Erith Riverside Festival 2012.

The photo above shows the Erith Riverside Festival, taken this morning. Unfortunately due to the horrendous weather, the event was a bit of a wash out; a real pity, especially after the hard work and sterling efforts of all of the volunteers who took part. In previous years the event has been a massive success - let's just hope the weather is better for next year. Many organisations saw the nasty forecast and cancelled their stands and did not bother to attend; a real pity, but somewhat understandable under the circumstances.

As the date of the start of the Olympics draws ever closer, the doubts about the public transport provision continue. Darryl of the excellent 853 blog recounts problems encountered on the Jubilee Line recently.  The overland train service on the Dartford to London via Greenwich line has not been inspiring; bearing in mind this will be one of the main ways to get to Olympic events in Woolwich and Greenwich, and to interchange at Woolwich Arsenal for the DLR to Stratford for the main stadium, the preparation for the games has seemingly been minimal. I was waiting at Greenwich for a train back to Erith last week; there were hundreds of people on the platform, some of whom had been there for over an hour. I overheard conversations in which commuters had not received any communication from South Eastern trains, despite it being pretty obvious that there had been some kind of serious failure. I saw two people go up to the information point and press the button to speak to someone in the rail control room for an update. Neither person got a reply at all – it seemed that the contact / information points were being ignored. Worrying, as they are also used to report crimes, or rail related incidents. On Monday morning the enquiry point at Erith Station was emitting a loud electronic screech; this was not the anti tamper alarm – I have heard that before and the sound was completely different, like audio feedback. It was so loud the people were covering their ears as they passed the unit. All this kind of thing does not inspire one with confidence. I am fortunate that my day job is one where I can work remotely quite easily. Physically not being in the office is not much of a problem for me, so I plan on working from home for the duration of the games. I realise that others are not so fortunate. 

Now that the weather has become somewhat more seasonal of late, the annual Erith strip off is well under way. Every year it is the same; as soon as the first rays of sunshine appear over the town the hordes of local low lives and assorted ne’er do wells strip their tracksuit tops and T-shirts off to reveal their sickly white and tattooed torsos. Over the next few days many of the idiots proceed to suffer sunburn as they inevitably don’t use sun cream, and they end up looking like walking saveloy sausages. They just never seem to learn. Another thing which really annoys me, which I have written about in the past, but which I think deserves a new airing is people who put their feet on the seats on trains and buses. Not only is it antisocial and damaging to the seat material, it is also seriously unhygienic. Dog mess and other nasties has a habit of collecting in the cleats on the sole of footwear; bacteria thus gets transferred onto the seat, and thus onto the clothing of the subsequent unfortunates who then sit in the same place. Many unexplained upset stomachs and other infections can be blamed directly as a result of feet on seats. I just detest this self centred and unthinking behaviour.

The London Evening Standard have (finally) picked up on the story about the wreck of the Richard Montgomery (digital high resolution sonar image above) that I originally wrote about here on the Maggot Sandwich, way back at the end of January. The Richard Montgomery was an American cargo ship that sank at the mouth of the River Medway back in 1944. The ship was stuffed to the gills with all sorts of high explosives and sank after going adrift and breaking its’ back. Some of the explosives were successfully removed at the time, but the rest was judged as too unstable and dangerous to touch. The ship has been in a seclusion zone ever since The masts can still be seen poking out of the water, and at low tides the uppermost portion of the hull can occasionally be seen; the water is very shallow at this point. It has been estimated that if the explosives detonated, the blast would create a column of water 1,000 feet across and 10,000 feet high, and most Windows in the town of Sheerness would be shattered. Basically the effect of a low yield nuclear weapon. The idea of creating London’s third airport within close proximity of this hazard beggars belief, as the Standard highlighted this week, and I have been banging on about for months. I have been in very close proximity with the wreck in the past, as I previously wrote in this posting. The other problem of potentially locating an airport amidst marshland is the huge amount of bird life in the area – just what you don’t need with jet engined aircraft in the vicinity. A bird strike can be fatal to a turbojet engine, and indeed the plane it is connected to.

Iceland opened their new store in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre on Wednesday; there were a healthy group of people keen to have a nose around the new shop, which has taken the double unit previously occupied by the now bankrupt Peacocks. Iceland were holding a prize draw; the winner of which would get a trolley dash around the shop - everything they grabbed within a fixed time would be free. When one considers that the kind of low value, high volume goods stocked by Iceland are not exactly going to be worth a fortune, the whole trolley dash scenario seems a bit mean. Nevertheless I am sure someone is going to have a good time, even if the value of the goods grabbed probably won't exceed £100. 

RIM, the makers of the Blackberry range of mobile devices seem to be suffering from the Osborne Effect. The Osborne effect is a term referring to the unintended consequence of the announcement of a future product ahead of its availability and its impact upon the sales of the current product. Pre-announcement is done for several reasons: to reassure current customers that there is improvement or lower cost coming, to increase the interest of the media and investors in the company's future prospects, and to intimidate or confuse competitors. When done correctly the sales or cash flow impact to the company is minimal as the revenue drop for the current product is replaced by orders or completed sales of the new product as it becomes available. The Osborne effect occurs when this pre-announcement is made either unaware of the risks involved or when the timing is misjudged. Customers react immediately by cancelling or deferring orders for the current product, knowing that it will soon be obsolete. Stock inventories increase, and the company must react by either discounting or lowering production of the current product. Either of these choices depresses cash flow and can lead to company bankruptcy. In the actual case of Osborne Computer Corporation the pioneering transportable computer maker took more than a year to make its next product available. It ran out of cash and was liquidated in 1985. This is what appears to be happening to RIM. They pre- announced their forthcoming Blackberry 10 operating system, originally promising that a new range of devices running Blackberry 10 would be available during the first quarter of 2012, which was later altered to “late 2012”. Consequently sales of their current range of handsets has plummeted, with something like a billion dollars worth of stock sitting unsold on warehouse shelves. The Blackberry market share has halved in the last year, as individuals (and most tellingly) corporates move away to iPhone and Android devices. Three or four years ago, the much vaunted end to end security and strong encryption was a real and unique Blackberry selling point, and something businesses in particular were keen to embrace. Nowadays, what Blackberry pioneered in proprietary hardware can be easily done in software by any mobile device – the advantage of modern multi core processors and their vastly increased computing power. The unique selling point of Blackberry has gone. I predict that they will either be bought by a competitor such as Samsung or Apple, or they will quietly fade away over the next year or so.

Another technology company looks like it might be about to be swallowed up by a giant; browser pioneer Opera Software are in talks to be bought by Facebook. Opera have been around for ages, but their browser, though extremely capable, has never really set the world on fire; it pioneered many now common technologies such as tabbed browsing, but perhaps due to its’ quirky user interface, the PC and Mac versions have never gained the popularity of Firefox or Google Chrome – which both have a far larger user base (indeed, in some markets, Chrome has now overtaken Internet Explorer as the most widely used web browser). I understand that the mobile version of Opera is a different proposition entirely, with a lightweight foot print, compatible with even relatively low powered phones, and an intuitive interface. Facebook are looking for ways to make money out of the mobile market – something that has largely eluded them to date. More and more Facebook users are accessing the site by phone – and Facebook want a way to make money from them. They could create their own bespoke browser, but that would take considerable time, and large amounts of technical resources; even though their share price has crashed somewhat, they have so much cash in the coffers it would make sense to buy the Norwegian software company – and a spin off from this would be to greatly annoy Google, something which Facebook are historically very keen on doing when the opportunity arises. Personally I am ambivalent at best regarding things to do with Facebook; I don’t use the site. As I have previously written, it is the world’s largest repository of private information, which is sold on to all sorts of third parties. Users have no control over what happens to their details. It really is a huge invasion of privacy. I am really very careful indeed as to what information about me is online; in reality very little – due to my extreme caution. Effectively the only real online presence I have is the Maggot Sandwich, which is designed to be as public and accessible as possible.

Bexley council seem to have had a change of heart regarding the closure of Belvedere Splash Park; it will now open after all, as it would appear that it is exempt from the hosepipe ban. I think that the views of many local people may well have had an influence on the decision – not only were there a substantial number of letters to the News Shopper on the subject, but things went as far as a very well subscribed and active Facebook group was set up. It certainly united many local parents whose children were looking forward to using the park, which incidentally is currently the largest of its’ type in the UK. The splash park is now scheduled to re-open on the 8th of June.

Erith and Thamesmead local MP Teresa Pearce has very kindly sent me an invitation to an event to be held on the 2nd of July in Westminster. It is a seminar on the Raspberry Pi, and I am hoping to attend the event as a delegate. I am very grateful to her for such a thoughtful gesture; I know she is a regular Maggot Sandwich reader, and was aware of my keen interest in the whole Raspberry Pi education project. 

The story I featured last week, about the project to build a prototype Starship Enterprise with existing and emerging technology has now gone mainstream; my reading of the website is that the guy behind it is trying to provoke debate, and he wishes to court controversy in order to get things moving. He's got a gargantuan task ahead of him, but I suppose that you have to start somewhere.

Breaking news from those nice people at The Chap; not only has their website had a rather fine makeover, but they have a scoop of a story. As I have often recounted, every year they hold The Chap Olympics in Grosvenor Square, as a kind of ironic "anti Olympics". This year things have got much bigger, and even stranger. Here is a direct quotation from their revamped website "In a surprising, not to say flattering, turn of events, The Chap has been asked to stage our eccentric Olympiad within the very grounds of the proper Olympic stadium. Clearly realising that the real crowd puller to the Stratford Stadium would be, not boring old athletics, gymnastics and muscular people in Lycra, but wan, foppish gentlemen in tweed, trilbies and brogues stumbling their way through Hop Skip and G&T and Cucumber Sandwich Discus, the British Olympic Committee approached this humble publication to request some of our top athletes. On Sunday 29th July, Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th August, ten of our finest-dressed, inappropriately trained and frankly weak at the knees Olympians will be representing The Chap in the Olympic Park. They will be demonstrating the above mentioned events, as well as the Pipeathlon, Moustache Wrestling and Butler Baiting. We thought Shouting at Foreigners was unnecessary, as the security guards will be doing plenty of that themselves, when they find some hapless Spanish student has tried to bring a bottle of fizzy pop into the Stadium".

In the spirit of this, here is a clip featuring Mister B the gentleman rhymer, with his musical ditty, "All Hail the Chap".

It's here!

The photo above shows my brand new and much anticipated Raspberry Pi model B computer, which arrived at Pewty Acres on Friday morning. Unfortunately at the time of writing I need to obtain a power supply, micro SD storage card and a HDMI mini cable before I can put the Pi into action. More in the next few weeks.

As I have previously written, the Olympic torch will be making its' way through Erith after being delivered to Erith Yacht club by boat from the Essex side of the Thames. It will route along Manor Road (not the most picturesque of locations at the best of times) before making its' way to Hall Place for an evening event. I was doing a little research into the torch parade, and came across some fascinating information. "The relay of the flame" as it was originally called was not a relic of hundreds, or even thousands of years of Olympic tradition as many people think; it was invented in 1936 by Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels for the Nazi games. Goebbels and several other high ranking Nazis were fascinated by the occult, and the image of the flame being transported around Germany prior to the start of the games was meant to symbolise the Nazi spirit alive in the citizens of Germany. All utter tosh, of course. What stuns me is the the British allowed the flame bearing and lighting of the Olympic flame ceremony to continue in the 1948 games in Britain. All I can surmise is that with less access to historical information back then, the organisers did not know that the torch was a Nazi invention, and thought that they were maintaining a long held tradition. Such is the power of "tradition". Even though the torch will be coming past my front door, I somehow doubt that I will bother to go out and look. Some of the torch bearers have not exactly covered themselves in glory, before the event has even taken place. Putting Olympic torches for sale on Ebay is something the press quite obviously were going to fall on in a feeding frenzy - it was just asking for trouble. To me, the Olympics represents the triumph of that class of people who used to obey orders without question, and have ascended to giving orders in turn. In consequence, there is order, hierarchy, "stand behind that there barrier", and a belief that what really matters about your nation is that some bloke can suspend his education for years and at the end of it jump three inches further than a fellow from Papua New Guinea. It all seems utterly pointless and very expensive, and for what?

I was quietly minding my own business, standing in the checkout queue in Morrison’s earlier this week, when I was violently jabbed in the side by an elbow; startled, I looked around and saw an elderly bloke – probably in his mid to late seventies. He looked like a shorter and less immaculately tailored version of Noel Coward in his later years, albeit with a purplish nose, less hair and a growth of stubble. OK, actually not a lot like Noel Coward at all, but you get the idea. I would have normally given the deliverer of the elbow jab a sharp piece of my mind, but in consideration of his advanced years, I thought better of it and held my tongue. The man then said something indistinct; I decided that I would ignore him and returned my attention to the progress of the checkout queue. Moments later I heard a commotion behind me; the man slurred to the woman behind me “Let me in here –  I have only got three items” – he sounded drunk, but then I thought that with his age, he could have had a stroke affecting his speech, or some other impediment. My charitable thoughts were interrupted as a blast of whisky fumes hit me like a smelly whirlwind – he reeked of booze and was clearly rather more than a little over refreshed. Fearing for my eyebrows, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and hoped that he would not make any more of a scene. A difficult situation due mainly due to his age and apparent infirmity. Goodness me, he did whiff. Hopefully it was a one off. I just hope when he does turn up his toes that they don’t cremate him as I reckon he’d go up like a Roman candle and take a week to go out!

I have never understood why modern computer keyboard are fitted with Caps Lock keys; just what is the point? I can fully appreciate the need to physically lock up the keyboard on a traditional manual typewriter, but who ever needs it on a PC or Mac? Anyone who types online in block capitals is pretty much guaranteed to be psychotic. I even know one chap who physically removes the caps lock key from any computer keyboard he owns, just to stop himself inadvertently pressing it mid sentence, as I am sure we all do from time to time. Any reasons why we need to keep this anachronism? Answers on a post card please.

Whenever two or more local people get together, it is only a matter of time before the subject of the conversation turns to the Dartford River Crossing. Local MP David Evennett is campaigning for residents of the London Borough of Bexley to be included in the discount zone when the toll fees are increased by 50p in October 2012. Cash charges for car users will go up from £1.50 to £2, from £2 to £2.50 for lorries and from £3.70 to £5.00 for heavy goods vehicles. Mr Evennett said to an interviewer from the News Shopper: “Bexley residents should not have to pay any more to use the Dartford Crossing”. This statement raised the ire of a number of readers, and as any local will gladly tell you, they almost to a person feel cheated and aggrieved that the original promise made by the crossing developers to abolish the crossing toll entirely once the structure had been paid for was ditched years ago. The communal resentment of this betrayal is something that is deep in the local psyche, and frequently crops up in conversation. I really don’t see that the cash cow that is the crossing toll will ever be abolished, however annoying it is to local residents.

Did you know that Bananas are radioactive? Not an urban myth, but a verifiable scientific fact. Bananas contain a small amount of a naturally occurring form of radioactive potassium.  There is even a unit of radioactivity measurement called a BED (Banana Equivalent Dose). It does beg the thought, are the physicists at CERN considering constructing a Large Banana Collider?

So, the illustrious Jonathan Ive, head designer at Apple got an knighthood this week. I think this was a really bad move, and wonder who nominated him for the award, which to my mind is misplaced and inappropriate. Ive was born and raised in Chingford, Essex, but during his fifteen year tenure at Apple he has lived and worked almost exclusively in California, USA. He pays no British taxes, and brings no corporate benefit to the British economy. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing personally against Ive, I am sure he’s a nice bloke and everything, but all his work has been for an American company in the USA. I don’t doubt he deserves public recognition for his ground breaking design work, but it should be the American government that is making the award, not the British. I fail to understand why he would get a knighthood for working for a foreign power?

I recently stumbled across a curious and intriguing website; for a (short) while I was almost convinced by it. The site is called The Sci Fi Air Show. The concept is simple but very clever. Back in the 1960’s and 70’s, when many classic / cult science fiction TV shows such as the original Battlestar Galactica and Space: 1999 were in production, the spaceships used in the programmes were not models filmed in special effects studios, but instead were full sized, working space vehicles. After production of the various shows ended, the vehicles quite often were abandoned to rust and decay. A dedicated group of rich enthusiasts have clubbed together to restore and fly the spaceships at air shows and rallies around America, in a similar fashion to the real life Commemorative Air Force. A complete history of each vehicle, along with details of the restoration and notes relating to their flying characteristics is included on the website. Do check it out; it really is very clever.

This week I seem to have come across, or been sent links to a number of curious websites this week the one above was fiction presented as fact. The next one is fiction potentially turned into fact; they seem to be a bit like buses – you see nothing for an age, then several turn up at once. This one is a gem; at first impressions are that it is the work of a crank – a dreamer who does not understand the real world. When I continued reading the details of the site, my view began to change. The project the chap proposes is heavily researched, and the engineering involved is extremely difficult, but not impossible using current or very near future technology. The proposed project is called Build the Enterprise; it proposes that work should begin to research and build a real version of the Starship Enterprise that would be capable of acting as a vehicle with which to reach Mars, to act as an orbital spaceport and a space station with accommodation for up to a thousand people. It would obviously not have warp drive or transporters, as that kind of technology is possibly hundreds of years from being possible, if at all. This all sounds like the wish fulfilling ravings of a lunatic, but if you actually read the website and study the figures, it actually makes quite a lot of sense. It would be a massive undertaking over many years, but the potential end results would change the exploration of space forever. Do take a look and see what you think.

Talking of fictional space hardware, in the real world I was surprised that the successful launch and docking of the SpaceX Falcon rocket, fitted with a Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station did not make a bigger news story. OK, it was covered, but I would have expected it to be headline news, not a third division story. Private enterprise has always been involved in the exploration of space, but until now it has always been as a contractor to government organisations, rather than actually running a full space service. Historically speaking, most earthbound exploration was carried out by private enterprise, rather than governments. The East India Company was a prime example of a private company that eventually became as powerful as many nation states through its’ aggressive exploration and commercial exploitation of the resources it discovered. Much of the foundation for the British Empire of the 19th and early 20th century was down to the actions of commercial organisations such as the aforementioned East India Company. Certainly the principle of NASA outsourcing the bread and butter activities such as provisioning the space station to companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation, makes operational and commercial sense, and frees up their resources for the more cutting edge deep space and near planet exploration.

Sometimes I despair. On Wednesday evening something happened that made me doubt whether the generosity of human spirit really exists in Erith. It was a lovely dusk; the blood red sun hung low in the sky, and I felt it was a good opportunity for me to fire up my Nikon D300 camera. I walked down Appold Street and took around half a dozen photos of the setting sun over Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. As I snapped away I heard a man’s voice behind me saying loudly “F*** Paedo!” There were two men accompanying a small boy of five or six years of age walking past me, down towards Morrison’s car park. I was first confused – who else was around that they were referring to? There was nobody; it became obvious that they were referring to me. Bearing in mind they approached me from behind, and I was clearly taking photographs of the stunning sunset, I was astonished that they could make such a surreal assumption. I debated having a go at them for their offensive, inaccurate and hurtful comment, but bearing in mind the impressionable little boy, I decided it was not appropriate. Being subject to behaviour of that nature, I would not be surprised if he grows up to mimic his warped mentors. How the feckless scrote who addressed me could associate a bloke clearly photographing the evening sky with a child molester was something I could not connect in my mind. It then occurred to me that he probably considered anyone with a professional camera a pervert – despite from my understanding that most genuine abuse images being recorded by camera phones – being discreet and common place. Then I thought that he was clearly of low intelligence and even lower social skills – he probably thought the camera would steal his soul if pointed in his direction (not that it was).  Using a Digital SLR camera in public is a lottery nowadays; in my experience people either want to be in your photo, or they take great offence in you even being present. As I wrote a while ago, the security guard in the Riverside Shopping Centre tried to ban me from taking photos of the building, despite it being a public place and him having no rights to stop me. The irony seemed to escape him that the entire shopping centre is festooned with CCTV cameras.

Probably at least partly due to the recent retro Halfords TV advert, and the death of its’ creator, the Raleigh Chopper bike is in the news. There are many fan websites, and reproduction versions are now on sale. When I was a kid I had a bright yellow Chopper bike, and I can tell you for certain, even after several decades I still recall it well. Some writers eulogise over the bike, but I am not one of them. Sure, it looked good in a garish kind of way, and it no doubt cost my parents a packet at the time. The overwhelming memory I have of the bike is that it was so HEAVY. It was very strongly built, from heavy gauge tubular steel, but this meant it weighed a ton. It was also ridiculously over geared, thanks to the gigantic rear tyre – it was almost impossible to get out of first gear without having to stand on the pedals to keep the bike moving forward. The large tyre also made wheelies impossible – and the tiny front one also made riding with no hands almost suicidal; the wheel diameter meant there was little in the way of centrifugal force to give a gyroscopic stabilising effect as you get on more conventional bicycles. I had many a happy day riding it however, mostly as I was blissfully unaware of the drawbacks at the time.

The ending video this week is the first part of a three episode series of lectures on the life and times of Alan Turing, one of the fathers of modern computing.

Art Deco Eltham.

Whilst I was out photographing the volunteers clearing the rubbish from the Thames foreshore by Erith Riverside Gardens last Sunday morning, I noticed a Royal Navy short range patrol craft passing by – see the photo above (click for a larger version). I have since seen it, or one of its’ sister ships several times in the intervening days; it would appear that the navy are already patrolling the river ahead of the Olympic Games. What actual level of security they will actually add is debatable. I suspect that it probably has more to do with the security services ticking a box so that they can say they have it covered. It may also be someone in the Admiralty wanting to ensure that the navy is not left out of any possible action; after all, the RAF are providing fighter air cover, and the army are providing anti aircraft missiles and a helicopter mounted quick reaction force, so the Navy may well be thinking “me too!” The vessel pictured is HMS Express, an Archer class fast patrol vessel normally based at Penarth Marina in Cardiff Bay. Click on the photograph for a larger view.

Apart from Hall Place, The Crossness pumping station, and (arguably) Abbey Ruins, our part of South East London / North Kent does not appear to have many historic buildings when one compares to other parts of Greater London. I recently visited one place that more than lives up to the description of Stately Home, yet is often overlooked as a place worthy of a day’s visit. I am referring to Eltham Palace, home during the 1930’s of the multi millionaire Courtauld family. The palace is hidden away, only a couple of hundred yards from the middle of Eltham High Street. It sits, surrounded by a moat, in eleven acres of gardens. I visited it recently and was astonished at the place. It is actually two distinct structures that have been skilfully (and tastefully) combined. The oldest part of the building is a 14th Century Great Hall, which was boyhood home to Henry VIII. The hall is now attached to a house, finished in 1936 which is one of the most impressive Art Deco buildings in the entire UK. You enter the building and are immediately amazed by the domed, circular entrance hall – a room that is so striking and unusual that it has featured as the location in a number of TV programmes and music videos, most recently it was used by Florence and the Machine in the video for their song “Shake it out” and by Cheryl Cole and her track “Parachute”. The walls are covered in wood laminate that has elaborate inlays depicting a number of stylised art deco figures. The rest of the house is just as impressive; in its’ time it was the most modern and high tech residence in the UK. It had a number of firsts – it was the first house in the country to be heated exclusively by electricity, it was the first to have integrated wet rooms, rather than ordinary bathrooms (something copied from Courtauld’s frequent trips to Hollywood), and it was extremely unusual in having multiple telephones, not only in the family rooms, but in most of the guest bedrooms. At the time, even very wealthy households generally had a single telephone which was customarily answered either by the butler, or the head footman. Eltham Palace also broke new ground in that it had an integrated electric time keeping system. Each main room has an embedded electrical clock, which was synchronised with radio pulses, originally sent from Crystal Palace. All in all it was absolutely state of the art when it was opened in 1936. What is strange is that one would expect the art deco 1930’s part of the building to clash with the 14th century great hall to which it is attached; yet the two parts, separated by the centuries actually mesh and complement each other surprisingly well. I would strongly urge you to visit the palace, which nowadays is run by English Heritage. When I visited, the palace was hosting a specialist Art Deco antiques fair. The goods on display were very high end, and not the kind of thing one might be able to pick up in a charity shop on a good day. I was looking at a geometric lilac coloured glass light, suitable for display in a cabinet; the thing was only about six inches square, and ten inches high. I looked at the label, which explained that it was made in Germany in 1934. Intrigued, I turned the label over, thinking that if the price was right, I might put in an offer to the dealer. The price quoted was £950. Even with a lot of haggling it was way more than my pockets could stand. Undeterred, I took an interest in a dining table with four matching chairs, all in “as new” condition. The description said it had been made in England in 1932. A very nice set indeed – until I glanced at the price - £3,500! What was more astonishing was that many of the items offered by the dealers were already showing “Sold” stickers; the market for high quality Art Deco goods would seem to be strong, even in the current recession.

Nowadays it is not uncommon to see campaigns and petitions whenever a supermarket chain (nearly always Tesco, for some reason) wishes to open a supermarket in a given area, locals get up in arms to prevent the store from opening. This was famously the case when Tesco wanted to open a large superstore in Bexleyheath, which divided local opinion between those who thought the jobs and prosperity the store would bring to the town would be a good thing, against a body of local residents who viewed the thought of a Tesco supermarket as a horror to be resolutely opposed. Something rather curious is currently happening in Sidcup. Waitrose were planning on opening a new upmarket superstore on the site of the old  Black Horse pub in Sidcup High Street. I understand that Waitrose management have got cold feet on the deal, as they feel that the area currently could not support a premium supermarket; consequently, a group of Sidcup residents have banded together to create an online petition to try and persuade John Lewis Group to change their minds. To me it appears that Sidcup has been heading in a downward spiral for years. In the 1980’s I had a Saturday job, working for iconic computer store Silica Shop in Hatherley Road, just off the High Street. In those days Sidcup was a lively and bustling place with a wide variety of well patronised shops. It still had a cinema, and was regarded as a nice, middle class place to live and work. Nowadays it is very down at heel; there are many empty retail units, rather more charity and pound shops than one would wish to see in the same location, and there is a general air of hopelessness about the place. All of this seemed to begin roughly around the time that the cinema shut down. Nowadays Sidcup is not a destination town – there is no compelling reason to visit. People trend to go shopping in Bexleyheath or Bluewater instead. It could be countered with the argument that the presence of Waitrose might make the town become that destination, but their business planners would seem to indicate that they don’t feel the chance is high enough, and have pulled out. I don’t think that any amount of signatures on a petition is going to make a difference with John Lewis’s bean counters. You can read more about it on the News Shopper website here.

After the coldest, wettest Spring I can ever recall I now hear that Thames Water are not going to deploy their more serious water restrictions as originally planned; the hose pipe ban remains in place (but with this much rain, what garden needs a hosepipe in the first place?) The drought order that Thames Water had planned to apply for is now apparently not going to happen. There is however no change to Bexley Council’s decision to close the splash park in Upper Belvedere – something that has incensed many local families, to the extent that a Facebook page has been set up to try and persuade the Council to reverse their decision. It is widely considered that the real motivation behind the proposed splash park closure has little to do with water conservation, and rather more to do with saving money. The effect that it will have on local families with small children would appear not to have been taken into consideration. The splash park is one of the few local amenities that appeals to children and is free; cash strapped families have used it as a cheap day out for years. Many are now annoyed that in the middle of the double dip recession, one of the few free ways to keep their offspring entertained is now not open to them.

The photo above shows construction staff working to convert the old Peacocks clothing store in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre into a new Iceland frozen food shop - as you can see, it is scheduled to open on the 30th May. It may provide some competition for the existing Farm Foods shop, which sells low priced frozen goods on the site for the former Erith Co-Op store. I doubt that Morrison's will be very worried about the competition.

I found out during the week that one of the traveller cob ponies has disappeared from the makeshift enclosure next to the recycling centre in Morrison's car park. A witness saw a small group of shifty looking travellers one weekday; they took the piebald horse out of the pen, and led it on a rope up Appold Street and into Manor Road. They then led it onto the piece of land behind the Victorian terraced houses where a van was waiting. They then spent some time trying to get the horse into the back of the van; eventually they succeeded and the van then drove off to points unknown. It all sounds very dodgy indeed.

Morrison's in Erith are in some hot water with Bexley Council Planning Department. They constructed the exterior Garden Centre department without applying for planning permission; the Council have given the company a rather severe slapped wrist, and if you walk through the car park of the local supermarket now, you will find a number of retrospective planning applications plastered on lamp posts. I cannot see Bexley Council turning down the application; after all, Morrison's are the largest employer in the town, and probably the largest generator of wealth as well. 

As you will see from the photo above, the refurbishment of Pewty Acres continues apace. My living room still resembles the kind place a compulsive hoarder would feel comfortable in, but things are slowly improving thanks to my sister giving me a hand shipping out a load of stuff - the best for donation to charity shops. I am the opposite of a hoarder - I like clean, uncluttered minimalism - probably why I was to taken with Eltham Palace as mentioned earlier. The shot above was taken on Friday evening; it shows the fan oven in place, though there is still a large gap above it where the combination oven will be installed on Monday afternoon. The LED ceiling and under cupboard down lighters are also still to be installed.  After much thinking, I have decided that as a bog standard B&Q glass splash back is unsuitable to go behind the hob (all standard splash backs are made of ordinary glass, and cannot be used near heat sources, only special toughened ones can be used), I have asked my builder / project manager to source a bespoke solution from a specialist company. Photos will be taken and posted online once all of the work is completed. 

There have been occasions in the past when a couple of people have accused me of being paranoid about a number of issues, not least concerning the security of my identity. It is true that I do keep my personal data profile as low as possible – no passport, bank loans, mobile phone, car or oyster card to aid tracking me. This may sound rather over the top, but investigators working for Channel 4 documentary series Dispatches have discovered some extremely worrying information. It turns out that over a thousand staff in the Department for Work and Pensions have been illegally accessing confidential information on claimants. Most people worry about hackers accessing files from Government computer systems; it now turns out that we are at a greater danger from civil servants. Web based technology commentator ZDNet reports: “There is one, simple fact: from health records to criminal records, employment details and other personal data, government databases are not only open to abuse, but are actively being exploited by the very people we supposedly trust with our data. Crunching the numbers: the DWP has a database of around 100 million people. More than 200,000 civil servants have to be vetted to extremely high standards before they can access this database. Between April 2010 and March 2011, 513 civil servants were found to have made “unauthorised disclosures of official, sensitive, private and/or personal information”. The year continuing, between April 2011 and January 2012, more than 460 staff were disciplined. The DoH on the other hand said it did not log each and every breach of unlawful access to U.K. medical records. It did say there were 158 recorded breaches in 2011. Only four years earlier, there were only 28 cases, representing a fivefold increase.” This is all very worrying stuff. It however in no way surprises me; in addition, the BBC News website is reporting that the Police are beginning to use tools that enable them to extract data from mobile phones and retain it indefinitely, activities that may well contravene human rights legislation. You can read more about the story here. Readers may think I am somewhat eccentric in my cynicism regarding data privacy, but the main issue is that once it is published online, you cannot put the genie back in the bottle. The Wikileaks scandal threw the vulnerability of confidential data into sharp relief.

The video clip this week is a short excerpt from the forthcoming "Alien" prequel, called "Prometheus" - it is not a trailer as such; it is actual footage from the film, showing the eponymous spaceship the Prometheus landing for the first time on alien planet LV-426.  Watch and let me know what you think.

Thames 21 clean up.

The photo above shows two Council workmen with a scrap van on Erith River Front this morning. They were assisting the environmental charity Thames 21 and a number of local volunteers to clear rubbish from the River Thames along Erith Riverside Gardens and along the frontage at West Street. Quite a number of shopping trollies, an empty gas bottle and even a stolen and dumped moped were recovered from the low tide mud of the River Thames. I have to say that the turn out of volunteers was a bit disappointing - not nearly so many people as this time last year; I think some of the reason may be that although there was a fair amount of publicity, it was all rather last minute, and many people either did not find out in time, or had already made arrangements for this Sunday. Personally I found out too late to give the event a plug on the last edition of the Maggot Sandwich. Still, there were enough people present to get some good work done, which is what really counts I suppose. You can see more photographs of the event on my Flickr site here.

Workers have been busy over the last few weeks in the network of roads around Erith Health Centre; they have been digging up the roads and installing new gas piping. The work appears pretty well planned and professionally undertaken. It strikes me as ironic that only a couple of hundred metres away you can see a road where the surface has so deteriorated that it has become a hazard to navigation. Back in May 2009 I reported on how Manor Road had been resurfaced (see the photos here) with a revolutionary sound deadening material which was designed to make the lives of local residents a bit more bearable, as traffic noise and road rumble had been a major concern for years. Bexley Council spent over £1 million on the material alone, and the entire project must have cost considerably more than this. Once it was completed, the road looked very smart, and for a few months local residents noticed a marked reduction in road noise. Then the 99 bus route was redirected to travel down Manor Road. The troubles began shortly thereafter. I really don’t think that the Council engineering planners and the surveyors for the road contractors had taken into account the volume of heavy goods traffic that uses Manor Road on a daily basis. The road surface takes an utter pounding from the heavy goods vehicles, low loaders and vehicles transporting unusually large loads, not to mention a double deck 99 bus in each direction every seven minutes or so. The road surface is breaking down, and this has recently appeared to have begun accelerating. It is noticeable that the worst affected areas are where the 99’s stop to take on and discharge passengers. I have logged calls to the Bexley Council Highways department on more than one occasion to point out the dreadful condition of what is one of the areas’ most heavily used roads. I have to say that thus far I have yet to receive a response. The irony is, that the longer the council ignore the problem, the more it is eventually going to cost to repair. *Update*. I got an Email from the Council Highways Department to say that they were investigating, and lo and behold the worst part of the problem - a very noisy broken manhole cover adjacent to the 99 bus stop by the Frobisher Road Estate, which has been making loud clacking noises every time a vehicle travels over it has been fixed - in a way which I guess must be unique to Bexley - they have slapped a rough patch of tarmac over the manhole, both stopping the banging noise, and also stopping the cover from being lifted. Crude but effective I suppose. Let's see how long it take them to make a permanent repair.

The area is the poorer for the recent death of Upper Belvedere resident Dennis (Den) Turrell. I am extremely pleased to say that the News Shopper gives him a suitably fitting obituary that you can read here. I was acquainted with Den, as he was a friend of my Mum; we would quite often bump into him on the bus to Plumstead, in the period when we were visiting Dad in his nursing home. Den was quite frail, but always laughing and cheerful. He spend a life of service to the local community, and was the recipient of several civic awards, though you would never have guessed it – he was a truly humble and down to earth individual. One of his main passions was the Scout movement, which he was involved with as a volunteer for well over forty years, and was the recipient of Scouting’s highest award – the Silver Wolf award in 2005. A nice bloke and sadly missed.

Every so often I publish a recipe on the Maggot Sandwich; it has been a while since I last did this, and by coincidence I came across a hand written recipe given to me by my good friend Debbie rather more years ago than I care to reflect on. I was turning out documents from the paperwork drawer in my old kitchen cupboard at the weekend, when I came across the long lost recipe, which I share here with you. I can promise it makes for an absolutely delicious restaurant style Madras curry.

Debbie’s Chicken Madras.

Ingredients.

Diced chicken breast

Large onion

Tin of tomatoes

1 teaspoon chilli powder (more to taste if you like it very hot)

2 teaspoons turmeric

1 teaspoon cumin

1 inch cube of root ginger

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

6 cloves

2 teaspoons coriander powder

6 green cardamoms (seeds only)

5 cloves garlic

1 chicken stock cube dissolved in ¾ pint of water

2 large pieces of cinnamon bark

Method.

Fry the onion in vegetable oil with the garlic, cinnamon bark, cardamom seeds and the cloves until ingredients are soft. Remove from the heat and add to tinned tomatoes then place in a blender and whizz to a smooth consistency. Fry the chicken breast pieces with the finely chopped fresh ginger until it is fully sealed and has turned from pink to white. Then mix the chilli powder, turmeric, cumin, black pepper, and coriander powder together with a little water to make a paste. Add the paste mix to the chicken and cook for a couple of minutes to temper the spices. Add the pureed  tomato, onion and spice mix to the chicken in a large pan, and add the ¾ pint of chicken stock. Simmer gently for an hour so that the sauce reduces, then serve with boiled basmati rice. You can also make the dish with lamb or beef, and you can add spinach and / or mushrooms for the last few minutes of cooking if you wish. It really is a recipe that invites experimentation with the ingredients; do let me know what you think if you try it.

I was listening to the excellent radio broadcasts of Laser Hot Hits on 4.015 MHz shortwave on Wednesday evening; the presenter, Stewart Ross was talking about once owning a Radio Shack 65 in 1 electronic project kit; I immediately Emailed the station to say that I too used to own a Radio Shack kit, but mine was the top of the range 150 in 1 kit. It was one of the best Christmas presents I ever received from Mum and Dad; I spent endless hours wiring up the various projects, and I have to say that most of them worked very well indeed. I wonder if there is a modern equivalent? I will have to have a look next time I am in a Maplin store, as they are the nearest equivalent to the now defunct Tandy (the British arm of then U.S giant Radio Shack). Incidentally Tandy / Radio Shack were famous for their amazing catalogues - I used to get each one and spend hours reading through it, though at the time I did not have much of a clue as to what some of the devices and electronic components were actually for. Someone has digitised virtually every catalogue the company ever published, and has made them available online. Click here for a look.

Visitors to the Olympic Games this summer are going to be subject to a range of pervasive and some would say draconian laws covering their behaviour. Photography News magazine are reporting that visitors to the Games are going to be banned from publishing their photographs on social networking sites like FaceBook or photo sharing sites like Flickr. The London 2012 conditions state: ‘Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the internet more generally, and may not exploit images, video and/or sound recordings for commercial purposes under any circumstances, whether on the internet or otherwise, or make them available to third parties for commercial purposes.’ Whoever drafted this rule was clearly utterly ignorant of the nature of social media; there is absolutely no way that the Olympic authorities will be able to control what people do with video and still photographs they take of the events. I am astonished that something of this nature would get beyond a very early draft – one would expect that someone more senior would read it and veto it as being not only unworkable, but potentially both unpopular and liable to cause damage to the Olympic reputation. This follows the previously reported restrictions on companies local (within 500 metres) of any of the Olympic venues. Small companies are banned from showing adverts, or even showing their names during the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. All shop signs and advertising must be covered over and rendered illegible for the duration. This is to “protect” the image of the three main sponsors – McDonald’s, Coca Cola and Cadbury’s. How an independent tobacconist or pie and mash shop in Stratford can threaten the commercial operation of a multinational like Coca Cola completely escapes me; it strikes me as corporate bullying of the most brutal and unsubtle kind. Even those keen on the Games are surprised at such behaviour, which does not exactly do much to reflect the Olympic spirit. As if to add insult to injury, Greenwich based blogger The Greenwich Phantom has discovered that hospitality tickets for events taking part in Greenwich are going to be unbelievably expensive - the "entry level" tickets costing from £534 per person, per day. When I checked the hospitality website, I found that most tickets were on the far side of £700. Not exactly encouraging to local young people to get involved in sport - just another corporate expenses bash.

A new IT award has been created to the memory of Tony Sale, the pioneering engineer behind the recreation of the Colossus mark two computer at the National museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. Sale died in August last year. The award, is to be granted to a person or group that has made a singular engineering achievement in the area of computer conservation. The Computer Conservation Society (CCS) is behind the award, which is being supported by Google UK. As well as rebuilding Colossus, Tony Sale was involved in the campaign to save Bletchley Park, helped to found The National Museum of Computing and jointly established the Computer Conservation Society. I met him briefly whilst visiting Bletchley Park a couple of years ago; he struck me as a quiet, intelligent and meticulous man. The award sounds like it will definitely aid in the promotion of the campaign to preserve vintage computers – a part of our history.

Something mildly earth shattering; work to extend the platforms at Erith Station has finally been completed, and not before time. The portacabins and storage containers that have occupied the entire car park area outside the station building have all now gone, after over a year on site. I am unsure when / if the car park is going to reopen to the travelling public.

The interior of Pewty Acres somewhat resembles the home of one of the compulsive hoarders that are currently being featured on TV documentaries; the reason for this is that the forty four cardboard boxes containing my new kitchen in flat pack format are taking up much of my lounge, and the space not taken up with these is dominated by my Nordic Earthstone counter tops and the boxes containing cooking utensils, mugs, glasses and the like that have had to be temporarily evacuated from the kitchen whilst the refurbishment work is undertaken. The house is once again closely resembling a building site – probably because it is. The bathroom is almost complete, just awaiting the installation of the glass splash backs that I specified instead of more traditional tiling around the bath and hand basin – the splash backs were hard to source and have quite a long lead time. My builder starts on the kitchen on Monday morning; the first job will be to take down the ceiling – the old one has to be ripped down to make way for the new one, along with embedded LED down lighters, and to accommodate the full height cooker unit which will house a high end Neff fan oven and a separate combination oven. There is around a week of further work before the kitchen will be finished; I am looking forward to getting the house back into some resemblance of normality before very much longer.

The video this week was brought to my attention by Ian. It shows two giant, high voltage Tesla Coils, with a man in a chain-mail electrical protection suit "playing" the resulting electrical arcs. Well I suppose that it beats working for a living, though there is absolutely no way that I would give it a go. Watch and feel free to leave a comment, as always.

Then and now.

The photo above shows one of the Traveller Cob ponies that are now living on the piece of enclosed waste land behind Morrison's in Erith; I wrote about them in last week's Maggot Sandwich update, and had hoped to include a couple of photographs. Unfortunately the weather was so inclement, every time I planned to take my Nikon camera around to the ponies, the heavens opened. Even on Sunday afternoon, as my normal deadline for the new edition going live approached, the weather did not let up. As I have said before, many locals feed the ponies, and lots of small children visit them on a regular basis. Whilst travellers would appear to be squatting the ponies on the land, I am led to believe that it is not actually illegal. As long as the animals are properly fed and watered and not in any way mistreated, there is nothing that the RSPCA or local Police can do. The Erith Safer Neighbourhoods Police team are indeed fully aware of the presence of the equine residents, and keep a regular eye on them for safeties' sake. Below you will see the other chocolate brown pony, which was somewhat more elusive than its' piebald companion pictured above.

Monday morning was not exactly a pile of fun; I normally aim to be in the office in Canary Wharf at a few minutes before 8am. This enables me to carry out a few routine tasks when not too many staff are around and getting under my feet. This time I was at Erith station in good time, admiring the new lights that have been installed on the extended platforms – still no sign of the longer platforms opening though. As I waited for my train, the fast service from Gillingham to Cannon Street came through. I immediately noted a strong smell, similar to overcooked car brake pads, but stronger. There was a thin haze of smoke coming from the traction units underneath the train. Then it was gone. To be honest I was more interested in the contents the The Times and gave the incident no further thought. When my slow train arrived, I dutifully got on and found a seat; the train then made its’ way to Belvedere. Once it arrived, things started to get interesting. The train stayed on the platform at Belvedere station for a period of time, when the driver came on the PA to say that we would not be moving for a while, as there was a fire on the train in front! After about twenty minutes of inaction, the train trundled at very little more than walking pace towards Abbey Wood, where a very large number of disgruntled passengers got on. The train then ambled about half way to Plumstead, where I could see a fire crew looking at the underside of the offending train, which by this time has been manoeuvred into the sidings and the occupants evacuated. There was still some smoke coming from the traction unit, but it did not look quite as dramatic as I had anticipated. Nevertheless the fun and games made a lot of people late for work; I think the most important thing was that the whole incident was handled well – although come the Olympic Games, it would have been a far more serious traveller impact. On a second note, I see that only a few weeks after I wrote at some length at the prospect of the Olympics being protected by anti aircraft missiles, the press have only just picked up the story. I have given the whole thing some thought. I am of the opinion that the missile batteries may well be a “box ticking “exercise. If a suicide plane was indeed targeted one of the main venues, any attempt to shoot it down could well be counterproductive. As happened in the first Gulf War, where Patriot missiles were used to shoot down incoming SCUD missiles, there ended up being more casualties from falling debris that there was from the SCUDs themselves. Quite often the cloud of falling metal and plastic created a “shotgun”  effect – far worse than had the missile been allowed to come down more or less in one piece. I understand that this is not the kind of message that the authorities would want to send out to a potential terrorist group, but the thought of a 300 tonne airliner coming down in bits over anywhere inside the M25 must be a truly nightmare situation – there would be carnage – think of the devastation after the Lockerbie crash; and that happened in a relatively sparsely populated part of Scotland, not one of the world’s most population dense cities. I sincerely wonder about the wisdom of holding the Olympics in London. The crusty, outdated and frequently unreliable transport infrastructure struggles to cope with passenger levels on a normal working day; what effect the predicted increase in passenger levels will have during the games can only be guessed at. The DLR is great when it is working, but an utter nightmare when there is a failure, as alternative transport in many of the locations the DLR serves can be patchy or nonexistent; this was outlined on Wednesday this week, when the entire system went down due to a power failure. Effectively, access to Canary Wharf from the South east was severely limited for a couple of hours – the alternative route of travelling to London Bridge then coming back on yourself via the Jubilee Line was almost un navigable due to the number of commuters all trying the same approach. The Jubilee Line Platform at London Bridge Station became dangerously overcrowded. This was a normal working day; I shudder to think what the implications would be if the same problem recurred when the network was packed with Olympic visitors as well as regular commuters.

It is a sad day when one sees a local advice centre have to resort to soliciting donations in order to survive. Erith’s own Cross Street Law Centre, which offers free legal advice to disadvantaged people is in financial hot water, and is requesting that both its’ customers and other local residents assist them joining in on the 10km London Legal Walk around the capital’s law landmarks on May 21st. This year’s route includes the Lord Chief Justice, the Master of the Rolls and the Attorney General’s office. A number of London based law services undertake the fund raising walk, and last year they managed to raise a total of £497,000 across the capital. The Cross Street Law Centre provides a vital service to local people, many of whom could not afford to go elsewhere for legal advice.

The News Shopper are reporting that Belvedere Splash Park will not be opening this summer; the reason given is that they need to save water and comply with the hosepipe ban. All this during the wettest drought in living memory. From my understanding, the Splash Park recirculates the water sprayed from the various fountains and water features; it is collected and directed through drains, where it is filtered and then pumped back up to go round the semi closed system. Most water losses are from evaporation and a small amount that get spilled on the adjacent grass. I get the feeling that the whole thing is a box ticking exercise.- the Council can look good, complying with water conservation regulations, whilst also saving a few bob on staffing costs for the place. I know a lot of local children, not to mention parents who will be sorely disappointed by the move by Bexley Council. It is one of the few remaining free things to do on a sunny day in the local area, and one leisure facility that Belvedere can normally by truly proud of. It will be interesting to see if there will be a significant kick back from the splash park users. Time will tell.

The one computer I miss to this day was one that I sold in 1993 to fund an early laptop purchase. It was a Psion 3A – a very early pocket computer, almost exactly the same shape and size as a spectacles case. It was powered by a couple of AA sized batteries (which would last for weeks and weeks) and it came pre installed with a calendar, a simple database, an Excel compatible spreadsheet, a Word compatible word processor (my personal favourite – and a very capable piece of software it was too), and address book and a lot of other useful stuff. On top of that there was a lot of commercial software available to install via mini cartridge. Everything from route planning to merchant marine ship load calculation software. The Psion was reliable, economical, portable and supremely useful. I used to write quite  number of short stories, restaurant reviews and magazine articles on it – often from the comfort of a corner seat in the Fox in Belvedere Village – my then local pub. I regret parting with it. I don’t think any portable device has equalled the Psion 3A for its’ unique strengths. A pocket computer way before it's time.

Erith’s very own Cyber Khazi has been out of action for most of this week; this means that the whole of Erith is now without any form of public toilets, since the ones in the Health Centre were closed “due to vandalism” to coincide with the initial opening of the revenue generating Khazi – very convenient (ho ho!) I have no idea how long we will have to suffer without a civic thunderbox. There are now no free, council operated toilets anywhere in the London Borough of Bexley. They have all been closed and in many cases, sold off for commercial use; the loos in Bexleyheath Broadway were famously sold off to be converted into an undertaker’s office. This cannot be good for public health. Most coffee shops and pubs prohibit the public from using their loos unless they are customers.

Scrap metal continues to be a subject close the heart of a significant number of local residents, some of whom sit on the wrong side of the law. Anyone who has spent any length of time in Erith will attest to the sheer number and regularity of scrap vans on a seemingly continuous patrol of the town and the suburbs. They normally act with vulture – like efficiency should anything with the remotest possibility of value become available to them. On Tuesday evening I managed to turn the tables on them in a minor, but very satisfying way. I popped out with my camera to take the horse photos you have seen above, and I noticed an object in the middle of the road, almost directly outside of Pewty Acres, it was shiny and shaped like a large ice hockey puck; it was a danger to traffic, so I popped out into the road and shifted it into the gutter with my foot – it was made of shredded metal, possibly from crushed then shredded car bodies. I thought that it was the kind of scrappie bait that normally would be gone in moments. I carried on my way to the ponies, fully expecting the puck to have gone by the time I returned, but to my amazement it was still there in the gutter. I popped indoors, got an old Morrison’s carrier bag, and in the manner of a dog owner, I “pooper scoopered” the mashed metal disk and took it home. It is probably only worth a couple of pounds, but I would guess there is a local scrappie gnashing his teeth to have lost it.

Some time ago Erith was besieged by a plague of chavs on mini moto bikes – the small, illegal bikes could be seen all over the place, causing consternation and disquiet to local residents. The Police acted robustly, confiscating and crushing many of the vehicles, and taking legal action on the owners. For a couple of years following this, relative peace ruled the area, but once again it would appear to have been broken. Local kids are obtaining old, unlicensed and uninsured mopeds and scooters, and they are riding them around the streets, often not wearing helmets, merely a raised hoodie to protect their identity. I saw two scrotes whizzing up Appold Street on such vehicles, they turned at speed into Manor Road, and very heavy traffic; they then proceeded to wheelie along the road, between the slow moving traffic. The bikes had no tax discs or registration plates, so it was next to impossible to identify them. I just hope this does not become a more regular occurrence as we head into the summer months. Hopefully the Police will crack down on the miscreants and the streets will become that little bit safer than now.

This weeks' video is a bit of a "then and now" collection in and around Erith - watch and see what you think. Comments below as always.