Music Monday: The Drezone - 'End of Summer Blue' on Hilly Fields

SE London musician The DreZone has many talents - multi-instrumentalist, DJ and professional singer who can be found performing tributes to Prince and Stevie Wonder among others. He also writes and produces his own material, his latest song released yesterday to coincide with the turning of the seasons and the end of British Summer Time. 'End of Summer Blue' is a lush slice of classic melancholic soul which put me in mind of 'What's Going On?' period Marvin Gaye (yes Marvin, the guy who danced in Deptford!).

The video was filmed in Hilly Fields, so joining the illustrious company of several other Hilly Fields songs and videos.

The DreZone is on facebook and all the usual channels.

Friends of Fordham Park SE14

It's the annual general meeting tonight (Wednesday 10th February) of the Friends of Fordham Park, from 7 pm to 8 pm in the Moonshot Centre in the park. If you want to get involved in caring for this oasis off the New Cross Road, come along.

Fordham Park is not one of those London  parks that are leftover fragments from when it was 'all fields round here'. Go back a hundred years to the 1916 Ordnance Survey map and you see not a green space but tightly packed urban streets, demolished in the post-WW2 period. Angus Street and Achilles Street are still there, at the north and south ends of the park, but in between no trace remains of Snead Street and Vance Street.

Frendsbury Gardens Green Flag Day

Frendsbury Gardens is  along the railway line next to the Honor Oak Estate, SE4. The Friends of Frendsbury Gardens invite everyone to help celebrate Green Flag day on Saturday 7 September. They say:

'Come along and join in the fun and celebrate because Frendsbury Gardens has been awarded a Green Flag! Green Flag awards, handed out by environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, recognise and reward the best parks and green spaces across the country. Activities from 10am will include:

* Bug club for 0-12 year olds (bug hunts and arts and crafts),
* A foraging, picking and preserving workshop by Grow Wild
* Mosaic-making.
* Storytelling.
* Mobiles making.
* Information about 'going green'.

Lewisham mayor Steve Bullock will be raising the Green Flag at 11:45am. He will be accompanied by local councillors and local residents. Frendsbury Gardens is off  Frendsbury Road. There is street parking and places to lock bikes nearby and the 484 and 343 buses stop outside.  Please do come along and invite all your friends and neighbours!'. Facebook event details here

From Gardens Where We Feel Secure

Some common or garden (or is that commoner garden?) events coming up locally:

Common Growth Community Garden Workshops

'First up is the kid's workshop on Wednesday 7th of August called herb spiral fun. It is suitable for children of all ages and runs from 10.30-12.00, and will involve fun learning activities, games and singing.

After that there will be an adult's workshop on Saturday 17th of August called Herbs and their uses and will run from 10.30 to 12.30. As usual this will be a mix of learning and practical activity.

The workshops are informal and fun, and it’s a great way to learn a few more gardening skills and share tips with other gardeners.

More information on the courses is given below. If you would like to attend any of them, or want more information, then please text Rich on 07901 360321 or email commongrowthuk@gmail.com giving the name of attendees and a contact telephone number. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. All courses are free, but we suggest a £3 voluntary donation to help cover the costs of materials.

Common Growth Community Garden, Sandbourne Road (on the corner with Jerningham Rd), SE4 2NS. http://goo.gl/maps/wu3GC'

Secret Garden Project Lewisham

Already underway is the Secret Garden Project Lewisham: 'Winding its way through Lewisham, fed by the River Thames (Deptford Creek) in the North, to Lower Sydenham and Beckenham in the South, the River Pool and Ravensbourne naturally define the boroughs parklands. Connected by the Waterlink Way, a cycle and foot path that follows the rivers, a series of new public art commissions; temporary, permanent and digital will investigate four parks, responding to their unique characteristics, communities and ecology.

'Launching in July 2013, Secret Garden Project Lewisham will manifest in Sue Godfrey Nature Park, Cornmill Gardens, Ladywell Fields and Riverpool Linear & Bellingham Play Park and will encourage people to discover and use urban green space in creative ways. These artworks form part of the pan-London Secret Garden Project, a programme of environmental art commissions produced by UP Projects'.

In the next couple of weeks they've got a series of events happening in the Deptford area, including:

Grasshoppers & Ghost Gardens, Saturday 10th August 2-4 pm

What has made Deptford the place that we know day? Share your stories of Deptford, as we walk from Sue Godfrey to John Evelyn Community Garden, taking in hidden pockets of green and ending with a feast of local food. Meet at Sue Godfrey Nature Park 2pm, Berthon Street, SE8

Clay Bottle Making, Sunday 11th August 2-5 pm

Revisit the history of Sue Godfrey Nature Park and make your own clay medicine bottles onsite.

Herbal Medicine Making

Saturday 17th August 11-4 pm

Working alongside herbalist Melissa Ronaldson,discover the medicinal properties of plants growing on your doorstep. Share your own recipes for home remedies, learn how to pick, process and bottle herbs to create a truly unique Deptford product. Meet at Sue Godfrey Nature Park at 11am

The Urban Immune System,Sunday 18th August 2-4 pm 

Join us for a shared meal and conversation with the artist, an ethno-botanist and herbalist, to examine the relationship between people and plants and the political dimensions of medicinal plant use. Meet at Deptford Lounge 2pm,  9 Gi­ffin Square, SE8 4RJ

All events free. To book please contact bethan@upprojects.com

 From Gardens Where We Feel Secure

Any excuse to get in a few verses of one of my favourite poems, A Summer Night (1933) by WH Auden:

Now north and south and east and west

Those I love lie down to rest;

The moon looks on them all,

The healers and the brilliant talkers,

The eccentrics and the silent walkers,

The dumpy and the tall.

She climbs the European sky,

Churches and power stations lie

Alike among earth’s fixtures:

Into the galleries she peers

And blankly as a butcher stares

Upon the marvelous pictures.

To gravity attentive, she

Can notice nothing here, though we

Whom hunger does not move,

From gardens where we feel secure

Look up and with a sigh endure

The tyrannies of love:

And, gentle, do not care to know,

Where Poland draws her eastern bow,

What violence is done,

Nor ask what doubtful act allows

Our freedom in this English house,

Our picnics in the sun.

Hilly Fields Parkrun

A while ago I got the running bug back for the first time since I was at school and got in the cross country team as a result of keeping going to avoid the bullies who always stopped off on the course for a smoke and some mindless violence.

I started off last year with the NHS 'Couch to 5k' programme, a series of podcasts that take you gently from a 'walk 5 minutes, run 2 minutes' start through to running continuously for half and hour. If you can't imagine yourself being able to run 5 km without a break I really suggest giving this a go - you can also have fun trying to work out which artists are being pastiched in the music specially recorded for the podcasts.

There's a solitary dimension to running, 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' and so on, going off into your own private world or perhaps into a kind of nothingness: 'really as I run, I don't think much of anything worth mentioning. I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it another way: I run in order to acquire a void' (Haruki Murakami, What I talk about when I talk about running).

But running is also a social activity- after all almost two million people are estimated to run regularly in England alone. Whether you are interested in competition or not, running with other people is not only enjoyable but also raises your own game. And the easiest way into running like this is through the parkrun phenomenon - weekly timed runs in parks all over the country. Locally there are regular park runs in Hilly Fields, Crystal Palace Park, Dulwich Park, Greenwich Park, Burgess Park and Brockwell Park, among others.

You don't have to join an athletic club, you just go on to the Parkrun website and register once. You can then take part in parkruns anywhere.

You don't have to book in advance - just turn up and run.

You don't have to be superfit - the runs are for people of all levels of ability. There are club runners who tear off in front and others who run steadily at their own slow pace.

You don't have to pay any fees, either to register or take part in a run.

You do get a properly organised run, with a marked out course, volunteer helpers and timing of your run. How it works is that when you register with Parkrun you are allocated a barcode which you print out. As you cross the line at the end of the run you are given another barcode token which is linked to your finishing time. You then get this token and your personal barcode scanned on the spot, which generates a list of runners and times published on the website very soon afterwards.

I took part in the Hilly Fields run for the first time at the weekend and will definitely be going back. The course is three times round the park, the uphill bits are tough of course but they are balanced by the downhill sections! They meet every Saturday at 9 am near to the children's playground, with around 100 people taking part. Many people have a coffee afterwards at the Pistachios cafe in the park.

Get fit for free with coffee and trees - what's not to like?


Save Telegraph Hill Playclub (and the rest)

A meeting was held at the Barnes Wallis Community Centre in New Cross last Saturday to launch a campaign to save Telegraph Hill Playclub (once known as the One O'Clock club when it opened at that time). The parent and toddler facility in Telegraph Hill Park, Erlanger Road SE14, has provided a place for many years for parents, childminders and other carers to bring their pre-school children to play and socialise.  As a result of Government cuts to children's services, its future funding from Lewisham Council is in doubt - though no final decision has been taken.

Of course anybody can bring their kids to the park, but the Playclub offers something different - a dedicated indoor and outdoor space for younger children with their parents. On cold wet days in particular, places like this are invaluable. Children get to play with their peers and learn how to get on with each other, parents get an opportunity to get out of the house and meet others without the pressure to spend money or suffer the scowls of the kind of people who moan about children being seen in cafes.

Obviously the streets around Telegraph Hill park aren't the most deprived in Lewisham, but the club and indeed the park attracts people from all kinds of backgrounds from New Cross, Honor Oak, Brockley and beyond. In any case, 'middle class' parents also suffer from the kind of isolation and post-natal depression that places like these help to counter.

The playroom has been under threat a number of times before - I remember going to protest meetings more than ten years ago when I took my own kids there. In the past it has pulled through. This time round the fight will be harder because of the scale of Government cuts. Two years ago the replacement of Sure Start funding with the Early Intervention Grant for children's services was accompanied by a big reduction in funding. While final funding for 2013-14 has not yet ben announced,  the Local Government Chronicle reported last week  that 'Councils’ funding for their own early intervention projects is set to plunge by more than £430m over the next two years, according to government figures seen by LGC - much more than originally thought'. That amounts to a 17% reduction in funding for Councils' children's services next year, with further cuts in the folowing year.

Save Telegraph Hill Playclub has a facebook page; email savetelegraphhillplayclub@gmail.com, sign http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savetelegraphhillplayclub/
I gather that users of the Deptford Park Playclub are also concerned about the future of the similar service there - they too have launched a petition. Lewisham's website also lists Playclubs in Friendly Gardens SE8, Forster Park (Downham) and Grove Park SE12.

(this morning  - Tuesday 13th November - a London Tonight film crew are expected down to Telegraph Hill to cover the campaign - please come to centre at 10.30am if you would like to show your support)