The road resurfacing outside Pewty Acres went into a second week, unbeknownst to me at the time. I would not normally feature the same kind of content in the photo above as last week, but I took the shot above on Monday night, as the final layer of road surface was laid outside my front door at around 10pm. I am rather pleased with the picture to be honest; I feel it is one of the most accomplished I have taken in some time. Please leave comments below as usual. The work men finished the tarmac and line painting just as I was getting out of bed at 5.30 in the morning. It was a bit noisy and disruptive for a while, but the excellent results were on the whole worth it. Talking to the construction supervisor, it would seem that the material used has some kind of special noise dampening properties; tyre and road rumble does seem noticeably less since the new surface was laid, and there is no longer an annoying "thump thump" as vehicles transit between the previous tarmac patches outside.
Local bar Potion (photo above) has been in the news recently; it has been visited by the local Police - they have been carrying out random drug tests on the customers. There were a few positive results, though since the tests would appear to have been voluntary, this is not that surprising - those who knew they would get a positive reading would obviously make themselves scarce. Following on from this, the police have raided a suspected drug den in a flat adjacent to Erith railway station. You can read more about it here. Potion has not to my knowledge quite become the cesspit of vice that I was expecting; certainly many of the local "faces" hang out in the place, but it would seem that the management are successfully keeping a lid on the worst excesses of a number of their less salubrious patrons.
Something that I am not alone in noticing over the last few years as becoming increasingly common, especially in relatively socially deprived areas such as Erith and Lower Belvedere, is the pseudo pagan practice of placing flowers and cuddly toys at the site of a fatal accident. This practice seems to have begun with the death of Princess Diana, and has become increasingly common. I don't know if this coincides with the reduced influence of the established religions, or if there us some other factor that has modified peoples' behaviour in this respect. These roadside memorials can be quite elaborate. I do wonder what motivates people to leave these tokens in public places. Once place that has an almost continuous memorial is underneath the foot bridge at Belvedere railway station. From my observations, it seems to almost exclusively commemorate kids who have either been hit by a passing train, or electrocuted whilst they illegally messed around on the railway. This Darwin Award nominee behaviour is nothing unusual, unfortunately; there seems to be some magnetic attraction to railway tracks that is exerted on the micro browed and low of wit. The fact they manage to terminate themselves is a kind of existential poetic justice - the downside to the rest of us is the delays and disruption caused to the long suffering commuters.
I was digging around in a cupboard this morning and came across a pile of old program cassettes going back to the early 1980's. They were for my classic 8 - bit Atari 800 computer, which I still have in working order. When I worked at Silica Shop, I used to know software genius Jeff Minter, and he wrote me a customised version of his game "Hovver Bovver". Nice to see I still have it; I just need to see if it will still load...
This weeks' video was suggested by Ian; it shows the never transmitted scene from Doctor Who where the fifth Doctor chases Del Boy, Rodney and Uncle Albert through the streets of Amsterdam. Ahem.
