Hill

Afro-Caribbean

Italian/Pizza

Island Fusion 020 8761 5544 57b Westow Hill The Spirited Palace 020 8768 0609 105 Church Road

Il Ponte 020 8761 3371 66 Westow Hill Lorenzo’s 020 8761 7485 48 Westow Hill

Chinese/Oriental

Napoli Pizza 020 8776 5969 96 Anerley Road

Blue Orchid 020 8771 3673 5 Westow Street Chi Oriental 020 8761 6186 14 Westow Hill Edo 020 8670 8900 18 Westow Hill Miss Haung 020 8771 8169 10 Church Road New Chong Kee’s 020 8778 2797 23 Anerley Road Nim’s Kitchen 020 8766 8820 7 Westow Hill Noodle Time 020 8653 3012 3-7 Church Road Shanghai Wok 020 8771 6212 72 Church Road South East 020 8670 6222 26 Westow Hill Tamnag Thai 020 8761 5959 50-54 Westow Hill

Indian Gurkha Cottage 020 8771 7372 17 Westow Street Golden Tiger 020 8670 3212 78 Westow Hill

The Bridge House Tavern 0871 917 0007 2 High Street Penge

Indian Dining Club 020 8670 7588 244 Gypsy Road Indian Post Tandoori 020 8670 5079 79a Gipsy Hill

The Mansion 020 8761 9016 255 Gipsy Road The Rosendale 020 8670 0812 65 Rosendale Road Westow House 020 8670 0654 79 Westow Hill The White Hart 0871 971 4084

96 Church Road

Mehfil 020 8771 6898 107 Church Road Palace Spice 020 8655 7140 36 Westow Hill Shelina Tandoori 020 8771 7900 62 Church Road Viva Goa 020 8761 1515 24 Westow Hill

Gastro Pubs

Pizza Express 020 8670 1786 70 Westow Hill Pizza Fresco 020 8761 1761 64 Westow Street That’s Amore 020 8291 2901 124 Kirkdale

Modern European Domali Café 020 8768 0096 38 Westow Street Joanna’s 020 8670 4052 56 Westow Hill Mediterranea 020 8771 7327 21 Westow Street Numidie 020 8766 6166 48 Westow Hill The Exhibition Rooms 020 8761 1175 69-71 Westow Hill

Spanish/Portuguese A Torre Restaurant 020 8653 9895 19 Westow Street Los Toreros 020 8771 0087 35 Westow Street

Legal/Professional Amphlett Lissimore 020 8771 5254 80/86 Westow Street Begg, Williamson & Co 020 8771 3644 24 Church Road

Business Advice Business Doctor 0800 756 6467 Laurence Chandler Assoc 020 8390 8888 91 Church Road P&A 0208 776 9500 Regent House Business Ctr

Suite 210, 291 Kirkdale

Business Directory Health & Beauty

Beauty Beauty by Renata Brown 020 8771 5062 77 Church Street Crystal Nails 020 8670 3221 28 Westow Hill Northwood Clinic 020 8653 5646 36 Westow Street Mother Earth 020 8768 0620 42 Westow Street

Hairdressing Afro & European 07980 510973 78 Westow Street Faith Salon 020 86593492 48 Anerley Hill Feathers 0774 8908587 40 Westow Hill Fortyseven 020 8771 7170 47a Westow Street Friends 07980 510973 78 Westow Street Hair by Jay Michaels 020 8771 7440 30 Westow Street Kreative Lynk 020 8771 9572 16a Church Road Mario and Bambos 020 8653 1599 63 Westow Street Outback Hair Salon 020 8676 9593 2 Station Approach Way Ahead 020 8653 7342 43 Westow Street World of Hair 020 8778 5538 275 Kirkdale Zorkot Barber 020 8916 1000 22 Church Road Willie Smarts 020 8670 9798 1 Westow Hill

WRONG DETAILS? Whilst we try to ensure that details in the business directory are correct at time of going to print, we still mess up!

Please tell us about any errors or omissions: listings@thetransmitter.co.uk

Therapies & such

Horticulture

Acupuncture

AFS Tree Surgery 020 8653 0513 108 Church Road

Tracey Goulding 10 Westow Street 020 8771 9050

Herbal/Chinese Natural Way 020 8761 0666 35 Westow Hill Planta Health Shop 020 8761 3114 32 Westow Hill

Hypnotherapy Diana Penny 020 8767 0791 Natalie Swanson 07901 883531 10 Westow Street

Life Coaching The Transformation Team 020 8767 0791

Physiotherapy/Osteopathy Crystal Palace Osteopathic Practice 020 8771 9050 10 Westow Street Crystal Palace Physiotherapy & Sports Injury Centre 020 8778 9050 Jubilee Stand, CP Park Crystal Palace Back & Neck Pain Clinic 020 8653 5058 32 Westow Hill

Massage The Massage Practice 07815 742266 6a Mowbray Road Peter Kendall 0787 054 3910 Planta Health store, 32 Westow Hill

Yoga The Secret Retreat 020 8671 7779 The White House, Norwood Grove Jamie Heseltine 07973 567895

Sports & Fitness Crystal Palace Triathletes 020 8659 8091 Dulwich Physio 020 8693 9930 163 Crystal Palace Road Gymophobics 020 8778 8111 10 Station Approach L A Fitness 020 8778 9818 291 Kirkdale National Sports Centre 020 8778 0131 Ledrington Road Sydenham Tennis Club 020 8778 4217 Springfield Road

Fireplaces Antique Fireplace Restoration Service 020 8771 9708 59 Westow Street Palace Fires 020 8771 8311 109 Church Road P.J Wright & sons 020 8771 9708 59 Westow Street

Edward James Florist 020 8670 2453 19 Crystal Palace Parade Gregory Leeson Assoc 020 8768 5669 London Sheds 07830 324841 Plews 020 8289 8086 The Plot 07947 756914 Stem Flowers 020 8761 1248 Sue Williams Gardens 07801 219157

Gifts Shopping

Antiques & such

Chester Voisey 07870 758 766

Art Deco Store 020 82916116 98 Kirkdale Bambino 020 865 39250 32 Church Road Crystal Palace Antiques 020 8480 7042 Jasper Road II Restauro 020 8771 4240 76 Church Road Lawrences 020 8766 6886 54 Westow Hill

Dry Cleaners

Books

Cleaning Touch 020 8659 6265 173 Kirkdale

The Lane Books Haynes Lane Market

The Secret Garden 020 8771 8200 Coxwell Road The London Log co.

0208-3144592 07970-695930

General Services

Decorating

Kirkdale Express 020 8921 6688 155 Kirkdale Palace Dry Cleaners 020 8653 0446 101 Church Road Silk Route 020 8670 8221 77 Westow Hill

Locksmiths Topy Key Cutters 020 8670 1778 38 Westow Hill

Home improvement Art with Glass 020 8771 6845 Haynes Lane Atamer Carpentry 020 8653 8090 Burton Neale 0007733 018858 Floorzone 020 8676 8333 244-246 Kirkdale Montrose Building 020 8768 1878 Plumbing Services 07941 42159 SDB Fencing 020 8771 3722

Kirkdale Bookshop 020 877 84701 272 Kirkdale Bookseller Crow 020 8771 8831 50 Westow Street

Fashion

Coconut Trading 020 8771 0700 73-75 Church Road Glitter & Twisted 020 8771 9493 25 Westow Street Myjumbie 020 8133 7080 83 Church Road Smash Bang Wallop 020 8771 5517 85 Church Road

Hardware Hollybush Stores 020 8653 1258 24-28 Westow Street Macdonalds Store 020 8670 0696 57 Westow Hill

Pets Crystal Palace Aquarium 020 8771 1349 54 Westow Street 4 Paws 'n' Claws Dog & Cat Grooming 0208 776 9248 49 Anerley Road

Allbone & Trimit 07764 196284 4 Coopers Yard Chutzpah 07958 910939 D’Solos 020 8653 7585 27 Church Road Grand Bay Boutique 020 8653 9347 23 Westow Street Merlin Shoes 020 8771 5194 44 Westow Street Next Address 020 8771 1884 76 Westow Street South of the River 020 8653 1669 56 Westow Street Spotrusherz Fashion 020 8771 1879 45 Westow Street Vintagehart 07982 184657 07949 552926 96 Church Road

49

Do you run a small business?

Do you feel isolated and need help to boost your sales? Then come along to the

Crystal Palace Business Network A place for dynamic local business people to meet, socialise and make connections.

We meet on the 2nd Tuesday of every month at the Black Sheep Bar, 23 Westow Hill, Crystal Palace SE19.

To pre-register for FREE and get a chance to WIN a Business Coaching Session worth £50! - visit or call

www.EthosBusinessNetwork.com

020 8776 8201

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Park Life

Park Life Readers photos taken in Crystal Palace Park

Leslie Weight sent in this picture of an albino squirrel spotted in the park... ...and Mark Richardson snapped these two dozy Kuni pigs in the zoo.

We are always delighted to see our readers-eye-view of the park, or indeed any other aspect of Norwood life.

Please e-mail your pics to parklife@thetransmitter.co.uk

Side Swipe

Jenkins thought ‘dress-down Friday’ was an excellent idea 51