I rarely comment on news items that have national relevance, and almost never on those that have an international basis. I am making an exception this week due to the strong local connection as well as the huge international impact that the story has caused. As I am sure that all readers are fully aware, there have been a series of catastrophic floods in Nepal, killing many and leaving even more people missing. As you may be aware, the largest Nepalese community outside of Nepal is based locally in Plumstead and Woolwich. The effects of the natural disaster must have been appalling for all Nepalese people, irrespective of where they are now living. From what I understand, many of the Nepalese expat community have lost friends or relatives, or are still awaiting news of those who have yet to be found, whether dead or alive. One particular person who is currently believed still to be missing is a lady called Sarada Simkhada, who is a senior nurse at the Darent Valley Hospital. She was on a visit to mount Kailash in Nepal, one of the areas badly affected by the unprecedented flooding. She is one of many whose fate has yet to be established. It is thought that some may never be found. Another medical professional working for the NHS is Pravin Atmakur, a psychiatrist who was visiting Tibet. His wife has now travelled to Nepal to help the search for him. The impact of the terrible natural disaster will affect Nepalese people both in Nepal and in the UK, among many other places that the diaspora now live.
I was sent the photo above (click on it to see a larger version) by regular reader and occasional contributor Lincoln. The vintage photograph is in the form of a postcard, which shows The Running Horses pub, The Erith Riverside swimming baths, and a small portion of Erith Riverside Gardens. Looking at the cars in the photograph, it would appear that the image was taken in the early 1970's. The swimming baths was closed down in 2006, and demolished in 2008, to make way for residential apartments on the site. The pub is still there, although its' appearance has now changed somewhat, with the addition of external customer smoking shelters and a pergola.
Over the last nearly three years visitors to Dartford will have noticed that The Orchard Theatre has been closed for major building and remedial work. The reason for this was that during a routine survey in early 2023, it was discovered that large parts of the roof of the civic building had been constructed out of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete - RAAC. This material was popular amongst builders in the 1970s and early 1980s, as it was originally judged to be strong, light and durable. Unfortunately, it was only discovered in the decades that followed that it could quickly degrade, causing potential structural failures. Thus it needed to be replaced when it was discovered. Dartford Borough Council soon determined that the theatre would have to shut for an extended period of time, and that major remedial work had to be undertaken. In what I feel was quite a clever move, they got a contractor to construct a temporary theatre, which they called Orchard West, which was constructed in Hythe Street. The temporary building proved to be a great success, attracting many theatre goers, and keeping theatre staff in gainful employment. It has now been announced that the remedial construction work to the original Orchard Theatre is nearing completion, since it began in September 2023. In addition to extensive work on the roof, the opportunity was taken to completely refurbish The Orchard Theatre, which had been in operation since the early 1980's, and was starting to get quite tired in its original form. The entire refurbishment plan ended up costing £28.4 million, some of which I understand was met by insurers. The original Orchard Theatre will be reopened in December, with the traditional pantomime. It is most gratifying to see a local Council with the vision to come up with a creative solution to the problem it was facing. I somehow doubt that Bexley Borough Council would have come up with a similar scheme.
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This year marks the 55th anniversary of the release of Stanley Kubrick’s film “A Clockwork Orange”, much of which was filmed on location in Thamesmead. Set in a flamboyantly stylised near-future where gangs of disenfranchised teenagers indulge in narcotic cocktails and revel in acts of ‘ultraviolence’, the film centres on Alex (Malcolm McDowell) and his band of droogs. McDowell’s performance in A Clockwork Orange was a major influence on the late Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the Joker in the modern classic Christopher Nolan directed "Dark Knight" Batman trilogy. Both are charming sociopaths who seek to disrupt the status quo of their respective societies. Kubrick is considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of cinema, directing classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, Full Metal Jacket, and The Shining. With a career spanning almost half a century, Stanley Kubrick is known for his meticulous attention to detail and long, rigorous productions. He made a total of 13 feature films, taking longer breaks after each completion. Despite that, his films have long been remembered and served as an inspiration for both filmmakers and viewers. Filming took place between September 1970 and April 1971, making A Clockwork Orange the quickest film shoot in his career. Technically, to achieve and convey the fantastic, dream-like quality of the story, he filmed with extreme wide-angle camera lenses. On the heels of depicting a distant future with everyday space travel in 2001, Kubrick depicted a cold, unforgiving dystopian near-future in A Clockwork Orange. With decrepit landscapes and crime-ridden streets, the sci-fi future depicted in A Clockwork Orange is more than a little alarming. By using the (then) modern, minimalist architecture of Thamesmead for shooting locations, Kubrick transports audiences to the kind of dark world where experimental behavioural therapies are used to turn everybody into mindless drones. A Clockwork Orange is based on the Anthony Burgess novel of the same name about Alex DeLarge and his journey to redemption through experimental therapy and techniques, after committing a series of crimes with his gang. Despite all the violence, both the novel and Kubrick's film remain surprisingly popular. At the height of his violent escapades, Kubrick's Alex commits a home invasion and injures one woman so horribly that she dies. Later, while facing the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence, Alex chooses to undergo the controversial "Ludovico technique" - a kind of brainwashing programme that renders Alex incapable of performing violence, though at the expense of his own free will. During treatment, Alex is strapped to a chair and forced to watch violent films. He is then injected with a chemical agent that makes him physically sick, thus conditioning him to associate violence with physical illness. Stanley Kubrick filmed many scenes in the movie on location in Thamesmead, which was a new development at the time. The whole film is set in a dystopian near - future Britain. In one of the film’s most famous scenes, Alex throws fellow gang members Dim and Georgie into Southmere Lake, which is adjacent to Binsey Walk at Thamesmead South Housing Estate. This is 200 metres north of Tavy Bridge precinct, where Alex walks home at night through an elevated plaza whistling and kicking rubbish. Even though the scene lasts less than two minutes, it took the perfectionist Kubrick six days to film. Like many of Kubrick films, it received mixed reviews from film critics, but upon reevaluation, is considered a classic. The movie also received four Oscar nominations including three for Kubrick for writing, directing, and producing. Many of Stanley Kubrick's films have been restored for preservation and have continued to leave an impact with movie goers. Many famous directors have been influenced by him due to his filming style and inventive ways of telling a story through camera movements and framing, all of which is evident in the dystopian crime film. Ironically for a film set in the near future, many of the locations in and around Tavy Bridge in Thamesmead have now been redeveloped. In 2009, another production was based in Thamesmead, set in the same near future, dystopian universe as A Clockwork Orange. This was the Channel 4 / E4 science fiction superhero comedy / drama Misfits. The TV show, which lasted for five series, featured a group of dispossessed teenagers who were undergoing community service sentences for various petty crimes; they were caught outside during a supernatural thunderstorm and who subsequently acquired special abilities. Initially, the show focused on five young adults, each gaining a superpower which mirrors their character. The group of unwilling superheroes were based at the Lakeside Centre, on the banks of Southmere Lake in Thamesmead.
The frequently fire hit EMR scrap yard located in Manor Road, Erith - as you can see above, that I have extensively written about recently has been back in the news over the last week, but for an entirely separate reason. The UK based company, European Metal Recycling, otherwise known as EMR has secured a huge contract with British Telecom to provide recycling facilities for thousands of tons of high quality copper cabling that BT will be removing from pylons and digging up from underground over the next decade. EMR has numerous depots in and around the UK, and the one in Erith would only be handling a relatively small percentage of the recycling work. Nevertheless, it will almost certainly be worth a lot of money to the company. The reason for this need to remove the copper cabling is that as the UK migrates from legacy analogue telephone systems to digital ones with connections supplied by fibre optic cables, the long established copper cabling becomes redundant, and can be removed and sold off. As some readers will be aware, some years ago I worked very briefly for BT as the lead IT Project Manager for their client BBC Wales (which I utterly hated) in the BT Tower, a building which in itself is now being sold off to be converted into a hotel (when I was based there, the outside of the BT Tower is very impressive, but the inside - with the exception of parts of the ground floor, which are occasionally open to external visitors - was an utter dingy dump) it looked like it had not seen a lick of paint, or a decent clean since the mid 1970's, and apart from a few office spaces on the lower floors, has actually been mostly empty and unused for years. In the short time I was working at the company, the floor on which I was based housed not only the team that I was working for, but also the project team that was planning the migration to Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), but also the subsequent removal of the analogue copper cabling, which would become surplus to requirements. I got to speak to several members of that project team on a casual basis. There was an internal running joke that at the time - if BT was to sell off all of its copper cabling, the resultant cash influx would exceed the market capitalisation of the company, and according to their own financial rules, they would have to remunerate all of the shareholders with those profits, and then close the organisation down. Of course that is never going to happen in this manner. It is thought that even after flooding the market over several years, the increased cost of copper will raise at least £2 billion for BT and its subsidiary Openreach. The reason for this is that copper prices have been rising steadily over the last few years, as it is used in the multitude of new data centres that are being constructed to house AI servers. Until the AI bubble eventually bursts, as it inevitably will, the price of copper will continue to rise. The knock-on effect of this will be that companies like EMR in Erith will make substantial profits on the back of the extensive project. This may well prove to be beneficial to local employment and an increased amount of money in the economy. Time no doubt will tell.
