Although - supposedly - nothing has yet been decided - there are rumours flying around that the Lea is going to be closed off for a couple of months over the actual games times. This includes the towpath - and could possibly include the Purple Recycled Garden!!
The police are using 'a potential terrorist threat' as the security-creep into making us not going about our daily business of living alongside the Olympic Park. Many of us use the towpath to cycle along (myself - at least 10 times a week - and on most weekends as well), walk our dogs, fish, ramble, forage - and of course - we have our rowing boat as well.
Well - it seems as though we going to be considered a terrorist threat if we carry on doing these things around games times!
Let's just re-cap here: We have all being living here long before the games were even suggested for Hackney Wick. We then had Arena Fields stolen from us by an Act of Parliament in order to build the games on top of. - that's a massive green field that now has concrete all on top of. We then have had to put up with years of disruption, noise, dust, wolf whistles, overlooking cranes, etc in order to build the games. We have thousands of CCTV cameras sucking up our images each time we walk along their/our perimeter. We have electric fences stuck directly in front of us.
And now - we are not even aloud to carry on living normally along our own river?!
If the threat of us not being able to garden in the Purple Recycled Garden comes true - then we are not even going to be able to get any of our crops of salads, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, cabbage, onions, brassicas, berries, figs, carrots, beetroot, etc. Remember everyone - this is the height of summer - this is the most important time of the year for any gardener - but more so for an edible garden.
So - what are we going to do?
Well - please write to all of our councillors to tell them how you feel about the Lea closure. Please also write to Meg Hillier and the appropriate ministers in the ConDem government.