Spam Curry.

Erith has been bathed in a sunny glow for most of this week; it has however been pretty chilly in the shade - we are not quite in to full summer mode yet. I took the photo above earlier this afternoon; it shows a bulk carrier moored on Erith Pier. It was around 200 feet long and at a guess somewhere in the region of 700 gross tons in weight - the largest vessel I have seen moored on the pier since it ceased commercial operation in the late 1980's. You can get an idea of the ships' length in the photograph below. Click on either shot to see a larger version.

Charlton based journalist and blogger Darryl of the excellent 853 Blog has uncovered some worrying facts about the local train services during next years' London Olympic Games. You can read his entry about the cuts in local services here. In effect there will be little or no service from London in to North Kent and back for the two weeks of the event. All train schedules are being re-jigged to serve the anticipated games visitors. This will massively impact those who have to commute into and out of London for work. I think it is going to cause a massive impact to many who work in town; Personally I am fortunate in that much of my job can be carried out from anywhere - there is a fair chance that I will just work from home for the duration of the Olympics. Many are not so fortunate and may suffer consequently. I have no personal interest whatsoever in sport, and the Olympics are a farce nowadays anyway. For example, Mexico is a great disadvantage from the outset, as anyone who is any good at running, jumping or swimming has already left the country for the USA. The organisers should allow performance enhancing drugs - the competitors take them anyway, so you might as well permit it, and then allow the drug companies to sponsor "their" athletes, just like Formula One. There would be a greater degree of competition, as the manufacturers would fight to come up with the best drugs - the technology in Formula One trickles down to road cars - I cannot see any reason why the drugs developed to speed up the athletes would not find use in medicine too. I think we need an update of the sports included on the games too - Rollerball would be a real crowd pleaser, as would Olympic standard Hide & Seek - only this would put Pakistan at somewhat of a disadvantage, as they have rather publicly just lost their world champion. He's now rather better employed as hors d'eoevre for the piscine residents of the Indian Ocean. Personally I would have thought Doctor Gunther Van Hagens could have plasticised his head for later mounting on a tastefully decorated spike at ground zero.

On a potentially similar theme, I was on the 380 bus heading back to Plumstead station on Tuesday after my daily Dad visit, when I noticed a lot of commotion on the slip road leading into the new McDonald's Drive through in Pettman Crescent. A dozen or so Police officers, many of them armed had detained three Arabic looking fellows and had them handcuffed, lying face down in the road, whilst their old green Mercedes Benz W124 was searched. Bearing in mind Pettman Crescent is only a few hundred metres away from the main entrance to the high security Belmarsh Prison (photo above), where many Al Qaeda terrorists are incarcerated, I wondered if the three arrested men were part of a gang carrying out reconnaissance on the place for a potential jail break; either that or the Police are having a rather robust clamp down on out of date car tax discs.

Three weeks' into the series, and I have finally realised what the Sky Atlantic / HBO drama series "Game of Thrones" actually is. The show is "Dynasty" with chain mail. Very disappointing.

Sunday afternoon or not, the Thames Harbour Master is still hard at work, patrolling the river at Erith. The blog does have rather a maritime theme this week, which is no bad thing. Erith is a riverside town, with a long history of connection with ships and the sea.

The scaffolding is still up around Erith Railway Station, and not much evidence of any work seems visible. The main station building has now been covered for over four months, and whatever time of day I check, nobody is ever doing any remedial work on the place. Yet another monumental waste of time and our money. As reported last week, a road bridge over the railway at Erith is planned by Bexley Council. This work may also coincide with the construction of the long anticipated new Bexley College building on the old tram shed site. The News Shopper has a report about the state of the plans if you click here.

Nick Jackson of Absolute Radio has been back in contact this week - he's Emailed me a couple of photos from our time in the late 80's / early 90's working for Radio Caroline on board their radio ship, the Ross Revenge. The photo below show Nick and I in the galley; I was making some soup, if I recall correctly. The stove in the photo was terrible, it was not designed to work on bottled gas, and it would take what felt like a week to cook anything in the oven, and the hob burners used to soot up, making a terrible pong. The port hole next to the sink would usually be open unless the weather was bad, and seagulls would sometimes land on the opening, looking for food. On one occasion I caught one smack in the head when I threw a raw Brussels Sprout at it. It did not come back! All the broadcasting and engineering crew would take turns at cooking and doing the washing up, with variable results. Nick's girlfriend of the time was an excellent cook - I recall a stunning lasagne she created on one occasion. At the other end of the spectrum was D.J Victor Hartman's notorious, noxious, inedible and utterly vile Spam Curry that looked like a pan of wobbly pink vomit with added chilli. I think he made it as a ploy to get out of ever having to cook again. It worked.

Some time ago I promoted the Flock web browser. Well it is now no more. The developers have decided to abandon the project and go and work on something else. It is a real shame, as Flock was quite different to most other browsers - it fully integrated with most of the popular social networking sites, which was a real bonus to those who use such things. Personally I am FaceBook phobic, and steer clear of such things, but if it works for you. A new alternative social web browser is Rockmelt. I have downloaded the OS X version, but am unable to give you a review, as you need to have a FaceBook logon in order to use it. Since I would rather saw off both my legs with a rusty bread knife than use FaceBook, I am somewhat painted into a corner. The Windows and OS X versions of Rockmelt can be downloaded here. Perhaps you can take a look and let me know what you think?

The video clip this week is the trailer for a new movie "Winter in Wartime" - a Dutch film about the final months of the German occupation of the Netherlands in WWII. It looks well acted and beautifully filmed; I will definitely be going to see it when it comes out. Click on the video to watch it in full screen high definition - dependant on your connection speed, of course.

From the City to the Country.

Above are a couple of photos taken during a brief sojourn into the provinces yesterday; both shots were taken in rural Kent - you can see more of the same by visiting my Flickr site. The upper shot shows sunset over a thorn tree, and the lower shot is of an extremely rare, classic Bedford Romany camper van, photographed in the car park of the Chequers pub in Heaverham.

We also visited a pub that has a reputation that borders on urban myth; it is regarded a place that people have heard about, but few are actually certain that it really exists. The Pub is the Old House at Home, at Ightham, near Sevenoaks in Kent. It has no pub sign outside, no publicity or hanging floral baskets. It looks like a somewhat dishevelled and run down private cottage in the middle of a picturesque village. When you go inside it is like stepping back into the 1930's - I felt it was almost like being part of a lost episode of All Creatures Great and Small. The pub does not serve lager or much in the way of spirits, instead it has four superbly kept local real ales, served directly from the barrel, over a bar that looks like it has not been changed or varnished for over sixty years. The place was populated by friendly locals, all of whom seemed to own a dog of indeterminate parentage. There was a lovely log fire in an large inglenook fire place, no juke box or one armed bandits - indeed, I am not entirely sure that the place was wired for electricity. The pub is the polar opposite of the likes of Erith's Potion bar. Regulars from there would absolutely detest the Old House - they would say that it was run down, scruffy and in the middle of nowhere. For precisely these, and a number of other reasons (great real ale, a sense of history and character) I absolutely love the place.

I am thinking about starting a competition - what do you think? I get a lot of leaflets from pizza delivery companies and other deliver to your door food services. The trouble is, some of them are absolutely miles from my house. Any food would be congealed and stone cold by the time it arrived. Don't these people think about their target areas when they deliver the leaflets? It must be a big financial drain, sending out leaflets to people who will never order your products because they are too far from you. I wonder what the furthest distance between fast food outlet and potential recipient is? Add a comment with your submission for furthest leaflet below.

I was very fortunate to attend a corporate bash at the not open to the public BT Tower on Tuesday this week; I got to go up to the former restaurant on the 34th floor, which has been modernised and refitted as a private cocktail bar for corporate entertaining. Nowadays the infamous rotating floor is only fired up two or three times a year; I was very fortunate to be there on one of those rare occasions. I would have loved to have taken my camera, as the views over night time London were truly staggering. Unfortunately photography is prohibited for security reasons.

The GC's nightclub saga may have now finally come to a conclusion. I had not been able to say anything for legal reasons, but I have been in pretty much continuous contact with both Bexley Council's planning department, and the local Police regarding the subject. There was to be a planning application meeting at Bexley Council offices between the club organisers and the Police, who were opposing the application on public order and increased crime grounds. I had been asked to attend to represent the views of local residents. I received an Email from the Police on Friday morning, telling me that the planning application had been withdrawn by the people behind GC's, and that it was now all over. We shall see, as has been said before, the price of democracy is eternal vigilance. Time will tell.

My Asus EEE PC has died. The Ubuntu Linux O/S build reported several kernel errors and then locked up in a sulk. I think I will flatten the installation and reinstall a clean version from scratch. More work - ho hum.

I was walking towards Morrison's in Erith from the shopping centre earlier today; I was in the process of crossing the road using the well marked zebra crossing when a people carrier zoomed past, causing me to jump out of the way. The driver was talking animatedly on his mobile phone and completely ignored me. Incensed, I followed his vehicle around the car park as he selected a parking space. When he emerged from the vehicle, I challenged him with "Are you aware that it is a criminal offence to use a mobile telephone whilst driving?" and before he could respond, "It is also an offence under the Road Traffic Act to fail to stop at a pedestrian crossing when it is in use". He, it has to be said, was rather taken aback (he was a rather scrawny little bloke with what looked like his Mother In Law in the back of the vehicle). He stammered an apology - I think he thought I was about to hit him - which was absolutely never going to be the case - a well chosen word and a pointed finger do quite well enough, thank you. Okay, I am six foot four, stockily built and wear size 12 steel toe capped boots, but that is mere window dressing. A well defined sense of right and wrong and the rage (tm) are more than sufficient to power Captain Tweed.

I have just found out that former Radio Caroline ship mate Nick Jackson is now working at Absolute Radio (what used to be called Virgin Radio). You can read all about him here. I must get in contact with him, as we have not spoken in ages.

This weeks' video clip is a classic sketch from Not the Nine O'Clock News. Brilliant.