Christmas Greetings

Happy Christmas to all my readers from Kensal Rise or around the world!

Tornado - three years on

Living directly in the pasth of the Great Tornado of 2006, but luckily only suffering minor damages to property, this story was quite interesting on one householder's apparent battle with their insurance company.

Station traffic for trainspotters

From Transport for London, we learn that in 2008 on average 4,424 people entered Kensal Green underground station on a weekday, but only 3,878 left. On a saturday numbers were lower but the discrepancy was higher, with 3,086 entering but only 2,652 leaving, while on Sunday 2,075 entered and 1,858 left. This meant a total of 2.6m entries and exits during the year. In 2007 the weekday entrance was 4,111 and exit 3,428, back in 2003 just 3,187 and 2,771.

Queen's Park was busier, with 5.7m in 2009, up from 4.3m in 2003, and an average daily entrance/exit of about 10,000/9,000. Again more leave than arrive, which I assume relates to people getting more taxis or perhaps buses in the evening.

Anti-crime

Did anyone see the huge police mobile LED display on Chamberlayne Road by Minkies warning about pickpockets and so on? Was this in response to anything specific? Hardly the image we want to see...

ps We walked to Queen's Park today and noticed the Police there have nice pot plants and a big Christmas tree. Clearly it's a plot to do down our beloved Rise... Also the new deli/cafe/restaurant at the Salusbury looks nice from the outside.

pps Apologies to 'Phil' who left a comment - I managed to delete it by accident.

Olive Branch

We went to Olive Branch the other day to see what it was like. We had a gorgonzola and walnut gnocchi, and a pizza. I'd say both were good - the pizza was Italian-style and while it perhaps lacked a bit of dazzle, it was of a high standard. The gnocchi was very cheesey (and hence tasty) [1]. Service was prompt and polite and the house red wine which I had a glass of was also fine.

So in short I'd say while its not going to win any culinary award, as an inexpensive place to get a nice meal it's a solid choice. I'm sure we'll go back again. We haven't tried the take-away options but they seemed popular while we were there.

[1] The only thing we really would have changed was the plates were cold. I don't think they need to be red-hot, but even luke warm keeps the food hotter that much longer. Many restaurants make this mistake.

A comments policy of sorts

Thanks for the forthright discussion on commenting. It seems to me that we must be allowed to criticise local businesses, as a local business that survives to an extent on charity will not last long. On the other hand I think such criticism needs to be criticism in the wider sense of the term, that is an examination and judgement of merits and faults, and one which hopefully will be useful in the context of supporting local business.

The question of anonymity is a tricky one. I don't think people should give full details, one of the beauties of the internet is that you don't have to reveal who you are (and I'm aware doing so can have negative consequences, albeit perhaps they are overstated) and on the subjects we discuss it is hardly relevant who is saying what. But the advantage of giving a name is that it at least rules out an 'anonymous' being the same person if it is not (it cannot stop one person pretending to be many), and I think there was an instance of multiple commenting recently that was unnecessary.

I have been told that people have put an email address in. I don't quite understand this as the box I see when asked to comment has four options:

Google Account
Open ID
Name/URL
Anonymous

The obvious one, if you don't have a Gmail/google account, is Name/URL or anonymous. The former formally asks the name, the latter allows you to type it in as part of your comment. Do other people have different options?

Anyway I think I should do some more posts, as I have rather relied on you all to spot and discuss things! Thanks again for your time and interaction.

London in 2010 from 1990

Some futurology, here.

Election material

We seem to be getting a huge amount of this posted through the door - mostly from the Conservatives, but also the Liberal Democrats. I find it quite annoying - surely the election is not until May 2010? Or is there a by-election I don't know about?

Auction

Watch This Space, Young and Emerging Artists Charity auction, The Special Yoga Centre, London, 8 December.

On 8th December in Kensal Rise. See here.

Now on Twitter!

You can click on the sidebar on the right or go to www.twitter.com/kensalriseblog.

I'm not quite sure I've got the template right but stick with it and I'll try to get it fixed.