please empty your brain below

because every world-class Games needs a car park

But I thought the big thing was that there wouldn't be a car park at the most environmentally friendly games ever. I thought it was going to be a coach park.

I was really puzzled about the long tradition of cutting the grass for the llamas until I read it more carefully.

"For the Games in 2012, East Marsh will host a temporary facility for coach drop off, cycle and disabled parking. It will not be concreted over, but will have a temporary surface that will be removed after the Games when East Marsh returns as playing fields." (Hackney Council)

A macabre legend in my family tells of the time that my grandfather was walking to work across the marshes as a very young man, at some point in the 1920s, and found the body of a suicide hanging from the Coppermill Bridge. Not hanging by the neck, but hanging by his ankles with his head under the water. Always sounded a fairly nasty way to go to me.

I very often take a cycle ride along the towpath from Fish Island up as far as Springfield Marina and I always look forward to racing under the low bridge with my whole body as flat as I can make it, the fear that any moment your back will scrape along the roof is for me at least a little exciting.

I first visited Markfield park in 1957 on a nusery school visit and can vaguely remember watching the barges slowly moving up and down the Lea.

Just to the North East of Markfield Park is the site of the former Tottenham Piggeries.. where 'Tottenham Pudding' (the name given to the pig's food) was produced.. From the Second World War until it's demise in 1965, Tottenham B.C. collected waste food once a week from all the Borough's householders in order to feed the pigs.

Up to the late 1960s this section of the river always smelt of a mixture of the oily deposits on the water and of fresh timber. There were many timber yards along it's course and 'Bambergers', the very large yard to the south of Markfield Park, burnt down in late 1966.











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