There goes the roof!

What are they doing? Whilst on my merry way to the shops yesterday, I was privy to the enormous fun of two things.

One, a large, orange digger from Penny earth workers taking out a fitted light on the front of the Bingo Hall on Charlton Road, and secondly some kids who had somehow scaled the building playing up on the every upper most balcony area on this ill-fated structure.

It seems doomed now to fall and for flats to be built there. We noticed the water spray on the diggers and storage containers, so I assume that the roof contains asbestos in part at least, and the vapour is being used to make the handling of the dangerous dusty chemical meet H & S regulations. Either that or they inexplicably wanted to soak the digger and skip.

Whilst trying to swing around the digger head, Penny managed to clock the mighty steel headpiece against one of the fitted lights on the front of the Bingo hall, causing it to fly off and crash to the ground below. As I watched, it came to my mind that really, it is a shame that nobody ended up using that place. I had my ideas, and many came so close. But it seems fated to go and for flats to go up there instead. Cheap housing in Keynsham can't be a bad thing, after all there isn't much of it that's not in bad condition, or only available for rent. If you're a first time buyer in the Keynsham area, you either need two people with above average income and a lot of luck, a fat deposit, or a miracle.

For the rest of us, it's rent or move away from family and friends into sunny Kingswood or an area where housing prices aren't quite so crazy. To be perfectly honest, renting isn't that cheap here either. The cheapest I know of was a one bed roomed ground floor flat, which cost me £360 PM over two years ago (not including utility bills or council tax).

That was part of an old house with serious renovation and repair needs, no parking, and a jungle for a garden. The Police were called several times to other flats in that house for domestic reasons ... I wouldn't recommend it to anybody thinking of moving in here.

Despite all this though, there are other new houses going up in and around Keynsham even as we speak. At the bottom of St Ladoc road as well as the base of Queens road, new flats and houses are almost ready for occupancy. I am sure there are more local examples, too.

It's sad to see that Keynsham has seemingly decided to let the Bingo Hall slide into the annals of history rather than let it be renovated or re used, at least as a community focal point rather than become a faceless, soulless set of flats. They could at the very least have preserved the front fascia for history's sake, and made a community or arts centre out of the location behind it. A historically interesting fascia was kept thus in Arnos Vale (Bristol), opposite the Hotel, Park and beside the Bristol City council buildings there. It features two kings sitting in a castle-like wall feature; a folly basically.

The price of fitting everybody in and progress as it so often is, seems to be quality, class, style and our cultural past.

But never mind. Think of the children! When they marry and move out, they'll have somewhere to afford. The future versus the past - future wins.