A blast from the past.

Erith Riverside shopping centre, taken last week. Comments have been made that it bears close resemblance to the mall featured in George Romero's seminal Zombie movie "The Dawn of the Dead". The bloke in the middle distance could well be staggering and muttering "Brains!" Erith being Erith, I doubt that anyone would notice the difference. Blockbuster video have opened a store this week in the centre, in a unit that has been empty since the first construction of the place. They had been due to move in as soon as the shopping centre opened, but for whatever reason it has taken them a couple of years to get the shop in place. Probably not the best timing, with the current financial crisis, but on the other hand, if people will be going out less, they may wish to hire a movie for the evening. We shall see. The shopping centre still has a large number of un - let units; I would love to see them filled, but the only recent new tenant has been a Doctor Barnardo's charity shop.

As is pretty well known, I am a bit of a curry and Indian food snob; I belong to the Curry Club, and occasionally write reviews and articles for their magazine. My favourite curry house is Sweet & Spicy, in Chicksands Street, just off Brick Lane. Having noted that, I do have a guilty pleasure - the Chinese takeaway chicken curry. Nothing whatsoever to do with a "real" curry - more like the kind of thing you might get served at school. I love one of these with mushroom Singapore noodles and a giant vegetable spring roll. A heart attack on a plate, but lovely homely stuff nevertheless.

At work, I have been made Chair of the company Carer's Network. I have some big ideas on how to expand and improve the service. Time will tell.

I watched the new Indiana Jones movie last night; I have to say that I thought that it was boring! I got 2/3 of the way through the film and, after looking at the clock for the third time, I switched the film off. It was both predictable and tired, and relied over much on computer graphics over clever use of physical stunts. Harrison Ford looked like he was going through the paces, and never convinced - and the scene where he climbs into a fridge to avoid getting vapourised in a nuclear explosion was completely laughable for the wrong reasons.

I received an Email earlier this week, it contained a link to a server with downloadable MP3 recordings from various offshore radio stations over the last forty years or so. I was absolutely gobsmacked to find a recording of me, from back on the 3rd of May 1990, presenting an afternoon show on Radio Caroline. I had only been on board for a few days when this recording was made; I was very inexperienced at the time, and I was very much the "new boy" on board. Later on, I moved to do the overnight album show, from midnight until 6am, and felt a lot more comfortable (and got lots more letters from listeners - Medium Wave radio signals carry a far greater distance at night). The quality is pretty poor - made as it was from an off air recording from a medium wave, thus mono source, the file is also a low bit rate one. Nevertheless, you can hear me on air, sounding very young and squeaky, by Clicking Here. The file is 10Mb in size, so it way take a short time before it begins playing. Comments and feedback can be left by clicking on the comments link at the bottom of this entry.

Continuing the radio theme, I did a search on YouTube and found the following clip posted by those nice chaps from WNKR. Apparently, earlier this year they went to a radio conference in America - whilst there, they did a little al fresco broadcasting of their own - see the video for the full story. I understand the lads will be on air over the whole Christmas period on 1476 kHz Medium Wave, with a variety of both standard scheduled programmes and some festive special shows.