It’s nearly Hallowe’en and time for all you deadbeats to get re-animated… on the dancefloor! We’ll have live music from Loathesome Ways, The Wailing Banshees and The Kemistry to make your flesh creep, and DJs playing tunes you’ll be dying to dance to: from the Slits to the Supremes, from Manic Street Preachers to Michael Jackson. You’ll be thrilled you came. From 8pm til 3am. Entry is £5 waged / £3 concessions. All proceeds will go to Haringey Solidarity Group and Mary Ann Johnson Housing Co-operative.
Coming soon… the Zombie Disco MAJ benefit night! You can always support MAJ by donating or investing, but how about doing it by watching live bands, dressing up as a zombie, dancing to crypt kickin’ tunes and winning prizes for doing it? Save the date, Friday 25th October 8pm ’til 3 am at The Silver Bullet Bar, 5 Station Place, Finsbury Park (30 seconds from Finsbury Park Tube Station). Tickets on the door £5 waged £3.00 unwaged/low waged. It’s a no-brainer!
The Chester Road loft conversion has been completed, and the Mary Ann Johnson local office for local people* is up and running and already in use! Once the plastering got done all that was required was a lick of paint, a tidy up, and the office furniture moved in. There have already been Haringey Solidarity Group meetings in the small but beautifully formed setting, and there will no doubt be more requests from local groups to follow.
A little basic to start with, but it will soon become more lived in/disorganisedWe can’t stop marvelling at the plush smartness of the lovely new carpet!We even have a colour photocopierAnd let’s have a look at those windows… they make the space lovely and bright.
It’s a fantastic resource and a great space to do a bit of work in. We are absolutely chuffed to bits.
Just needs plaster, a tidy and some decorating before the office can move in
Here are some more pics of our work in progress – the conversion of the attic of our Chester Road house into a loft. It will be used as an office for MAJ, Haringey Solidarity Group (which we’re all in) and possibly other local activists groups too. We’ve been really busy working on that all summer and it is now getting near completion. Tony has especially been putting a lot of time and effort into this, so big up to him. We’ve got the staircase installed, the electrics done, the dormer window and velux fitted in, the insulation and plasterboard done, and we’re finishing putting in the floorboards. With all that, we’re in no doubt that our next blog will proudly announce the grand opening of our office! Before we get there though, we still have a lot of plastering to do, and a radiator to install. Oh, and hope that Building Regs wont be the pain in the ass they can sometimes be and will just okay all the works… Then, we’ll need to tackle all the decoration bits (painting, carpet, etc…) and think about furnishing the room. Once that’s all done, we can have an office warming party and trash the place!
Look at those lovely windows! Much better than in our last post, eh?……but you still have to watch your step!
In other news, its been nearly a year since we’ve started managing the property we don’t own but that houses a few of us. And it’s been going fairly well. Lately we got gas and electricity checks done and a few other bits and bobs that improved the life of the co-op members who live there. The contract is up for renewal and we’re optimistic we can carry on acting as a managing agency, in the hope of a better outcome for the future. Finally, and because we need to house everyone in the co-op securely, we’re in the process of opening a new bank account dedicated to raising money for a new property. We made an estimation of how much we need to raise and the bank account will allow us to receive donations or loans. No doubt that once we’ve published an appeal on our shiny new website, all potential donors will contact us begging to give money. They’d better anyway as we’ll need quite a lot to top up our meagre savings. But nothing is impossible for Mary Ann Johnson housing co-op! That’s the spirit anyway…
Building work at Chester Road has been going on apace – with the new staircase in, the loft conversion is really taking shape.
Getting the stairs in means we can progress more easily with the rest of the work.
Most of the major structural work has been done now, but it’s still just a shell – there’ll be a few more work days to come before we can call this an office space. And then, finally, we can stick the photocopier up there. I bet a certain person who’s been living with it in his bedroom all this time will be chuffed when that finally happens.
Mary Ann Johnson Housing co-op 
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