#west wickham

[insidecroydon]

The Swan upgrades its sports bar credentials for summer

The Swan pub in West Wickham reopened its doors last week following a £250,000 refurbishment and internal refresh by its owners, the Stonegate Group. Open again: The Swan in West Wickham has undergone a £250,000 refresh The investment has provided new flooring, redecoration and new seating booths and additional television screens – there are now nine TVs in total – boosting its sports viewing…

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Video: West Wickhams Share Shimmering and Dreamy "At The Cinema"

New Video: West Wickhams Share Shimmering and Dreamy "At The Cinema" @westwickhams @heygroover @romainpalmieri @DorianPerron

Back in 2022, the Richmond, UK-based self-described “psychedelic, garage noir” duo  West Wickhams — Jon Othello and Elle Flores — released their debut, Consider Her Way, which featured the brooding, The Cure-meets-Cocteau Twins-like “Consider Her Way” and their sophomore EP Magenta, which featured the slick The Cure-meets-New Order-like “This Is a Hang Up,” one of the more dance-floor friendly…

[bndrainage]

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[doubledeeauto]

Double Dee Autos: Your Neighbourhood Car Haven in Bromley

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[marcowalker148]

West Wickham Landscaping Ltd is the right place if you are looking for the Best Gardens service in West Wickham. Visit them for more info:-

[ceejay-waste]

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[eaglestrong-falcon]

[ropeaccessspecialistscouk]

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[indietapes]

West Wickhams - This is a Hang Up (Indie Rock)

🕑 1 min / Text: Franklin B. Release Date: N/A We already came across West Wickhams' music back in July, and we're stoked to share a song, called 'This is a Hang Up' from their brand new EP 'Magenta' here with you on our radar. It's an atmospheric and easy to listen to guitar track with pleasant melodies and lo-fi vocals getting lost in the mix in a beautiful way. West Wickhams dropped their new song with an accompanying music video. Give it a shot and enjoy! Melodie: ★★★★★ | Produktion: ★★★★★ | Arrangement: ★★★☆☆ | Energie: ★★★★☆ |  Stream: https://open.spotify.com/track/0LLOi9XuBWFDpv9zxianq1?si=377224f4396d4fa1 Follow: https://www.instagram.com/westwickhams01 ✔️ Available on our Indie Playlist on Spotify.

[modernism-in-metroland]

77 Addington Road, West Wickham

1934

Kemp and Tasker

Image from the Coulthard collection

Modernism Beyond Metro-Land

[insidecroydon]

Sudden closure of West Wickham pool for safety reasons

Bromley Council has been forced to close West Wickham Leisure Centre as a “precautionary” measure, “in support of safety”. Sudden closure: West Wickham Leisure Centre and swimming pool was built in 1967 The council made the announcement yesterday afternoon, less than three months since agreeing to carry out a multi-million-pound refurbishment of the centre. With its 33.3-metre pool, as well as…

[enchi-elm]

Caleb and Ben bought land!

I have found the source!

"Loyalism in New York during the American Revolution", found (where else) on Archive.org, a website I will be donating my entire first paycheck to when I find employment again for saving my ass at least a dozen times this year and that is not an exaggerated number. (https://archive.org/details/loyalisminnewyor00flic/page/252/mode/2up)

Page 251-252:

The entry notes that the Loyalist owner of the land, Richard Floyd, disposessed of his land by attainder, had his land sold to "Benj. Talmage and Caleb Brewster" for 730 pounds, covering The Middle of the Island Farm in Brookhaven township, 4 1/3 lors, about 320 acres, "reserving to William Floyd, Esq., and to his heirs and assigns one lot and one-half lot of the above described lands claimed by him as his property." The land was bordered in the north by William Clark, east by William Smith, south by John Homan, and west by the Connecticut River.

Parker Wickham, also under attainder, had his land sold for 1250 pounds to Ben and Caleb. It was a "tract in Southold township known as Robin's Island, about 350 acres. No definite boundary given."

(5K, domesticity, bittersweet ending, but hey that's just where my mind goes.)

There's more, though. With some... familiar names.

We've got a listing for a Joseph Brewster of Brook Haven Township, buying land bordered by a Benjamin Floyd. I cannot for the life of me find a Joseph in Caleb's known family tree but maybe I'm using incomplete information.

(EDIT: FOUND HIM! And you'll never guess where. You know Abraham Woodhull, the Abraham Woodhull, well he had a daughter, Elizabeth, who married an Isaac Brewster, who is the son of a Joseph Brewster from Setauket. If this is the same Joseph, he's Abe's daughter's in-laws. They're parent-in-laws. What the-- Oh, and is this Joseph a direct relation to Caleb Brewster? I honestly don't know, WikiTree is so unhelpful in mapping out these families.)

Benjamin Floyd himself is buying land that's bordered in the east by a Nathaniel Woodhull -- land that was Richard Floyd's, taken by attainder. Is this Woodhull a relation to Abe? No idea. Is Benjamin Floyd a relation to Richard Floyd? Could a family member buy land that had been taken by attainder?

And then we've got Caleb Brewster himself throwing in lots, literally, with the same Benjamin Floyd, buying four lots in Nocamock.

(Benjamin Tallmadge, you may remember, married a Mary Floyd, though I can't find evidence of a Benjamin in her family).

Ooooh I wanna know, I wanna know so bad. What was going on here? How did they all know each other? And did they?

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Video: West Wickhams Share Brooding and Shimmering "The Conformist"

New Video: West Wickhams Share Brooding and Shimmering "The Conformist" @westwickhams @heygroover @romainpalmieri @DorianPerron

Originally formed in Tresco, the second biggest island of the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, UK, an island famously known as “The Island of Lost Souls,” and now currently based in Richmond, UK, the self-described psychedelic, garage noir duo West Wickhams — Jon Othello and Elle Flores — named their project after an imagined rival gang to British punk style icons The Bromley Contingent, a group who…

[justforbooks]

In 1967 when Radio 1 was founded as a successor to the BBC Light Programme, one of its aims was to reach housewives – and to attract them, the station employed only male DJs (or “husband substitutes”, as they were known behind the scenes) for the first three years. It was only in 1970, bending with the times, that it took on its first female presenter, Anne (later Annie) Nightingale, a former journalist and television presenter with almost no radio experience.

The original male presenters have long since left the station, but Nightingale was still working for Radio 1 at the time of her death, aged 83, and had become its longest-serving broadcaster, most recently on air in December 2023. Known to fans as the Queen of Breaks – breakbeat was her specialist genre – she defied the station’s usual career trajectory (five years as a top-tier presenter, then off to weekends or Radio 2) by staying relevant. She introduced listeners to prog rock, punk, indie and dance music, and was unfeignedly passionate about them all. At 75, she told a dance magazine: “I listen to what 13-year-olds listen to because that’s the future. [I’ve] got to be ahead of the game all the time.”

As a dance music specialist from the late 1980s onward – playing “the biggest bass bangers”, as Radio 1’s website put it – Nightingale spent the second half of her career broadcasting to people too young to have known that she had been friends with the Beatles and Marc Bolan. But her age was immaterial because of her stature in the dance world. In 2001, she received Muzik magazine’s Caner of the Year prize in recognition of her late-night lifestyle – her favourite of all her awards, which also included an MBE in 2002 for services to broadcasting (advanced to CBE in 2020), and an honorary doctorate in journalism.

She was a highly knowledgable musical curator, and an expert at exploiting the intimacy of radio. Though Nightingale prioritised music over DJ patter, she recognised that a human voice was still an essential part of the mix; husky-toned and self-deprecating, she belied the station’s early fear that a female DJ would lack authority. According to the writer Irvine Welsh, who listened to her while growing up, her “cool, funky tones” stood out against “the flatulent sounds of loud, boring, thick and egotistical men strafing the airwaves”.

An only child, Nightingale was born in Osterley, west London, to Basil, who ran a wallpaper company, and Celia (nee Winter), a chiropodist. Educated at the independent Lady Eleanor Holles school in Hampton, she left before her A-levels. Overriding her parents’ request that she have “something to fall back on”, she enrolled on a journalism course at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster). Moving to Brighton after graduation, she married a Fleet Street journalist, Gordon Thomas, and had two children. After a short stint at the Brighton and Hove Gazette, she became the only woman in the newsroom at the Brighton Argus.

Along with reporting local news at the parish-council level, she was given a music column called Spin With Me, which gave her access to the biggest pop stars of the 60s. Her friendship with the Beatles later helped open doors at Radio 1 – the band’s publicist, Derek Taylor, persuaded the station controller to let her audition after her own requests were repeatedly refused.

At a Dusty Springfield gig in 1964, she met Vicki Wickham, producer of Ready Steady Go!, who hired her as co-presenter of a new pop show called That’s For Me. It lasted only a few months, but the exposure led to writing work at the Daily Express and Cosmopolitan, and radio appearances on Today and Woman’s Hour. It was the era of pirate stations such as Radio Caroline; she considered applying to Caroline but was put off by the idea of “living out at sea with a bunch of blokes”.

Finally installed at Radio 1 in 1970, she was hampered at first by a lack of technical knowhow – her first day was marked by eight seconds of dead airtime when she accidentally pressed the “off” switch in the middle of a record. Yet she quickly established herself, choosing her own playlist almost from the start. Her skill at persuading listeners that what she wanted to hear was what they wanted to hear led in 1978 to the job of presenting BBC Two’s “serious” rock programme, The Old Grey Whistle Test. It had failed to keep up with musical fashion, a problem she tackled by booking the most challenging artists she could get away with and braving the consequences. She was delighted to bag Public Image Ltd for a live appearance, though frontman John Lydon repaid her enthusiasm by admonishing her for being “so fucking patronising”.

Four years at Whistle Test were followed by a return to Radio 1’s highly popular Sunday afternoon request show for 12 years. When acid house gained traction in the late 80s, she credited it with changing her life; from that point, she played solely dance music on Radio 1, first in the influential Chill Out Zone slot, then on a longstanding programme that went out at 1am on Wednesdays. Her free time, she said, was consumed by listening to the thousands of demo tapes she received every week.

Despite her achievements, Nightingale claimed she lacked confidence until she was robbed in Havana, Cuba in 1996. The attack left her unable to walk for months, but made her “a stronger person”, she said.

Though she hated nostalgia, she did reflect that ageing had been isolating. The death of John Peel, her friend from the early days of Radio 1, provoked the unusually downbeat comment: “Now John’s gone there’s nobody I know in my age group who remotely likes this kind of thing. I don’t understand why. I’m driven by it.”

She published two volumes of autobiography, Chase the Fade (1982) and Wicked Speed (2000), and a 50th-anniversary volume, Hey Hi Hello: Five Decades of Pop Culture from Britain’s First Female DJ, in 2020.

She is survived by her children, Alex and Lucy, from her first marriage, which ended in divorce. Her second marriage, to the actor Binky Baker in 1978, also ended in divorce.

🔔 Anne Avril Nightingale, broadcaster, born 1 April 1940; died 11 January 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[rhapsodynew]

#everything you need to know about rock

Where are your seventeen years?

Eric Clapton joined his first band, The Roosters, at the age of 17. They played mostly in Greater London. Among the venues where they performed were the Carfax Ballroom in Oxford, the Ricky-Tick clubs in Kingston, Reading, West Wickham and Windsor, the Wooden Bridge Hotel in Guildford, The Jazz Cellar in Kingston, The Scene in Ham Yard, Soho and Uncle Bonnie's Chinese Jazz Club in Brighton.

Eric Clapton became famous as a member of the Yardbirds, but before that he made a living performing in coffee shops and pubs, both solo and with another guitarist named Dave Brock, in London and in his native county of Surrey.

Then, at the age of 17, he joined his first band, which was called The Roosters. The band was put together by guitarist Tom McGuinness, who had just failed an audition for an R&B band with brass instruments.

"My girlfriend at the time, with whom I lost touch for many years, but to whom I am now married, asked how it went when I left the stage," he told the Village Times. "And I said, 'Oh, that was terrible. I was in the wrong place." And she said, "Oh, don't worry. This is Eric, who I study with at art school, and he loves the blues." That's how I met him! Then we had one of those conversations where we just threw names at each other: he called Jimmy Reed, and I called John Lee Hooker; he called Muddy Waters, and I called Buddy Guy. So we knew we were thinking the same way.

McGuinness then invited a familiar pianist Ben Palmer, as well as vocalist Terry Brennan and drummer Robin Mason. As Michael Schumacher reports in the book Crossroads: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton, they rehearsed either at the Prince of Wales Pub in New Maiden or at the Wooden Bridge Hotel in Guildford, performing blues songs by Waters and Howlin' Wolf or rock and roll songs by Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Fats Domino.

But they didn't have much impact on the burgeoning London blues scene. "The Roosters rehearsed more than we played,— Clapton wrote in his autobiography. "Even though we performed from time to time, mostly in rooms upstairs in pubs, we were more excited to meet like—minded bluesmen."

It didn't help that the guitarist was still far from perfect. "I knew just enough to be able to play and finish the job," Clapton admitted.

There wasn't enough work to feed themselves, and it was difficult for them to get to those rare concerts because only Mason had a car. Therefore, The Roosters disbanded in August 1963, about six months later. "It was a nightmare," Clapton added, "but it was a lot of fun."

[rebeccadumaurier]

2023 Books in Review

a tiered ranking of all the books i read in 2023! originally i was going to write up my commentary on each one but then i was like hahaha.....no, so below the cut is just a list of the titles/authors in each tier instead.

changed my brain chemistry

The Idiot, Elif Batuman

Land of Milk and Honey, C Pam Zhang

The Borrowed, Chan Ho-kei (trans. Jeremy Tiang)

My Cousin Rachel, Daphne du Maurier

Vagabonds, Hao Jingfang (trans. Ken Liu)

The Membranes, Chi Ta-wei (trans. Ari Larissa Heinrich)

Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeannette Ng

Severance, Ling Ma

He Who Drowned the World, Shelley Parker-Chan

Vita Nostra, Marina & Sergey Dyachenko (trans. Julia Meitov Hersey)

Network Effect, Martha Wells

top-tier stuff

Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez (trans. Megan McDowell)

Brainwyrms, Alison Rumfitt

The Door, Magda Szabo (trans. Len Rix)

The Lover, Marguerite Duras (trans. Barbara Bray)

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

Strange Beasts of China, Yan Ge (trans. Jeremy Tiang)

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

Pachinko, Min Jin Lee

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, Kim Fu

Tell Me I’m Worthless, Alison Rumfitt

Bliss Montage, Ling Ma

How to Read Now, Elaine Castillo

Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

The Fifth Season, N. K. Jemisin

If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin

My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante

The Jasmine Throne, Tasha Suri

good, well-written

Carmilla, Sheridan Le Fanu

Life Ceremony, Sayaka Murata (trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori)

Yellowface, R. F. Kuang

A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine

Assassin of Reality, Marina & Sergey Dyachenko (trans. Julia Meitov Hersey)

Witch King, Martha Wells

Tokyo Ueno Station, Miri Yu (trans. Morgan Giles)

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

Peaces, Helen Oyeyemi

Gingerbread, Helen Oyeyemi

Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir

The Pachinko Parlor, Elisa Shua Dusapin (trans. Aneesa Abbas Higgins)

All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Fugitive Telemetry, and System Collapse (Murderbot #1-4, #6-7), Martha Wells

Revenant Gun, Yoon Ha Lee

The Dry Heart, Natalia Ginzburg (trans. Frances Frenaye)

Gods of Want, K-Ming Chang

Paradais, Fernanda Melchor (trans. Sophie Hughes)

The Mushroom at the End of the World, Anna Tsing

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency, Chen Chen

The Hurting Kind, Ada Limon

Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie

An Unauthorised Fan Treatise, Lauren James

Upstream, Mary Oliver

The Art of Death, Edwidge Danticat

Meander, Spiral, Explode, Jane Alison

alphabet, Inger Christensen (trans. Susanna Nied)

Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates

flawed, but enjoyable

The Wicker King, K. Ancrum

Exit West, Mohsin Hamid

Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters

Flux, Jinwoo Chong

Bang Bang Bodhisattva, Aubrey Wood

The Murder of Mr. Wickham, Claudia Gray

Natural Beauty, Ling Ling Huang

The Monster Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson

Certain Dark Things, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Likeness, Tana French

The Cabinet, Un-su Kim (trans. Sean Lin Halbert)

The Kingdom of Surfaces, Sally Wen Mao

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Franny Choi

good, well-written, but not my cup of tea

The Good House, Tananarive Due

The Transmigration of Bodies, Yuri Herrera (trans. Lisa Dillman)

Roadside Picnic, Arkady & Boris Strugatsky (trans. Olena Bormashenko)

The School for Good Mothers, Jessamine Chan

At Night All Blood Is Black, David Diop (trans. Anna Moschovakis)

Family Lexicon, Natalia Ginzburg (trans. Jenny McPhee)

The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo

The Kingdom of This World, Alejo Carpentier (trans. Harriet de Onís)

Against Silence, Frank Bidart

flawed, less enjoyable

Tenth of December, George Saunders

Counterweight, Djuna (trans. Anton Hur)

Authority, Jeff VanderMeer

Comfort Me with Apples, Catherynne M. Valente

Babel, R. F. Kuang

The Genesis of Misery, Neon Yang

Carrie Soto Is Back, Taylor Jenkins Reid

not ranking

These are nonfiction and they aren’t literature-related, so it just felt weird trying to rank them.

Visual Thinking, Temple Grandin

On Web Typography, Jason Santa Maria

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo (trans. Cathy Hirano)