Blog: Lost In Leyton

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Being caring citizens of MOTHER EARTH myself and The Paper In My Pulping Machine set off to distant LEYTON on Sunday to drop some broken Electrical Equipment in at our local Recycling Centre. I visited the council's website, printed off a map, and off we set with a hessian bag full of STUFF to dump. If the planet must burn, it will not be on OUR heads!

Things were going well until we arrived in Leyton and found that our map didn't actually show us HOW to get to our destination, and also that things had CHANGED round E10 way. I don't know if you've been told, but apparently THE OLYMPICS are coming to the Old East End this year, so there has been a lot of work done on the "street furniture". Charmingly in Leyton this seems to have included planted loads of street lights which bend over in such a way tnat nearly ALL of them are entangled with the telephone wires, but there's also been some NEW ROADS put in and OLD ONES sealed off. We thus became ever so slightly lost.

We knew we were NEAR the recycling centre, but couldn't work out exactly where we were or how to get there, so asked a passing Generational Trio (toddler, father, grandfather) how to get there. To our amazement the middle member of the group asked if we'd got a postcode and, when I'd said we had, offered to DRIVE us there!

What a lovely man! We thus HOPPED into his car, put the postcode into his satnav and set off. Leyton, clearly, is full of SAINTS... tho, it turns out, not the kind who have working SatNavs. He said "Ah! The SatNav says it'll take 8 minutes" which seemed a LONG time to me, but assumed there'd be a one way system or something. Similarly when we set off in the OPPOSITE direction from the map I thought the same and assumed we'd be circling back... but we didn't. In fact we headed off towards WALTHAMSTOW and KEPT heading that way until, roughly 8 minutes later, we arrived in a deserted SQUARE in an ESTATE.

I thought he MIGHT be right, but if not didn't want to FORCE him to ferry us around any more, so we hopped out, waved our Good Samaritan goodbye, and then looked at the MAP again. We were MILES away from where we'd been and so had a DELIGHTFUL half hour STOMP through Leyton, seeing Interesting Churches, an old BOWLS CLUB and some ALMSHOUSES on the way. "This is what it's like on TOUR" i told The Green Of My Bowls Club, "We're having an ADVENTURE!"

Eventually we got back to just round the corner from where we'd got in the car and went down many side roads, none of which led to the recycling centre. We could SEE it, but couldn't get in, and eventually ended up at The Allotments (where The Landlady harvests many items for our TEA). I could see a big sign 100 yards away saying "Recycling Centre" but there was a 20 foot high LOCKED GATE between us and IT. The Rungs On My Ladder saw two MEN working along the road, so we waved and called to them. "No public access! No public access!" one shouted back at us. "Go round!" he added, but we kept waving and eventually he came strolling over (despite his colleague telling him not to bother) to tell us that this road was now LOCKED and we'd have to go MILES around in a whole other direction to get in.

We were UPSET to say the least, but then our SECOND Leyton Miracle of the day occurred as he took out some keys and UNLOCKED the gate for us. "Put your stuff over there, near those tellies" he said, and we JOGGED down the road to add to a small pile of electronics already there. ANGELS sang and JOY was UNCONFINED as we finally achieved our goal, thanks to the general overreaching GENTLE KINDNESS of these Leyton Folk.

In TRIUMPH we went to Leyton Mills and bought some FOOTWEAR and FOOD before heading home, where I CHECKED the postcode given on the council website - the MAP they gave was STILL rubbish, but at least the postcode was correct, so I guess our first new friend must have had a WONKY GADGET.

In summary, then, as long as they provide enough STREET MARKINGS I think that THE WORLD is going to be in safe hands this summer, thanks to the people of LEYTON: land of ill-gadgeted yet friendly ANGELS!

posted 9/1/2012 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

I had money on this story ending half way down with the words “and then he got his nob out”
posted 9/1/2012 by Francis

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