From memories of Basildon's old Arts Centre to concerns for Wickford town centre, here are five letters published in the Echo this week: A BIG thank you to Basildon Council for the wonderful facilities they provide at Wat Tyler Country Park. After all the totally unacceptable , it was so, so nice to spend a very pleasant few hours at Wat Tyler Country Park, Pitsea last weekend. How very, very pleasant and reassuring to see many hundreds of people of all ages and backgrounds peacefully enjoying the simple pleasures of sunshine, gentle ball games, fresh air, children’s play facilities, ice cream , etc.
in such a friendly and relaxing atmosphere, plus a well maintained and clean venue (including clean toilets.) After all the unpleasantness of the last few weeks, it brought everything back into perspective – the majority of people are friendly and peaceful and it is only a tiny minority who aim to destroy the pleasures of the majority. Thank you again to Basildon Council – long may you support Wat Tyler Country Park for the enjoyment of so many of the community.
revived happy memories of acting with The Thalians drama group who were based there before the creation of the more modern Towngate Theatre. One treasured souvenir from those times is my script for Arthur Miller’s The Crucible –about the 17th century Salem witch trial in which I played Francis Nurse, the husband of one of the accused women, signed by the great American playwright who I had the privilege of meeting during his 80th birthday visit to London. I left The Thalians, who continue to keep the am-dram flag flying, to co-found Basildon Hospital Radio with support from where I was working as a sub-editor.
For five years, I produced and presented The Friday People, a weekly magazine programme which featured prominent local, national and international personalities. Thanks to Arthur Levinson, the manager of Southend’s Art Deco Odeon, I secured an interview with the legendary Gregory Peck and Arthur also arranged for me to have my head “served” on a silver platter by beautiful actress Maddy Smith at a Leicester Square preview showing of the horror film Theatre of Blood. I am pleased that, after more than 50 years, BHR continues to entertain patients.
My love of performing continued after leaving Basildon for Thurrock where I initially joined an improvisational group at the Thameside Theatre but since 2014 I have been in the Community Chorus at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch. Last year, through its partner Public Acts, I made my debut, aged 79, at the National Theatre where, alongside professional actors, I played a sailor, a partygoer and a sea creature in a new version of the Greek Legend, The Odyssey. After Covid, theatre attendances dropped alarmingly but I am hoping that, perhaps with help from the new Labour Government’s Culture, Media and Sports Minister Lisa Nandy, things will improve.
Wickford is falling to pieces! The market, which I have known for the last 58 years from its days as a local cattle market so that the London Road doctors’ surgery could be moved with the promise of new additional diagnostic facilities. The surgery moved and the facilities never appeared! As a consequence, the market relocated to the High Street on Saturdays and was pretty successful. That was until the bus companies objected to the Saturday closure even though they don’t have a bus stop in the High Street.
So the market had to move again to the smaller and less visible space behind the High Street. With proper signage, that site could possibly work, but then along came the relatively new town council and inexplicably changed some of the rules and doubled the daily rent, which is already driving out traders and will inevitably kill off the market for ever. If Wickford is to survive as a town centre, particularly in the face of the current national high street decline, someone needs both to get strong with the bus companies and abolish the useless talking shop that is the Town Council.
That way we might just keep our town. I read with some interest the article in Wednesday’s Echo regarding the development at in Leigh, not least due to the fact that way back in the past my wife and I were governors at the school and at the time it was attended by our children. We are still residents on the west-bound carriageway of Blenheim Chase close to the Blenheim Centre building.
I have absolutely no problem regarding the proposed development but I do have some concerns regarding the possible impact, parking-wise, to local residents like us. My main concern about the school development is the fact that there is no mention of parking provision, which since the pupils concerned have special needs will undoubtedly require school run or special transport, some of which may involve long parking periods. In my view parking is an issue that needs to be seriously considered.
What infernal idiot (or group of idiots) came up with the stupid idea of keeping bottle tops attached to plastic bottles. I saw on TV that it is to stop us not recycling the tops. Are we all too daft not to do that? Please don’t tell me that some unelected and unwanted Quango told the bottling industry that this was mandatory.
Or worse still some hangover from the lunacy of the EEC. I rip them off anyway but I suspect this is another part of the Nanny State trying to rule our lives..
