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.