You need to be a member of Alexandra Park Neighbours to add comments!
This reply was deleted.
To add a post - click on +Add new Post at top right (if it is not there, you are not signed in - see link at top of page); fill in the details, then click on black button below.
To later edit it, click on the post header to display it, then on +Edit at top right.
If you wish to give somebody your contact details, you may prefer to do so by personal message (click on little envelope at top of page, then on +Compose) rather than putting it in a post which is visible to everyone.
Advertisements
Click on an advert for more info.
FORUM CATEGORIES
Click on a category to display all posts that have been allocated this category:
Sharing stuff other than tools
Items offered / wanted - for sale or for free
Campaigns and community action
How-to Guides to using this website
Traffic, roads, public transport
Policing, community safety and anti-social behaviour
Local shops, cafes and businesses
Gardening - help, advice, issues, news
Recipes - Food
Recipes and tips - Health and Beauty
Schools, health, caring and parenting
Parks and wildlife, palaces and communal spaces
Replies
Both great ideas Susie.
Also, I have just come back from the Farmers Market with all that delicious street food and nowhere to sit to properly enjoy it. A few picnic tables somewhere close would do the job. There isn't a picnic area in the park.
One of our founding members, Giles Christian, has recently passed away. He too before his time. Giles had been ill for a while but pulled through so many times, we came to believe him invincible. He was key to all our fudraising and more. We are yet to decide on how to commemorate him. Those who knew Giles are welcome to send suggestions.
If you think we are jinxed, I reassure you it is not so. In a community as numerous and as active as ours is people pass through and pass away and some passings are timely and some are not. It's the stuff of a village life. Which is why we were of old derided as "the village" by the more affluent dwellers up in Muswell Hill. But more on that another time.
I was very sad to hear about Giles. Perhaps we could have a very special planter in his memory, or perhaps plant a small copse on the embankment near the gate on Bedford Road.
It is so monumentously sad about Giles - he was such an important and passionate member of the Friends of Ally Pally Group. We are going to put together some ideas.
I am mourning the loss of a friend, and I think we all agree that it would be lovely to do something nice for him.
Susie - love those ideas, I think that would be suitable. One of the ideas that Giles talked of was a medicine garden - and I think I would like to see something similar.
Best wishes
Nick
The bench is put there in memory of our neighbours Tom and Joan who had contributed and helped in the early days of the Triangle initiative*.
They were both regular users of the station. Tom Trainer will also be remembered by some of you as a frequent contributor to our neighbourhood emails. He was an active member of our local community. He had survived a teenage cancer, only to succumb to a new one in his fourties as a result of excessive radiation received during the first treatment. He and Joan were inseparable from their young age and she could not continue without him. It was a tragic loss for both their families.
The bench was actually made from scratch by a man in Kent. It is supposed to be a love bench (a variation on a love seat). He let the Friends of the the Ally Pally station have it for the princely sum of £15. Tom and Joan would have loved it. Not least its homely - "I've tried my best" look and the paltry sum paid for it.
We Friends have been slow at putting up the plaque. We are slow at putting up plaques. Something to do with no-one in charge of the plaques. Because we are short of volunteers willing to do things other than gardening. So please join if you have time to spare. Tom and Joan were not gardeners. They contributed in other ways. And that is why we felt their loss and wished to remember them.
* a community campaign to green the area of the Triangle at the junction of Crescent and Palace Gates Rds, which sadly did not quite succeed as the Council would not allow any shrubs, grass or additional planting that might have reduced the visibility at the junction of Palace Gates Rd and Crescent Rd - a curious decision as reducing visibility with trees and shrubs is is a traffic calming measure. So the Triangle initiative turned into a gardening club for the existing raised bed, two new planters and, later, a raised bed at the back of the paved area.
Correction: Joanne is the name of our late neighbour, not Joan. Apologies.
What a lovely idea (the bench). So sad about Giles. Was something being planned for the enclosed area on the embankment by the path down to the footbridge?
We can't use the enclosed area after all as there are electricity cables running along at a shallow depth. A pity.
That's a shame. I always wondered why that bit was enclosed - presumably this explains it.