Bollards!

The building in the above photo is one of the landmarks of Erith. It is the first thing many visitors see when they enter the town for the first time, but it is also one of the least memorable. The large and nowadays rather run down and scruffy brick building is called Electricity House – though many locals are unaware of this. It was built back in 1938 and opened in November 1939 as a showroom and offices for the local electricity company, which at the time was run by the council. Pre – war services such as gas, water and electricity supply were quite commonly managed and supplied by local councils; the idea of private companies being involved was something that did not happen until after the war had ended. Electricity House was also a place where new electrical customers could view domestic appliances which they could buy via hire purchase (it sounds like an early version of BrightHouse, but without the crippling interest rates). As well as the showroom,  Electricity House was home to what contemporary accounts say was a very upmarket dance hall with a fully sprung Canadian Maple floor; there was also a small Pathe cinema. The local electricity business was astonishingly successful – probably much helped by the fact that it offered the cheapest metered electricity in the entire UK at the time – one penny per unit. Ten thousand local people signed up for electrification in the first month alone, attracted by the offer of free connection to the local power grid – unusual at the time – many suppliers would even charge for the copper cable to connect new customers. In 1939 the Erith electricity board made a (for then) massive profit of £13,000. The idea was that the money would be used to improve local services and amenities for all, but the advent of war meant that early in 1940 Electricity House was handed over for war work, and once peace was restored, the money intended to benefit local people was absorbed by the LEB during nationalisation, and nothing was ever seen of it. Much of Erith was still lit by gas until relatively recently. I believe that some houses in West Street did not get electricity until 1947 when the London Electricity Board was formed, and the local council control of power was nationalised. I have heard a rumour (and I must stress that at this stage, it is only a rumour), that Electricity House may be coming up for sale in the not too distant future. The story goes that the current owners of Electricity House realise that the building is end of life, and no longer fit for purpose. The current commercial tenants don’t pay very much rent for the place, and as the building is old and very scruffy, it is unlikely to attract new tenants prepared to pay higher rents. The only real money earning part of the building is actually the roof, which hosts a number of cellular telephone repeaters and their associated antenna masts. The most profitable course of action would be for the owners of the site to sell the building to a property developer, and for the current building to be demolished to make way for a modern alternative which would attract new and more prosperous tenants prepared to pay higher rents. Personally I would rather see the existing building extensively refurbished, but I somehow doubt that would be commercially viable. The longest term tenant in the building is Erith Snooker Centre, which occupies a large portion of the upper floor, and has been there since at least 1946. Others like the various African stores, the Redeemed Christian Church of God, and the Celestial Church of Christ (which seem to both share the former tyre warehouse part of the building that faces Erith Council Offices) would all have to find alternative accommodation if this redevelopment rumour has any foundation in truth.  If anyone has any information about the future of Electricity House, please drop me a private line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Back in 2011 a great FaceBook campaign was set up to prevent Belvedere Splash Park introducing entrance fees. The park, which is the largest computerised children’s wet play area in the UK is incredibly popular in the summer months, when it offers a fun and convenient (not to say cheap) day out for parents with young children. Bexley Council quickly backed down when they discovered the extent and depth of feeling against the introduction of charges, despite council policy seemingly being that anything that involves pleasure being banned or charged for to the point where use is positively discouraged – for example the permanent cancellation of the Danson Festival and the discontinuation of the “Bexley in Bloom” competition, even so the ending of the latter would save only a handful of pennies. I have now heard from multiple sources that the council are at it again; they are now closing the splash park for two days a week for “cleaning and maintenance”, yet on those days nobody is to be seen. Malcolm Knight of Bexley is Bonkers has already written on the subject, which you can read here. Malcolm has the advantage of publishing almost every day, whereas for logistical reasons the Maggot Sandwich only gets updated once per week on a Sunday. What all the concerned people who have contacted me on the subject note is that whilst Belvedere Splash Park is being closed two days a week, the equivalent splash park at Danson is not. The real reason for the Belvedere closure is to save on staff wages; why they are not doing the same at Danson is the usual one – all of the councillors and their families who make these decisions live in the South of the borough, and cutbacks in the North part of the borough don’t affect them – the posh parts of Bexley keep their amenities whilst the “plebs” in the poorer North take all of the cuts. Nothing new there then.

I have noticed that residents in certain parts of Erith, Northumberland Heath and Lower Belvedere are currently being targeted by the marketing departments of certain banks and credit card companies. It would seem that they have been trawling the electoral register and comparing it against a database of areas whose inhabitants are thought to be on a lower than average income. Locals are currently receiving a steady barrage of envelopes containing offers of loans and credit cards, typically with a wording along the lines of “CCJ’s need not be a problem – even if you have been turned down before – tenants and the unemployed welcome to apply – fixed weekly repayments” – the quotation was taken directly from a letter from Provident Personal Credit. Much has been written by both myself and many others about the online payday loan companies such as Wonga, and the high street crisis lenders such as The Money Shop, and their scandalous rates of interest. It would seem that the “respectable” financial institutions are now trying to get a slice of the market. The aforementioned Provident charge an eye watering 399.7 percent interest on their loans, whereas if you shop around (not difficult with online comparison websites) you can get a credit card with 18.9 percent interest and better repayment conditions. The difference is that in order to get a credit card with those kind of terms, one needs to be in full time, well paid employment and have a good credit history. The people the unscrupulous lenders are targeting are not this demographic – they are hoping to snare vulnerable “high risk” borrowers. Once again being poor can be seen to be very expensive. A better alternative would be to approach Greenwich and Bexley Credit Union. I have heard some strong rumours that a group of local churches are looking to set up a credit union for the people of Erith, Northumberland Heath and Belvedere. If this turns out to be the case, it will be a far better prospect than these unscrupulous high interest lenders that are actively seeking out people with a low income to charge outrageous sums in interest to.

If you were watching television on Monday night, you might have happened to come across the Channel 4 cookery show “Food Unwrapped” and the article about the resurgence in interest in eating jellied eels. If the fisherman and his little vessel looked familiar, it is with a reason. The chap featured was Dave Pearce, who fishes for eels off Erith. He and fellow Eel fisherman Gary Hillier are pretty much the only people who regularly fish for the eels nowadays. Back in 1981 there were around thirty eel fishermen, over half of whom made a living from fishing in the river Thames off Erith. The irony is that eels have become rarer, and their price has subsequently risen to the point that nowadays very few traditional pie and mash shops sell jellied or stewed eels, as they have become too expensive for their main customers, who often are retired people on a budget. “Food Unwrapped” gave the impression that eating eels was moving upmarket, and that smoking and barbecuing the fish was becoming increasingly popular.  Bearing in mind how eel fishing has formed part of the historical culture of Erith, it is remarkable just how little the humble eel is celebrated locally. Perhaps something roughly analogous to the Whitstable Oyster Festival could be set up in Erith? After all, the Oyster Festival has been tremendously successful and brings visitors and business to Whitstable, to the point where it is now the commercial and social highlight of the year. Perhaps something like it could be established for an Erith Eel Extravaganza could be set up? What do you think? About a decade ago, we had an Erith Multicultural Festival, which involved lots of food stalls along the high Street, and dragon boat races on the river, along with a big firework display in the evening. Perhaps an Erith Eel Extravaganza could be organised along similar lines. I concede that we might have a bit of an image problem; you think of oysters and you think of James Bond, whereas when you think of eels, you think of Alf Garnett. Eels have been a working class staple food since Roman times, and ironically until relatively recently, so were oysters, but overfishing of oysters caused them to become rare, and consequently they went up market – exactly the same thing is happening to the humble eel nowadays. Is the time right for an eel revival and a new image?  Should Erith be nailing eels to the mast (poor analogy, but you see where this is going).  Should we be celebrating the Erith eel, or is it just a sad footnote in history? What do you think? Do give me your feedback; you can comment below, or Email me to hugh.neal@gmail.com

The Basic computer programming language has just celebrated its fiftieth birthday. Whilst not the first computer language designed to be used by non – professional programmers (Cobol and Fortran could both claim that title) it was the language that gained massive popularity in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when it started to be taught in secondary schools and further education colleges, first on Commodore Pet and Research Machines 380Z computers, and slightly later on the massively popular and ubiquitous in education BBC Micro. Kids of the time, myself included also had early 8 – bit home computers, and learned to program them by a mixture of trial and error, and by laboriously copying game Basic source code by hand from magazines such as Computer and Video Games. One soon learned to save the input code on a very regular basis, as having the computer crash after spending three hours typing in code was a quick way to learn the benefits of a backup. Basic was relatively easy to learn, though different computers often employed slightly different versions, usually to accommodate special features that they had, which meant one could not expect a Basic program from say a Sinclair ZX Spectrum to work on a Commodore 64 without some fairly extensive rewrites to the code. One thing basic did allow you to do which cannot be done with modern programming languages is it enabled you to read and write data to areas of the computers’ memory which would normally not be permitted. The PEEK command enabled a programmer to see the value that was stored at a specific memory location, and the POKE command enabled you to write a value into a specified memory location. This might sound pretty dull and boring, but in reality it enabled you to get the computer to do all sorts of things that it was really not meant to. For example, there was a bug in the chip which controlled the video display in the very early versions of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The bug meant that the clock rate of the chip (how many instructions it could obey per second) could be radically altered by inputting a certain numerical value to a very specific address in the video memory. The increase in the clock rate caused the chip to suddenly heat up, to the point where it would begin to melt the rubber keys and thin plastic case of the Spectrum. Once this trick was discovered, there were numerous little oiks around the country who would go into Boots or Rumbelows (remember them?) and type in a short program to the Spectrums on display. The program had a FOR: NEXT loop in it, which acted as a timer to allow the perpetrator to make a stealthy exit. At the end of the loop, the POKE which over clocked the video chip would be executed. About ten minutes later, the shops’ fire alarm would sound as smoke poured out of the hapless Spectrum. Oh how we laughed. Not that I would condone this kind of behaviour of course (apologies to Boots in Bexleyheath Broadway Shopping Centre) – nowadays shops are covered by CCTV, and in any case this direct control of a computer via software is just not possible. Nowadays the operating system and firmware act as a barrier to such tricks.

I have heard that recently launched London Live – the TV service set up and run by the London Evening Standard is already in deep trouble. The channel, which broadcasts a series of London – centric programmes, along with a lot of re – runs from other channels is already looking to cut back broadcasting hours. At present the station broadcasts around the clock, but I have heard that they would like to cut back to opening at 7am and going off air at around midnight. Initial viewing statistics for the station have been woeful. The station, which launched back at the end of March is only attracting between two and four thousand viewers for its flagship early evening news and current affairs programme. The highest viewing figure for any one day were approximately fifteen thousand people – in a capital of nine million, this figure is statistically as close to zero as makes very little difference. I am really not surprised that London Live has had these problems. The production values and technical quality of their original programming is amateurish to say the least; it is painfully apparent that the broadcasts are made with minimal resources and little in the way of money. One critic wrote” The schedule is appalling; the picture quality at times is worse than a worn-out VHS tape and at other times, it is like watching a 240p YouTube video on a 60" plasma screen. The whole thing is a dog's dinner, so why would anyone want to watch it in the first place? Never mind the advertisers!” Quite. Bearing in mind that the station is heavily promoted in the London Evening Standard every weekday, to the extent that London Live features before BBC1 on their television scheduling page, and London Live based programmes invariably get featured on the “pick of the day” page. Even with the overt and heavy promotion that the paper, which has a circulation in excess of nine hundred thousand readers, they cannot get more viewers to the station. What do you think? Have you watched the station? You can leave a comment below, or Email me directly to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Please click on the questionnaire above to be able to read a larger version. It is a sneak preview of a document that will be handed out to visitors to Erith Fun Day on Saturday the 30th August. I have mentioned in passing over the last few months that I have had some involvement in the work to restore and convert the Cross Keys in Erith High Street into a venue available for all local people to use. I have been a member of the local residents steering committee since it was formed, and over the next couple of weeks I will be outlining the way in which the Aleff Group who own and are restoring the building are very keen to engage with the local residents to create a facility which will act as a community centre, restaurant, tea shop and local small business resource with bookable hot desks, private meeting rooms, 100 seat presentation suite / cinema, WiFi internet access and printing facilities. The project has the full backing of local MP Teresa Pearce, the local Police, Erith Town Forum, the Rotary Club, Bexley Business Forum, and a host of other worthwhile local organisations.

The battle for the radio airwaves over London grinds on. The competition between Capital Radio and Magic has been a close run thing for several years, with Capital finally beating Magic in the most recent polls. This is interesting stuff, as when Magic first started in 1990 it was called Melody FM and had a very old school , unchallenging easy listening music format –  Mantovani style big bands, crooners and hardly any music from later than the mid 1970’s. This, along with the station policy of very little speech from the presenter and no station identification jingles quickly got it the nickname of “Mogadon FM” as the laid back format allegedly sent the listeners to sleep! Advertisers were initially pleased with this approach, but soon realised that the demographic of the station was overwhelmingly amongst pensioners, many of which had little in the way of disposable income; the advertising revenue then began to dry up. This, along with the sudden deaths of two presenters persuaded the owners to change the format slightly to allow more interaction from the presenters and slightly modernise the playlist to allow artists such as Enya to be played. By 1998 the station was sold and rebranded as Magic 105.4 and further marketed to attract a younger audience. The rebranding worked very well, and Capital Radio got its first real direct competitor for the music listening Londoner.

Resurfacing work in Manor Road has been completed two weeks ahead of the planned schedule. I am gratified by this; after my blog posting criticizing the contractor Conway as to the level of resources they were employing on the site, the number of workers and the length of time they were working on Manor Road dramatically increased. There is every chance that this was a happy coincidence, but you can draw your own conclusions. A very useful new confidential contact dropped me a line during the week to let me know that as Conway had finished resurfacing Manor Road early, they were in a position to carry out maintenance on the roundabout opposite the KFC drive through, and a few other small jobs in the area. I think that this makes eminent sense – after all, the workers and equipment are already on site, it will just require some more hot tarmac and a splash or two of road paint. I have also been in contact with the council about the illegal traffic cut through at the end of Appold Street where it joins James Watt Way. There are bollards to (supposedly) prevent vehicles other than push bikes from using this route as a cut - through, but historically the bollards were placed too far apart, and small cars and vans could get through. During the Manor Road surfacing work, there was a constant stream of vehicles illegally cutting through. The matter was raised the with the Police, but by the time this was done, Conway had removed several bollards and were actively encouraging vehicles to used the illegal diversion. Understandably the residents of Appold Street were very upset by the huge increase in vehicles using the road - most have houses with no front gardens, and their front doors open directly onto the pavement. The noise, smell and disruption was very bad, and during rush hour there were often queues of cars waiting to share the one – way only cut through. Impatient drivers hooted their vehicle horns and a number of road rage incidents and two minor accidents involving children in baby buggies being clipped by passing vehicles were reported. Fortunately no serious injuries resulted from the situation. Following a midweek Email I sent to a chap called Dimitri Araj of Bexley Council Engineering Services team, I got the following response on Friday afternoon:- "Thank you for your constructive comments about our works in Manor Road. You will be glad to know that because of the savings we have made in the works, we shall be resurfacing Appold Street on 22 August 2014 after clearing the temporary site holding compound from the bottom of the road at the junction of James Watt Way. We shall replace all the broken kerb stones from the island in the road and renew the road markings as well. We shall write to the local residents about this work next week. Also as suggested by you and other local residents, we will increase the number of steel bollards at the junction of James Watt Way to reduce the gaps between them. We shall endeavour to complete this by the 22 August 2014 or as soon as possible after that if there is problem with the supply of these steel bollards. I am hoping that these additional measures will work. The closure of the KFC roundabout is limited to 10 hours this Sunday afternoon / night and 4 hours on Monday night and we are hoping that the traffic will be very light then. The site holding compound is blocking Appold Street and there will be debris and construction materials to discourage any passage through there while the diversion is in place. My colleagues in Street Works Team have regular contacts with the police and they have asked the police to increase their presence in the area during our works. I have personally reported two incidents to the police recently. Finally I would like to thank you and all the local residents for your patients with us during the Manor Road works which have improved the local environment in my view". What a result!

The ending video this week is a few months old, so it may not be completely up to date. It shows some of the demolition and rebuilding work going on in the Southmere part of Thamesmead, prior to the Crossrail project opening in Abbey Wood, which will bring a lot of new people to the area, and also is certain to put local property prices up.

The South Quay navy.

The picture above has content somewhat different to that which I normally feature; most of the time you will see a photo or two that I have taken in and around Erith; I try to give a little bit of the flavour of the local areas to readers who may have never visited the area, either because they live in another country, or because they read my moans and decide they would be better off staying put. Just for a change the photo content this week is focussed on Canary Wharf, the business district part of East London about ten miles to the North and West of Erith, on the opposite bank of the River Thames. Specifically one particular dock in the massive redevelopment - South Quay, which is the location of some rather uncharacteristically glamorous ships for the next few weeks. The Maggot Sandwich this week has a distinctly nautical flavour; more on this later.

Following on from last weeks’ Olympic torch relay in Erith, I have some further thoughts on the event. The parade was organised with almost military precision; the number of Police officers involved rather surprised me. The bulk of them were not from the local force – I saw a group who had Northumbria Police insignia on their shoulder boards. They were rather out of their area. I was expecting a greater involvement from the local Safer Neighbourhood teams – after all they know the area intimately, and know who any potential trouble makers are. The sheer number of Police, as well as private security officers was quite amazing; there were hundreds of people lining Manor Road as the torch convoy slowly progressed along the street, and in some points it felt that the security detail almost outnumbered the noisy and enthusiastic audience. At one point there was some fairly aggressive shouting / chanting from a group of low – lives lurking opposite the Londis corner store, but after a visit from the Police and a not so quiet word with them, they shut up. The road itself was closed for a relatively short amount of time, though incongruously the 99 bus was allowed through, and one Bexleyheath bound one had quite a close encounter with a couple of the corporate sponsors vehicles. I was surprised by the size of the turn – out; it was apparent that quite a few in the crowd were not residents of the road, but had come from other parts of Erith to see what all of the fuss was about. Talking of the Olympics, I have noticed a strange and perplexing phenomenon on the platforms of all stations on the Dartford to London via Greenwich line. There are station staff present! Normally you are very unlikely to see anyone from South-eastern Trains on the platform, with the notable exception of the occasional member of their revenue protection team. All of a sudden a host of previously invisible staff have appeared as if from out of the wood work – all I can surmise is that office bound staff have been handed high visibility jackets, and instructed to press the flesh of the Olympic visitors. I reckon that they will disappear as mysteriously as they appeared as soon as the last event in the Paralympics is completed. I also notice that the work to extend the platform length at a number of stations on the Dartford to London via Greenwich line have been very quietly stopped, most notably at Plumstead – which is only about half done. At least Erith got finished, even if commuters are currently unable to use the extended areas. I don’t know if there is a specific reason for the cessation of construction work, but the whole project appeared to start with a bang, and finish with a fizzle.

The M.S Deutschland, temporary waterborne home of the German Olympic team. More in a bit. If you feel like looking at some other photographs, click here to visit my Flickr site.

Following my away team visit to Putney last weekend, I thought I would take a virtual tour round several South West London estate agents, to get a feel of what the housing market in that area was like. I am grateful that I made a virtual, rather than a real life visit. The results of my visit were truly eye watering. I reckon for the price of a medium sized semi detached house in Putney, you could buy all of Erith and half of Slade Green as well!

Well, as suspected, the Thames Emirates cable car, sometimes better known as the Arabfly Dangleway has already had its’ first breakdown. The rather pointless ride, which goes from nowhere to nowhere and back, whilst entertaining its’ passengers with panoramic views of scrap yards and empty industrial warehouses, gave up the ghost on Wednesday lunch time, leaving passengers stranded in mid air, baking in the thirty degree heat. It was fortunate that the operators managed to get the thing working again relatively quickly – most passengers were able to get back onto solid ground within around half an hour. Still, being trapped in a (relatively) unventilated glass box with the midday sun beating down on it cannot have been a pleasant experience. It makes me wonder what emergency plans the Emirates operators have in place. It would be disastrous PR for them to have a further breakdown during the period of the Olympic Games. Toasting your fare paying passengers is not a move likely to enamour the public or indeed the press.

Erith Riverside Shopping Centre finally seems to be fulfilling its owners’ expectations; for years the centre has had vacant shop units. The combination of high rents and punitive business rates proved a deterrent to many small shop owners keen to get into the area. I know of one small operator who wanted to open a coffee shop (in the days before Mambocino arrived). When they enquired about the rental fees, they were told that a single retail unit would cost £500 per week, with a substantial deposit. That level of rent was beyond them, and they dropped the plan. It would now seem that most of the units are now occupied, albeit mainly with large chain stores – the kind of organisation that have deep enough pockets to cover high start up fees. Over the last year or so I have noticed that some of the more successful places have been the pay day lenders and pawnbrokers such as Cash Generator. The trouble with these places is, that whilst they are perfectly legal, they charge such punitive rates of interest on small loans that they keep their vulnerable customers in a permanent state of penury; quite often customers take out a loan to pay off another loan, and end up in a vicious cycle of ever increasing debt. A solution is on the horizon, however. Greenwich Credit Union (an ethical, non profit organisation that offers many of the functions of a bank or a payday lender) is expanding its operations into the London Borough of Bexley. The service has been operating in Greenwich since 1998 and members must save at least £10 a month for a minimum of three months to apply for their first loan through Greenwich Credit Union. For more information call 0208 855 4344 or click here for further details.

Over the last year or so, the craze for all things 3D seems to have raged; it seems that pretty much all Hollywood blockbusters have to be issued in a 3D version, and 3D capable televisions are all over the place. I have to say that I am unimpressed. I watched parts of Wimbledon which was specially broadcast by the BBC in 3D HD, and it left me cold. I have spoken to an industry insider who tells me that the major television manufacturers such as Samsung and LG are fully aware that the 3D images produced even on very large televisions cannot even begin to match those from a projector in a cinema. He explained to me that it will be around five years before really effective imagery will be available in the home – and it will not be using any current technology. Personally I have no interest in 3D – either at home, or in the cinema; it strikes me that every few years the movie studios roll out a new gimmick to try and tempt more bums onto seats; they plug the gimmick for a couple of years until people grow bored by it, and they then move onto something new. I gather that 3D revenues in cinemas are now starting to fall; the additional cost of a ticket to a 3D version of a film seems now to be putting the punters off – either that, or they too have realised that the King is not wearing any clothes. One other thing I discovered when researching the whole 3D phenomenon is that it is not recommended that children under around seven years of age be allowed to watch 3D content. The reason for this is that their visual and cognitive abilities are still developing, and they are unable to perceive the pseudo 3D shifted images created by the interference of the on screen image with the polarised micro shutters in the glasses. I have heard some evidence exists that prolonged exposure to small children can actually harm the development of their perception – so all round it is not a good idea.

There is more than a touch of glamour round my office in Canary Wharf right now. South Quay, one of the largest docks in the Wharf is currently temporary home to a fleet of super yachts; they are moored so that their oligarch and billionaire owners have a base whilst they attend the 2012 London Olympic Games. The Quay is normally pretty quiet and is treated as a bit of a backwater to the wharf – there are a few bars and restaurants around the perimeter, but usually it is not much of a tourist trap. I have been out for a stroll on a couple of recent lunch times, and the quay is heaving with curious visitors from the office buildings in the surrounding area. Some people seem keen to star spot (fat chance), others – mainly slightly anorakky blokes like myself just want a closer look at the yachts themselves; I have a background in ships and the sea, and I am a sucker for any kind of marine vessel. There is a large cruise liner, the MS Deutschland, which is acting as temporary home to the German Olympic team. There are nearly a dozen other super yachts of varying designs and sizes, a couple of which are relatively modest, and would not look out of place in somewhere like St. Katherine’s Dock. 

At the other end of the scale you have the Octopus (click on the photo above for a larger version) – a gargantuan and very menacing looking vessel owned by Paul Allen of Microsoft. It carries two full sized helicopters, a couple of launches in an internal stern located dry dock (seen moored by the stern in the photo above), and to cap it all, it also carries a brace of submarines. It is almost the clichéd James Bond super villain ship. A more recent arrival is the M/Y Eclipse – the world’s largest giga yacht, owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. It seems like there is a weapons race to see which shady super businessman can outdo the others to commission the biggest and most vulgar expression of their wealth. The yachts do satisfy a very important role – they quite often spend their time at sea, moving from glamorous location to glamorous location around the world, even if their obscenely wealthy owner is not aboard. The reason for this is that they get registered as the location of a number of the owners’ businesses – and thus enable the owner to avoid mind boggling amounts of tax. To their credit, theses vessels employ large crews, often who are ex Royal Navy or US Navy, so there is a fair degree of "trickle down" of money (the ships have to be fuelled and provisioned locally, thus putting some money back into the local economy of their destination). I overheard two security guards talking about the giant fleet - one was saying that by gross tonnage alone, the vessels currently in South Quay would make up the World's twelfth largest navy! I don't know how true it is, but it certainly makes for an interesting story. The Octopus was surrounded by a cordon consisting of a mix of Metropolitan Police, Canary Wharf Security, and some dark suited Microsoft storm troopers. I managed to sweet talk my way past this cordon quite easily - 1) I looked like I was meant to be there (look confident and smile at them - it works most times); and 2) When asked who I was, I told them the truth - from a certain point of view. I won't let on exactly what I said, as I may be able to pull the same trick again in future! Suffice to say, I was able to get up close and personal to the Octopus, getting the photos of the bows from directly in front - as you can see in this photo here. Paul Allen is apparently funding an expedition to retrieve the ship's bell from the wreck of HMS Hood. The bell is understood to be separated from the main body of the sunken WWII warship, so any salvage efforts will not disturb the site, which is a legally designated war grave.

Bexley Council have recently launched a new website. It tracks the food hygiene standards of restaurants, takeaways and pubs throughout the borough. All establishments are rated by a star system – five stars to the very best places that have impeccable food hygiene, down to zero stars – which I take to mean it should be shut down, or at best completely avoided. Unfortunately, Erith scores very poorly indeed on the survey. I have trawled through all 67 pages of entries for Bexley, and I was appalled to discover that the very highest food safety rating for an outlet in Erith is the  Ark Cafe / Christian book shop in Pier Road, opposite the car park – and that only manages to scrape a measly two out of five stars. After that, it is downhill all the way. The Manor Fish Bar in Manor Road gets one star (not surprising, the place is a dump and has seriously gone to pot since it was sold by the last owners a few years ago). Town Kebab opposite the hideous fish sculpture also gets a single star – if it does stay open long enough to feed the Bexley College students when the new Walnut Tree Road campus opens, it will likely poison them if it does not do something drastic about its’ hygiene standards. The former Oyins Nigerian cafe gets only one star - this may be part of the reason not long ago it changed its' name to Wazobia, but the staff and management would appear to be the same. Masala Reef Indian takeaway in West Street also gets only one star, but even this is eclipsed by the West Street Cafe, which manages to score zero stars. This sounds like a recipe for disaster; I normally like to support independent local businesses, but all I can say about the cafe is I will be studiously avoiding it! Hopefully once this star rating system becomes better known, it will encourage restaurants to raise the bar to better hygiene. You can read more about the star rating system and how Bexley food outlets score by clicking here. If you are anything like me, you may be reluctant to read the often shocking results. Restaurants I thought would garner high scores do very badly – and there are a couple that I have eaten at that I won’t return to until I see a dramatic increase in their scores. The Council gets a lot of criticism, but for once I think they are onto a good thing with this ratings scheme.

Just recently the Maggot Sandwich appears to be attracting readers from the Antipodes; I had another comment logged from an Australian reader on Monday morning; they were keen to use one of my photos. Thus far I have not heard a reply to my message of greeting; I will let you know what happens. I am not holding my breath!

The closing video this week is a bit of a ; you may recall that some weeks back I featured a website called the Sci Fi Air Show. Well, the imaginative chap behind the site has created the following thirty second video trailer for the 2012 season of the air show.