New licks of paint

First of all, the title itself is a conundrum, though it is not meant to be.  Licking is an action you do with your tongue.  It begs the question, what would you be trying to achieve by licking paint.  Of course, there may be a difference between the verb and a noun, but I'm afraid I am not sure of the connection between using your tongue (for refreshment, sealing envelopes) and applying paint to undertake a repair job.  However, that's not important.

A short while ago some fuss was made – and a photograph appeared in the local press – about a repaint which has been given to the frontage of Fleetville Post Office.  I cannot now remember what colour it was before the workmen arrived, but now the woodwork is freshly painted "post office" red. And that decision appears to have pleased many people, presumably based on the historic assumption that post offices should be painted red.  To be honest, although Royal Mail vans and posting boxes are red, and so are the little oval signs announcing the presence of a post office, I am convinced that post office buildings – window frames, doorways, fascias, floorings and fittings – are not universally red, though sub post offices, of which Fleetville is one, may have had some signage which is a mixture of red and green.

On the other hand there is quite a lot of red in the newly-revamped main post offices which are gradually appearing.

If you are unfamiliar with Fleetville and are looking up and down Hatfield Road for a post office, you might well spot the stand-out colour on the corner of Woodstock Road and make a guess that it is a post office.  From a distance it points us in a likely direction.

Another lick of paint, slightly further afield, has been applied to the down-at-heel former Odeon Cinema in London Road; a very calming cream.  Suddenly that cinema is feeling very exciting, and I am looking forward to the new sign, Odyssey, which I hope will be fixed to the front shortly, in advance of a celebratory opening before the end of the year.

This building is not quite the nearest cinema Fleetville residents had access to in the heyday of movie-going.  The Gaumont (formerly Grand Palace) in Stanhope Road, was closer.  Three early attempts at giving us some screen entertainment came to nothing.  A temporary building, on the site where Fleetville Post Office was later built, did not last long enough to see its first screening.  A small cinema was also proposed, in the 1930s, for the Quadrant (where the Baptist Free Church is today).  Finally, a little further away, and a short ride on the 330 or 341 bus, would have been a large 2,000-seater next to de Davilland's if it had been built, but it became a shopping parade at Harpsfield Hall instead.

Whether there will be a distinctive colour scheme for the Odyssey, has not yet been revealed, but I have no doubt that plenty of East End folk will relish the thought of visiting the cream and ..... building for an evening of screen entertainment once more.  And for the first time we will all discover the inside has not just been given a lick of paint, but a complete new appearance.