BexleyCo.

There have been rumours circulating locally for the best part of the last decade about the future of the site of Erith post office. Various plans have been discussed, and options put forward but it is only now that a fully specified development proposal has been published. BexleyCo Homes wants to build a development, which will include 33 homes which would include 31 flats and two townhouses at the site at 89 Erith High Street. As many readers will be aware, much of Erith High Street is a conservation area and several of the buildings located there are additionally locally listed. Adjacent to the post office site is a closed small industrial unit which used to be used by a company which made signs for use in both corporate and leisure activities, but when they left the building that side of the structure has been left empty. From what is currently being published, 3/4 of the homes would have two bedrooms. Eight flats would have three bedrooms and the remaining flats would be one bedroom. None of these would be for affordable rent. What is currently unclear is whether the post office would remain on the ground floor or be removed during the redevelopment. I think it is important this is clarified soon. Erith post office is very heavily used, and one of the most popular locations within the town centre. There are many people who have small independent businesses selling goods online on websites such as eBay and they can be found taking items to post to customers usually early in the afternoon each weekday, which is one of the reasons it's probably best to avoid the post office during this period, and to visit it in the morning wherever possible, as it tends to be a lot quieter then. It would be a great loss to the community if the post office was to close, as it is heavily used and I'm fully aware that there are people who come from places like Upper Belvedere to use Erith post office rather than their own local one, as they find the service in Erith to be far superior. In addition to this, the town has no banks now after Barclays closed in the town centre a few years ago, and the post office is one of the only places where you can pay in cash and there are a number of traders in and around Erith who primarily deal with cash and would not want to travel to Bexleyheath with the risk of being mugged during that journey. I understand that the facade of the post office building is to be retained as it is locally listed, but it is unclear whether the internals and the post office service will be kept. Personally, I am uncomfortable with the proposed block of flats, as it greatly dominates the most historic part of the town, and would overlook Erith Playhouse and the Cross Keys Centre. The planning proposal says that if they get to build the block it would be six stories higher. But as we know from experience the block of flats built pn the former Police Station site in Upper Belvedere on the corner of Nuxley Road and Woolwich Road was proposed and exhibited during public consultations at one height and mysteriously, when it was built they had added an additional floor. I am concerned that the developers might try a similar trick on the post office site. Your comments and feedback as always to me at  hugh.neal@gmail.com. 

I know that the story about the potential redevelopment of the Erith post office site has been published elsewhere previously. As I have written in the past, it is an unfortunate side effect of the fact that I only publish once per week on a Sunday morning. I had actually written the piece above very early last week when the story had yet broken to the local press, but only being in a position to publish once weekly meant that others got to scoop me on the story this time. As most readers already realise this is just a hobby for me, and I have to fit it around other activities. At the moment this is mainly attending outpatient hospital appointments, as I am still rather unwell. Thank you to everybody who has contacted me to enquire as to my well-being. There is no major change at this point. I am still housebound and only able to get to medical appointments when being chauffeured by NHS patient transport, who are absolutely excellent. More on this subject below. 

Unless you are somebody who uses a local hospital on a regular basis, you are probably not aware of the Patient Transport Service, what it is, and what it does. Patient transport is something that is run by a third party organisation on behalf of the local NHS trust for Lewisham and Greenwich, and is something that is operated by other trusts around the UK as part of the overall end-to-end NHS healthcare service. If a patient needs to attend an outpatient hospital appointment, and is not able to travel to and from the hospital under their own steam, either by car or by public transport, t is possible for them to book an ambulance minibus to collect them from their home, take them to the hospital for their appointment and then take them home afterwards. This is done for no  charge. It is basically an assisted chauffeur service. In my opinion, the highly trained drivers will also help with mobility problems and will take wheelchairs and other mobility aids on board and assist the customer with getting onto and off the converted minibus used as the means of transportation. Each hospital has a specialised and dedicated waiting room which is available for patient transportation (photo above of the one at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital - click on it for a larger view). When one is delivered by patient transport to the hospital, the driver will escort the patient to the waiting room, and if they need to use something like a wheelchair they will then be pushed by a hospital porter to the relevant department for their consultation appointment. Afterwards another porter will come and take them back to the waiting area, where they will be booked in to be then taken home. I have found the service to be absolutely excellent; there can sometimes be waits of up to 90 minutes for a patient transport, ambulance and driver to be free to take them home but often the wait is far less than this, and it can be no more than a handful of minutes. Bearing in mind, the service is completely free. This is absolutely astonishing and something that is very much underappreciated by those who either are unaware of the service or have never had to use it. In my own personal experience, I've had to use the service multiple times over the last few months after I was discharged at the end of July when I spent a month as an inpatient at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich. Since then I have had multiple outpatient appointments back at this hospital, and also at the Lewisham Hospital and also at St. Thomas's in central London, all of which have been courtesy of the patient transport service. Locally the service is run by an external company called HATS, but I found their staff and drivers to be extremely polite, efficient, and very empathetic. I cannot praise them enough. The patient transport vehicles are legally classified as ambulances, but unfortunately many drivers either do not know or do not care about this. If you see a patient transport vehicle then please give it right of way instead of treating it as being a road hogging nuisance. I think some people are very selfish in this respect. You never know when you may need to use it yourself, or the vehicle could contain a loved one or neighbour. I just thought I would give some recognition to a service that is not widely recognised and I feel should have more respect for what it does in a very quiet and understated way.

This month, Microsoft Windows is 40 years old. On November 20th, 1985, Microsoft unveiled its graphical operating system; (actually technically speaking it was not an operating system at all - from Windows 1.0 to Windows ME, Windows was actually a graphical interface shell that sat on top of DOS - which was the actual operating system - but I digress). Windows 1.0 offered a new way to navigate a PC, clicking a cursor on various boxes rather than scrolling through lines of text in order to navigate data and applications. While arguably less efficient than a command line, the graphical user interface (GUI) was more intuitive and easier for novice users to manage. Running Windows 1.0 required a PC running DOS 2.0 as well as two double-sided floppy disk drives, 256K of memory, and a new-fangled device known as a "graphics card." Windows worked with some DOS apps, while others would just run in full-screen mode. Windows 1.0 was not exactly a stirring success. PC users accustomed to the command-line interface of DOS weren't yet sold on a GUI, and only about 500,000 copies were sold in the first couple of years. It took until the early 90's for Windows to catch on, but when it did, the OS became synonymous with the PC and made Microsoft one of the most successful and powerful companies in the world for the next two decades. Windows has had its ups and downs - at times it has been an excellent operating system, with other iterations, it has been truly terrible; let's look at some of the bad ones first:- Windows Vista was the long-awaited successor to Windows XP – perhaps that's part of why it is considered such a huge disappointment. After years of speculation and hype, Vista was roundly panned by critics and loathed by consumers. Part of the problem was its hefty hardware requirements that, for many users, meant upgrading components or just buying an entirely new PC. Add to that performance issues and default security settings that would flood users with permission dialogues, and you get one of Microsoft's biggest flops. Windows ME, however, was an even bigger flop than Vista. The final DOS based, consumer-only version of Windows, its mere mention will draw cringes to this day. It was a buggy, sluggish mess of an operating system and is considered by many to be Microsoft's worst-ever Windows version. On top of being riddled with bugs, ME suffered from a rather unfortunate flaw in its system restore process that on some machines meant that when something did go seriously wrong, the OS could not be restored. On a happier note, there have been some excellent and very popular versions of Windows:- Windows 3.11 was credited as the first true "hit" version of Windows and the commercial success that the platform needed to be considered more than just an add-on for DOS. It also carved out a niche for itself in the embedded market that would last for more than two decades. Windows for Workgroups was phenomenally successful as a platform for consoles, point of sale terminals, and workstations. Well into the 2000s, Windows 3.11 could be found in embedded devices. Just a few weeks ago, it was found that back in 2015, Orly Airport in France used Windows 3.11 to power a critical weather prediction system, 23 years after its release and nearly 15 years after Microsoft pulled official support. Windows XP SP2 was the version of XP that Microsoft got right. Three years after XP hit, Microsoft pushed out the second service pack and finally addressed some of the myriad of security problems that plagued XP. Like Windows 3.11, XP SP2 enjoyed a lifespan so long it had become troublesome. Despite Microsoft's best efforts to get people to upgrade their systems to newer versions, some older PCs still rely on XP. Windows 7 was another stellar release that came after a less-than-stellar predecessor. In this case, Windows 7 corrected a lot of the things that Vista got wrong, particularly security, performance, and hardware demands. Windows 10 proved a big success - offering good security and performance. Unfortunately its successor, Windows 11 has been many things that Windows 10 was not. It is extremely unpopular, bug ridden and dependent on new and very expensive hardware, meaning that many users have to purchase a new PC if they wish to use it, as it is incompatible with older hardware in many cases. Another criticism of Windows 11 is that it is full of advertising and forces users to subscribe to a Windows online account, and also to use artificial intelligence even when it is something they have no interest in or involvement with. Some users are getting so frustrated with Windows 11 that they are contemplating moving to Linux. Personally, I have only used Windows in my professional life when I was being paid to. Other than that I have been a Linux user in one form or another since 1996. Unfortunately, some computer users are stuck with Windows as they have a particular piece of software or business requirement that can only be satisfied under a Microsoft operating system. Having said that, the use of desktop computers is now far less prevalent than even five years ago - many people's main use is now with a handheld device, such as a tablet or smartphone - which usually run either MacOS or Android (which is actually a heavily customised version of Linux) rather than Windows. I am firmly of the belief that Windows will be with us for decades to come in some form or other, but that it will not have the dominance that it once enjoyed. 

The end video this week shows travellers at Woolwich Arsenal railway station, waiting to board a London bound train back in 1964. It is a real slice of local history. Comments and feedback to me as usual to hugh.neal@gmail.com.