Wharf Life Jun 5

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Legal matters with Yogesh Patel of Kidd Rapinet Page 4

Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

inside

Jamie Bolding on founding Jungle Creations and creating a new restaurant chain off the back of a digital empire

National Landlord Investment Show London Festival Of Architecture Mudchute Park And Farm The Breakfast Club The Pearson Room Deptford Cinema Manhattan Plaza Traders’ Quarter Humble Grape King Hedley II Flipside Puzzles Excel GDIF

jungle king of the

celebrating the best of Canary Wharf, Docklands and the new east London people - events - treasure - property - nonsense

Image by Matt Grayson – find his work at graysonphotos.co.uk or @mattgrayson_photo on Insta

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Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

read

fortnightly find

this issue’s Tiger Treasure

14 days later

plan your life from Jun 19-Jul 3 where?

Cabot Square Canary Wharf

WATCH | Wimbledon Settle down for 14 days of tennis action on the estate with a food market to sate your hunger over the lunch hour (noon-3pm, Mon-Fri). Get out Jul 1-14, daily, free, canarywharf.com where?

Canada Square Park Canary Wharf

feast your eyes on these

I’ve a terrible case of Kludderleg – it sounds like something you’d say in hushed tones to a sympathetic doctor.

In fact, and we’ve no idea how they’ve got round the copyright, it’s simply a Danish take on Twister. Traditionally for kids, why not set it up in the boardroom and watch the children team-build?

Kludderleg, £4 Go to uk.flyingtiger.com

design art and

London Festival Of Architecture

EVENT | Midsummer Festival Celebrate the summer equinox by heading to the park for some live music from the festival stage.

Performers include Sully Gravity and Chelsea Blues.

Jun 21-22, from noon, free, canarywharf.com where?

Crossrail Place Roof Garden Canary Wharf

STAGE | Boys Part of the regular Bloom Festival, Pappyshow presents a tale of young men whose communities, families and heritage span the entire world.

Jun 30, 7pm, free (reserve), canarywharf.com

coming up

On June 17 and 24 and August 12 and 19, Cabot Quizzing will take over Cabot Square from 6pm-9pm with teams (max 6) competing to win the top prize of a £100 Canary Wharf Gift Card. Entry is free, register in advance canarywharf.com

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One Canada Square Lobby, Cabot Square, across the estate

The London Festival Of Architecture is set to take over parts of Canary Wharf from June 10-28.

A mini-festival within a festival (if you like this sort of thing, check out GDIF on Page 46), there will be four attractions for visitors to see or participate in.

LBMV will create a tunnel-like installation in the lobby of One Canada Square, designed to create “an architectural boundary between the workplace environment and the experiential space of the structure”.

It’s called Don’t Walk, Walk, so that’s pretty clear.

In the same location, Article 25 will display architectural models and images of its Designs For An Alternative To Poverty.

Visit Cabot Square during the festival and relax in The Qunitessential English Garden – a pop-up garden by Lily Jencks Studio.

Or simply explore the estate with Building Sounds – an audio guide to the architecture of Canary Wharf, downloadable as a podcast to your phone.

All of the above are free to visit or experience.

Go to canarywharf.com for more information about the festival

From top down: Don’t Walk, Walk, The Quintessential English Garden and an image of Article 25’s work

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The Pearson Room gives us a taste of its freshly twisted gin menu

Humble Grape gears up for the opening of its latest branch

the joy of six Every fortnight Wharf Life covers six areas surrounding Canary Wharf to bring you the best of what’s going on beyond the estate From Page 40

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Editorial email stories@wharf-life.com call 07765 076 300

we want to hear from you

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Testing out Drag Brunch at The Breakfast Club on a Saturday

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Canary Wharf

£4

on the radar need to know

Did anyone say padel tennis? Pop-Up Padel is back at Montgomery Square from June 17 until July 4. It’s pay to play, but free to watch.

Families can try the sport on June 30 while exhibition matches by top players will take place on July 2-3 wearepadel.com

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What we paid for a pair of crunch summer rolls at Velo

dine

Velo - Reuters Plaza

Flipside is helping east Londoners into digital design careers

Canary Wharf’s Movie Nights return from June 11 with the people deciding between The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (obviously the best) or Guardians Of The Galaxy via Insta.

Shows are typically 7pm with some lates at 9pm in September canarywharf.com

No, I’ve no idea what the transparent, gelatinous membrane holding the ingredients together is.

I’m not clear what’s in the dipping sauce either. All I know is I’m a “with prawns” man rather than without.

Velo’s summer rolls have long been one of the best buys in Canary Wharf and I’m happy to confirm at £4 for two, they continue to be excellent value.

Ideally served slightly stuck together, forcing the buyer to perform a delicate separation that keeps both tubes intact and is the very essence of mindfulness, they’re a crunch, fresh delight.

There are probably many more nutritious dishes to be found on the estate and certainly a large number that beat the rolls on beauty.

But these simple, cheap, vegetable-stuffed crowd-pleasers

are a consistent, reliable choice for those on the go.

My only gripe really is the plastic box and sauce pot – sort out these with more sustainable alternatives and there would be no reason not to go back day after day for a rapid, edible-at-desk Vietnamese lunch fix.

Go to velorestaurant.com Jon Massey

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legal matters

by Yogesh Patel

or many in their early to late 20s it can be a real struggle to get onto the property ladder.

The UK government has recognised the problems surrounding the property crisis in the UK and the lack of affordable housing limiting the younger generation from taking their first steps onto the property ladder.

With this in mind, ministers have introduced a number of incentives to stimulate the market and give a helping hand to first time home buyers Help To Buy This is an equity loan scheme available for firsttime buyers and existing homeowners who want to purchase a new-build. The only restriction is the property must not be priced at more than £600,000.

Under this scheme, a buyer can borrow 20% of the purchase price interest-free for the first five years, as long as a deposit of 5% is paid. If the buyer lives in London, then up to 40% of the purchase price can be borrowed. This scheme is set to run until 2021.

The Government also offers a Help To Buy ISA. This operates as a bonus when the homeowner saves £200 a month, on which the government tops it up by £50 a month to a maximum of £3,000.

“

Shared Ownership From April 2016, anyone who has a household income While these methods of less than £80,000 outside of London create incentives for or £90,000 inside first-time buyers, there London can buy a home through Shared are still many obstacles Ownership.

– the main one being This scheme enables a buyer to purchase a lack of housing stock portion of the property Yogesh Patel, Kidd Rapinet from a landlord, usually the council or a housing association and pay rent on the rest. A mortgage may be required to pay for a share of property being purchased. This can be anywhere between a 25% and 75% of the property’s title value. A larger proportion of the property can be purchased at a later date, up to 100% of the value of the property.

Right To Buy This scheme is for tenants in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who are currently renting their property from their local council or housing association and enables the property they reside in to be bought at a discounted value. The size of the discount will vary depending on the property location and type. Restrictions apply accordingly.

Supply and demand While the methods above create incentives for first time buyers there are still many obstacles – the main one being the lack of available housing stock in the UK. Further stimulation is required for these schemes to be effective.

Yogesh Patel is a partner at Kidd Rapinet LLP based at Harbour Exchange on the Isle Of Dogs with extensive experience in property matters Go to kiddrapinet.co.uk or follow @KiddRapinetLLP on Twitter or @kiddrapinet on Instagram

when brunch is a

by Florence Derrick

I

t’s Saturday brunchtime and I’ve found myself in an oversized hat fashioned from a torn-up copy of the Evening Standard, strutting down a makeshift runway between rows of restaurant tables.

I’m trying to out-catwalk 10 competitors to get through to the next round of a fashion parade called Strictly Come Drag Queen (SCDQ).

The judging panel – three drag queens, dressed to the nines in false eyelashes, platform boots and ringletted wigs, clapping their hands and selecting the three fashionistas-to-be.

I’m not one of them. But I am several mimosas deep at The Breakfast Club’s regular drag brunch in the venue’s semi-secret bar – Dr Kluger’s Olde Town Tavern in Canary Wharf’s Crossrail Place.

So far we’ve seen our hosts lip sync an imagined and outrageous fight between the ardashians, and perform high kick-heavy dance routines to the Backstreet Boys and Britney.

They’ve been entertaining us, dancing on tables and downing our drinks, as we’ve eaten a full English breakfast and pancakes paired with bottomless Prosecco.

Naturally, by the time the SCDQ game begins with the newspaper hat-making challenge, things are pretty raucous.

In its third sell-out year and now hosting twice-monthly shows, this might be London’s most on-trend brunch.

Eating a meal between breakfast and lunch has been a rite of passage in the capital for decades, going up a notch over the past five years as anhattan inspired bottomless brunches began taking over Londoners’ Saturdays.

Today, name just about any pop culture reference you can think of, and the capital will have a weekend party dedicated to it – hip hop brunch, bingo brunch, karaoke brunch, ball pit brunch.

The Breakfast Club’s version responds to London’s insatiable appetite for breakfast and booze by combining it with the city’s other latest obsession – drag.

“Drag-themed shows are getting more popular because the general public have clocked onto how fun it is,” says Third Girl, one of the performers and an artist and film maker outside of her drag duties.

“There’s always something trending and at the moment, it’s drag queens.”

It’s plain to see. Dalston’s debaucherous and drag-hosted Karaoke Hole opened last year, ethnal reen Working en’s Club regularly sells out drag shows and the Royal Vauxhall Tav-

drag

Q F

How can I buy my first home? With property prices the way they are, the idea just seems impossible

Above and below, drag performers at The Breakfast Club

£45

Cost of tickets to Strictly Come Drag Brunch at The Breakfast Club

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

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Canary Wharf

doing the deals ern has been given Grade II listed status thanks to a drag legacy that helped bring the artform from the underground to the mainstream.

Lily Savage (Paul O’Grady) held a residency there in the 1980s. ondon wants fishnets and bawdy banter, and a full English to go with it.

“I do miss the days when drag was new for a lot of people,” says third girl. “I remember when there were only a handful of them in east London.

“It was very new and exciting – but I’m happy I can do something I love now and get paid well for it.

That wouldn’t have happened six years ago.”

Neither would the scene that’s unfolding in front of me – two young men and one woman picked from the crowd at a Canary Wharf breakfast table have donned stilettos, feather boas, red lipstick and satin dresses, to compete in the final stage of the SCDQ fashion show that the rest of us watch from behind our constantly filled flutes of fi .

They saunter down the impromptu catwalk, fluttering

just what is The Breakfast Club in Canary Wharf serving up on the weekends?

Drag means clothes, especially women’s clothing and comes from Polari – slang language used by actors, showmen, sailors and gay subcultures in Britain since the 19th century

hit the Wharf’s malls and restaurants for less their eyelashes and grinding their booties at onlookers that screech in delight.

One is crowned the winner and, as the brunch comes to a close, we celebrate by learning and mass-performing a dance routine to Stop by the Spice Girls.

But the party session is just beginning. The Breakfast Club offers two for one on rosecco and draught beer for the rest of the day, and the hen dos and birthday parties in attendance are only just finding their stride.

“My most hilarious drag brunch memory was getting two men to give me a foot up the fire exit, to reach a bottle of perol Sprit , says Third Girl, as we wonder just how raucous the afternoon is going to become. There’s only one way to find out. t starts with getting our hands on a bottle of Aperol.

The next SCDQ takes place at Dr Kluger’s Olde Town Tavern behind The Breakfast Club in Crossrail Place on June 15. Tickets cost £45 but sell out quickly. Other dates are available.

Go to thebreakfastclubcafes.com for more information

beer

Attend Jo Malone’s Father’s Day event in Cabot Place on Jun 15-16 and discover their men’s scents over a craft beer while stenciling ‘Dad’ on a box jomalone.co.uk

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Jungle Creations’ CEO Jamie Bolding talks social and food

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why The Pearson Room’s gin menu should be on your list for the summer

by Jon Massey

F

resh to the Wharf himself, The Pearson Room’s bar manager Omar Valadez has unveiled a summer gin menu at the Canada Square venue designed to inspire playfulness in its customers.

Created in partnership with Fever Tree and available from June 6 onwards, the list features 18 expressions of the spirit alongside eight mixers.

The latter, costing £2 each, consist of four tonic waters, a ginger beer, a Sicilian lemonade, a ginger ale and a soda water.

“It’s like a build-your-own concept, to make it more playful for the customers,” said Omar, who lives in west London and began working at The Pearson Room two months ago.

“We have a choice of tonics and mixers and you get to play with them – we’re happy to make suggestions, of course, perhaps a No.3 London Dry Gin with Fever Tree’s Mediterranean Tonic, ginger ale or ginger beer, for example.

“We try to give our customers a different experience – different flavours, different twists, so things don’t get too boring.”

Having run a Japanese whisky bar in Haggerston for the past two years, the Mexican-born Italian has worked in the US and Sardinia, a global citizen working consistently in the industry.

“The life is good – I’ve been doing this for 12 years and I’ve learned from all the people around me, which has given me a good grounding,” he said.

“Much of my life in the industry has been in the US where things are more about tequila and mezcal – I personally love a smoked mezcal Negroni.

“When I moved to Europe, especially the UK, I was like: ‘Why are there so many brands of gin?’.

“To celebrate that, the idea of the list is that we feature different gins because it’s growing, it’s global now, even in the US. The ones we’ve selected are different from the regular ones.”

The spirits featured in the build-your-own section are priced between £8 and £12 for a 50ml measure.

Towards the lower end of the list are Bombay Sapphire, promising aromatic, bright citrus and warming spice flavours, Suntory Roku for fruity sweetness and peppery notes and Tanqueray London Dry boasting potent juniper and light spice.

In the mid-range, Glendalough Wild Irish is best garnished with grapefruit, No.3 London Dry is bold with citrus notes and cardamom and Bathtub Old Tom delivers a gentle sweetness.

Splash out a little more (probably after a few at the lighter end) and you’ll find i o i made using a rice spirit base, Hinoki wood chips and bamboo leaves and Sylvius with its dominant juniper with angelica notes.

The list also features two classic G&Ts with Star Of Bombay (£10 including Fever Tree Indian Tonic) and Tanqueray 10 (£12 with Mediterranean Tonic).

And then there are four drinks designed to introduce a little more complexity to the standard spirit and mixer. There’s a bitter with Thomas Dakin Gin, a dry with Sipsmith, a floral with Hendricks and a sweet with Theodore.

“I particularly like the Thomas Dakin, especially with soda,” said Omar.

“We want people to play with the list – to come in, stay for the gin. It may be one or two pounds more than they would normally spend but they’ll be getting something fun with a twist.”

For more information about spirits or to arrange an event at The Pearson Room call 020 7970 0920 or go to thepearsonroom.co.uk

“

We have a choice of tonics and mixers and you get to play with them – we’re happy to make suggestions, of course Omar Valadez, The Pearson Room

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Expressions of gin available at The Pearson Room from June 6

twist gin with a

Images by Matt Grayson – find his work at graysonphotos.co.uk or @mattgrayson_photo on Insta

Bar manager Omar Valadez and his team are ready to mix gin and tonics to order at The Pearson Room Right, putting the finishing touches to the sweet with a sprig of rosemary

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

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Canary Wharf

why not book your next event with a Wharf view?

Events manager Grace Harrison shares a drink with Omar in the Canada Square venue’s bar high above Waitrose

I

n addition to gin, The Pearson Room is among the most flexible venues in Canary Wharf for parties, get-togethers and celebrations.

Events manager Grace Harrison said: “We do all kinds here. We’re tucked away, overlooking the square, and we’re very, very flexible.

“It’s a very big open space that can accommodate up to 350 people for a standing reception, or you can hire little sections of it.

“Tomorrow night, for example, we’ve got three small groups of 20, all with their own private area, but we’d still have room for another 100 people at the back.

“If you ever want to have a completely private event, you would have to hire the whole venue, but we can do drinks only areas and it can be very relaxed.

“With a lot of places there are lots of hoops to jump through – terms and conditions and so on – but we try to make it very easy for people. If someone just wanted somewhere, lastminute – say the boss has organised a drinks session for 30 people – we can make that happen. Our chef prides himself on being very flexible.”

Located above Waitrose on the same level as Third

Space, there’s a certain exclusivity about gazing out over Canada Square with a drink in-hand. But it’s also a place to dine.

“There’s a breakfast a la carte menu and our all-day menu for lunch and dinner,” said Grace. “We also have snacks and platters and for anyone who wants more of a high-end feel, canapes, for example, we can circulate those. We also do bowl food, which works on a pre-order basis. It’s a very relaxed offering with platters, sliders, burgers.

“Our chef is actually introducing a menu for the summer that will sit alongside the gins – there will be four canapes that are going to pair with our four signature drinks.”

While the venue is normally closed at the weekend, it is available for hire on Saturdays and Sundays.

“Because we wouldn’t otherwise be open, our minimum spends are really very reasonable for those days,” said Grace.

“So if you’ve got anything planned, for example graduate events over the summer, then get in touch.

“We can cater for the last-minute needs of both businesses and private clients, but also organise events way ahead of time as well.”

The sweet signature, left, features Theodore Gin, mango syrup, lemon juice, dried mango and Fever Tree Mediterranean Tonic with rosemary garnish for £12

The bitter signature, right is a blend of Thomas Dakin Gin with blood orange syrup, Fever Tree Lemon Tonic and an orange and pink peppercorn garnish for £12

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Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

Canary Wharf

fruit bearing

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Bottles James used to transport on an 800cc motorcycle for delivery

as Humble Grape prepares to open its doors on the Wharf we talk wine and fundraising with its founder

by Jon Massey

T

here’s something fresh in the glass at Humble Grape. And it’s not the Austrian white that’s splashing from a bottle decorated with an abstract painting that’s being poured in front of me. It’s the realisation that the founder and CEO of the company has pulled off something remarkable.

In July, James Dawson is set to open the fifth branch of his empire in the unit formerly occupied by Le Relais De Venise L’entrecote in Canary Wharf – a restaurant that may have missed success because either its singular offering of steak frites was too narrow for an increasingly veggie, vegan audience or that the length of its name made arranging to meet there a near impossibility. Where are we going? Le... L’... All Bar One. A lesson in branding.

Under its new stewardship and with the departure of Corney And Barrow, I suspect the Cabot Square premises will flourish.

Humble Grape is a clever blend of wine shop, bar, restaurant and venue that ought to fly on the Wharf, at least if the success of Nicolas is anything to go by.

Bigger, better, with an outdoor area and cork all over its walls it’s likely to be a good fit for the suited on weekdays and the wealthy shorts battalion at the weekends.

But more than that, it’s being run by a man who comes from a

“

I wanted to get out and do something else. My wife said I needed to do something I really loved – chess, travel or wine. I chose wine James Dawson, Humble Grape

financial background, understands the thrusting power of fintech and wants to serve you a drink.

“In 2009 I was on holiday with my wife and we were discussing business ideas, what to do and where to go next,” said James, originally from South Africa. “I was working in the City – running digital e-commerce for a broker – and I wanted to get out and do something else.

“My wife said that I needed to do something I really loved – chess, travel or wine. I chose wine.

“The original idea was to do some fundraising, buy an old chateau in France with vines, fix it up and turn it into a boutique hotel and sell the wine. I ran some models and wrote a business plan for it.

“I realised in a few months, having spoken to lots of people, that it was an extremely long-term commitment that would require somewhere between £5million and £10million, and that wasn’t possible. So, I decided that I was really interested in the world of wine, and the best way to learn about that was to set up a business in the sector.

“On that same holiday I met this guy who was a Czech immigrant in the UK and his car had broken down and he was forced to work to make repairs to the car.

“He had met some winemakers and ended up working for these guys to pay for the car repair and so had fallen into the wine business. He was a wine importer and I bought 10 cases of wine from him.

I emailed everyone in my friendly contact database and invited them to come to a wine tasting.

“I was going to teach them about the basics of French wine. I knew a lot about it because I lived in France from 2000 to the end of 2001 – I’d bought a beat-up old car and driven to most of the French wine regions.

“So that was the first wine tasting I did. I decided to make it a monthly thing. Back in 2009 I was still working full-time and running the tastings, teaching people about

Humble Grape founder and CEO James Dawson is set to open his fifth wine bar in Canary Wharf

French wine, then Italian, then Spanish, and this carried on for months and months for about a year and a half.

“I was getting more and more involved with wines, and operationally things became more complex because people wanted to buy them, so I ended up delivering bottles on my way to work, on my motorcycle.

“I had an 800cc bike, so I would put 12 bottles in a case on the back and six in the boot and I did that for about nine months. I would get up at 6am, pack the wines, put on address labels and then deliver them, preferably in the morning.

“I was still working so delivering wine on the way home was a real nightmare because you had to find parking, grab the wine – 18 bottles is a good 25kg – take it all the way to the office and then carry it back to the bike after work.”

From there, the business developed step by step.

“After two years doing that on my own, I hired an operations guy – a lovely Australian called Cameron.

“He was in London looking for something to do with wine, so he joined me as my first employee. He ran the whole operation, helping me to run wine-tastings.

“We found some warehouse space to store our wines, and then we started to import our own stuff.

“Because we were doing that, we decided to sell to restaurants, import lots of different wines, start a lot of corporate events so we were doing this not just for individuals but also for companies.

“We’d set up in their own offices or at venues we would hire and it just grew and grew. At one stage in early 2014, when we were doing lots of wine-tastings – one a month, two or three corporate events and selling wine to about 40 or 50 restaurants – we looked at the business model long and hard, and realised we weren’t making any money, especially on the sales to restaurants.

“That’s because they wanted very cheap wine or branded wine, and we were importing all this quirky stuff.

“Ours were organic, sustainable craft wines made by small family holdings and it just didn’t suit the marketplace.

“We realised that we needed to be in the place where we are now, that this business can’t be a product business, trading on commodity and price and volume, that it needed to be an experience business.”

It was time to go into bricks and mortar and that’s where James’ business background and expertise in fundraising came into its own.

“When you’re selling a really quirky little wine in maybe 500 bottles, you have to tell the story Continued on Page 10

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Canary Wharf

The dining area at Humble Grape’s Fleet Street branch attracts a crowd for lunch

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Branches of Humble Grape when the Canary Wharf wine bar opens its doors in July

continued from Page 8 yourself to sell the wines. So the penny dropped and we realised that we needed to have our own sites, our own wine bars.

“Then you realise that you need a venue, so you have to find out how much it costs to open a wine bar or wine shop - maybe two to three hundred grand - where to get the money from.

“At that time I had moved to a job at fintech startup OpenFin, so I was still working full time and doing this part-time.

“But now I’m at Level39 in Canary Wharf, which is very entrepreneurial, loads of startups. “ met a guy called Frank Webster, who was one of the very early founding members of Seedrs.

“I got talking to him and he introduced me to the CEO, and I thought: ‘If I’m going to be raising funds to open a site, I had spoken to all the banks, but I don’t have a good track record and no experience of opening sites, so the only way to do this is by crowdfunding’.”

Humble Grape managed to raise £360,000 on Seedrs’ platform and a further £175,000 through more traditional methods.

“This allowed us to open our first wine bar in attersea, said James. “The process was tricky because finding our first site was very difficult.

Eventually settling on the premises of a former client near where James lived, the Humble Grape team enlisted the architect behind the likes of Pizza East to tackle the interior and made a success of the place, topping the charts on TripAdvisor within six months.

Further crowdfunding followed with £1.3million generated in 2017 to open branches at Liverpool Street, Fleet Street and slington.

“The fundraising is a combination of working in the City for fifteen years and my , said James. “You really have to understand what your differentiation is, whether it’s sustainable and that it means something.

“Everything boils down to the fact that you have to create value for customers, give them something interesting, something different, something new or something they can connect with.

“It’s the whole experience culture that we have, and we curate that through the people we hire, how we train our staff, the way we import everything ourselves and the way we curate our own products. The food, the wine, everything is sustainable, everything is organic, everything is authentic.

“If a client is sitting at a table

Left, James is adamant his branches are just as much places to buy wine as to drink it with a wide selection of unusual bottles.

On Mondays, these can be drunk-in at no extra cost

Images by James Perrin – find his work at jamesperrin.com or via @millerjamesperrin on Insta

and asks about a wine, the staff can talk about it because they’re super-passionate.

“We go out of our way to make sure that they’re happy, well trained, with holiday pay, with full pension, full sick-leave. We don’t do zero-hours contracts. Everyone is properly salaried with permanent roles. It’s hard, because the margins in the restaurant industry are challenging, and we’re in that industry, although we don’t classify ourselves as a restaurant – we’re a wine bar which also does food.”

And that brings us to the next chapter. As Humble Grape prepares to open on the estate, what can Wharfers expect?

“I have always loved Canary Wharf, not at first, but, because spent 18 months at Level39, I grew to love it,” said James. “ t’s so efficient and clean, and its personality is changing because it’s becoming more quirky – it’s just a nice place to be. Canary Wharf Group have decided that there should be more independents there and that’s why they’re letting people like us in.

“Canary Wharf can expect something that’s almost unique – not a cookie cutter site. It’s going to be its own thing, with really fantastic wines and service, really good quality, simple food that’s very well cooked.

“We’re going to be doing breakfast, lunch and dinner, we’re going to be open weekends and you can expect to have an experience when you come to one of our sites.

“It’s going to be a conversation with someone, if you want, an interesting story with something to learn about wine or how we do food. It’s wine exactly how the customer wants it, not how we want to deliver it.

“Because everything is experience-led, almost every day of the week has a different theme. We do something called etail onday’, where we sell all our wines at retail prices – roughly 50% less than the restaurant prices.

“On uesdays we do heme Flight’ – that might be the oire Valley, for example where you can taste two reds and two whites from the region for 1 . On Wednesdays we’ll either have live music or open our icon wines.

“Every site has a cherry on the cake – those are our icon wines, and we open them by the bottle.

Some are only made in tiny quantities, maybe 200-300 bottles a year, and they’re very exclusive, very interesting, very niche. We like to give people a chance to taste them. On Saturday mornings we do brunch and on Sundays we do roasts. Every area is different, we need to figure out exactly what Canary Wharf wants and we’ll do that when we’re open.”

Go to humblegrape.co.uk

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

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12

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

virtual viewpoint

by Chris Ezekiel

by Jon Massey

P While video stores are a thing of the past, there were some upsides to them

I

t’s a Saturday evening in 1991, and my then girlfriend and I have planned a film night in. It’s about 6pm and I drive a few miles to the local Blockbuster.

It’s their busiest time of the week and I’m already regretting leaving it late. I head straight to the latest releases section and all the copies of the newly released film I wanted have been rented out.

I rifle through the other latest films and read the reviews on the VHS cases. I look around and share the collective anxiety and pressure with the other faces. We are the ones chosen to take responsibility – to pick the film that will make or break the weekend.

I check at the front counter for the new release and two are due back that evening. I take a gamble and wait, and 20 minutes later one is returned.

I grab the film and popcorn and head home (via the local Chinese takeaway) and we settle down I do wonder about to watch the latest the downsides of blockbuster.

Fast forward (pun technology. Our intended) to today.

What a different world world today is based we live in. too much on instant That chosen film might have been gratification rubbish for the first five Chris Ezekiel, Creative Virtual minutes but brilliant overall, and we would have discovered a wonderful film as we would have persevered as there was no other choice.

I got lucky that Saturday as I chose The Silence Of The Lambs – what a film. The anticipation and excitement of the Blockbuster Experience has gone forever and while more choice is a good thing (as I ended up watching some pretty awful films) I do wonder about the downsides of technology.

Our world today is based too much on instant gratification. As we see with vinyl records, there is a Yesteryear Renaissance underway – bring back the Blockbuster Experience. It certainly had its upsides.

“

Chris Ezekiel is founder and CEO of customer engagement solutions specialist Creative Virtual based at Cannon Workshops on West India Quay Go to creativevirtual.com or follow @creativevirtual and @chrisezekiel on Twitter

assion is a word often bandied about. But sitting and listening to Charlie Lyons and Jess Tyrrell talk Flipside, it’s definitely present in the room. The general manager and director of strategy at digital design agency Beyond, respectively, are both willing to let our conversation overrun, eating into their day jobs because of how much they relish their involvement in a programme that’s only just finished its second year.

A collaboration between the London Legacy Development Corporation, The Skills Lab and A New Direction, Flipside takes cohorts of 12 unemployed or underemployed people aged 18-25 living in the boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney or Waltham Forest and offers them three months of paid training, working with some of the best digital design agencies in the world.

The aim is to transform them into “digital pioneers” by equipping them with the mindsets, skills and behaviours necessary to succeed in the industry.

Beyond, based in Bermondsey Street near London Bridge, is one of 10 agencies that lends space and expertise to the scheme. So far it has hired two former participants – Joel and Jahkeeta.

“When I was working at think tank the Centre For London, we were looking at the biggest issues that the capital faced,” said Jess who was involved in conceiving the programme.

“There were two big issues – how is London’s tech sector developing and what are the problems with that, and what do you do about the disparity of quality across the London boroughs?

“The tech sector was crying out for people with the right kind of skills and there are still not enough. Thousands of jobs were going to be unfilled. “ igital is a field where young people can excel – they are digital natives and can understand, more than older people. So here is an area where they can do well, sometimes without formal education.

“So when I was doing that research in my role as associate director, we started talking to startup owners and found they don’t really care about educational background, they care about practical skills, creativity and a person’s record.

“So they will hire developers based on their portfolios – they’ll look at the code they’ve created.

There was one company which hired a person, based on their portfolio – it was amazing. “ hey offered them a job only to

12

Number of participants in a Flipside programme, drawn from east London and aged 18-25

above and beyond

Images by Matt Grayson – find his work at graysonphotos.co.uk or @mattgrayson_photo on Insta

how design agencies are using Flipside to create the digital pioneers of the future from the raw material of east London

“

We are looking for companies to join us for the next cohort, to write the brief and potentially employ some of the people Jess Tyrrell, Beyond

Jess Tyrrell and Charlie Lyons of Beyond are enthused by the potential of Flipside find out they were 1 , and legally they couldn’t do it. Digital changes the nature of employment.

“However, there is a skills gap that has to be filled if the tech is going to survive and demand is growing very quickly.

“The other part is that if you look at east London, you’ve got this tech sector that’s booming, but it’s situated in the poorest part of the city. If you do nothing about it then you have this place with massive disparity between people who live there and people who come there for work.

“The best way of solving that is to include local people in the success of that sector.

“It’s one of the things I get really excited about with Flipside because if you get one person into a job or – in the case of the first

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

13

Technology

cohort, 10 young people out of the 1 – the effect that has on their family and friends is really, really big. So you’re not just affecting 1 or 1 people, you’re affecting many more than that.

“As we grow Flipside, and people become familiar with it, they build their own networks and then they start to connect other people to them.”

In an important sense, Flipside is a hack, superseding more traditional ways of learning, short-circuiting the need for formal qualifications and delivering what agencies want rather than what those writing syllabuses think they need. Jess is forthright, saying the old models are failing and that, having researched them “95% of them are shit”.

“They don’t respect young people enough, because the system bleeds it out of you,” she said.

“We do quite a lot of work in learning platforms anyway, but we’ve also been looking with some of our clients at the future of learning and there are loads of interesting models coming up, and those older models are going to find it hard to continue to exist.

Part of the reason for that is digital agencies’ need to tap into sources of talent that are out of their comfort zones.

“The creative industries are not doing a very good job at building a future,” said Charlie. “We think of ourselves as very liberal and open to all kinds of different things, but the reality is we often hire from a similar talent-pool and what that gives us is people who have had similar schooling, similar upbringing and are from similar backgrounds.

“As a result, when you’re going into a creative process, your ideation techniques will often yield a similar set of outputs, because everyone’s seeing the world from a similar place.

“When you incorporate people from different socio economic backgrounds, they see the world in radically different ways.

Ultimately, if you can get that kind of thinking and those perspectives into a creative process, you create and produce far more wellrounded products and services for customers, which is a great thing because it’s a much more diverse world out there than the creative industries actually represent.

“Here’s an example – there’s one specific exercise must have done a hundred times – you draw a grid and go left to right. Everyone has to draw an apple in each of the boxes except no one apple can be the same as one already drawn.

“Typically people start by drawing an apple, then an apple with a bite out of it and so on.

“Eventually you exhaust every possible version of a normal apple so then someone will draw the

New York skyline, representing the Big Apple. The exercise is designed to teach you that, the further you go with creative thinking, the more creative you can get.

“Usually you get normal apples, then connected creative thoughts, then apples loosely, then, by the end, some people will draw sunglasses shaped like apples, and produce more creative stuff. “ did it with the first cohort of Flipsiders and the way they saw the challenge was just totally different. didn’t interrogate them as to why, I was just delighted that it was like that. “ hey went straight to cra y – they thought it was fun, drawing, expressing themselves. It was a removal of boundaries.

“It was really interesting, because they didn’t feel the need to bottom out every single possible version of an apple. They went straight into: ‘Apple doesn’t mean apple, it means what I think of when I hear the word apple’.

“Maybe it’s that they don’t think with constraints, they think without boundaries, so they just expressed themselves very quickly and it was much richer than normal.

“This exercise has, over the hundred times I’ve done it, yielded pretty much the same result, but this time, with a completely different age demo graphic and people from different backgrounds, it was completely different. retty much all the other times before, it was people who’d had that similar kind of education and upbringing.

“So, you know that you defi nitely have the ability to harness some pretty interesting creative thinking from these people.”

Age isn’t just a number either.

For Charlie it’s one of the key attractions in getting the Flipsiders through Beyond’s doors. “ here’s an ancillary benefit as well, which is an age bias, where quite a lot of the people are pretty young – the difference between the Millenial Generation and their children – eneration lpha – is huge. They have a completely different set of rules about how they engage with technology.

“We think of ourselves as being able to just understand it but from our age perspective you just can’t and so having people with diverse socio-economic backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, geographical backgrounds is great, but it’s also the age difference that provides a totally different way in which people would see or think of a product that they may use in 2019. It’s really good to have that intermingled with more senior thinkers and creatives as well as people from the more traditional educational backgrounds.”

One of Flipside’s stated aims is “to create the ripple that becomes

the wave” in terms of the impact it has on diversity in the industry, all from a base at Here East on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford.

A second cohort has just completed its journey with participants getting three months of training led by the agencies involved, mentors to help them achieve their goals and guaranteed interviews for paid placements after they complete the programme.

“We may have said this when we launched the first cohort – the agencies are trail-blazers,” said Charlie. “This is not taught in universities or schools, it’s evolving all the time.

“Within that comes the challenge, because it’s very difficult to create a syllabus or document down everything, so there’s a bit of a panic at the start of every cohort, that we haven’t got everything together.

“That’s also OK, because the way we work is agile, and you aren’t getting a fully finished, polished curriculum or textbooks – we’ll go with this this week and we’ll have a backlog of stuff we’ll get to next and we’ll make it up as we go along.

“That, on paper, sounds like we

Jess says Flipside isn’t just about 12 people, its the effect it has on their families and friends as they build their own networks

don’t know what we’re doing, but that’s really how we work .

“The programme is really just a manifestation of the processes and methodologies agencies are using anyway and that’s kinda cool.

“The concept is build your own curriculum and that’s a really nice thing. We’ve done a lot of learning about the case against education.

“Marry that up with the fact that a whole different set of jobs will be needed with automation coming and it’s really an interesting time.

“Traditional systems get disrupted, the roles required for the future will be completely different and it’s going to make for some quite interesting experiences.”

Flipside is looking to involve other companies in east London alongside its stable of agencies.

“The businesses in Canary Wharf will largely be employing digital people,” said Jess.

“I know that a lot of them have diversity programs about reaching local people as well. We are looking for companies to join us for the next cohort, to write the brief and to potentially employ some of the people coming out of there – get in touch.

Go to flipside-london.com or bynd.com for more information

Help your loved ones to help you kiddrapinet.co.uk/understandinganlpa

You can’t control what the future holds, but you can control who makes decisions on your behalf.

Download our FREE guide to MAKING A LASTING POWER OF ATTORNEY (LPA) Book a consultation with Gemma Hughes today on 020 7205 2896 or email ghughes@kiddrapinet.co.uk

14

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

Canary Wharf

£6.95

The cost of avocado on toast at The Sipping Room on West India Quay Don’t let the garnish fool you, there really is very little avocado on this toast

avocado a sorry story of

by Jon Massey

I

t wasn’t that The Sipping Room managed to bring me a plate of bacon, sausage and black pudding after I’d ordered the Veggie Full English. Nor that when it finally arrived it had one less piece of toast than the meaty version (vegetarian’s require fewer carbs, obviously). I was also quite prepared to put up with the sad watery clump of tasteless spinach hiding under the bread and its equally shy friend, an avocado so unripe it hurt my teeth.

for an astonishingly miserly portion of toast and avocado, tarted up with a few shards of radish and some pea shoots, is beyond me.

Tearing up some leaves and sprinkling them on the empty desert of the plate isn’t fooling anyone.

Perhaps the largely diffident service stems from a lack of comfort in serving up such meagre portions.

On the plus side, having just been to the gym before our visit, my companion pointed out she wouldn’t be putting on any weight by the end of our meal. Brunch best avoided.

Go to drakeandmorgan.co.uk

It also wasn’t that the tap water had to be requested twice and a side of extra virgin olive oil took longer than my replacement veggie breakfast to emerge from the kitchen.

And it certainly wasn’t the lack of pepper on a pair of compensatory Virgin Mary’s hastily offered to soften the order snafu – a contrast to the ones we overpaid for at £4.50 each.

The Sipping Room is a lovely place for a sunny brunch. It offers greenery, blankets and sun block (a genuinely thoughtful touch and not one I’ve seen elsewhere).

But how it can justify charging £6.95

The Veggie Full English, ideal if you don’t mind some meat turning up

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

39

Creative Space

this space is yours

emergency Venn diagram, fill in as appropriate – share your works with @wharflifelive or #keepittoyourself – don’t like, subscribe or comment

WORKING TITLE

40

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

14 days later

plan your life from Jun 19-Jul 3 where?

Wilton’s Music Hall Wapping

GIG | Aletia Upstairs And The Flamingo Orchestra Vintage cabaret and sounds from bygone eras abound in this hour-long performance. Expect Dietrich, Weill and Edith Piaf among others.

Jul 1, 8pm, free, wiltons.org.uk where?

Wilton’s Music Hall Wapping

where?

Jamboree Limehouse

GIG | Tarantella Beats 2am Party Dance off that poisonous spider bite until the wee small hours as Amaraterra make their debut at Jamboree’s new base. Italian dance music.

Jun 21, 7pm, from £8, jamboreevenue.co.uk

to do before Jun 19

Pop to Troxy where Taking Back Sunday are set to celebrate 20 years in music with a performance on a Tuesday. Expect Emo, hits and nostalgia on Jun 18 from 7pm. Tickets start at £27.50. Support from The Frights troxy.co.uk Visit St Katherine’s Precinct for free gardening on Jun 25, 10am-4pm precinct.rfsk.org want more? @wharflifelive

with an empire of digital media brands, Jungle Creations CEO Jamie Bolding explains why he’s rolling out a restaurant chain

by Jon Massey

STAGE | Bourgeois & Maurice’s Supercreeps The intergalactic musical weirdos return with comic and tuneful support from Jayde Adams, Lucy McCormick and Myra Dubois among others.

Jul 2-6, 7.45pm, from £10, wiltons.org.uk

spot check worth a visit

social the power of

R

ainforests are home to the greatest biodiversity on the planet. Plants and animals unknown to science are routinely discovered. They’re also a rich source of raw materials – from medicines and fresh ideas for treating disease, to substances used across the globe in the construction and engineering industries. About 80% of the food we eat originated in the rainforest. It’s the abundance and richness of evolution made flesh and it’s glorious.

So Jungle Creations is an appropriate name for Jamie Bolding’s company – a rapidly expanding portfolio of social media brands, content creators, advertising creatives, o ine ventures and bright, young digital things, all engaged in a constant, energetic battle to leverage the blunt commercial power of internet audience share and to evolve to meet its everchanging nature. t’s five years old, already turns over millions in hard cash and has offices in ew ork, os ngeles and Toronto, although its headquarters remain in Batty Street, Shadwell.

It boasts an audience of more than 85million followers and online viewer numbers in the billions.

It works for the likes of Hasbro, Heinz, Bailey’s and Virgin in the UK, acting as a full service solution for brands by being able to create, make and broadcast content for them. It all started when Jamie, now 28, was a student. “ I was at the University of Manchester from 2010-2013, studying business management and started a student business – a What’s On guide about events that were happening in the city. Off the back of that I met a bunch of people, who helped start a student noticeboard online.

Delivery only: Twisted London now has branches in Bayswater, Edgware Road, Gloucester Road, Russell Square and Piccadilly as well as Bethnal Green

on business

making it my life’s work “The words ‘serial entrepreneur’ describe failed blokes for me – people who build a business and two years later, sell it then repeat the process,” said Jamie.

“I’ve always wanted to build my own business but I don’t want to sell it. I’ve always called myself a CEO rather than a founder.

“A founder always hustles to try to make it work and then over time becomes a CEO because they’ve become experienced in all different parts of the business.

“Many don’t want to make that transition, because they see it as being very boring, but I don’t. I want to be a CEO and make it my life’s work. I wouldn’t choose to sell it or to retire. Because I have Jungle, it’s infinitely easier to build something new as part of it instead of starting from scratch.”

“

The big thing I’ve learnt from being a digital media publisher is that if you don’t diversify, you will die Jamie Bolding, Jungle Creations

“The main challenge back then was driving people to the website, so we were going out handing people lanyards, doing petitions and getting people signed up to use the website.

“Then we started thinking that there must be some clever way to go viral and get more attention. We got in touch with people on Twitter that had big followings, asking them to link to our website. “ o and behold, that drove massive amounts of traffic – way more than we’d delivered from our more traditional methods. So that was the light bulb moment of realising the power of social media.”

It was Facebook however where Jamie found real success. Having initially built pages to drive traffic to websites during his university days, he’d amassed a following of students. After graduation, he hit upon the idea of writing specifi cally for that audience.

“At the start I thought I would write about my student life in a fun, relatable way,” he said.

“Then after doing that for three months and not earning any money, those articles went viral.

“I had taken a £10,000 loan from the Government to set up another business I was working on, I’d got down to my last one or two grand and I was like: ‘What do I do now?’ – that’s when I started Viral Thread (VT). I wasn’t earning any money for a few months, and then it was like £10,000 in one month and I was like: ‘Wow. This is big’.

“The website I was driving traffic to crashed about a million times, but it was a real excitement to make money like this, so I started to see how to build VT as a brand. It was the same time as Facebook launched video on their platform, so I was using that and user-generated content to drive the size of the facebook pages.”

VT eventually blossomed into Jungle Creations when, in 2016 Jamie took the decision to diversify

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41

Wapping - Limehouse - Shadwell

and build a number of brands across social media designed to capture specific audiences.

“We set up Twisted, which was our food and drink brand, and that’s when we decided that we needed a holding company,” said amie. “So that’s when we changed the name of the business and we created that multi brand approach.

“Fast-forward to where we are now – we’ve not only built six big media brands in addition to VT, we’ve also built a creative agency and a commerce arm, where we actually sell products to audiences.

“The big thing I’ve learnt from being a digital media publisher is that if you don’t diversify, you will die. he digital media platforms are still fluctuating and if you don’t diversify to different areas, you’re not going to be around for long. t’s about having that mix.

We’ve created revenue streams with brand content, working with brands directly to produce content and then we sell commercial products to audiences, through outube, Facebook, Snapchat and ik ok.

“The one thing you can be sure of is that some platforms will fall, all will change their algorithms and new platforms will emerge – so there’s a constant need to adapt.

When you’re posting as much as us, you need a constant daily analysis of what’s working, and then you pick up trends of what’s happening on the platforms.

“We also speak very closely with them – they give us an idea of where they want to go maybe in six months or 12 months down the line.

“Facebook made a big change recently – it’s all about threeminute content, less about articles, less about user-generated content, and over the years we’ve made the transition to have studios at our ondon office, downstairs and next door. hat decision was made on Facebook saying it was making those changes and now they have.

While traditional companies may be stuck in their thinking, one of the reasons Jamie’s business has done so well is his willingness to try new things, building on the successes he’s already had.

That’s why Jungle wasn’t afraid to launch a delivery-only restaurant and is now rolling out the brand, built off the back of its Twisted food and drink platform, to a further five locations.

“With all our media brands we’ve always been focussed on building communities – it’s where people are, it’s where you can engage with them, said amie.

“We’re in a social first world, believe, in terms of how people get their news, their opinions and where they see content.

“Once you have that community, you can do many things with it, you can create events or sell

products. here’s always been a part of us that said: ‘How can we prove that it works?’ We need to confirm that to our audience.

“So we decided to build a restaurant with Twisted, because I knew that when people were watching the videos, if they could buy it, then they would – the ultimate impulse purchase.

“So we did it, we built a business, because we knew how to make good food and because people knew the brands. Since then it’s expanded to six locations.

“Twisted is global, it’s not just all over London or the UK, it’s all over the world.

“We have billions of people watching our content over the year and each month we get 200million views and that’s massive. magine if McDonalds was paying for that – that’s money.

“At the end of 2019, we’re hoping to expand to dozens of new locations, which is very exciting.

“We are keeping the new business approach, because we’re constantly changing our menu based on what our audience is telling us – we have that interaction online.

“So it’s about taking us from being a social media publisher to being this much more holistic 360 media marketing commerce business.

“On the marketing side we’re an agency, on the commerce side, we have the wisted ondon restaurant.

We also have a product range for Twisted coming out, we have craft factory range coming out.

“With the other brands we had, we can do it in many different ways – it’s not exclusive to food.

“It could be creating a product from scratch, selling it to our audience and knowing that the product we’re creating is what they would want to buy because we know things about them and how they interact and engage with the world. hat puts us in a much better place to sell things.

Constantly creative, it’s a fair bet these aren’t the only new developments to come out of the Shadwell powerhouse in the near future.

Go to junglecreations.com

Big in the jungle: Jamie Bolding’s company offers companies a wide range of digital media and commercial services from its offices in LA, New York, Toronto and, of course, Shadwell

Jungle Creations’ brands include Viral Thread, Twisted (food), Level Fitness (health), Kidspiration (children’s activities), Craft Factory (making), Four Nine (focussed on women) and World Unknown (travel) Image by Matt Grayson – find his work at graysonphotos.co.uk or @mattgrayson_photo on Insta

42

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

riverside recipes

by Matt Colk

how riding a horse at Mudchute Park And Farm can put you back in touch with those childhood dreams

45

Length in minutes of the mandatory assessment lesson all adult riders must attend as a first step to riding at Mudchute

by Florence Derrick

D Ingredients for Matt’s Guinness Bread with sunflower seeds, blue cheese and pumpkin seeds

T

his bread is a simple recipe that is ideal for baking fresh when you have people coming over. Rich, seeded and hearty, it’s also great as a side to savoury soups and stews.

Ingredients (one loaf) 400g self-raising flour 100g blue cheese 400ml Guinness 60g sunflower seeds 60g pumpkin seeds 5g salt 10g sugar Extra flour for dusting Method Lightly grease a baking tin (ideally 10-by-five inches) and dust with flour. Then set it aside, ready for later.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients (ensure you’re using seeds that have had their husks removed) and mix together thoroughly.

Then add the Guinness and mix with a spatula until you’ve created a wet batter.

Pour this into the baking tin that you prepared and dust the top with flour – bake at 170ºC for about an hour and 15 minutes until golden brown. Allow to cool before serving.

Matt Colk is head chef at The Gun in Coldharbour, Blackwall. Owned and operated by Fuller’s, it offers dining, drinking and relaxation by the Thames Go to thegundocklands.com or follow the @thegundocklands on Instagram and Twitter

o you remember how to use one of these?” said stable manager Esme Correa, handing me a hooked, metal tool. It was a hoof pick, and I hadn’t held one for 18 years. Between the ages of six and 12, I was obsessed by all things equine. I rode horses every day.

Nothing could stop me from getting up at the crack of dawn to muck out a stable.

I did cross country competitions and won rosettes for show jumping.

I had biceps the size of lemons and rock-hard thighs that I’d kill a pony for right now.

But the moment adolescence hit, I moved to the city, discovered eyeliner, and replaced geldings with grunge overnight. left my hobby in the fields of my childhood.

So my visit to Mudchute Equestrian Centre on the Isle Of Dogs meant more than testing out the facilities at one of London’s premier inner-city riding schools and liveries. I was seeing if could rekindle my first love.

Up to 20 people a day visit the equestrian centre, which is currently home to 23 mounts – four of which are privately owned livery horses.

The school is popular with Canary Wharf workers, who often drop in for a am pre office ride, or for the post-work 7pm slot.

It’s also a go-to for the area’s local schools, who often visit in 15-strong groups to spend a couple of hours learning about the stables.

“All of our ponies have to be very gentle, because they’re with the general public so much,” said Esme, as I toured the stables and met its largest horse, Ruby – a grey mare who towered over me at 17 hands high.

She nudged her head into my shoulder for a hug as Esme explained that because none of the animals are hand-fed, there’s no danger of them nipping.

Much of the day-to-day stable upkeep is run by volunteers, some of whom are on work experience programmes from local colleges. The centre is always looking for more.

“More hands means more attention for the ponies,” said Esme. I turned to the gate and saw one leading Perry in from the field – a shiny bay, with a white star on his forehead.

“First, you have to groom your horse,” said Esme. “Unless you know

Esme coaches Florence as Perry maintains an air of detached cool

back saddle in the

Fleek of foot: Florence gets to grips with a hoofpick to spruce Perry before her lesson Right, tack, groom, helmet and mount

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Isle Of Dogs - Poplar - Blackwall

“

First you have to groom your horse.

Unless you know how to respect your pony, you don’t ride

14 days later

plan your life from Jun 19-Jul 3 where?

Poplar Union Poplar

Esme Correa, Mudchute Park And Farm

Good to go: Every lesson at Mudchute is preceded by a lengthy period of preparation with your horse

Image by Holly Cant – find more of her images at hollycant.com or via @hollycantphoto on Insta

how to respect your pony, you don’t ride.”

This goes for every visitor to the riding school, whether they’re in an hour-long group session or attending for a 45-minute private lesson.

It means you actually spend around an hour and a half with your horse, brushing and tacking them up before the lesson and turning them into their stable afterwards. I brushed mud off erry’s fetlocks and picked his hooves, remembering my early years training on avoiding the soft, sensitive centre. I strapped on his bridle and laid the saddle on his back before leading him to the newly refurbished arena, where Esme helped me onto his back with the aid of a mounting block.

Over the course of the next 20 minutes back in the saddle, I realised a couple of things. First, riding is a bloody good workout that my legs and core would definitely thank me for if I made it a habit.

Second, it’s a very intuitive, calming act. The mutual communication between horse and rider means your body language decides everything.

Turn your head and face your shoulders to the right and the horse will veer that way. Breathe out, squeeze in your heels and relax the reins and your mount will move forward. Sit deeply and squeeze with your knees and it’ll slow to a stop.

“It’s like yoga, but you do it on horseback,” said Esme.

I guess this is the part that’s so addictive, and is also the reason why Mudchute Equestrian Centre’s programme for children with behavioural problems is so effective.

“Kids like that aren’t born naughty, they’re shy and don’t know how to interact,” said Esme. “Our horses are cuddly and people-oriented. Caring for them gives children a lovely sense of independence, it helps their confidence and focus, and they just come out of their shell.”

There’s certainly something magical about such powerful, graceful creatures allowing us to share their space, going so far as to let us ride on their backs. I left my lesson with a full appreciation of why they captured my imagination as a child and with a slight pang of guilt for having let it slide so far. But with Mudchute so easily accessible via the DLR, at least my childhood dreams have wound up within reach. A wide range of riding lessons for children and adults is available at the farm costing from £18-£55.

Go to mudchute.org

FOOD | Just Bread Supper Club Ironically more than just bread, the E5 Roasthouse presents traditional recipes from around the world in celebration of Refugee Week.

Jun 25, 7pm, £20, poplarunion.com where?

Capeesh Isle Of Dogs

PARTY | City Vybez Presents Sky High Sundays Rise up to the Sky Bar for games, shisha, entertainment, Hip-Hop, Afrobeats, Trap and cocktails. VIP tables and packages available.

Jun 30, 5pm, £8-£640.19, capeesh.co.uk where?

The Space Isle Of Dogs

STAGE | Fall Prettier This new play by Therese Ramstedt promises to deconstruct and twist narratives about women with a capella tunes, exercise balls and ketchup.

Jun 25-30, times vary, £12.50, space.org.uk

on the radar

If riding isn’t your bag, but agriculture is, head to Mudchute Park And Farm for two days at the end of June. Running June 29-30, the farm’s Agricultural Show will be held both days between 11am-4pm mudchute.org

spot check In warmer weather, Kinkao near Island Gardens is a great spot for a drink kinkao.co.uk want more? @wharflifelive

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Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

how Deptford Cinema delivers an antidote to bottomless streaming

£6

The cost of a typical ticket to see a feature film at Deptford Cinema

by Jon Massey

W

idescreen LED screens, home projectors, advanced sound systems and all the on-demand content you can handle on the box. Somehow, even in combination, these things don’t quite measure up to viewing a film in a darkened room with a group of fee-paying strangers.

But where the multiplex is all high prices, luxurious seats and tired blockbusters – an endless cycle of rebooting franchises and obsessively remaking past glories in search of commercial success, Deptford Cinema is something else entirely.

Tucked behind an unassuming shop front in Deptford Broadway that’s faintly reminiscent of the TV repair stores of yore, passers-by could be forgiven for missing it completely. And that would be a shame. Run by a team of film enthusiasts, it is steeped in the charm of its volunteers.

I visit on a Sunday having booked a very official looking ticket online. As I hurry from nearby Deptford Bridge DLR station, I have it loaded on my phone, ready for scanning and swift entry because I’m running late for the 3.30pm screening of Homo Sapiens, a documentary capturing the bleak beauty of places abandoned by humanity as nature reclaims them.

But on arrival, a few seconds before the film is set to start, I find people spilling out of the cinema, drinking and smiling.

Striding past them, there’s no high-tech machine to scan my e-ticket. Instead my name appears in green scrawl on a dishevelled bit of paper and is hastily crossed off by a woman who turns out to be hosting the whole affair.

Eventually, the assembled audience members are encouraged to descend the stairs to the

“

There’s a sense that by buying a ticket and sinking into an old-fashioned theatre seat, you’re doing something good Jon Massey, Wharf Life

Black box: The cinema is located in the basement

Don’t miss it: Deptford Cinema’s shop front

cinema itself – a black box of breeze blocks with 39 red velvet seats bolted to the floor in front of the screen.

Fairy light-lit, it feels comfortable and welcoming, doubly so when the mistress of the green pen explains a bit about the film and goes on to explain that screenings in her Sci-Fi Sundays season typically come with added value, in this case a Q&A with senior lecturer in modern and contemporary literature at Birkbeck University, Dr Caroline Edwards.

D

ystopia may be the theme of the current Sunday season, but the experience of visiting the cinema is much closer to utopia.

Tickets cost around £6 and the bar is mysteriously cheap.

While parts are rough around the edges, the striking paint job on the bar and the wallpapering of ceilings and the toilets with pages from old film magazines are clear expressions of the passion that has gone in to putting this place together.

So while it probably won’t be showing the latest releases, after five years of operation it delivers a programme of arthouse movies, foreign films and classics with a little bit more magic than you’d get at home.

It also provides an antidote to the bottomless streaming services that have all but taken over traditional TV by allowing those with a genuine interest in a subject to intelligently curate the films offered.

For the visitor, there’s no cumbersome membership, just a chance to watch the likes of Blade Runner, Heat or Clueless or discover rarely screened works by Orson Welles, Ang Lee or Werner Herzog.

There’s also a sense that just by buying a ticket and sinking into an old-fashioned theatre seat for a couple of hours, you’re doing something good.

Go to deptfordcinema.org

seats the thirty-nine

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

45

Rotherhithe - Bermondsey - Deptford

film review

Homo Sapiens, 2016

14 days later

plan your life from Jun 19-Jul 3 where?

The Albany Deptford The Buzludzha opens and closes Homo Sapiens

Reel value: The bar at the cinema

Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Homo Sapiens is perhaps the perfect film to illustrate the joy of Deptford Cinema.

It’s an hour and a half of documentary footage composed entirely of static shots of humanity’s works, abandoned by people and apparently in the process of being reclaimed by nature.

The locations are real, the abandonment genuine. We see a plethora of anonymous places including Japanese coal mining colony Hashima Island and the Buzludzha – a derelict monument to the Bulgarian Communist Party which opens and closes the film as it is seemingly consumed by a snowstorm.

What multiplex would screen this slow, deliberate meditation on the part people have played in shaping the world and how their works will, like those of Ozymandias, ultimately fade ?

And which mainstream chain would host a discussion on how far the director has departed from pure truth, cleaning up graffiti, engineering a human-free soundtrack and using weather to lend a special eeriness to his subject?

Long may Deptford champion thought-provoking, brave film.

The next feature in the series will be George Lucas’s THX 1138 at 3.30pm on June 30

STAGE | The Time Show Rob Auton’s work in progress is a spoken-word investigation of the temporal that asks: “What time is it?” and: “What is it, time?”. Expect charm.

Jun 25-27, 7.30pm, £7, thealbany.org.uk where?

Sands Films Studio Rotherhithe

SCREEN | The Good Soldier Schwejk This satirical comedy adapted from a novel by Jaroslav Hasek follows the life of the titular “official idiot” with a taste for extreme logic.

Jun 30, 6.30pm, donations welcome, sandsfilms.co.uk where?

Deptford Cinema Deptford

SCREEN | Heat Pacino, De Niro, Mann – the classic crime drama comes to the basement, delivering an obsessive buildup to the inevitable showdown.

Jun 24, 7pm, £6, deptfordcinema.org

to do before Jun 19

What can we learn from the New Cross Massacre, which claimed the lives of 13 young black people? That’s the question posed by Jay Bernard’s Surge at The Albany, Jun 20-22. Tickets cost £14, doors 7.30pm thealbany.org.uk The shots are all static and devoid of people

spot check worth a visit Small, but perfectly formed The Watch House Cafe is a real find in Rotherhithe dokke.co.uk want more? @wharflifelive

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Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

as GDIF returns we pick out a selection of must-sees across its ever-expanding patch

14 days later

plan your life from Jun 19-Jul 3

by Jon Massey

where?

The O2 Arena Peninsula

GIG | Cirque Du Soleil: Toruk The First Flight Inspired by James Cameron’s movie Avatar, performers bring the Na’vi to life on the Peninsula with a barrage of dazzling special effects.

Jun 26-29, times vary, from £52.70, theo2.co.uk where?

Greenwich Theatre Greenwich

STAGE | Sirens Expect feathers, projections and visual storytelling as ZooCo bring Greek myth to a beach in Hastings in 2019 as three women attempt to rewrite history.

Jun 20-23, 7.30pm, £16, greenwichtheatre.org.uk where?

Indigo At The O2 Peninsula

COMEDY | Dr Mashoor Gulati’s Comedy Clinic Prolific Indian comedian and actor Sunil Grover, noted for his work on the Kapil Show brings his character Dr Mashoor Gulati to UK for the first time.

Jun 23, 6pm, from £51, theo2.co.uk

to do in the coming days

G

reenwich And Docklands International Festival knits the flourishing strip of ondon along the hames together, perhaps more than any other cultural event. ts extensive and ever growing programmes plug the old bits of the oyal borough into the new, running threads from the historic maritime centre to Woolwich, Eltham and hamesmead. ut it also defies the river, linking up with Canary Wharf, oyal ocks, ow and, for the first time, the City. he festival’s long standing artistic director radley Hemmings said, “ t a time when, more than ever, we need to come together and remind ourselves of what unites, rather than divides us, ’m very proud that the festival is presenting opening and closing events which invite audiences to join hands with local participants and international artists in a spirit of openness and conviviality.

We’ve scoured F’s programme and selected these events as dates for your diary.

WOOLWICH Opening night Obviously we’re going to start with the grand opening – essentially a festival within a festival featuring at least 1 performances over the course of the day as ove ane, oyal rtil lery Square, owis Street, eresford Square and eneral ordon Square become stages for the afternoon and evening. isitors can expect to be showered with confetti by Joyous Urban Madness, eyeballed by i-Puppets’ optical creatures and amused as two cars head for the same space in That Parking Show.

Chief among these attractions though, is Cristal alace. From . pm eneral ordon Square will host the premiere of this “glittering outdoor ballroom decorated with a giant chandelier and filled with performers from ranse Express

Many performances at GDIF are repeated, check the times online Put those elasticated trousers on, Street Food Markets is back in Greenwich next to the Cutty Sark from June 15-16 starting at 11.30am both days and at 6pm and 5pm respectively. Expect bites from overseas streetfoodmarkets.co.uk

spot check one to try Check Royal Arsenal Riverside’s Farmers’ Market every other Saturday rare.london want more? @wharflifelive

and local dance groups under the guidance of mass movement director eanefer ean Charles.

Expect audience participation, music from Walde and some serious moves to be thrown. nd if you miss this one, Cristal alace returns to close the festival at ’s oyal lbert ock develop ment on uly featuring local dancers from the niversity Of East ondon.

Jun 21, 1pm-11pm, free

Cristal Palace will both open and close GDIF in Woolwich and Royal Docks respectively

GREENWICH Greenwich Fair he obvious pick here, this event sees a similar mini festival pitch up at the Old oyal aval College, reenwich ark and Cutty Sark ardens with three days of performances and events. hese include Pasture With Cows, a giant painting that comes to life by a collective of Flemish artists that features a giant picture frame and gra ing bovines, the family friendly drag of Fantabulosa! and Saut, a show with four acrobats, buckets and gasp inducing stunts.

We’ve a hunch that Wild will be the performance to head for on Saturday at 1pm and . pm or Sunday at noon and . pm in Cutty Sark ardens. all poles, acrobats and minutes of daring dance circus.

Jun 21-23, noon-8pm (9pm Sat), free THAMESMEAD Les Voyages French circus company Compagnie descends on Hawksmoor outh Club at he oorings for several days prior to the performance.

They will listen to the stories of locals and invite them to become part of a special performance featuring elements of flashmob and the essence of a street party as “the magic of circus meets the hopes and dreams of a community .

Jun 30, 2pm, free ELTHAM My House pop up circus theatre house you know, one of them is coming to

All eyes: iPuppets will be parading in Woolwich and also for Greenwich Fair at various times during the festival

assey lace off Eltham High Street with a show designed for families with children of all ages. erformances feature slack rope, hand balance and partner acrobatics and there are plenty of DIY tricks to try out.

Jul 4-5, 11am, 1pm, 3.30pm, free CANARY WHARF Dancing City t the risk of sounding like a stuck record, here’s another mini festival. his time, it’s the shiny towers of Canary Wharf that provide the backdrop for multiple dance troupes to move and groove over the course of a day.

See Pulse! fuse movement and music on a . m wheel of percussion at pper iverside, twin sisters Kristina and Sadé Alleyne celebrate their diverse background with

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

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Greenwich - Peninsula - Woolwich

Above, A Night’s Game features twin dancers celebrating their diverse heritage Left, Leviathan will take over Canary Riverside as part of Dancing City in Canary Wharf on June 29 Below right, Wild is the show to head for at Greenwich Fair at various times over the weekend

Hip-Hop, Indian classical dance, Latin and circus in A Night’s Game at Jubilee Place or James Wilton Dance take over Canary Riverside with Leviathan, an show that conjures up Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab through a combination of athletic movements, martial arts, capoeira and partner work. What’s not to like?

Somehow though, we’re most attracted by On Edge by Justice In Motion, a 50-minute performance on a specially designed construction site that investigates modern day slavery through a mixture of parkour, dance and “adrenaline-fuelled, gravity-defying moves”.

Jun 29, 1pm-5pm, free l GDIF runs from Jun 21-Jul 6 with a huge programme of events and performances.

Full details can be found at festival.org

You’ve been framed: Pasture With Cows is set to bring art to life at the Old Royal Naval College

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green

4

Million visitors come through Excel’s doors every year for a wide range of shows, exhibitions and conferences

excelling on

why Excel CEO Jeremy Rees is keen for the Royal Docks venue to continue leading the way on sustainability in the events sector

by Jon Massey

W

e’re making progress and that’s really important because, compared to other sectors, that I think are substantially further ahead than the events industry, we’ve got catching up to do,” said Excel CEO Jeremy Rees.

“As far as the events sector is concerned, if Excel is not leading the way, we’re there or thereabouts.”

Visit the vast Royal Docks exhibition and conference centre and it’s impossible to find single use plastic straws or stirrers sold by food and drink outlets on its concourse.

There are also plenty of free water fountains to replenish reusable bottles, businesses offer discounts for those supplying their own takeaway cups and even the light that falls on visitors’ skin is from LEDs – part of a programme that has seen the venue cut its energy used for lighting by 70%.

Vegetable waste from its kitchens goes to an on-site facility where 300,000 worms painstakingly munch their way through it to create plant food for the enormous building’s grounds.

“I’ve just looked and a little bit more than 100,000 bottles have been refilled throughout the venue since we introduced the water stations,” said Jeremy.

“Giving real options for people to take is essential when it comes to sustainability.

“For example, we worked with the show ICE Totally Gaming and a company called Ecobooth, which took all the single-use plastic graphic material after the event.

“That was then squashed and

crushed and turned into a children’s picnic area for a local school – creating something interesting. On one level sustainability is extremely complex and there are no easy, immediate answers unless you ban everything and I think that’s unlikely.

“But there is clearly some low-hanging fruit that as a society, as businesses and as consumers we should be getting right.

“There are some obvious cases where people can use alternatives that are sustainable, that are recyclable.

“Apart from anything, sentiment is changing. You actually have to care to make it work, you have to mean it. Whether that’s employing locally to reduce transport costs, sourcing sustainable food or tackling packaging – the whole piece has to be rounded and consistent if it’s to have any credibility.”

In addition to the moral obligation to operate sustainably, Jeremy said companies had started to view how potential partners operated as a crucial factor when deciding where to base shows and events.

“Increasingly, our customers are asking us what we do?” he said. “Do we have the right environmental accreditations?

“Firstly we have them not because it’s a nice badge, but because it fundamentally is the right thing to do.

“Secondly, our customers are interested in it now. Part of the criteria when they are choosing venues around Europe is to ask what their sustainability credentials are.

“You have PLCs that have very clear corporate social responsibility policies and if we didn’t have ISO14001 – the environmental standard – and ISO20121 – which sets sustainability management standards in the events

industry – they’d be less inclined to work with us.”

Excel is also pursuing a policy aimed at eventually sending none of its waste to landfill.

“Part of what’s stopping us at the moment is contamination,” said Jeremy.

“One of the things we’ve done is to retrofit the entire bin stock in the venue and double its capacity – it’s cost us a fortune but hopefully it’s much clearer.

“If we can get consumers to put things in the right place, it makes the jobs of our refuse and recycling teams much better and more efficient taking it forward.”

With such projects already in train, it’s clear Jeremy isn’t afraid of making significant changes at Excel to improve the effect it has on the environment.

“We have a sustainability team drawn from across the organisation who all have a real interest in that area,” he said. “I’m a big believer in impact – so when I brief them I tell them we’re always looking for the greatest impact as quickly as possible.

“You start there and work your way down. If you have very high energy usage then if you can reduce or eliminate it, that’s helpful, similarly if you can cut your gas use.

“If we’re feeding 4million people, how do you make sure they’re eating

“

Apart from anything, sentiment is changing. You actually have to care to make sustainability work, you have to mean it Jeremy Rees, Excel

food from sustainable sources and make sure everything is served in recyclable, compostable products?

“Then there’s lighting – we’ve put in sensors everywhere in the building so when lights don’t need to be on they’re not.”

Such focus is in sharp contrast to an industry that, in the past, would routinely generate extensive pollution.

“The nature of what we do is really developing in terms of our abilities,” said Jeremy. “At Excel, we’ll have 40,000 exhibitors and 4million come through our doors every year.

“For example, now all the carpet is recycled. In the olden days, it would have been thrown away.

“Hundreds of thousands of square metres would have been sent to landfill after each show. Now none of it is.

“That was an awful lot of pollution.

So what everyone is trying to work out is how you reduce that even further.

“There are a lot of things you can do with supply chain management.

Whereas contractors used to have vast amounts of stock up in Birmingham and drive it down every day to an exhibition venue, now we provide them with office and warehousing space here. That reduces their transportation costs and, in this context, pollution by cutting transportation and movement on the motorways.

“All of this is essential. If people are eating an ama ing meal off plastic with plastic cutlery they’re not going to be happy anymore.

“It’s quite a visceral, emotional reaction – if an outlet gives you a plastic stirrer that you don’t want, for example, you feel differently about that brand. Companies all need to address that issue.”

For more information about the venue go to excel.london

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Canning Town - Royal Docks

fast facts

Excel, Royal Victoria Dock

14 days later

plan your life from Jun 19-Jul 3 where?

Royal Docks Adventure Royal Albert Dock

A lot has been done, with more in the pipeline

Increasing import: Sustainability is an essential problem to tackle for both moral and business reasons as attitudes drive change according to Excel CEO Jeremy Rees

While work is ongoing, here are a few of the things Excel has already done to improve its impact on the environment: l Launched a No Plastic campaign in January 2019 with single-use products removed from the 27 retailers along its central concourse. l Installed permanent water fountains to provide free chilled water to drink or refill bottles. l Worked with its clients to reduce waste going to landfill and ensure all rubbish is disposed of correctly before, during and after events. l Boosted energy efficiency by swapping old lighting systems for Philips LED bulbs, switching off heating and cooling units while events are being set up and dismantled, dimming lights to 50% during the same period and introducing sensors to ensure lighting is off when it’s not needed. l Recruited locally – more than 35% of Excel’s 180 staff live in east London and more than 50% of staff at Aloft, the hotel it opened following £50million of investment by owner ADNEC, live in Newham. A further 14% come from Tower Hamlets. l Worked with likeminded partners – Excel London Hospitality, the venue’s exclusive food and beverage partner for all events held there boasts a workforce where 77% live within five miles of the exhibition and conference centre. l Fed the 300,000 worms in its on-site wormery with all vegetable waste from its kitchens to create plant food.

EVENT | London Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival Experience Chinese culture, eat food, sip drinks and, of course, watch the teams race on the water as London Chinatown Lions Club takes over.

Jun 30, 10am-6pm, free to attend, lhkdbf.co.uk where?

Excel Royal Victoria Dock

EVENT | Public Sector Solutions Expo 2019 Delivering public services? Then this is the show for you – suppliers offer their solutions to a sector that is under increasing pressure as budgets are cut.

Jun 25-26, 9am, £599+VAT, excel.london where?

RA Fold Canning Town

CLUB | The Empire Line Promising spontaneity in the darkest corners, this live iteration will be supported by Aurora Halal, Container and Ireen Amnes – £20 on the door.

Jun 21, 11pm, from £11 online, residentadvisor.net

planning ahead

Fancy a dip? Experienced swimmers are invited to take part in the Dock2Dock Swim from Royal Victoria to Royal Albert Dock and back. Distances of 10k, 5k and 1,500m are all available on July 13, prices from £37.50 dock2dock.co.uk

spot check worth a visit Exercise in the open air with One Element at Thames Barrier Park one-element.co.uk want more? @wharflifelive

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Advertising Directory - Acknowledgements

find our advertisers’ messages here Higgins Homes print Wrap online higginshomes.co.uk

Telford Homes print Page 23 online telfordhomes.london

Chase Evans print Pages 1, 32-33 online chaseevans.co.uk

National Landlord Investment Show print Page 24 online landlordinvestmentshow.co.uk

London City Airport print Page 3 online londoncityairport.com

Folio London print Page 25 online foliolondon.co.uk

The Gun print Page 5 online thegundocklands.com

Berkeley Homes print Pages 26-27 online berkeleygroup.co.uk

TfL print Page7 online tfl.gov.uk

City & Country print Page 29 online cityandcountry.co.uk

The Pearson Room print Page 9 online thepearsonroom.co.uk

Sourthern Homes print Page 31 online shosales.co.uk

Keith Prowse print Page 11 online keithprowse.co.uk

Landmark print Pages 34-35 online lmlondon.com

Kidd Rapinet print Pages 13, 15, 36 online kiddrapinet.co.uk

Greenwich Peninsula print Page 37 online greenwichpeninsula.co.uk

Vantage Properties And Management print Page 22 online vantage-uk.com

Galliard Homes print Page 38 online galliardhomes.com be part of the Canary Wharf conversation To advertise in Wharf Life call 07944 000 144 or email advertising@wharf-life.com

without these people, Wharf Life would not have been possible Graeme Bellenger, John Garwood, Jon Dyer, David Galman, Natasha Maddison, David Campbell, Matt Grayson, Kerry Hill, Stephanie Massey, Sarah Leaman, Steve Grieg, Phil Wetz, Camille Waxer, Lucy Merritt, James Vellacott, Lyndon Nunn, Camilla Maddison, Philip Wild, Michelle Vellacott, Andy Shaw, Andrew Scott, Paula Voong, Nadia Maddison, Gary Pring, Edwin Chiu, Annamaria Maddison, Mike Televantou, Chris Ezekiel, Steve Askari, Michael Massey, Andy Shrimplin, Gooch Heer, Rudy Wong, Nick Preston, Steven Herd, David Massey, Ian Li, Andrew Brown, Jean Paul Toerien, Mark May, Ranald Macdonald, Mustafa Topkaya, Simon Spann, Enza Capodici, Mathew Heaton, Kim Wiper, Sophie Watt, Louise Howell, Victor Huang, Phillip Maddison, Spencer Fortag, Dan Smith, Richard Carroll, Randeep Thethy, Toby Wilson, Joel Rayney, Lana Marshall, Olivia Curle, Laura Warren, Rebecca Wood, Maria Tognarelli

thank you Jess Maddison co-founder and commercial director Jon Massey co-founder and editorial director

@wharflifelive

Wharf Life is published by Massey Maddison Limited, printed by Iliffe Print Cambridge and distributed by Willis News Distribution. Copyright Massey Maddison Limited 2019

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51

Stratford - Bow

6

Number of cast members in the play, which takes place in a single location

king the man who would be

14 days later

plan your life from Jun 19-Jul 3 where?

Theatre Royal Stratford East Stratford

STAGE | Noye’s Fludde Lynsey Turner directs a new production of Britten’s masterpiece chronicling Noah’s building and sailing of the ark. Features English National Opera.

Jul 1-13, times vary, from £10, stratfordeast.com where?

Stratford Circus Stratford

Apoplectic: Aaron Pierre

STAGE | Another England Vici Wreford-Sinnott’s surreal satire sees disabled characters Murphy and Rat confront their painful pasts and find their identities challenged.

Jun 21-22, 7pm, from £13, stratford-circus.com

in the role of King Hedley II at Theatre Royal Stratford East

where?

Park-wide Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

spoiler alert - review contains King Hedley II plot points

by Jon Massey

T

here’s something spectacular about the chiselled, muscular physique of Aaron Pierre in the seething, titular role of King Hedley II at Theatre Royal Stratford East.

His body is a mass of veins on the point of bursting, as fury gushes round his system. He’s the embodiment of his part.

There are multiple hosts for King’s anger in August Wilson’s stark portrait of slights and revenge, set in Pittsburgh, 1985.

The seven years he spent in jail, the mother who abandoned him, his pregnant wife who wants an abortion, the hustler who tells him home truths and his friend whose desire for furniture threatens their mutual dream of escaping the desperate poverty of their everyday lives.

Pierre is every inch the wound-up killer as King, released back into the community a damaged, edgy, confused man, incandescent with rage.

His performance is constantly on the verge of violence.

It’s tense and completely convincing.

Underpinning the whole play

Lenny Henry supports as seasoned hustler Elmore is King’s killing of Pernell in retaliation for verbal insult and a disfiguring razor attack. News the victim’s brother is hunting him provides an ever-present undercurrent of threat.

So Pierre is often acting Glock in hand, ready to go off as swiftly as his gun at whatever target emerges on the stagnant set – a decaying, urban backyard.

Like the play itself, King is a mass of contradictions; half finished stories that add up to a whirlpool of a character. After more than three hours sat in the luxurious scarlet box of Stratford East, it’s unclear whether

society, divine intervention, dumb luck or simply evil is to blame for his inevitable demise.

As one-man Greek chorus Stool Pigeon (the immaculate, scripture-singing bum played with panache by Leo Wringer) repeatedly intones: “God’s a baaad motherfucker”. Only bad, in this instance, could be positive or negative.

It’s a brutal, exhausting watch.

Often harrowing, sometimes funny and ultimately bleak – the single gunshot that brings King’s story to a close is a relief even as the mess of loose ends left on stage remain untied and unsatisfying.

Some potent performances do make the minutes fly by, not least Pierre himself. Lenny Henry too oozes glossy menace as seasoned hustler Elmore, a man who’s learnt to restrain his rage a little better than King.

While Martina Laird struggles to find her groove as King’s mother Ruby, Cherelle Skeete is a strong presence as his wife Tonya and Dexter Flanders a funky delight as best friend and confidant Mister. Worth a watch.

King Hedley II is at Theatre Royal Stratford East until June 15. Tickets start at £10.

Go to stratfordeast.com

CULTURE | Great Get Together Bring a picnic, participate in workshops, watch live performances and have a go at sports as the East Bank crew (UAL, UCL, the V&A etc.) host a bash.

Jun 23, noon-6pm, free, queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk

to do before Jun 19

Visit Stratford Circus on June 14 for the latest of its regular E15 Jazz Sessions.

Expect two hours of music from the David Angol Quartet featuring compositions by the greats and original material - 8pm, from £10 stratford-circus.com

spot check try this place out Pop up to the luxurious adult playground of Roof East for food, drink, movies, golf roofeast.com want more? @wharflifelive

52

Wharf Life Jun 5-19, 2019 wharf-life.com

SUDOKU

Crossword - Sudoku

Easy

Previous solution - Very Hard

2 3 9 4 8 5 1 6 7 Sudoku 6 a7break 4 from 2 1 that 3 phone 8 9 5 Take 1 5 8 6 9 7 3 4 2 How 4 to8 play 7 1 2 6 5 3 9 To complete Sudoku, fill the board by entering numbers 5 such 7 that 4 9each 2 row, 8 6column and 3x3 box one3to1nine contains every number uniquely.

9 6 2 3 5 8 7 1 4 9 find 6 strategies, 8 3 2 hints 4 7and1tips online You5can at sudokuwiki.org 8 2 1 9 7 4 6 5 3 7 to 4 play 3 5 6 1 9 2 8 More

7 5

4 2 9

1 3 6 8

1 6 6 7 9 2

2 1

3 1 5

4

7

that each row, column and 3x3 box contains every number uniquely.

Notes

© 2018 Syndicated Puzzles

9

You can find more Sudoku puzzles and a wide selection ofTo others available in apps and books at str8ts.com. This complete Sudoku, fill the board Sudoku is supplied by Syndicated Puzzles. by entering numbers 1 to 9 such

For many strategies, hints and tips, visit www.sudokuwiki.org If you like Sudoku you’ll really like ‘Str8ts’ and our other puzzles, Apps and books. Visit www.str8ts.com

crossword Down

7.

1.

8. .

1 .

1 .

1 .

1 .

18. . .

Resent having to accept the one that is different , He is all the more ready to help forgetful actors 8 Otherwise girl has one missing eters hundreds of female relations ange sold from temporary home Cold cure ry to get in the first river boat his sign means nothing to workers on’t bore everybody, even if it is annoying 8 oes this put teachers among the aristocracy ,

. . . . .

11.

1 .

1 .

1 .

1 .

1.

Notes

egitimate target in passable match , asty creatures found in silver mines Formerly it was the way to go idn’t cry over having no rent 8 et it stand about again in the road Where the archers go in the ship ry gates as tactics have changed 8 ob never changes then 8 n which play starts with love s put among the others to give opposition irl is cra y about underground leader evolutionary register

Quick Across

. oundless 1 8. ractise 8 . Cylinder 1 . edicine 1 . Overtax 1 . eginning 1 . Slack 18. hwart . iry 8 . aw 1

Down 1. . . . . .

11.

1 .

1 .

1 .

1 .

1.

elease 8 Superfluity en aluer 8 Winner ssociation Scorn 8 Example 8 French Emporium Work ull

Across: 7 Inexhaustible; 8 Rehearse; 9 Tube; 10 Physic; 12 Strain; 14 Origin; 16 Remiss; 18 Foil; 20 Ethereal; 22 Jurisprudence.

Down: 1 Untether; 2 Excess; 3 Lair; 4 Assessor; 5 Victor; 6 Club; 11 Contempt; 13 Instance; 15 Gallic; 17 Market; 19 Opus; 21 Haul.

Across

whether you’re cryptic sleuth or synonym solver in it for quick wins, this should satisfy

Cryptic Solution

Cryptic

beating the

Across: 7 Take exception; 8 Prompter; 9 Else; 10 Daunts; 12 Extent; 14 Heater; 16 Strive; 18 Omen; 20 Tiresome; 22 Ruling classes.

Down: 1 Fair game; 2 Vermin; 3 Exit; 4 Tearless; 5 Street; 6 Bows; 11 Strategy; 13 November; 15 Tennis; 17 Resist; 19 Maud; 21 Roll.

The solutions will be published here in the next issue.

Quick Solution

No. 419