See Creative Corner and you have arrived

The view a good many of us  have of the Mish Mash Gallery is from a Indigo or Y5 bus, or a car, and that is as close as we get, yet if we are coming to towards Beeston this is the marker we are likely to use to tell us that we have, for all intents and purposes, arrived in Beeston. My first Pubs and Cafés map from 2013 never quite got this far, but I knew of it and thought it was further out of Beeston than it actually is. It was not until last Friday that I realised it was on the corner of the High Road with Cator Lane.

If your usual bus is a 18/20 or a 36, this is the view you will see of Chiwell's Creative Corner:

Inside Mish Mash is stylish and welcoming. This is just one view. During my visit two artists came in with folios and I bought a lovely little hare brooch. Altogether I spent an enjoyable fifteen minutes browsing before a rumbling tummy started pulling me the direction of the Fusion Café next door.

From the quick view I had, I thought it was going to be small, but once through the door there is a surprise in store, it opens out to the right behind the Mish Mash Gallery Tardis like. I was welcomed by the delicious smell of black coffee and a food cabinet full of treats, where a quiche caught my eye.

I was waiting at the counter, my black Americano being made, when a man burst in through the café's front door, took one look at me, and said 'Are you the map man' and before I could reply added 'I've emailed you this morning. I've seen your map'.

Now it was my turn. 'I know' I said 'It doesn't include the Creative Corner or the Fusion Café, but by Monday it will I promise' (and for once, I was as good as my word. I am afraid that all too often my enthusiasm runs away with me).

The man then introduced himself as 'A-J' and we ended up chatting for nearly two hours and were joined for a while by Garry Thomas, who founded Mish Mash and the Creative Corner with his wife Gail. At the end of our chat, we were setting up a Creative Corner writers group and A-J was creating a logo as we talked. His enthusiasm was infectious and I enjoyed his bubbly company.

And here I caught A-J in the act, with Garry beside him. It was all so unexpected and I eventually left in no doubt that this is how they are with everyone. As for Ceative Corner Writers? See the end of this post.

I left Fusion with another piece of knowledge: coffee is grown in Thailand and tastes even better than it smells. Undoubtedly the best coffee I have ever had in Beeston and A-J even does real tea in a pot. The quiche was yummy like creamy custard and came with a small salad on the side.

I didn't take any interior photographs because a few minutes after I arrived some mums with toddlers and babies arrived, all clearly at home — always a good sign — and one corner was full of guitars. A-J told me he runs guitar and drum classes. A older couple came in and the man could not resist picking up one of the guitars and began to play, telling A-J he had played a guitar for forty years. Hearing about the guitar classes he asked for details and said he would go along. 

I said my goodbyes and made my way next door to Created By Hand, selling craft goods and ceramics, plus cards and jewellery. I was welcomed by a lady who introduced herself as Hazel, the wife of the gallery's proprietor, David Humphreys, who works with glass.

  This is just one view of inside Created By Hand — I don't want to take away the fun of discovering more for yourselves. Now there is a good chance that if you are a local reading this blog post none of what I have been enthusing about will come as news, but if Beeston is normally off your radar, then this is a good example of what you are missing.

Chilwell's Creative Corner is also home to the Greenfingers Florist, who relocated from the shops opposite, after being closed for a few months because of the loss of passing customers when tram construction work began.

There is also a small gallery called Attik, which was closed at the time of my visit, and above Mish Mash is Tranquility, offering 'holistic therapies'.

The sad thing is that despite how tram construction work has impacted on Creative Corner and the shops opposite, they are outside the 'Beeston BID' area (BID stands for 'Business Improvement District). Make no mistake, this is where my Beeston now begins or ends depending on which way I am travelling and the good news is that my Beeston Pubs and Cafes Map now includes A-J's Fusion Café and Creative Corner.

There can be few better days out than a perambulation from here to the east end of Beeston High Road where it ends at Humber Road. Good cafés, galleries and craft shops, waiting to be enjoyed and explored. The buses may not have brought visitors to Beeston in droves, but The Tram should. I am forever telling friends and other folk that buses come out of Nottingham as well as into it and it was Matt Goold, he of The Beestonian free magazine and blog, who I first heard talk about pulling Nottingham University's main campus into Beeston. This inspired me to extend a version of my map to include the campus and QMC. I also added Rylands and Beeston Marina (you can find the latest version under Pages in the column to the right and Matt has kindly re-produced it in the latest issue of The Beestonian).

I will end with a plus for the Creative Corner Writers Group, which will have its first get together in March. In the meantime, if you would like to know more or to help in any way, just contact me.

Beeston's 'Flying Dutchman Bus' and embracing the Creative Corner

Before I begin the journey I made on Friday, a footnote of sorts to last week's post. My new driving licence arrived on Thursday, so I went into Broxtowe Borough Council offices during my travels to prove that I am me. Hopefully, I will get a letter soon confirming that I now am a registered voter.

I have asked the Borough's Electoral Office for information about registered voters in the four Beeston wards by streets and the number of households, together with the same data for 2011. This will enable me to compare voter nos. by Beeston streets. I will tell you my findings in a few weeks, assuming I am given the data I have requested.

Now back to Friday, when I took myself off on a bus journey around Beeston, Toton, Stapleford and Sandiacre before reaching Long Eaton. The bus in question was a no.17 and not a single person I have asked knows about it and I have asked a good few over the past few weeks, so what am I talking about?

Well, it's this old fella…

This is the 17 arriving at my bus stop on Wollaton Road on Friday morning just after 10.20am — right on time, having started its journey in Beeston Fields (Dennis Avenue).

It was empty as my photograph shows apart from me and the driver and this is how it stayed all the way to Chilwell Retail Park, where to two other oldies joined me. The bus stopped just twelve times whilst seven other passengers got on and off between Toton and Sandiacre. For the run into Long Eaton I again had the bus to myself. I picked up a timetable on the bus:

This map is inside it (to enlarge, just click on the map):

At my bus-stop on Wollaton Road towards Beeston there was a timetable, but the route no.17 does not appear on the bus-stop itself, and this is the case for most of the route. At a good few stops no timetable is displayed. Taken together all these explain why this little red bus has been winging its way around Beeston empty most of the time like a Flying Dutchman Bus, although I have seen a few passengers on board coming up the hill out of Beeston towards Dennis Avenue, 

The 17 is a commercial bus route operated since 2 December 2014 by Nottingham Coaches, but their website contains no easy to access information about the service — which operates from 9.20am–2.20pm Monday–Friday hourly (start times from Dennis Avenue and Long Eaton Asda). The timetable leaflet says that 'When the new tram routes start running in 2015, our buses will pull into the new tra stop park & ride site to provide (passengers) with fast access to Nottingham City Centre'.

Premiere Buses, who folded a year or so ago, operated a no.17 bus route along part of the same route, so I suspect that the fact that Nottingham Coach chose to number their route '17' is no coincidence.

Given how little publicity there has been and the restricted service I just hope the 17 is still running come mid-summer when The Tram is due to start. The bus was old, noisy and rattled. Given the high quality buses of the local rival bus companies, they will have to up their game if their 17 bus route is to survive. I wish them well. I also suspect that Trent-Barton will be introducing their own Tram feeder bus routes when The Tram finally starts running.

Having said all this, it was an interesting journey 'around the houses' so to speak. Most of the other passengers knew one another and it had all the makings of a route like Nottingham City Council's Linkbus service L10, which I have become a regular user of after years of travelling of the 36, Y36 and Indigo.

The L10 really is a friendly bus and also goes 'around the houses' and I love the little section from Beeston along Derby Road, when it is heading to towards the Victoria Centre in the direction of Derby! I grew up in Wembley using bus routes like this (namely the 16, 46 and 55) and wrote about the 28 in Birmingham back in the early-1970s (the 28 used to head south out of Birmingham City Centre before turning east, then heading north to Kingstanding on the northern edge of the city).

I photographed this L10 in Beeston Bus Station at the beginning of its journey to the Victoria Centre. The bus has seen better days and will, I believe, be replaced by new electric buses before too long, when Nottingham City Council start operating the service instead of Nottingham City Transport (hence the signs about EasyRider tickets no longer being valid on Linkbus routes from 1 March 2015).

My fascination with buses began as a child and as a local historian of sorts I have long been interested in the role buses (and trams) have played in the development of our towns and cities over the last one hundred years and more.

As often is the case, I digress, so it's back to my Friday day out. When I got off the 17 at Long Eaton I caught a Indigo back towards Chilwell with a view to visiting the Mish Mash Gallery. I had a vague idea of where it was, having passed it many times over recent years, but on my many walks around Beeston I never got further than Park Road to visit friends.

Seeing the time, an account of my eventful visit will have to wait until Wednesday, so please come back and learn more about Chilwell's 'Creative Corner'. I have done one thing already: updated my Beeston Pubs & Cafes Map to include its location. See the Pages section in the column to the right of this post.

Much more than it looks… a Tardis of the Arts.

To learn more return Thursday…