Sometimes, do you ever get the feeling that people just don’t think things through?
M and I spent yesterday at my cousin’s wedding in Hastings, very nice it was too. Beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, sea was like glass and the bar was free. Doesn’t get any better than that.
However, travelling back today we ended up having to get a train to London Bridge followed by one back the other way to Blackheath and then a bus to Beckenham. In between deciding that we were going to move to Blackheath and what we were having for tea, we came through Lewisham – only a short walk from Blackheath yet the equivalent of buying a £300 pair of shoes only to stand in dogshit outside the shop.
And this is where we come to people not thinking it through. As I was idly gazing out of the bus window we passed, in the centre of Lewisham, the offices of the Beaver Housing Group.
See what I mean? Haven’t thought it through.
Part of me hoped that the administrators of the Beaver Housing Group have chosen to rise above the inevitable schoolboy sniggers their chosen name will cause with a disdainful shrug and snooty snort of derision.
It’s obviously proved difficult for them though. A look at their website (www.beaverhousing.co.uk) shows disdain is a tricky thing to pull off. Headlines such as "How to get involved with Beaver"; "Beaver objectives" and the probably illegal "What it means to work with Beaver and the latest on available positions" mean snorts will occur, just not ones of derision.
It must also mean they turn up in some Google search results that they'd rather avoid.
I was assuming that somewhere in the dingy past of Lewisham’s social housing history, a philanthropic gentleman named Mr Beaver started a scheme that has now grown to manage over 3,000 homes. Not the case either. The Beaver Housing Group actually consists of three member organisations – the Beaver Housing Society, the Otter Housing Society and Riverside Housing Developments.
I can only assume that as the organisation grows the Ratty, Badger and Toad Housing Societies will come on board, but it’s reassuring to know that over 3,000 disadvantaged single parent, drug addicted, benefit claiming, asylum seeking, small, soggy woodland riverbank dwellers are safe and snug within the boundaries of the boroughs of Lewisham, Croydon and Bromley.
We had chicken for tea, by the way.
