A new Road.

Major roadworks began outside Pewty Acres on Tuesday night this week. Conway civil engineering are resurfacing the entire length of the road over the next eight nights, to minimise disruption during the day. Nothing mentioned about the noise and disturbance to locals overnight, though in fairness I think their decision was correct. Some photos of the first and most dramatic night of work are shown above; click on any one for a larger and more detailed version. You can see more of my photgraphs if you view my Flickr photo album here. Something that I unfortunately did not notice as I was taking these photographs was that as the workers stripped off the top layer of tar macadam, they exposed the old tram lines that went along the road until the service was discontinued in the late 1960's. Thanks to Flickr users Crash Colloway and Steve Thoroughgood for their information. You can see a map of how Erith looked, way back in 1921 if you click here.

The summer seems to have arrived in Erith, normally this is something to be welcomed, but a significant proportion of the locals make me feel otherwise. I am utterly repulsed by the bare torsoed and tattooed vermin that frequent the area; they seem to delight in exhibiting their scrawny, pigeon chested bodies, complete with ink, sunburn and accumulated grime; something I find completely unacceptable. I have never understood their need to deface their bodies with tattoos and other disfigurements such as piercings. Generally speaking, the sight of one or more of these unsightly adornments on an individual will set my internal alarms running on "steel toecaps to stun".

If you wish to read any Maggot Sandwich articles older than ten or so updates ago (which is what you see on the front page), then scroll down under the blog links list on the right until you see the Blog Archive list - if you click on this pull - down menu, you can select and read articles going way back to the beginning of the Maggot Sandwich in 2006. There are now 223 postings, so you should have enough to keep you occupied for quite a while.

I have been watching the recent television advertisements for Birds Eye Salmon fish fingers; am I alone in thinking these are just utterly wrong on so many levels? Fish fingers need to be made of white sea fish, not fish resembling something the colour of a Pringle golfing sweater that has been hauled out of a river by and Irn Bru swilling inhabitant of our more northern colonies. It is just Wrong. Please share your thoughts by clicking on the comments link below.



An update on the Royal Alfred pub saga; the place has been empty and abandoned for months, awaiting a buyer. I can announce that the place has just been bought by Manjinder of the Londis corner store opposite the pub. I have talked with him, and he originally wished to reopen the place as a working pub with good food and real ale, but after consulting with various people he came to the realisation that Erith was never going to support such an emporium, filled as it is with lager swilling slack jawed neanderthals and other nondescript crooks and undesirables. He and his family are planning on converting the building into a supermarket and a larger verson of their existing store, where I buy my copy of the Times each morning. Their business is a shining example of what can be done right in the local area, and with space to expand, I see them doing very well indeed. It is sad to see the end of an historic local pub, but one has to be realistic - better the building is put into productive use than either stay empty, or worse still, be demolished for yet more anonymous flats.

Further to my mid - week posting concerning my visit to the recording of two episodes of the wartime comedy Hut 33, several people have asked me what the plots were. Well, without giving too much away, the first episode concerned gullible schoolboy prodigy Gordon being given the task of trying to come up with a psychological profile of the German signaller who encrypted a particularly important message; to this end professor Charles gives him an armful of Wagner LP's and a copy of Mein Kampf. The effect this has on the impressionable teenage mathematics genius can be imagined...

The second episode concerns a blanket ban on Bletchley Park staff posessing anything German whatsoever - Minka ends up almost machine gunning Alan Turing because he is eating Battenburg cake. Later it turns out that Charles' uncle is a Colonel in the Wermacht who is conducting the siege of Leningrad....

This weeks' video is one that I have been searching online for a long time; it is a press report covering the illegal raid by the British and Dutch governments on the Radio Caroline ship the Ross Revenge, back in August 1989. I had been on board two weeks before the raid, and some of my photos were later used in evidence to show the pre - raid condition of the ship, and to show the damage the raiders caused. I spent many hours with Carolines' lawyers, the prestigious firm of Richards Butler (now known as Reed Smith) who were working for free, and eventually we won the day and all confiscated equipment was returned.