The Maggot Sandwich - year end review.

What a year; above you can see a handful of images that have appeared before on the Maggot Sandwich, that to me really encapsulate what this year has been about. The photos show (from the bottom up) Shirley posing for the camera at my Mum's house last Christmas. This seems like a lifetime ago already. Due to me having Flu over the holiday season, we have not been able to have our traditional get together with my Mum. Something that is to be remedied in January.

Above this is the infamous "caught in the act" photograph I took from my home office window of one of the feckless Chavs who were stealing lead/acid batteries from the recycling plant behind my house. The Police were soon on the scene, and no further burglaries have been attempted. The local Police even called me "CSI Erith". Not a bad compliment. Next is a photo of my (then) two Nikon Professional DSLR cameras; shortly thereafter I sold the smaller D200 to work colleague and friend Martha. The newer D300 is continuing to provide sterling service.

One of the biggest impacts technology - wise this year has been the arrival of my top of the range Apple iMac 24" computer. It has been a great boon - it is very fast, has a great 1080p HD widescreen display and a dinky bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse. With 4 Gb RAM, and a Terabyte of internal storage, as well as a Terabyte of external FireWire 800 backup storage, it should keep me going for quite a while.

The shot of the chap in armour above, illustrates the best Erith River Festival for years; Erith River Front Gardens became home to a truly entertaining local event earlier this year. Many festivals have been held, and some have been truly dispiriting affairs. This years was really excellent.

The band photo was taken of popular local beat combo "Oxide" who once again headlined the Farnfest as reported back in the summer. I was official photographer for the event and a great time was had by all. Above that is a shot taken of Martha and Alan at the third annual Bexley beer festival at Sidcup rugby club. The weather was appallingly cold and wet compared with previous years, but the beer and company was excellent; we even managed to meet up with pretty much the whole broadcasting and engineering staff from local radio station WNKR.

Next up is a photo of Shirley on the river front at Gillingham back at Easter - a chilly but bright and pleasant day as I recall. We were then off for lunch at Nandos.

I visited the holy grail of anyone in the IT business - Bletchley Park, home of Britain's secret wartime code breaking activities, and the place where Colossus was built - the world's first programmable digital computer, a rebuilt version of the Colossus is shown above. Amazing stuff.

Above this is a photo that was a big scoop earlier last year. Bongo covered the then prospective American Presidential Candidate Barack Obama on his European tour. Here is a (somewhat grainy and poor quality) photo of him with the next President of the USA.

Right at the top of the stack, and heading the whole pile of photographs is what I consider to be the outstanding event of last year, which was of course Major Steve Fraser's MBE investiture in October. The pre MBE party at the Robin Hood & Little John pub, and the subsequent visit to the palace were really something special, and something I am proud to have been a minor part of.

Thanks to all of you who have been reading my random rants and philosophical discourses over the last year; your thoughts and feedback are always welcome by clicking on the comments link below. I have had some recent feedback from Crayford resident, and Plumstead area Blogger Marta - you can read her thoughts on the local area by clicking here.

This week's video clip is quite topical; it features a comic song by Mitch Benn about the closure of Woolworths following the store chains' recent insolvency. Where will the Chavs go to shop lift now? Do let me know what you think.

The battle of Fraser Road.

Well the battle of GC's Night Club has entered a new phase, as you can see above from the front page of the News Shopper local paper - click on either photo for a larger version. I have been contacted by one of the original organisers of the enterprise, who has now parted company with the organisation; it would appear that she was misled by Antony Stewart - the main man behind the club, and she has now severed all ties with him. You can read more on the continuing story, along with some comments from members of the public on the News Shopper website by clicking here. My sources also inform me that the club did not appear to open on Boxing Day evening, as they had been enthusiastically advertising, and it was also closed on Saturday night. We have also discovered that their Facebook site has been taken down, and all references deleted. I am not going to tempt fate by making a pronouncement at this point; let us wait and see what happens.

Many local councils around the country have brought in draconian measures relating to disposal of domestic waste and recycling. Bexley Council issued different coloured bins for food waste, recyclable products and the like. It has to be said that the reliability and regularity of the collections leaves quite a lot to be desired; the increase in workload has meant that the council has had to outsource much of the rubbish collecting to an external contractor, who to be honest are pretty crap. Many locals cannot be bothered to separate the materials by type, and dump everything into a bin bag and hope for the best that the contractors will take it. On top of this the council has hoped to recoup much of the additional expense by selling things like glass and metal on for recycling. Unfortunately for all concerned, the credit crunch has caused the bottom to fall out of scrap prices, and the whole thing has become unworkable. I have now started observing people bagging up their daily rubbish into shopping bags and then disposing of it in public waste bins. Their council run wheelie bins are too small to take all their rubbish, so they export it into public space into bins only designed for the occasional chip wrapper or empty soft drink can. I suppose this is really a form of fly tipping, but I have to admit I can completely understand. The ball has well and truly been dropped on this one, and I don't see what can be done to remedy the situation.

The Christmas / New Year break is always a good time for listening to the radio. Not only do the normal BBC and Independent stations usually have something new and interesting to listen to, but you get all sorts of radio stations like the elusive Enigma 846, Laser Hot Hits and the oft mentioned WNKR 1476 AM popping up. You can see details of what station is on and when by checking out the following blog. I received a very interesting book as a Christmas present, on the history of the development of domestic radio, written by the president of the British Vintage Wireless Society. At heart I will always be an anorak.

You could not make this up. Erith's own tattoo parlour "Point 2 Point" is selling tattoo vouchers for people to give as Christmas and birthday presents. You can see a photo of the place with the proud owner here. My personal views on tattooing and piercing are well known, so I won't bore you with repeating them again.

Another local Blog that is more than worthy of regular read is Plumsteadshire by the engagingly monickered Doctor Pangloss. Do check it out.

I think that next week I may do what so many media outlets do at the end of the year and do a "Year in review" type summary of the last twelve months. Any suggestions would be gratefully received - you can leave comments below as normal, which will appear online instantly. I have now switched comment moderation back off, as I think the anonymous knuckle dragging moron who posted an obscene comment on an older posting seems to have disappeared. No doubt his medication has now worn off.

This weeks video is one that has proved to be extremely popular online. It features a slightly podgy Japanese cat who has a fascination with cardboard boxes and other packaging. See what you think anyway.