Happy Easter / Vishu .
A couple of stories we at Beestonia have been involved during the last few months come to a head this week. One is great news, one not so.
We’ll start with the positive and give a hearty welcome to the Sri Thurkkai Amman Temple that officially opens it’s doors from 10am tomorrow. You’re invited to attend the temple in West Crescent, and I strongly recommend it. The sneak preview I got a few weeks ago left me awestruck: the transformation of a derelict building into a visual feast of colour and craftsmanship was astounding, despite it being far from finished. On display will be the cards you lot sent in after my appeal here: it had a great efect on morale there, after the deflation caused by the acts of a few bonehead racists who took it upon themselves to see the transformation of a derelict building into a brilliant community-centred (they are offering the extensive hall space to Beestonians to use for meetings and other secular activities) hub as akin to forcing us all to worship Ganesh and forsake beef for ever, on pain of death. Never underestimate the nastiness, or the idiocy, of the far-right.
We won this one. The general open-minded, good natured compassion of Beestonians swept away the small minded prejudices of a miserably grim few. Pop down tomorrow. They’ll be happy to see you.
EDIT: Cllr Barber just got in touch to add the following:
I am advising people to walk or get the bus to the Temple tomorrow. If they drive please do not attempt to park on West Crescent, there should be space on Leyton Cres at the Community Centre, there are no sporting fixtures tomorrow. This is less than 3 minutes from the Temple
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The bad news? I also highly recommend you pop down Wilkos this week. Well, as it is the store with highest foot-fall per square metre in the whole of Beeston, you probably were off down there anyhow. But of not, this week is your last chance. On Saturday the store is closing, and may not be back. Why? Well, it seems I have a clear picture on that now, and you might be surprised by who the main culprits are.
Let me first issue a partial apology to Henry Boot Developers. I’ve long-blamed that their vision of Beeston Square was dramatically out of step with your everday Beestonian, and as such were trying to force Wilkos out, hence the utter shambles of getting them a new site.
Seems the story is more complex than that, and I’ve had to put myself through a crash-course in urban retail development over the last few months to get my head round it. However, the notional bad-guys, Henry Boot PLC, seem to have been trying to get some sort of solution to the interminable problem of the Square for some time. I still think their methods of communicating this leave a lot to be desired, but I now firmly believe that they have been obstructed unneccesarilary by other parties. All will be revealed in the next post, as I’ve sent them emails asking for a response and want to ensure right of reply.
Henry Boot are far from whiter than white, but their recent transparancy of their plans for the precinct/square are admirable. The truly greedy, the truly damaging? Watch this space.
And as a totally unrelated aside, I’d like to mention that senior bosses from Wilkos, including members of the Wilkinson family themselves, will be at the store this Thursday (12th). I don’t know what time, and due to the fact I’m working that day will not be able to attend, but if you’re free, do pop down and be at liberty to ask them how much they will profit from purposely running the branch into the ground for a bit of cash while one half of the workers have been pushed into other stores and the other half now unemployed.
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Or, pop along any day and leave a message here:
It’s a wall in Wilkos thats been given over to people wishing to say goodbye to this institution. Right now it seems peoples rage is directed mainly towards the tram, though, as all will become clear, this is a bit misguided. When I spent hours in the cold taking signatures for the petition, this was also flagged up as the reason….if only local retail planning was so simple.
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We, as in the Beestonian Elite Journalistic Squad, the NG9 A-Team (motto; we love it when a pun comes together) are working on Issue 8 right now and it has a spercial theme: PUBS. Own a pub in Beeston? Have pub stories? Want to join our intrepid mission to forge a new pub crawl on Modern Beeston? Then let me know at mattgoold23@hotmail.com .
Beestonia 
I went into the store today to leave my comment on the wall of sadness. An amazing sight, all the comments and cards. Seems that Wilko’s is a bit more than a shop to an awful lot of people. Will be doing an blog story on it tomorrow.
A pub crawl around Beeston sounds daring, as there are around 25 ale houses in the area, not including the plethora of winebars that we have now.
Cheers!
I remember in my younger days the challenge to do all pubs with “Beeston” in their address according to the telephone book. Half in each K.O 5.30. As I recall in those days this is the list, the order and the ale (K=Kimberley, S=Shippos, H=Home Ales);18 in total:
Rosegrowers K, Nurseryman K, Cricketers S, Commercial K, Star S, White Lion H, Queens S, Anglers H, Boat and Horses H, Victoria (Ind Coope), Chequers S, Hop Pole (Ansells), Crown K, Three Horseshoes S, Malt Shovel S, Prince of Wales S, Durham Ox H and finally the Royal Oak S.
What was the year?
I’m not sure of the exact years but in the early eighties there were two charity “Barrow crawls” round Beeston. Teams from
many of the Beeston pubs pushed a wheel barrow (or other wheeled conveyance, we used an office trolley one year and a
sack truck the next) containing a team member round the rest of the pubs in Beeston, having a drink in each and finishing
back at your local or where you lapsed into unconsciousness .
Along the way raising a few bob for charity and proving why you shouldn’t drink and push ,let alone drink and drive!
Though not all the pubs on Steve Barbers’ list were included ,we definitely didn’t head over the hill to the Nurseryman ,and I can’t
remember if we ventured south of the tracks to the Boat and Jolly (several hogsheads have been consumed since those days).
The third year the event was cancelled I believe because of wholly justified Police objections to drunks in charge of assorted
wheeled contraptions wandering down the middle of Chilwell high road and traversing Queens road without using the
proper crossings or looking left and right as we’d been taught by Tufty, which is a shame as it was a fun evening.
Sorry missed out the Greyhound (Bass). There were 19 pubs in total. The year as I remember was 1979, when Forest won the European Cup.