33 East

by Susannah Rickards

  It was a typical British day that saved them – a rainy, Sunday, summer afternoon – when in a heightened spirit of camaraderie that the issue of the name change had brought to their streets, some West Ham residents decided to hold a yard sale at the Grassroots Community Resource Centre. All the stallholders were ready with plastic sheets to cover their goods, no matter how cheap and seemingly worthless they seemed – someone would buy them.

  They decided to hold a ‘Save West Ham’ meeting, just before the yard sale since so many members of the community would be there. At first, as the meeting was Mark’s idea, he wanted to have it at his café, but although it was a comfortable, laid back space, it was far too small for the numbers they hoped and expected would attend. One side of Rial’s walls was a montage of polaroids of the Rial’s regulars and favourites, with a small collection of Polaroid cameras in their own glass case. There were bookshelves filled with art and design books, from a backlist of Wallpaper, Taschen books on interior design in different countries, and a full rare collection of the distinctive black and white SABLE Literary Magazine. People could sit all day inside Rial with a cup of tea, or outside, smoking. But not for the meeting. It was many of those regulars displayed on his walls who had been his ardent supporters in dreaming up a new and wild idea to get West Ham recognised, so it was decided to rendezvous at the café and walk together to the community centre.

  Mark hadn’t been there before and he had to admit, one of the reasons that he didn’t want to hold the meeting at Grassroots was because they had their own café, so he was a bit miffed. But once he saw the community centre, he could see why people raved about it. It was a pretty amazing building, built ‘into’ the park, with a grass topped roof that turned his face into a picture of admiration. Somebody had told him that it had won a Green Flag Award for its energy saving features and another award for its innovative design and construction. How could anyone believe that West Ham wasn’t on the map with a building like this!

  It was Errol’s charismatic voice that called the meeting to attention.

  ‘Hey people, listen up! Thank you all for signing the petition. And in case you haven’t, step over here, it’s not too late! Guess what? We are gonna add more pizzazz and excitement. To get West Ham on the map, we are going to ask everyone to join us outside City Hall when we present the petition so if you’ve got any ideas to make this a day to remember, come over and let us know.’

  There were mixed murmurs. Most people seemed to be bemused, but a few local residents did come over to listen to what was going on, and a couple more came with whacky suggestions.

  Errol turned and nodded at Mark.

  ‘Good thinking, this. Simple, but the meeting today was a good idea.’

  One of Mark’s regulars turned out to be a volunteer at the Newham Bookshop on Barking Road which had been a landmark in the area for 30 years. The famous ‘dread’ poet, nicknamed ‘The Bard of Newham’ lived in the area and was a big supporter of the bookstore. She offered to find out if he wouldn’t mind supporting them – they could only try…

  She had a PO Box address to contact him that she suspected was more like a Doctor Who thing – that it went into the stratosphere – but what did they have to lose? They had four weeks to go.

  Errol followed up on the role he did best – promoting and campaigning – well, Marcia did the work of the promoting and he did the schmoozing of the campaigning. As soon as he and Mark had confirmed date and place, they would let West Ham-onians know.

  The success of the campaign with signed names and the possibility of celebrity support made an impressive PR presentation pack for the Mayor’s office. Their campaigning Facebook page quadrupled its sign ups within days after the meeting at Grassroots – the momentum was building.

  Mark and Errol wanted to make the presentation to the Mayor of London personally – not to a ‘representative’ or his right hand man; it was important to them and West Ham residents to have media attention. It needed the Mayor, and a celebrity. Errol’s wife, Marcia, had organised the publicity, coordinated the presentation and the day down to a ‘T’ and made everything click like digital. She had contacted the press, learned how to write an effective press release, with the help of staff at Grassroots, arranged for Newham’s local press photographer to be there, found out the rules and legalities for gatherings of mass numbers and checked which days the Mayor would be in. They needed the cameras to be on them, at City Hall not on the Mayor in another part of town or with a visiting dignitary.

  Over 200 people arrived at City Hall on the designated day and time, witnessed by the ecstatic whoops, back slapping and arm clutching of Mark and Errol. If this didn’t get them press coverage, nothing would. It seemed as though Mark’s regular customer had really done her bit and they felt that press coverage was guaranteed when the loping, wide stepping, locks flaying from the ‘Bard of Newham’, appeared. Their whoops got louder! All cameras turned on him, but no-one cared – he was a faithful community activist who could get them in the papers and hopefully radio and TV, too. ‘My poem for West Ham’ he stated simply and loudly. And true to his word, he span off a rhyme, to support the cause and to big up Newham.

  So, the petition is in, to save the name of the sleepy village/town of West Ham in Zone 3. But they haven’t let it rest there…why should they…no way…this campaign had really stoked their enthusiasm and commitment. Mark and Errol were on a roll…and the continual push was, what would see West Ham, Zone 3, be on the top line – or at least the first page on Google. They had raised money from the yard sale, so they could possibly pay for that position, but what else?

  A West Ham – The Cocktail (Errol’s idea).

  The West Ham Wrap (Mark’s favourite idea).

  West Ham residents break a Guinness Book of Records world record (which one?).

  Walking Drawings, West Ham? The latest community pitch seemed to be The Big Art or The Big Draw and one resident came up with an idea that she’d seen on the telly, to have a ‘Walking Drawing’ in Memorial Park, which all the residents could participate in. Now that would attract media attention, she said proudly.

  The suggestions became larger, more ambitious and more outrageous. The ideas were put together to create a new photographic artpiece that Rial Café put up on its wall.

  The latest idea on the list so far, on the community board outside Rial Café was to bring West Ham United Football Ground back home to West Ham – to Memorial Park, the first and true home of the football club. Although someone had scribbled over it – ‘Forget the Club, just give us a Post Office!’

  The deadline to hear about the outcome of the name change came and went… in the meantime, at the rear of Errol’s off-licence, West Ham got its Post Office. That in itself will guarantee that West Ham, stays as West Ham.

  WALTHAM FOREST

  North by North East

  Ashleigh Lezard

  Two Days Earlier

  The hangover felt like a drill was screwing into his brain. He blinked as his eyes focused on the dusty chinks of grey light coming from around the edge of the curtains. He ran his tongue along the fuzz on his teeth and licked the top of his lip which was still covered in sweet sticky sambuca.

  He stumbled to the bathroom to get a glass of water, there were no pint glasses only a tiny little tumbler – ‘Fuck it, it will have to do.’ The thimble-sized glass of water did little to quench his thirst – it felt rather like the first trickles of the rainy season forming a tiny waterhole in a desert, where five thousand small insects and a water buffalo are supposed to rehydrate after months of drought.

  He went back to bed. Sleep was the only thing that could cure the gross pounding in his head. He lay down relieved to be prostrate.

  DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… ‘That fucking bell’, he thought. It was 8.50. DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… Not even on the hour. DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… Slightly warped, hardly sanctifying. DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… It c
arried on.

  It was like some kind of retribution, he thought, for the life he was living. DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… He should have joined the building apprentice scheme on the Olympic building site, rather than stick at the job he hated, selling telephone systems to offices in a recession. He should have done a lot of things. He should have taken the book back to the library. DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… DONG… He should not have let his drinking drive Sarah away. The night that he had hit her through drunken fury was the last that he had seen or heard of her and that had been eight months ago.

  He should have not stayed at Zulus drinking until the end, swaying and shouting through the incongruous company of Afrikaners, students, Poles and east Londoners. He should not have been there in the first place. He had gone after work, as usual on the pretext that he would have one pint. Andre, the Afrikaner had insisted that they spend their hard-earned paltry pounds on a crappy South African beer. Being the only drinking establishment in Leytonstone that he ever drank in, Adam the Pole and him had agreed. He was also terrified of Andre, his thick-necked opinion on everything, the stories of murders and guns and rapes in the country that he had left.

  There was no-one in there when they walked in, ordered their crappy South African beers and sat at the splintered bench in the beer garden. The volleyball court, which now resembled a giant sand ash tray, was being swept by a bar worker in an attempt to improve the surroundings. It had started with beer, then there was the cheap Saffa brandy, the drink probably responsible for stripping Andre of his brain cells. DONG… oh no then there was the tequila, DONG… sambuca, DONG… – a healthy dab of drone which he had never taken before, DONG… DONG… DONG… and then dancing and shouting and Andre fighting. Amy, DONG… . He remembered talking to her – a slurred, spitty, sweaty encounter which had left her trapped quivering in the corner squashed with nowhere to go except to listen to his intoxicated moaning about the fucking bell that never stops ringing and how he should have worked on the Olympic site and was it not fantastic that there was an opportunity like that just around the corner. He had also rambled about the bell and the fact that it was haunting his waking, sleeping and especially the hours in between.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she had ventured, ‘you need something else in your life apart from this.’ He looked around him. He was having a whale of a time; he loved it here, the soft rock, followed by shite R&B. Andre bumping his way across the dance floor followed by a dozen pairs of murderous eyes, as he groped any arse he could feel on the way.

  What more could he possibly want? It was Friday night, work for the week was finished, he did not have to talk to his colleagues or anyone on the phone for a whole two days. Life was great.

  Except, DONG… it wasn’t. He was now lying alone in bed listening to god’s wrath in the form of church bells punishing him for his debauchery, DONG… his unfulfilled potential. He peered out the curtain, it was grey outside, no one was going to the church, in his two years of living on that road, in its shadow, he had never seen anyone enter the church, not even on a Sunday. Another day spent in shivering self hatred with nothing to do except wait for the bell to stop, DONG… DONG… DONG…

  Beyond the spire, he could see the cranes on the Olympic site. He could see the outside edge of the shell of the main stadium taking impressive shape. Everyone who lived in the adjoining boroughs had a right to training and to work there and he had been all set to go along to an induction on how to get a job. He had not made it because he had been up until five in the morning doing angel dust and then straight to the pub at 11.30 to carry on the bender. DONG…

  What else had Amy said? He thought to himself. He should go to yoga, it would help him clear his mind and focus on what he wanted, some bollocks about balance. It would turn his alcohol-racked body into a well-honed example of masculinity. He looked at the crumpled leaflet in his pocket she had given him: ‘Kundalini Yoga at the 491 Project’. He knew where that was, it was a commune near the station run by like-minded free spirits. He had thought it was an art gallery, maybe he would go.

  ‘Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth and then breathe from your stomach – huh huh huh,’ chanted the yoga instructor. She had dreadlocks, tattoos and three rings in her nose, homage to the lifestyle she had chosen to lead. Her body was taut through her practice and her expert stomach breathing left him feeling inadequate, uneasy and nauseous. The chant at the beginning was eerily cult-like. ‘And cobra.’ He looked around; the room was filled with a group of people who looked like they did yoga, stringy and sinewy. The only two other men looked particularly yoga-like with shaved heads, veins lining their foreheads and tapestry trousers. He, on the other hand, was not built for flexibility, a six-foot Welshman, with a beer belly from life’s excesses that made it hard for him to touch his toes gracefully. The physical effort was making his red face even more flushed and the five pints he had drunk last night were seeping through his skin, covering him with a slimy layer of very hopsy, pungent sweat.

  He could see Amy at the back, concentrating on lifting her chest to the ceiling, looking serenely ahead. He hung his head forward and stared at the collected dust on the ground. It had gathered on the parquet flooring, heaping into the corners in little mounds. He could see the hairs on the back of the leg of the girl in front of her and the slightly dimpled skin where her shorts had ridden up. The smell of the dust mingled with the smell of sweaty gym clothes and farts.

  His mind wandered to the Olympic site just down the road. In two years’ time primed athletes would be searching for glory in the stadium that would dominate the east London skyline. He had walked past it on the way to yoga and wondered what it would be like to be involved with something that would bring so much change to the area. He could see the sturdy mesh of the entrance archway taking shape and the fluid curves of the velodrome. The wall protecting the site had sprung up quickly, cordoning off the world of cranes, tractors and mud from the commuters, mothers and school children, Ghanaian chop shop owners, Nigerian taxi drivers and Pakistani mosque goers, all going about their everyday lives. It had felt like an American military operation in a film about discovering alien life. He had expected to see some official looking men in big white suits bouncing around. Inside the walls there were machines with wheels as big as houses toiling away constructing, building and bulging with activity. Outside the barricades, the streets of Leytonstone and Stratford hummed with normality.

  ‘And feel your spine stretch,’ she was gripping his shoulders pulling them back and telling him to lengthen his spine. Kundalini yoga apparently translated into a snake coiled at the bottom of the spine; he felt like he had a snake at the front as well. The flow of blood from moving around in the peculiar, carnal yoga positions had made him feel a bit more virile and alive. He still had a splitting headache though.

  After the session, while people gathered around to talk about yoga stuff, he sipped his bottle of water, feeling like a bit of a professional and wiped some sweat off his brow with a spare pair of socks. ‘Did you only tell me about the bell because I am religious,’ she asked inquisitively. He stifled a nervous giggle and mumbled something about how he had been drunk and talking nonsense. He had forgotten what he had told her about the church bell when they had met on Friday night.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ She was putting the kettle on in the communal kitchen. ‘There is usually an art exhibition in here, you should come sometime and have a look.’ He was always saying that he should go to art galleries and museums or even a walk in Epping Forest but he never did, as he was usually too sick from the excesses of alcohol and drugs, feeling too anxious to leave the house and venture out and interact with other people.

  They left yoga and while they walked, Amy talked about her work and how she had to fill in numerous forms in order to gain access to a child who had been beaten. She also moaned but how the budgets had been cut, putting more pressure on her and her colleagues.

  She was ok, Amy, a bit of a hippy bu
t ok. He had met her in the Sheepwalk where he went to watch a friend in a band. Sarah had just left him and he had been on a three-day drinking binge which led to him falling him over and cracking his head open on the bar, before being booted out onto the street. He could not even remember if the band was any good. She had been handing out flyers for his friend to get some extra money and looked after him as he crumpled on the pavement.

  He had heard that she had left Belfast after all her family, bar her brother, were killed when their house had burnt down. She had travelled to India where she immersed herself in the tripped out haze of Anjuna. When her boyfriend overdosed on everything she worked in a nunnery, sleeping in a bed with a crucifix above it, ensuring that any sleepless night was spent staring up at the suffering Jesus Christ. It had made her think about things and she came to London and studied social work and was now a Catholic, hippy, social worker who was drunkenly accosted by him whenever they bumped into each other. She had patched up his head that night on the pavement and had helped patch up his heart after Sarah had left.

  He always felt bad when he moaned about his life and slightly stupid when he explained to her that the bell from the church next to his house haunted him as it droned on and on. He looked at her walking along, clutching her yoga mat. ‘Why are you being so nice to me?’ he asked. She looked at him, ‘Everyone needs to be helped out occasionally, sometimes people get stuck and they need a push in a new direction or just someone to listen to them. I have had people do the same for me when I’ve been in a bad way. I am just doing that for you – karma, if you like.’