Depleted Earth Site?

Electricity substation, Wood End Road, Harrow

What does "Depleted Earth Site" mean? Google doesn't seem to know exactly. This is outside a local electricity substation.

Update: It appears to be just a fancy way of saying that if you step through this gate you will fall into a hole. There’s a deep hollow behind the fence.

Radio Harrow information poster

Radio Harrow poster at Northwick Park hospital. See about volunteering. Link: www.radioharrow.org

Northwick Park station

View to the back of Northwick Park Station from the northwest corner of Northwick Park, March 2025

Sudbury Hill Harrow station

Small station on the Chiltern Line, 15 March 2025

Trains stop here about every half hour only during peak hours and only on weekdays. The platforms are short, so only trains with a small number of carriages can use this station.

Review: "Anora" - a snorer

Sarah Hegarty's damning review of Anora, winner of the Oscar for best film, 2025

Harrow Cricket Club and Apple Tree Montessori Nursery

View of Harrow Cricket Club and Apple Tree Montessori nursery buildings, 28 Feb. 2025 

Affinity Water - leak at Sudbury Hill for several days

Water leak at Greenford Road near Sudbury Hill, 27 February 202

This leak has been running for several days. According to Affinity Water’s “report a leak” map, the leak was reported on 19 February and has been investigated and located by one of their technicians on 25 February. (See details below.)

Screenshot of the leak on the “report a leak” page (detail)

Update Friday 28: Still bubbling up, water spreading across the road etc.

Update, 1 March: Still the same. To call it a puddle is a bit of an understatement, it's spreading across Greenford Road. Video today: 

Broadway Living, Ealing: What is happening?

Site of Wood End Children's Library

Site of the former Wood End Children's Library, 23 Feb 2025

Note: The display states "Work is due to be completed by late 2023. There has been no visible activity on the site for several months. The development is supposed to include a new community library. The library was demolished in February 2022. See  Wood End Library and Children's Centre demolished (photos). 

Question for Ealing Council, what is happening here? The website link given leads to "Sorry page not found." 

Update: 22 April 2025 - still the same. (Supposed to have been "completed by late 2023")

Bald Cypress

Bald Cypress, Whitton Avenue West, 23 Feb 2025

Trainspotting

Piccadilly Uxbridge Line train spotted at Wood End, November 2015

Watching Miss Austen?

Jane Austen's memorial and gravestone

Perhaps you might like to see Cassandra’s sister Jane Austen’s memorial and the inscription on her gravestone over at on that moonlighting hack Moran’s private website. What price loyalty? (Red)

Mpox clinic self check-in screen

Corner of First Avenue and Harrow Road, W10

Queens Park street scene, Monday, 6 January 2025

Digging out sheep from under snow

* The Big Snow of 2025 on the Galtees * Brothers Tom John William & their nephew Billy Cunningham along with their Hill Sheep Farming Neighbours are out on the Galtees with the last few days digging out their sheep who have been trapped in what has been the worst snow fall in decades.

[image or embed]

— Carlow Weather (@carlowweather.bsky.social) January 10, 2025 at 8:31 AM

Extraordinary video from Carlow Weather on Bluesky

Wood End Road this evening

All this happened because of the damn fool clocks going back malarkey. Simple as.

Farewell to Storyville

The End of the Road

We are now closed indefinitely for submissions of short stories. It’s been fun.

Take care. Be good. See you around!

Ed.

Our Short Stories of the Year 2024

Willesden Herald Short Stories of the Year 2024

• January: Cranes by Alex Barr
• February: My Yellow by Amanda Huggins
• March: Outlaws by Neil Brosnan
• April: With Every Choice Something is Lost by Mike Fox
• May: At the Hotel Swinburne by Cath Barton
• June: New Moon by Michael Howard
• July: The River by Pia Quintano
• November: I O U by Robert Stone
• December: The Man on the Train by Sarah Turner

Thanks for another lovely lot of short stories this year, though we only managed to find some for nine out of the twelve months.

Here’s wishing everyone a peaceful and happy new year. (Ed.)

Photo: South Vale this afternoon

South Vale, Harrow, London HA1, this afternoon

Bill poster in action today

What would make a good caption for this - "Culture clash"?

Photo: bill poster man in hi-vis work clothes up tall ladder to replace the topmost of two large billboard posters. The bottom one is a poster advertising flats at Greenford Quay "West London's Vibrant Rental Community". The top one is half and half and it's hard to tell which poster is being added and which being covered over; one is for "First Hindi Entertainment on Samsung TV Plus"; the other appears to be a fashion advert for White Fox brand leisurewear.

Update:

The new poster completed (for First Hindi Entertainment Channel)

Short Story of the Month, December 2024

The trouble about helping strangers is you just never know what you're getting into and you don't know what other strangers there might be when you get into it. The clue is in the word "strangers". (Ed.)

T H E   M A N   O N   T H E   T R A I N 

by Sarah Turner

Copyright 2024 © by Sarah Turner. All rights reserved

I’d speculated about the man even before we spoke; he interested me as soon as I saw him on the station platform that afternoon, in his long tweed coat and beaten-down, once-formal shoes. He caught my eye and paced towards me with a focused look that made me think he was about to ask me something. I thought he might need help, and that I should do what I could for him. I was confident at that age, perhaps more so than I should have been, old enough for the adult world to have started to seem straightforward, and too young to have really understood the complication in it, and I assumed I could solve most of the problems other people had, but now that we were on the train and he was sitting across the aisle from me, with his legs crossed at the knee, exposing his thin, sockless ankles, I suspected that there hadn’t been a specific issue. He just seemed anxious. He was holding a small glass and he kept glancing over his shoulder and swinging his foot. His nervy manner, combined with an unusual expressiveness in his face, made me think he must be especially intelligent – a retired academic, perhaps, or a poet, and I watched from the corner of my eye as he glanced round, leant forward to pour a glass of wine from the bottle he’d hidden in his bag, and sat back to sip it.

Bonus book for the next Story of the Month

Cover: Day of the Flying Leaves

In addition to a copy of one of the New Short Stories anthologies, the next Story of the Month author will receive a copy of Day of the Flying Leaves, poetry by yours truly. I will also inscribe and sign an as-yet unpublished poem on a blank page. I hope this will not be a disincentive! (Ed.)

Short Story of the Month, November 2024

We've just arrived back to civilisation and found a great short story of the month for November. It's a "read twicer". Did anything happen while we were away? Ed.

I O U 

by Robert Stone

Copyright 2024 © by Robert Stone. All rights reserved

 

BILL HAD NOTICED, and he noticed it again now, that whenever Brett’s friends felt that they had to speak to him, they didn’t look him in the eyes, as though they might be afraid to do that, rather they looked in his direction, over his shoulder. Brett herself was not like that, not quite.

The canal at Ladbroke Grove, Tuesday

12:22 5 November 2024

Photo: Looking along a canal that bends away to the right in the distance from this viewpoint on a bridge, with a swan beside a houseboat barge on the right bank, on bright calm shiny water, with a variety of buildings alongside the left bank, foremost one completely covered in brightly coloured graffiti. (There is another swan following some distance back by the next houseboat. They both leave gentle V-shaped in their wake.)

Lime + Uber eBikes chaos – London

Kensal Green: 5 November 2024, 11:08 a.m.

Photo: “On Lime + Uber” branded eBikes piled up blocking the pavement outside Kensal Green underground station, 5 November 2024 

Trailer: “Reawakening” – a new film written and directed by Virginia Gilbert

“Reawakening, starring Jared Harris, Juliet Stevenson and Erin Doherty, is the powerful, psychologically piercing and searingly emotional second feature from BAFTA-nominated writer-director Virginia Gilbert.” (Facebook)

Some of you might remember when Virginia Gilbert’s short story “Winter Lambing” won the Willesden Herald short Story competition in 2012, as judged by Roddy Doyle. There is even a video of the awards presentation at the old Willesden Library Centre [with Mourny three sheets to the wind. Ed]

Reawakening had its US premiere at the Newport Beach film festival last week and has already been nominated for awards and included in other film festivals.