Hurray for Fridays

Mutterings continued.

Busy day, nice and easy evening.

More bad news from London. I did like this from The Northerner:

You knew it was a big story when the US TV crews turned up with the

lacquer-haired anchorman. There were Japanese crews too, plus a

worried-looking Belgian journalist scuttling past the wheelie bins in

the back alley behind Colwyn Road, in Beeston, Leeds, the home of

London bomber Shezhan Tanweer.

The media mob grew bigger every day last week and everyone living in

the terraced grid of streets was probably interviewed at least twice.

At times like this, locals tire of notebooks and lenses pretty

quickly and urge us to shove off.

But not in Beeston. After the two-minute silence, staff of the Hamara

community centre distributed bottles of mineral water to reporters.

As bomb squad teams prised open the shutters of the youth centre on

Lodge Lane, a man carrying a bottle of orangeade and pile of plastic

cups handed out free drinks to those gasping in the sun.

A reporter from the Yorkshire Post said a local greengrocer had given

her a free watermelon. In other hotspots they might well have thrown

it at her. And as police searched another house in a quiet road in

nearby Dewsbury, a resident saw the sweat on my brow and gave me an

ice lolly.

The paradox of Beeston is that this centre of inner-city deprivation,

which harboured fanatical suicidal killers, appears also to be a

place of multiracial and multi-religious harmony. "This is a

beautiful area with lots of different people, ideas, clothes, music.

Everyone learns something from each other," said one very

young-looking father of six.

Perhaps his glasses would have been rose-tinted, had he been wearing

any. But in the shop behind him the Asian British owner (from

Swindon) discussed the news with her white British friend (from

Cornwall). He promised to help her find a way through the police

cordons to the cash and carry.

Beeston, on the basis of a three-day visit, does not feel like

Bradford, Burnley or Oldham, scene of riots in 2001 and now the

target of government cohesive community strategies. Perhaps, amid the

horrors, there are lessons to be learned in Leeds.

Amen.

Can't recall how I discovered this site; suspect it was a link from the Dull Mens Club. A site dedicated to some of Britain's more pathetic motorways. The A57 is especially amusing.