The Oakhaven Gazette
Monday 14 September 2026Radworth Ward · No. 7Delivered free to every houseOakhaven City Council area
EXCLUSIVE · FOURTEEN CARS, ONE DOOR, EVERY NIGHT
BROTHERS GRIM
Fourteen men in dark suits drive fourteen black saloons on to Popplewick Terrace every evening, walk up the steps under a green glass eye, and shut the bronze doors behind them
THE NEWEST CAR IN RADWORTH is a black saloon on a 2026 plate, RZ262 GEM, and it is parked in bay one of a private car park you are not getting into.
It belongs to Harold Prentice of 14 Wheelwright Close, who is fifty-eight and is, this paper can reveal, the Worshipful Master of the Oakhaven chapter of the Order of the Unsleeping Eye, number 357, founded 1923.
There are thirteen more of them.
They come in a minute and a half apart. The first turns in at half past six, the last is parked by ten to seven, and every man uses his own numbered bay. There is not a wonky one in the row. At seven, the doors shut.
WHO THEY ARE
Douglas Ashworth of 1 Limekiln Close is Senior Warden, Raymond Thurlby of 21 Lacemakers Court is Junior Warden and Iqbal Rashid of 6 Limekiln Close is Chaplain. Marcus Bevington of 1 Popplewick Terrace is the Tyler, which appears to mean he sits nearest the door — and parks nearest it too.
The rest are Brothers. The oldest is Stanley Hexham of 23 Ravensholt Avenue, who is one hundred. The youngest is Alan Stukeley of 2 Kimberton Road, forty-three.
WHAT IS INSIDE
A black and white chequered floor, a hexagonal window with a wheel of glazing bars in it, three raised seats. The long benches have gone; thirteen loose chairs stand in their place.
Downstairs, a table laid for fourteen under a white cloth: plates, wine glasses, tumblers, cutlery and twelve bottles down the middle.
Ninety-seven items on one table, and nobody this paper spoke to has ever been asked to sit at it.
Outside, eight cast-iron lamp standards nobody here has seen the like of since the pit closed.
“Last month it was a building,” said Vera of 11 Radworth Road. “Now there is an eye on it.”
ALSO INSIDE
Joint effort
Four joints and one price at the Working Men's Club. Page 2.
Path to nowhere
Half a kilometre of towpath. Both ends in a field. Page 2.
Signing on
The job centre works — until you stand up. Page 3.
The Oakhaven GazetteFRONT PAGE · Page 1Continued on page 2
OUT & ABOUT
WHERE TO GO THIS WEEK
CARVERY · RADWORTH WORKING MEN'S CLUB
Joint effort
EIGHT POUNDS NINETY-FIVE. One price, whatever you put on the plate, and there is now a carving counter in the Working Men's Club to put it on.
Four joints under the lamps: pork, lamb, beef and turkey. Yorkshire puddings dished in the middle so they hold the gravy, and you may have two.
Then the line. Roast potatoes, runner beans, sliced carrots, sprouts, cabbage, mashed potato, cauliflower cheese, broccoli.
Gravy after the veg, which is correct, and the sauces last of all — horseradish, cranberry and mustard, in that order, at the mouth of the counter. Seventeen things on it in total.
The right-hand leg of the counter is empty. The club says it is meant to be.
Nobody has been served.
The knife is on the board and it moves. This paper has seen it draw twice through a joint and lay a slice down. What it has not seen is anybody stood in front of it holding a plate.
THE RIVER · THE TOWN BANK
Path to nowhere
FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN METRES of new path have been laid along the town side of the Oakhaven, two metres wide, three and a half metres back from the water.
It is a good path. It sits on the ground rather than over it, it does not wobble, and it runs a metre or two above the river the whole way.
It starts in a field and it finishes in a field.
Neither end joins anything. Not the road, not the chippy, not the bus interchange, not the estate. You cannot get on to it except by walking across the bank to reach it, and when you come off it you are stood on the bank again.
It is also, and this paper says it as a friend, distinctly orange.
The bank around it has been done properly, mind. Ten thousand six hundred and seventy-two wildflowers have gone in along it, and the tree line has been thickened to six hundred and sixteen — thick enough now that you cannot see through it, which was the complaint.
“I walked the whole thing,” said Les of 48 Bestholme Boulevard. “Lovely. Then I had to walk back up it because there is nothing at the end.”
ON THE WATER
Up the creek
There is a dinghy on the Oakhaven. Two-man, inflatable, tied on the bank.
It floats level, sits the right way down in the water and drifts with the current at a shade under half a metre a second, which is slightly slower than the river, which is exactly what a boat with nobody in it should do.
This paper's advice is to leave it alone.
The Oakhaven is seven and a half kilometres of river and the far end of it is nowhere near a road.
The Oakhaven GazetteOUT & ABOUT · Page 2Continued on page 3
THE ESTATE
COUNCIL · TRADE · HOUSING
HOUSING · ALL 28 STREETS
Dish of the day
EVERY SATELLITE DISH IN RADWORTH IS POINTING THE SAME WAY, and if yours is not, you have not got one.
A hundred and twenty-eight dishes have gone up across twenty-two streets this week, every one of them aimed at the same spot low in the south-eastern sky. Two hundred and seventy-nine houses were given none at all, for the stated reason that their front wall cannot see it.
That is the most organised thing the council has done in living memory, and nobody asked them to do it.
It came with the rest of a job on all five hundred and forty-six houses on the estate: string courses, gutters, fascia boards, downpipes with swan-neck hoppers, chimney stacks with up to four pots on and not one of them level, aerials, alarm bell boxes — a hundred and sixteen of those — air bricks, meter boxes and doorbells.
Twelve thousand nine hundred and ninety-six separate pieces of it. Twenty-eight street name plates, real ones, on posts.
The brick has changed too, and it changes in runs — four houses, then nine, then six — which is how a street looks when it went up in plots rather than all at once. No two houses on this estate are now identical.
“They have done the front of my house and they have not done the back,” said Terry of 56 Limekiln Close. “I am not complaining. I am observing.”
BESTHOLME BOULEVARD · THE JOB CENTRE
Signing on
THE JOB CENTRE IS OPEN, NINE TILL FIVE, and you can actually sign on in it. That is not a sentence this paper has been able to print before.
There is an advisor at the desk. She talks. She answers. She runs three assessments on you and then she puts a job in front of you, and if you say yes to it, you have got it.
One man did exactly that this week and took the bin loader vacancy.
Then he stood up.
He is understood to have finished the interview stood on top of the advisor's desk, unable to move in any direction, for some time.
THE PAPER'S ADVICE, AS WITH THE CHAIR IN THE SLAG & SLURRY: think carefully before you sit down anywhere in this town.
The waiting-room chairs are fine. It is the ones facing a desk that are the problem, and the job centre is full of those.
THE COUNCIL DEPOT · INSIDE AT LAST
Spend a penny
THE REFUSE DEPOT HAS GOT A CANTEEN, A CLASSROOM AND A SET OF LAVATORIES, which is three more rooms than it had a fortnight ago and two more than most of us expected.
Gents and Ladies, off a corridor at the east end, tiled floor. A counter in the canteen with four mugs, teabags, coffee and a pint of milk on it. A television on the wall four times the size of the last one, with the remote left on a chair by the door.
And, at last, a way out that is not a four-metre drop.
The office door used to open on to nothing. There is now a railed terrace twenty-six and a half metres along the front of the building and a dog-leg stair of thirty steps down to the grass at the corner.
Ninety-four separate pieces of ironwork went into that. Nobody has walked down it.
The Oakhaven GazetteTHE ESTATE · Page 3Continued on page 4
YOUR SHOUT
WRITE TO THE EDITOR
IN BRIEF
Still not emptied
The wagon is still on Tollerton Rise in full council livery with two men in orange stood behind it, and the bins are still out. Nobody has been taken on. That is four editions.
SPORT
Course of inaction
The golf club above Harewood Avenue has eighteen holes, two hundred and seventy-four trees and a clubhouse, and still nobody has played a round on it. Thirty-eight pounds a weekday, forty-eight at the weekend, if anybody ever takes the money.
CRIME
Three hundred and ninety-nine
That is how many tags are up on this estate. It was three hundred and ninety-nine last week and the week before. Brick, render, doors, galvanised shutters and the wheelie bins. Not one of them has been painted over.
THE EDITOR WRITES
A path, a plate and a green eye
It has been the best week this estate has had since the paper started printing, and it has also been the week that best explains what is wrong with the place.
Look at what arrived. Five hundred and forty-six houses got their own fronts. A carvery counter went into the Working Men's Club with four joints on it and a price on the board. Half a kilometre of towpath was laid along the river. A temple opened its doors to fourteen men in dark suits.
Now look at what you can do with any of it.
You cannot eat at the carvery. You cannot get on the towpath without crossing a field, and it takes you to another field. You certainly cannot get into the temple, and after this week's front page they will know exactly who to keep out.
One thing, and one only, you can now genuinely do: walk into the job centre on Bestholme Boulevard, sit down with the advisor and sign on. It works. It has been done.
And then you stand up on to the desk.
That is Radworth in a single afternoon. The best week we have had, and every road out of it still ends in a field.
Green light
I want to know who gave permission for that eye.
It is over a doorway on a residential terrace, it is lit, it is green, and it is roughly the size of a dustbin lid. There are children on that street. Well — there would be.
JACKIE, 1 Bramcote Row
Not on my roof
I have been told my front wall cannot see the satellite and that is why I have not been given a dish. Two doors up has got one. Her wall faces the same way as mine.
I would like the council to come out and look at my wall rather than at a piece of paper about my wall.
SUSIE, 28 Radworth Road
Sat on the desk
Further to your report. I signed on, I took the bin job, I got up and I was on the desk.
The advisor did not react. She carried on as though a grown man stood on her paperwork were an ordinary Tuesday, which on this estate it may well be.
PAUL, 7 Radworth Road
Still no children
Fifth time. We now have a temple, a carvery, a towpath, a dinghy, a golf course, a snooker table, five fruit machines and eighty-eight grand under the waste ground.
No kids. Not one.
TRACEY, 57 Limekiln Close
The tags are still up
Sixth week. Both ginnels, the gable ends, the shutters. Three hundred and ninety-nine of them and not one painted over.
I have given up asking. Print it every week.
HOLLY, Marlpit Boulevard
The Oakhaven GazetteYOUR SHOUT · Page 4End of this issue