Category: Health
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The Southall Gasworks Story
The story of how the remediation of Southall Gasworks highlights the environmental injustices faced by communities of colour.
The disregard for the health and concerns of these residents raises questions about the inequitable distribution of environmental burdens and the role of local government in protecting vulnerable populations.
It also highlights the potential conflicts between development, profit, and public health, and the need for greater transparency and accountability from authorities and developers.
(This is a Google NotebookLM creation, based on selected sources from my blog posts on Southall Gasworks.)
Nine year old said he wanted to grow some potatoes, so we planted chitted seed potatoes in bags tonight.
He said he didn’t know it was so much work!
A Trip Down Memory Lane
Andy’s post on Kingstonian Football Club losing their home reminded me of the loss of Southall’s football ground, and a chance meeting I had with an old supporter a few years ago.
Jim had lost his coat.
He remembered leaving it in the Halfway House pub next to the entrance to the Southall football ground on Western Road.
He told me he lived in neighbouring Hayes with his wife, who would be very angry with him if he went home without his coat.
He also had a house in Ireland.
We walked and walked, but we couldn’t find the Halfway House. It was neither here nor there. We couldn’t find the football ground, either. Nothing was where Jim remembered it.
Like his coat, they were very much alive in Jim’s memory, but in the world we walked in the goalposts had literally moved, the final whistle had blown, and everyone had gone home, except Jim (and me).
I felt very confused. Finally it dawned on me that Jim was probably feeling very confused, too. And probably very frightened. He asked if I could show him the way to get the bus back to Hayes, which I did.
We never did find his coat.
Journaling
My nine year old started keeping a journal at school so we can read what he’s been doing at school every day. (Replaces the “What did you do at school today?” “Can’t remember” alternative). It’s terrific.
He wanted to know what I’ve been doing, too, so I am reciprocating. I’ve never kept a diary a journal before, but I’ve enjoyed doing it these past couple of days.
It’s fair to say, though, that my lad’s days are far more interesting and fun than mine.
Back cover image of the dec 1975 issue of “issues in radical therapy” (via danielle carr on Twitter.)
Last Words
These are my last words writing from the café at the local leisure centre where I go every Wednesday during term time as a parent volunteer for my son’s swimming class. It’s their final session today.
My lad has gone from being so anxious about swimming that he didn’t want to go at all, to wanting to go for swimming lessons now the class sessions are over.
The café that was closed has reopened, although I still haven’t bought anything. They have new tables and chairs, too, which is nice.
It’s been something a personal journey for me, too. Having an hour or so in relatively undisturbed peace and quiet just to write whatever comes into my head (and publish to my micro.blog) has felt very therapeutic. I feel like something significant has changed within me, for the better.
I can’t say what, exactly, for a number of reasons, not in public. Maybe another time.
I’m also wondering if it’s a permanent change, or if it will all unravel. And I’m also feeling some sense of loss. Something that has been a part of me for a long time has gone. Even though it had an overall bad effect on my life, it was a regular companion. It won’t be missed, exactly, but it takes some getting used to, it not being here.
I’ll need to find somewhere else to write.
Annual (eek!) morning walk.
Thriving?
My son’s school’s Thrive teacher is leaving. She helped transform my lad’s experience of school from being one where he had weekly if not daily challenges with regulating his emotions and his behaviour, to one where he enjoys school every day. She’s going to be very greatly missed.
I managed to tell her this today and thank her for her work. It was so sad to hear her story.
She has committed ten years of her life to helping our youngsters get the best start in life, and done lots of extra work getting accredited to do so. But, at the end of the day, she can no longer afford to continue, and has taken a job elsewhere in sales and marketing.
What a stupid, shit country we live in.
Wife has returned home after being abducted by aliens (scroll down past the football).
Curriculum Vitae (Repetitum)
Following on from my success delivering the news to my local community, I took a break from the world of (very part-time) work to focus on… playing in my first bands. And learning to play the guitar. Much of which came at the expense of any interest in or motivation to study, or revise for ‘O’ Levels, and later ‘A’ Levels.
Living in a small rural market town, some of my friends, and my own younger brother, in fact, had Saturday jobs bush beating - literally (as far as I know) beating bushes to encourage game birds to fly to their sporting deaths. Let’s never forget that killing is a sport for our aristocracy and their hangers-on. Famously, at the time, the host of these shootings was “peppered in the buttocks” by our drunken home secretary Willie Whitelaw. You couldn’t get away with a name like that now.
My brother graduated from bush beating for toffs to hunt sabotage.
I did well enough in my ‘O’ Levels (one A, eight Bs, and a C), that my maths teacher told me I would “never amount to anything”. He wasn’t wrong.
My dad tried to motivate me after my mock ‘A’ Level results by leaving me a drunken handwritten note and caricature drawing of me with an arrow pointing to it (I mean, in those days what else could he have done?) saying: “THICK CUNT”.
Then he got me what felt like a punishing summer job at the duck processing plant where he was a line supervisor. Being the boss’s son was no fun when they put me on the killing floor. I became a vegetarian for nine years after that (although since returned to meat eating - that’s another story).
I messed up my ‘A’ Levels (three Es, and failed General Studies writing about the punk band Stiff Little Fingers). I was profoundly depressed, but had no one to talk to about it. Mainly because I had been brought up not to talk about or express any “bad” or “difficult” feelings. Random people used to come up to me and say “Cheer up, it may never happen”, but it in my internal world, it already had.
Music, and playing guitar in a band, was my only outlet, but we were young and totally delusional. We were a three-piece, but believed we were the next Fab Four. We played a successful debut gig in Cleethorpes at The Sub, but instead of building on that, we immediately packed our bags and gear into a van, and drove to London to live in a series of squats in Stepney, Poplar and Limehouse.
An older ex-school friend was part of an anarchist community based out of a bookshop, and helped us find, gain entry to, and occasionally get the water, gas and/or electricity working. In those good old days, you could easily “sign on” the dole and get enough to actually live on.
I read and heard a lot about the politics of anarchism, which I found very attractive to my idealism. That said, I couldn’t ever see how it would work in practice, in the real world. It would need a revolution, of course, but even then, it would need a revolution in people’s minds and thinking first.
Six months living in squats, a couple of lousy gigs and a demo tape later, we packed our bags and returned home.