Squats, DIY, Community Repair - Chris Setz, Haringey Fixers

Mentioned in the previous episode so I checked up on the current state of the Haringey Repair Cafes and I was pleased to see how professional they have gotten since I last looked at them. Chis was also super easy to connect with - I think apart from our German surnames we have quite a bit in common (both interested in and involved with one million projects at any one time).
We covered so many topics from start to finish - longstanding fans will recognise projects featuring in previous episodes. I hope you feel inspired - I already am working on a new project inspired by our conversation.

Haringey Fixers website: https://haringeyfixers.org
Haringey Fixers Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/haringeyfixers/
Haringey Fixers Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/haringeyfixers

Top Tips Directory: https://anybodyeverybodytottenham.com/blog/aet-directory
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Transcript

Jamila  0:10  
Hi, I'm Jamila. And anybody, everybody Tottenham is a monthly podcast introducing the good people of Tottenham to you. Happy August, my friends, and I'm back, and today I'm talking with Chris, and I need to pre warn you a little bit, because, you know, I'm quite straightforward, right? Where I ask a question, I expect an answer. With Chris, he will give me the answer, but he will go on a little side quest and journey, but I'm promising you just go with it. Just feel like you're on a river and you're slowly going into little creeks, you know, sideways, but eventually you will get there. But it's really, really nice, because, yes, officially, I wanted to talk about repair cafes, but we will talk about so much more. And the other thing that is exciting, I don't know if you are all ready, there are 12 Top Tips Tottenham that have not been mentioned before. I hope you enjoy - all the best. So today, on the pod, I have Chris setz with me from the Haringey fixers. Thank you very much for joining me today, Chris,

Chris  1:25  
you're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Jamila  1:27  
All right, Chris, let's find out a little bit about you and Haringey. How long have you been here?

Chris  1:33  
About 25 years.

Jamila  1:35  
Okay, which area of Haringey? How? How did you end up living in Haringey,

Chris  1:41  
I married the love of my life. We went and found a beautiful house, and we were incredibly lucky in that we had started to have children, and we wanted the children to go to the best state schools possible. So we looked all over London, and we settled on Haringey in the 90s as having the best primary school. So we moved here.

Jamila  2:07  
What was that primary school? 

Chris  2:09  
Coleridge primary school, okay, it was just marvelous. And it turned out to be right. We have had two children, and both of them went to the same school.

Jamila  2:17  
And what was Haringey like at the time? How has it changed? Over the last 25 years,

Chris  2:23  
I've lived in a few places, in Haringey, and it's hard to detect changes. I mean, there are changes, for example, as you know, when you watch a movie in the shape of the mobile phone, that it used to be a brick, and now it's not, you know, and there are changes in habits, like, there's an awful lot less smoking amongst people. But in terms of infrastructure, there are very few changes within Haringey. The busses are more or less the same. The transport is more or less the same. The institutions are more or less the same. And you know, a lot of Haringey was made possible by the explosion of the railways in the 1860s and so a lot of the housing stock was built when England was a superpower, and that's still pretty stable. I mean, there have been a few building works, but not very many. There's a notable revival of Alexandra Palace, which was a big step forward for us. But broadly, the infrastructure has not changed much. The society has changed, as it does quite a lot. And things, as in the words of the Tony Blair election songs, things can only get better, and they have

Okay, so you're quite interested in infrastructure. What's that about?

Speaker 1  3:46  
Again, I'm the elders of seven children, and so to a certain extent, my family, my brothers and sisters, would look to me. And so what I would do is I would look around. I still do this. I look around at the things in front of me and try to detect the things which have the greatest impact on me as a person, and amongst them, obviously, your family is way high as number one. But what we're all surrounded with is what some people call the built environment housing. I mean, it's literally they, they literally tower over us, and they are huge expressions of authority. I started as a dreamer, as a young hippie, as a squatter, my best friend at school trained to be a doctor, and he invited me to go and share - me and my girlfriend to go and share a space with him in his squat. And I was really shocked, because I was very surprised. I didn't think that trainee doctors lived in squats.

Jamila  4:50  
Was that here in Haringey or in London? 

Speaker 1  4:52  
No, it was. It was in London. It was in Mile End. He was near the London Hospital. I got very involved in squatting movement. And I was part of the St Paul's advisory service for squatters, as I used to open up houses for people. And it made me a housing activist. And in doing that, the council would put a spike through the water main. They would try and destroy the electricity meter. They would take up the floorboards and put them by the windows with them. And so in order to open a squat and make it habitable for a family, there were 100,000 Council properties which were empty, boarded up like this with corrugated iron. You had to be good at do it yourself. So I bought a book, and part of that was the ethos which was in Altternative London, of do it yourself, a whole sort of hippie type approach to life. I built myself a four poster bed, so that sort of thing. I bought the Reader's Digest, do it yourself manual, and I read it from cover to cover. And as a reasonably bright graduate, I mean, it isn't rocket science. I used it to fix up the plumbing, to do the electrics, to do a bit of plastering where it was needed, and it's created in me a lifelong love of practicality and use my hands.

Jamila  6:09  
Okay, Chris, I feel like you're already segwaying us into Haringey fixers. So tell me, how did it come about? It's, it's been like, about two years now.

Speaker 1  6:19  
Yeah, we're in our third year, and I've been reasonably active in local politics, and I know some of the politicians and councilors quite well. Few years back, there was a parliamentary repair cafe. I invited one of the people I admire, Catherine West, who's now an MP, oh, now is an MP. I helped work on her campaign to, you know, come and visit it as an MP and I sort of, from that moment, I started to get actively involved in the repair Cafe movement. And I used to go and travel as a volunteer. And what they call it, they call it fixer to repair cafes, particularly in Hackney. And those guys in Hackney are really good. Particularly, there's an organization called Hackney fixers. I was really impressed by the whole thing. I mean, I have been involved with a lot of community groups in the past, as I've lived in Haringey for 25 years. I was involved with the transition movement. I've been I used to do, help to put on a series of films green on the screen, dealing with green issues, documentaries talking about, you know, plastics in the sea and the ocean and that sort of thing. What you can do about it. I'm involved with the Friends of parks movement, so I continue to be a housing activist. Got excellent relationships with the council and Council offices and councilors. So for me, the repair industry, if you like, the repair and reuse segment, is right up my street. 

Jamila  7:48  
But tell me about the practicalities, 

Chris  7:50  
yeah, and that's where I started to go to repair cafes. And I thought, this is a long journey. Why aren't there any in Haringey? And at the time, the council had a sponsorship system where you could apply for a small amount of money to get a new ideas started. I applied for 500 quid from the community fund. So I got my 500 quid, and we decided I found a couple of great local people who I knew were friends of mine, a German guy, Friedrich, who is a genius, and somebody lives on the same estate as me. I live on the Broadwater farm estate in Tottenham, Caesar, and he's, you know, these two people, I said to them, you know, can I depend on you for advice and guidance? You don't have to do any work. I'll do it all. But, you know, I would really appreciate because I respect it. And so they said yes, and we decided to do a six month trial. And we did the first cafe we tried to do, have this idea that a lot of the charitable activity has got that charities name branded all over it. I mean, what I tried to do is to say, look, this is going to be there's a community center in Lordship hub recreation ground, and this is the Lordship hub repair cafe. It's not the Haringey fixes repair cafe, because the idea is that I think that people are great, and they've got a huge amount of resources, and they can do everything they need to do. And so what we do is we try and be complimentary. So if there's a group of local people and they can do everything, we don't need to do anything. And so if they need perhaps a ticketing system, or they want some help doing social media marketing, or they want fixers to stand behind their desks and help people, or whatever they want, we'll do. I decided we could should start two cafes simultaneously, one in this really wonderful estate that I live in, which is an unsung gem here in in Tottenham, is the best place in Tottenham to live. I don't care who who disagrees with me on that. It's a fantastic place, but very different in nature to the Victorian Superpower buildings that have been built around the park. I mean, the park is 64 acres. It's one of the biggest parks in Haringey. 20 years ago, it was an absolute hellhole and the community, and you see those heroes there tirelessly, cleverly over the years, building up capability and capacity. So they transformed a park which was a hellhole into arguably the most beautiful park. And so the people who live around it are a very different type of people than the people who live on the housing estate, which was in the 1980s a sink estate. I mean, I've spent years in Haringey, walking around Haringey streets, doing tree walks. I've seen a lot of the built environment that I love so much, that I feel is influential on us, up close. And I chose to come and live on the Broadwater farm estate because I think it's just a great place. Number one, it's got the people. It's got such a variety of people. I mean, I can't tell you ... I mean, there's a regular food bank. We they do free hot meals on Friday. Today's Friday. I just came from there. It's buzzing. It's 50 people in a room. Great food from great, you know, just a great atmosphere. But they're all unclassifiable because of my engagement with them, because I run a repair cafe right in the community center. Of getting to know people over the years. And it's, it is why I moved here, that and the architecture, yeah, and so we chose the first and third Saturday of the month. I mean, I'm an experienced event organizer. It's easy. I mean, at the very first one Lordship lane, a Lordship rep, one person turned up, and I thought, Oh, God, I'm going to, this is a mistake, nobody's going to come. But within very quickly, not only did we have people coming in, bringing their broken stuff. I mean, the first visitor we ever had. I'm sure she won't mind me mentioning her first name, Mary Ann from the Seychelles. She is a seamstress of 40 years experience who lives on the estate, and she stepped forward and said, If I can help, I'd be pleased to - this is exactly what I mean about there are people, there are amazing people out there full of skills who want to and so it's easy, and it's been easy ever since. Recently, we opened another repair cafe in a bookshop. And again, the theme is, it's right in the middle of turnpike lane. It's surrounded by local Haringey people who are all good at stuff. It is a cultural center, that bookshop. It does a huge range of things, filmmaking, knitting a whole - It's a beautifully run cultural hub. And so it's easy. Oh, we are a catalysts, yeah, okay, we could do with some more money, etc, etc. There are some logistics issues. I'm a perfectionist. I always want it to be better. But we managed to get a grant to employ a first time, part time employee as a community development manager, and working on not growth, because as the Greens recognize and acknowledge growth in its own, growth for its own sake is dangerous. What we're looking to do is trying to have a cultural change in Haringey. It's why I'm here, in a way, it's so that it's a different approach. What I'm trying to do is a bit like what consultants do, which is try to maximize the resources that are already there. It's that sort of thing. I'm saying that we already have the capability to fix our problems. If we get together, we can do it ourselves. That includes pavements. I think we could. We could fix a lot of stuff, and so logistically, it was no problem. It's a joy to do the lift you get when somebody fixes when we help people to fix their own stuff, when we together, we fix it, it just feels great. It does attract the sort of techy type mentality men and women who get off on that. It's just great. So I'm very happy with what we're doing. We've got ambitious plans, and you'll see us in a town center near you over the coming years.

Jamila  14:24  
Yeah, I want to hear about your plans, because I've, I feel like you said something. I don't know if it was in the minutes or somewhere I saw about a library of all things, kind of thing. 

Chris  14:37  
Yeah. I mean, if you, if you look at what's called the waste stream, the waste we all produce. One of the documentaries I screened in green on the screen was about a Japanese village which had around about 100% recycling. How did they do it? They each had nine recycling bins.

Jamila  14:57  
Well, any Germans heart would glow. Yeah, , yeah.

Chris  15:02  
absolutely so, well, this is all a response to climate. What we're saying is there's a climate crisis, and so we can't change the climate by a local action in Haringey. There's no doubt about it, and there's no point in even considering that what we can do is try and create the circumstance in which change can happen. And you know, change can come, big change can come, for example, from artists and art, an artist can produce one idea that changes the world. And if we can create the context where things like this are important and where people's creativity is unleashed, we will see and we have in our history seen, people will emerge who will change things for the better. So what we aim to do is bring about a culture change so that people don't think of the disposability of the products they're swimming in. They're being constantly tempted by this. It'll fix your problem, and you can throw it away afterwards. These are cultural changes, and they start in, in my opinion, with opportunities. And so what we can do as enablers is enable the circumstances. And this is such a strong political message that the council are 100% behind this. All the councils are because, if nothing else, they recognize the demise of their own institutions. 

Jamila  16:32  
The reason I got in touch was because the over 50s Haringey forum, James he talked about, you like recommending it, because we talked about the loneliness of older men and how they don't necessarily get involved, and that he thought, maybe that's one way of getting involved. And I think that is very true, again, anything that creates community and gets a diverse group of people involved in community. And, you know, it's not always that these people want to sit and talk, but maybe they want to fix something, you know, and that they also get some worth out of it. You know, I can be helpful for other people. That is a very strong feeling.

Chris  17:18  
Yes, I completely agree. Build it, and they will come. And I agree with you also that people have got a latent desire to get involved, and particularly older people. I'm quite an older person. I've done a lot of things in my life. I've had the time because I'm older and I've got a lot of skills I've picked up along the way, and I am very keen to just to donate those skills to the community. However, you asked me in the beginning about change, and so I think it is easy for us to have this view of a lonely old person, but old people are quite resourceful, almost by definition. They've got to where they are. They've survived, and part of that survival is being alert and COVID, which did us lots of harm, did us a huge favor in that older people, for the first time, started, en masse, to use the internet, particularly zoom and things like that. And so older people are much more connected than they've ever been, and they're much more aware of the massive opportunities. I give you an example of a woman I know, again, I'm sure she won't mind me my mentioning her first name. She's called Cynthia. She's 84 Hi, Cynthia, if you're listening, she's from the Bahamas. She's a fantastic woman, and she's got a smartphone. She's got a smartphone. I mean, 10 years ago, if I said to you an 84 year old woman's got a smartphone, you would have said, no, no, that's very

Jamila  18:39  
my grandma. My grandma is 84, yeah, she got one  

Chris  18:42  
exactly. So I think this idea of lonely, old white men, and it is often white men, unable to pursue their interests, is has changed. I think it was true. If you look, there's a men in sheds movement, which really speaks to it. I think there are, there is, no doubt, a huge epidemic of loneliness.

Jamila  19:04  
I'm always worried about the people that we don't see, you know, so I'm always very conscious about who should be in in certain spaces and isn't there. So you don't want growth for growth sake, but what are your plans and how can people get involved? 

Chris  19:22  
I just want to add one other aspect of the way we do it, and this is, again, it's all me, really, it's that we also don't want experts, because I'm an expert, and experts are bottlenecks, and it's "the doctor will see you now". So what we try to do is we try to say that if you can get to the repair Cafe on time. You've already jumped through eight different hurdles to make sure your hair is right, you're fully dressed. You got the right transport. You arrived on time. It's symptomatic of your ability to jump over hoops, to solve problems, to troubleshoot so if there'd been a delay, maybe you've texted and said you're going to be late, whatever. Yeah, and so what we're saying is that most people, particularly people who've got some experience of life, have got a lot of troubleshooting, problem solving skills, and they can apply those skills to fixing things, anything. They just need a bit of encouragement and courage to open it up with somebody who they can trust, knows what they're doing. And it's saying to people with the right guidance, there's m asses of step by step stuff on YouTube. With a bit of guidance and confidence and support, you can fix something yourself. So it's teach somebody to fish. We're saying this  let it help you. If you've never used a screwdriver before, here's a screwdriver. If you want to have a quick lesson about how to use a cordless drill, here's a cordless drill. Let's give you a lesson with somebody who knows, etc. If you want to understand how to fault find we'll do all those things with you with the aim of enabling you. And so in terms of the plans, I said to you, it's important not to grow for its own sake. I'm afraid, forgive me for this unpopular opinion, but I don't think charities should exist.

Jamila  21:06  
Are you a charity officially not are you? 

Chris  21:08  
(laughs) I'm sorry it sounds hypocritical. You had to become a charity in order to obtain grants, because you cannot. And we're not a business, and we're not interested in profit. I chose, in my defense, the most modern form of charity. And the more important it is, the more we should be involved collectively. And the way we're involved collectively is through the government. And so there's a huge need for charities, unfortunately, but there ought not to be. If something's important, then it should be supported by government, which reflects its importance. And so I'm lobbying, as I mentioned to you separately, for a change in the law, a right to repair act. So we had  - in May, - a repair cafe in Parliament, which Catherine, again, for the second time, West, kindly attended. And I'm absolutely delighted that one of the most respected councilors in Haringey. Adam Jogee has been elected as a an MP for Newcastle under Lyme, and looks already, from what I can see from Parliament live to be a powerful and hopefully influential MP, and I've already invited him to the next parliamentary repair cafe. So the things rights which the Europeans and the Americans have increasingly got that people in Haringey don't have, are coming along the way. So part of our plans is to get together with the rest of the repair and reuse movement and help to bring about beneficial change, legitimize the sector, help to professionalize it, be a catalyst so that almost organically, new repair cafes will come into the five town centers, because Haringey is a place with five town centers, because we're trying to ask the people of Haringey to consider changing their own culture, and the least we can do is make it easy for the people of Haringey to take advantage of that to so, you know, we want places which are central, easy to get to. The other thing I'm doing is we're working on a council manifesto promise, which is to establish a repair and reuse hub in the borough in terms of the Library of things. There are some stats, but basically, everybody knows that many people have bought a cordless drill and they've used it once or three times, and in any one street, 

Jamila  23:31  
guilty 

Chris  23:32  
- is perfectly normal, no problem. But in your street where you live, maybe there are 150 houses all of having done the same thing. So if in one of those houses, you could go and borrow the drill for the day and a half you need it, then you can see that that that's the essence of the idea. But it takes a lot of hurdle jumping. There is one organization, Library of things limited. You have 12, at least, at last count, maybe it's a few more. By now, they have 12 libraries of things. There are many libraries in which, you know, physical book, libraries in which there are libraries of things. It's a global movement. I've been tracking libraries of things in particularly in America, yeah. So there's quite a lot of logistics and resource needed to do this successfully, and it's incremental, and we're not in any hurry. What I would really like, and again, shout out to your listeners here, what I would really like would be if you Jamila would accept a drill because you needed to use it and then keep it until somebody else needs it, then I'm involved in the open source movements, in the computers. This is called peer to peer. There's lots of problems with it. There are many people  there's no way they want strangers knocking on their door. "I've come about the drill". They really don't want their privacy, etc, like that. But there are people and organizations who could do that. So what I'm saying is that maybe we can have a different type of library of things. I mean, this has sort of been tried in other places. It's not entirely new, but it's where the public themselves have shared ownership of a library of resources. 

Jamila  25:16  
Is there something you want to mention before we move on to top tips? Anything we haven't talked about yet in regards to how we get fixers? 

Chris  25:24  
Yeah, there is something I suffer from. People are glad to use their skills and to donate them. But I've noticed this. I do tree walk. Nobody wants to do the boring admin. 

Jamila  25:38  
Oh, I can do that.

Chris  25:40  
well exactly. There are lots of people out there who love admin. I like admin. It's, I find it satisfying. I'm too much of a perfectionist. I spent too long crossing the T's and dotting the i's. But I like it. We find it very difficult trying to reach people we call helpers, people who are going to, for example, we record the length of time a repair in a cafe takes we record a couple of things, the weight of the item as part of the calculation of the carbon saving. We want people to be greeted and ticked off in a list. We've got a spreadsheet of who's coming and what they're bringing. And again, yes, I can hire, I can get a grant and I can hire somebody. But what I'm really looking for, and this is the ask here, I'm really looking for those people who are happy with admin. Maybe they're home based, so you don't actually need to come on site if you don't want to. And maybe they want to get involved, and they got, they'd be just be happy to make the tea, to do tick boxes to record times and waits to do some of the sort of infrastructure stuff that every community organization needs. Please, if you're like me, one of those people, please get in touch and we'd welcome you. Okay,

Jamila  26:56  
we'll put your website and there you can contact that, because that's how I contacted you. So you're clearly checking your email. 

Chris  27:04  
Thank you. Like I'm a nerd. 

Jamila  27:08  
So, and then you've got, I've seen, you've got an Instagram now, you've got a Facebook group, you said, or I've seen on the set, yeah. Oh, maybe one thing I was gonna ask on the website, it mentions the social cinema, but then it doesn't really talk about it. What's that?

Chris  27:23  
Well, I've got a whole lot of projects which I would like to do, which are, I call community repair. Okay, we've sort of talked about a little bit of this. We talked about loneliness. I've started a social cinema, which is basically, it's aimed at people within walking distance of broadwater farm community center. And the idea is that you come in on Friday night, we watch a movie together, and we have some social time. So, you know, as an interval, like we have an interval in the middle of the film, and we have a time at the end, not very long. It's not compulsory, but it's just to sort of get people to know each other. Unfortunately, one of my failures is that I ran out of capacity to fundraise. Okay, we basically run out of money, but I'll that'll come back the Minute, I'm hoping later in the year, the minute I can find the time to fundraise. So if you're, if you're an admin person who loves fundraising, please help. I'm drowning in the lack of money. And so there's, there's a dozen projects that the library of things is a project which is going to require extensive funding, and I'm sort of halfway through a big funding bid for that that's going to need more people to be hired. So you know, when we're eventually we're going to be advertising for local people with the relevant experience to come on board and join us. There's a whole range of things around this idea of repairing helping the community to repair itself.

Jamila  28:57  
Alright, let's do the top tips Tottenham!

Chris  29:01  
okay, well, your blog is marvelous, and it's comprehensive. I had a look at your directory. (Jamila laughs) Everywhere great in Haringey, you've already covered, as you keep on saying. However, I've got a few things which you may not have considered. I couldn't see Fields eat. 

Jamila  29:20  
No, I haven't heard of that. 

Chris  29:22  
No, this is an organic restaurant, more or less opposite Tottenham stadium, okay, which is relatively new, which is a couple of years old. I've been in there a few times. They're great people. It's not inexpensive. Organic food is expensive, but it's great. It's worth it. It should be supported. Another place I wanted to talk about was the parks. We've got riches on our doorstep, and the parks are certainly one, and also, if you as many, many people are if you are lonely, joining your local friends of parks movement, they're great people. Well, there's no pressure. And if you want to get to learn about nature, and if you're interested in becoming a tree warden, then get a list of the trees, and I'll help you to name them. 

Jamila  30:09  
tree warden - what's that? 

Chris  30:12  
In 1987 in the UK, there was a massive storm, and unbelievably, the wind in the storm came from a direction it had never come before. Lots of trees fell over, and some of them sadly, killed people, and there was a mass outpouring of sympathy, and a whole group of local people got together and created tree wardens. So the tree wardens were people throughout the country, very strong in rural areas, as you might guess, who care about trees, and they work as independent groups, often in concert with their local council. And they just care for trees. Here in London, there are hardly any. The organization who owns the tree Warden brand is called the tree Council. If you look on their website, you'll see all the tree Warden groups. There are very, very few, almost none, within this large city, which, if people are interested in trees and they wish to become a tree Warden, as a first step, join your local friends of parks. Find your nicest park that you like doesn't have to be near you, but better if it is and look at the trees. Get a list. Contact me, and together, let's find out what trees are there, and I'll introduce you to the tree service, tree wardens, who can simply look after a tree pit if they want. There's some beautiful flowers being grown in tree pits throughout Haringey, just by local people on their own street. There are people who got together there's not very expensive to have a tree planted outside your house, particularly in Tottenham, which has fewer trees. Okay, let me carry on. So there's a supermarket, which I don't think people know about. It's called B and M, and it's just by Northumberland Park. It's massive, and it's one of these - I remember, if you ever remember going into that famous German institution, Aldi for the first time, I couldn't believe it there was no - I didn't recognize any of the brands. Well, this is B M, is something, something like that. I also want to mention Sainsbury's car park, which is very near B M, because it's a three hour underground covered car park in the middle of Northumberland Park. So if you have a car, as I do, then it's a very handy place to park with a great big supermarket above it. I also wanted to shout out a guy called who I don't know personally, called ogmios. He did a YouTube Vlog, which was so good. BBC Three gave him a TV show. It's called Zen motoring. It's such a simple idea. He basically puts a dash cam, and he walked drives the streets of Tottenham, and he's gone a bit wider in the rest of London. And his show is it's on BBC Three. It's called Zen motoring, and it's on YouTube under a slightly different name. If you Google Zen motoring, this guy is the definition of cool. He has got such a wonderful presence. Every episode is an absolute gem of tranquility, and yet totally observant. His observational powers are superb. He understands what he's looking at, and he's got a warm heart, and I just think the guy's great. I also commend spurs to you. Now, I don't like spurs because they are a massive corporate and as massive corporates generally go they're as evil as all of them. And one of the parts of their corporation, which is the most evil, is their extensive property holdings. It's for another time, maybe, to discuss the damage that large scale developers do to places like Tottenham. Draw that aside. They've got an active sports foundation, and they don't do what they can because they could do 1000 times more, but they do a lot to provide free or subsidized activities. And all of them are great, and the people who put on the activities are great. I would urge anybody to look at the activity program, which is, you know, there's things like walking football for people of my age, there's a whole range of stuff. They do, job fairs, they do a range of things, all of which are enriching and all of which are worth doing. I also like to mention one of my ambitions in community repair is I think that we'd all be great at play reading. So I would like to form a group of play readers, because in Lordship hub, there's an open air theater. So I would like to see us as a community, use that open air theater. Yes, it could, and it is used, but not very much, or not as much as it could. Of course, we could do Haringey has got talent in the shell open air theater in Lordship hub, but we could also do plays. And so I wanted to shout out Haringey shed, who are really classy Theater Company, often doing work with children and young people. But, you know, impressive, worthy of your attention. Three more, and that's it. One of the people I've based ... my taken inspiration from is a Victorian stained glass maker called William Morris, who has got a museum in his parents home in Waltham Forest, and it's not in the borough. He wrote a book called news from Noah, 64 pages utopia of what the future would be like when he goes into a shop, and in that shop, everything in the shop is free, and the person serving him is working for free. And the book explains how it would be possible to have a society like that. Something I hope you've never heard of is Tottenham cake. 

Jamila  36:01  
Tottenham cake? Nope

Chris  36:01  
okay, so that's great. I'm so pleased. So there's a mulberry tree in a Quaker church in Tottenham, and it was used to flavor the icing of some cake. That's Tottenham cake. So if you Google it, you can see all sorts of recipes if you want to celebrate Tottenham. One way, you can do that at birthday parties, at special events, ideally using that mulberry fruit, but if not, your own mulberries, Tottenham cake. And finally, something I've been doing for I've stopped doing it now, but for about 15 years, every year, I was an architectural guide in Open House London. And if you look it comes up in September every year, it's the opportunity to go to places which are either not normally open, not normally free, or not normally easy to be guided around. And so within haringey, there's plenty of places there. But if you look at, if you want to be reminded of what people value about London, the star for me, the jewel for me, is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which, amazingly, our Tottenham MP, David Lamey is now in charge of there, that building inside, it's got British muted splendor. Now, there's a whole lot of issues about how we pillaged that and the repatriation needed from all the damage we did, but as a building, it is incredible. But there's a whole across London, whatever you like, you'll find that they need stewards who just have to make sure people don't get lost and don't dawdle. So you can always volunteer for that. So it's another charity, but open house London is the sort of London I want to live in. 

Jamila  36:15  
Thank you very much, Chris for this interview.

Chris  37:58  
Well, thank you for having me really. As you can hear, I'm in love with the sound of my own voice, so it's but it's an absolute pleasure to talk to somebody so receptive.  

Jamila  38:07  
I just vainly left all the compliments in for me. So what I'm gonna do as well is I am catching up. I'm a little bit behind on a website, but I will write up those top tips, and I will link in the directory so you can see from previous episodes, etc. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you have a lovely, lovely summer. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Learned something new and let that Tottenham love grow. Take care and until next time bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai