Mini moto madness.

The photo above shows the newly boarded and shuttered Cross Keys pub. Strangely the place still has all the lights switched on inside. Rumour has it the place is up for sale for the relatively low price of £90,000. I suppose this reflects the amount of internal work needed to bring the place up to scratch, and to replace the carpets, as I am sure that horse poo must be very difficult to get out of the shag pile. The place never recovered from the late summer traveller invasion. You can read about the story by clicking here. I am going to Email Shepherd Neame to see if they might consider renovating the place and opening it as one of their excellent pubs serving superb quality real ale. I know they are actively expanding their estate at present - whilst property is relatively cheap in the current economic climate. Coincidentally, there are builders in the Nordenfeldt pub at the other end of Erith; rumours abound that the building is about to be converted into residential flats. More on this soon.

Just as I took the photo of the pub above, I heard the unmistakeable "wasp in a biscuit tin" rasp of a tiny two stroke engine coming from Erith Riverside Gardens. I looked over from my vantage point outside of the Post Office and saw a chav on an illegal mini - moto bike. Not only was he whizzing up and down, making a terrible racket on a Sunday morning, but he was giving rides to a couple of toddlers. One toddler nearly fell off his perch on the handle bars when the scumbag rider swerved violently to avoid a woman walking her dog. I got photos of the whole thing, and these have already been passed to the local Police. I am only showing the rider, not the innocent small children in the photo below. One of the kids was screaming and clearly terrified, and I thought the behaviour of the bike rider was a form of child abuse. The individual needs a stern talking to, and the bike (which in any case is completely illegal) should be crushed. People have very short memories - it is not that long ago that a youth from Erith was killed on a mini moto. He was illegally riding it on the road when the poor quality rear wheel bearing collapsed and he lost control, crashing into a parked van. The impact split the plastic fuel tank on the miniature bike and soaked him in petrol, which was then ignited by the red hot exhaust manifold. I don't believe he made it to hospital.

The News Shopper is reporting that following my recent observations in respect of illegal scrap metal dealers, the police in Erith and Crayford have been carrying out road blocks, stopping scrap vans and checking the operators for the correct legal permits and insurance. There have been a number of arrests made - click here for more on the story. 

I don't know about you, but I think some of the major charitable organisations should get their planning sorted out; every Christmas one gets assaulted by about half a dozen different charity collectors at any public transport hub or shopping centre. I get "charity fatigue" and I am sure that I am not alone. Why don't they spread their collection campaigns to other times of the year? People usually have less, not more money at Christmas, and running a gauntlet of massed charity collectors outside of train stations and supermarkets is not the best way to encourage willing donations. Spreading collections more evenly throughout the year would seem a sensible approach. Talking of trains, Darryl of the excellent 853 blog has said everything that needs to be said about the woeful level of service and information supplied by South Eastern Trains over the cold period. To add insult to injury, South Eastern Trains did not grit any of the platforms on the Dartford to London via Greenwich line. Obviously, for much of the snowy period, there were absolutely no trains running for you to stand on the platform to wait for. Once they were back, it would not have taken much effort to out down some grit and salt. To top this, Erith station main entrance has been taped off since early last week; only a year since the exterior of the Victorian building had a complete restoration, and now chunks of masonry are falling off the crenelated edge of the roof and down onto the main entrance. On Friday I saw a couple of structural engineers surveying the damage; I don't know how long it will take to fix, but you can guarantee South Eastern will get it done on the cheap.

Erith has two new retailers; one opened last weekend and is a branch of the popular Card Factory. The company have taken the old unit previously occupied by Mambocinos, before they moved to the much larger double unit they now operate from. I had not heard of Card Factory before, but after doing a bit of research, they sound like the kind of thing the Erith Riverside Centre could really do with. The second new arrival in the town is a flooring and bedding retailer; they are currently renovating the old Woolworth's building between Farm Foods and the Health Centre, as you can see from my photo below - click on the picture for a larger view.

I see that Plumstead has just got a 24 hour drive through McDonald's; it is located on the island of land that houses Plumstead Bus garage and is surrounded by Pettman Crescent. After a bit of online research, I have discovered that the new Plumstead branch is a franchise owned by local businessman Talmoor Sheikh. He already owns the Woolwich branch - famously the first McDonald's in the U.K. You can read about the £2.3 million Plumstead development by clicking here. Apparently the existing McDonald's in Crayford has applied for permission to open 24/7. I wonder how long it will take before the Erith branch does the same? I think it unlikely to succeed, as unlike Plumstead and Crayford, the Erith branch is slap bang in the middle of a residential area, and has an old people's retirement home directly opposite.

I love Wikipedia; the stories about its' alleged inaccuracy seem to be nothing more than an urban myth; I have yet to come across an entry that is obviously incorrect or misleading. I find it to be the first place I will look when wanting to learn about a given subject; The site is soliciting for donations at present, but feedback from former employees seems to suggest that things are not all that they might seem. You can read the story here. Anyway, what other website would explain the subtleties of the Bristol Stool Scale?

Christmas came early to Pewty Acres this week. Shirley and the kids came up to stay on Friday, and on Saturday we all went up to my Mum's for a traditional roast dinner and to exchange presents. They are all off to Ghana to visit family on Tuesday and won't be back until the New Year, so we thought to bring the festival forward instead of the kids missing out altogether. You can see more photos here.

The video this week is another curry recipe from Titli's Busy Kitchen - a comprehensive and easy to follow recipe website, that also has a strong sense of humour. The recipe is a quick and easy, but traditional Chicken Madras. Please feel free to leave a comment below, as always.

The Acne Carriage.

The Ship pub in West Street (featured above) has now re - opened following the suspension of its' licence, as per my previous posting here. The rowdy clan of drug dealing ne'er do wells who took over the place have now been dealt with by the local constabulary, and hopefully it is now business as usual. Pity they don't serve any real ales, choosing to stick with the gassy and chemical laden grot such as Stella Artois, that the local chavs neck down by the gallon. Ian played a free gig there on Friday night to try and drum up support for the landlord, who by all accounts is a decent fellow who was caught up in a situation that rapidly spiralled out of control.

The Acne Carriage. A great new definition of a badly souped up chav car. I have always thoroughly detested customised cars; when a youngster I always valued authenticity and originality over the laughable changes the ignorant make to production vehicles.

Even as a teenage driver I always had a preference for “interesting” cars. Whilst friends had Escorts and Fiestas, I went for an old Triumph Dolomite – it was slow and not very reliable, but it had a lovely interior with lots of real wood, and great big comfortable arm chairs for seats. I used to pootle around at a sedate pace and watch the world go by. I never once got stopped by the Police, or got into any kind of motoring trouble. A week after I sold it, the drivetrain fell out – something I genuinely knew nothing about. Nowadays it seems there is the same bone headed minority of young drivers that soup up sad old shopping cars with improbable spoilers and under car lighting. I call such vehicles Acne Carriages, as mentioned above. The Citroen Saxos, Vauxhall Novas and their ilk almost always end up with a giant wing over the rear tailgate; the spotty oiks who own the asthmatic poser mobiles have not the faintest clue about aerodynamics and vehicle engineering. The cars are all front wheel drive. The spoiler (if it actually does anything at all) is meant to provide more down force on the rear of the car at speed – but this only applies to rear wheel drive vehicles. The chavs who stick them on shopping cars are at best doing nothing except increasing drag. At worst they are actually making the grip and handling substantially worse. They don't seem to realise that it is far cheaper to get “dickhead” tattooed on their foreheads – and the effect is just the same.

Almost two years to the day from the last great Pewty Acres fly infestation, and they are back again. For three days this week, I have arrived home from work to find the kitchen and living room infested with house flies; I gave up counting at thirty on the first day, after liberally applying chemical warfare (fly spray) against the repulsive creatures. I then ended up polishing every flat surface with antiseptic cleaner cloths, and hoovering thoughout the house to remove the corpses. I have checked everywhere I can think of in case a small creature had crawled under a piece of furniture and died, but absolutely nothing has been found; anyway, I would have noticed the horrible smell long before any flies would have had a chance to hatch. The doors and windows had not been opened in the interim, and I am utterly at a loss as to where the repulsive invaders originated from. All I can think of is that I have a wooden floor under the Wilton carpet in the living room; there is a void beneath this and the ground - I reckon something like a mouse or small bird must have crawled through one of the air bricks that keep the void ventilated. It must have then died and the resulting flies have found a tiny crack or whole to get through into the lounge. As said, this is not the first time this has happened, and I am absolutely at a loss as to what I can do. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this entry. *Stop Press* The mystery appears to have been solved. I was doing a clean of the lounge earlier this afternoon, and moved my heavy, 1930's era vintage oak folding dining table from its' normal location. Underneath the central podium of the folded table is a small void between the base and the wooden feet. The carpet in this area has a multitude of small white fly eggs and areas where the carpet pile had been eaten away, back all the way to the hessian backing material. Unable to eat rotten meat or poo (the house flys' favoured food) they must have turned to the woollen carpet pile instead. This would explain why the flies hatched and died within hours - they were suffering from severe malnutrition. I have comprehensively blitzed the area, and nothing now remains of the unwelcome invasion. Here's hoping I don't see it again.

Units seven and eight of Erith Riverside shopping centre have been let, and are now being worked on by a team of shop fitters; I have yet to discover who has taken the space, but it is good to see the units gradually being taken up after several years where the centre felt like something from a George Romero zombie movie. I understand that the high rental prices that are being charged has put off a number of retailers in the past.

I have recently been invited to join an online community, the Plumstead Integration Project. Their leader, Doctor Marta Rabikowska invited me - she's an occasional reader of the Maggot Sandwich, and realised that I spend a great deal of time in and around Plumstead. The community group meets up from 7.30pm onwards at O'Dowd's pub on Plumstead High Street on the first Tuesday of each month. I will try and get along there soon.

I see an online petition has been set up to protest against the proposed Ebbsfleet giant white horse sculpture. Personally I don't find it particularly repulsive, though I do think the money could be put to better use elsewhere. Details of the campaign here.

The photo above shows the view looking West along West Street from Erith towards Lower Belvedere. In the foreground is the excellent kebab shop the Yildiran, which is frequented by more than the usual after pub drunkards - local cabbies, shift workers and the local Police eat at the place regularly,  such is the quality of their cooking. You can read an online review of the place by clicking here. Some people bang on about how unhealthy kebabs are – personally, though I only eat one or two kebabs a year (and avoid the notorious fat saturated doner like the plague, in favour of the shish, halep or adana kebab). What can be so wrong with marinated, lean grilled lamb, with shredded raw vegetables and unleavened bread? Answers below if you will. Erith really has nowhere for locals to go for a proper sit down meal with cutlery, rather than eating with your hands as with KFC or McDonald's. You have to go to Upper Belvedere, Northumberland Heath or Barnehurst for that pleasure. There are some pretty decent takeaways, like Massala Reef, but I think the area would definitely benefit from something a little more upmarket and formal. Suggestions as to what you would like to see, if you will.

I am getting rather ticked off with people nicking my photos and calling them their own - it has got so bad that one chap has passed off a photo I took of a ship moored on Erith Pier and subsequently won a photographic competition with it! Suffice to say I have contacted the competition organisers, and the guy has been stripped of his award. All my photos on Flickr are under the Creative Commons licence - basically people can reproduce them and do pretty much anything with them, as long as they don't make any money with my photos, and I get full credit as the author of the work. The licence is legally enforceable, and I will uphold my rights vigorously. You can see my Flickr photo stream here.

I am still getting advertising leaflets for takeaways from miles away; only this week I got a flyer for a pizza delivery place at the Brent, on the far side of Dartford (and the actual historical place of birth of famous proto revolutionary Wat Tyler). Why they would want to advertise in Erith is way beyond me; any pizza scootered from the Brent to anywhere in Erith would be cold and rubbery by the time it was delivered. What a waste of paper and effort on the part of the vendors.

I see that Radio Caroline are having a presence at the O2 Arena this week, as part of a festival celebrating 1960's music. You can read more about it here.

The Daily Mail are currently running a promotion to give away DAB radios to any reader who collects 60 tokens, one from each day of the detestable tabloid rag that unsuccessfully masquerades as a quality paper. What supreme irony it is that only two years ago a leader in that very paper called DAB “The Betamax of radio technologies”. You can read the original story by clicking here. They seem to have rather substantially changed their tune now. The Register carried more on the story, that you can read here. The irony is that the analogy of DAB and Betamax is inaccurate. DAB is a poor, not fit for purpose and outdated broadcasting system. Betamax was technically a superior video recording and playback system to VHS, that was crippled by initially only having blank tapes that lasted an hour - not long enough to record an entire movie or sports fixture. People bought VHS systems because of this. By the time Betamax could handle longer, thinner tapes, the market had been dominated by the inferior VHS system. If you wish to learn more about the great video format war of the early 1980's, click here for more.

It seems after Plumstead, Barnehurst has also got its' own online community, winningly called Barnehurst Online. It seems that more and more areas are getting their act together to produce virtual village notice boards filled with local news and information. I wonder if Erith will get one soon? The Erith Town Talk site hardly counts, as it seems to have been abandoned some time ago, and never had much in the way of content at the best of times.

At work, the multinational professional services company that I work for has been making a few promotional videos, one of which features a couple of free runners (often called Parkour running) dressed as accountants, racing across London to reach Head Office. I have to say the video in question is rather naff, as pretty much all corporate videos tend to be; though the free running is excellent. Parkour began in France, but soon spread world wide. Surprisingly one of the first places in the UK to have an active free running scene was Erith in the early 1990's - probably due to the preponderance of concrete obstacles that formed the hideous old Erith Town Centre. The tradition seems to have been upheld, and the video this week is of two seemingly fearless and very agile lads free running in and around the new Erith Town Centre.

Victories.

It is really pleasing to be able to report a couple of victories this week; one big, and one small. I'll start with the big one, which if you recognise the figure depicted in the slate statue above, (click on the photo for a larger view) you will already know is that of Alan Turing. Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced his apology on Thursday to Alan Turing, father of modern computing, code breaker and genius in reaction to the appalling way he had been treated after the war. This was a direct response to the online petition I and many other people signed on the Downing Street website. The strength of feeling shown by many people from both the UK and way beyond, forced the government to make the statement you can read online here.

In addition to breaking the Germans' Enigma code, Turing was behind the theoretical basis of all modern computing; his work led to the development of Colossus (photo below) which was used to help break the fiendishly complicated Lorenz cipher. Churchill said that Turing was the single individual who did the most to shorten the second world war by as much as two years.

On Thursday this week, I saw one of the Woolwich ferries being towed downstream past Erith, presumably going to Denton Wharf near Gravesend for some heavy duty maintenance in their dry dock.

Much has been made in the press over the last week or so of Terry Wogan's decision to stand down from the BBC Radio 2 breakfast show. I have no strong feelings either way, as I am already on my way to work when Sir Terry holds forth over the airwaves, and don't get to hear him. What does get my goat is the inexplicable way in which BBC management have neglected to dispense with the services of Sarah Kennedy. She frequently slurs her words as if she is on high dose prescription medication; she crashes vocals, blathers on about inconsequential matters and generally wastes licence payers money with her inane wittering. One of the few blessings is she is frequently off sick, with Aled Jones or Alex Lester sitting in her place - both of whom are far better company on air. The sooner she is pensioned off the better. Personally my favourite radio station is the incomparable WNKR who this weekend have been transmitting a fascinating documentary about former 1970's offshore radio broadcaster Radio Atlantis, amongst their regular shows.

After visiting my Dad, I was waiting for the train at Plumstead railway station earlier this week; there were a couple sitting on one of the benches - it was immediately obvious that they were in a state of extreme refreshment, to the extent that neither were capable of even sitting upright; to be honest I think several recreational pharmaceuticals may also have been involved. The woman slurred to her male partner in a loud stage whisper "let's get his laptop bag" - a comment obviously intended at me. I (from an out of knife point distance) told her where she could get off, and what dire and malevolent consequences would result to her and her festering compatriot as a result of any attempt at theft. I love my size 12 steel toecapped boots. Suffice to say they left me well alone.

I touched very briefly on the issue of Chavs with threatening dogs last week, without really going into any detail regarding the problem. The issue would appear to be that the local low - lives get themselves the most aggressive, ugly and menacing looking fighting dogs as a form of street legal weapon; they know that the Police will stop and search them on a regular basis, as it is patently obvious that they are part of the criminal class. One easy way around being arrested for carrying a knife or other martial implement is to instead be in possession of a biological weapon in the form of a Staffordshire bull terrier, rottweiler or pit bull terrier - the latter are illegal in the UK, but the kind of people who own them tend to be criminal anyway. They then prowl the streets, menacing honest passers by with their semi feral canine weaponry. This behaviour apparently began in the western United States amongst organised drug dealing gangs; the transition to Europe began when R&B and (c)rap videos featured vicious dogs. The Chavs then picked up and replicated this, hoping to emulate their wonky baseball capped, pointy fingered "heroes". Talking of (c)rap - what precisely is the point of shouting about their "bitches and hoes" over a drum machine, accompanied by samples nicked from records made by people who can actually play their instruments and sing? Answers below if you will. Personally the old refrain from the 1980's seems to hold truth in respect of chavs: - "Nuke them 'till they glow, then shoot them in the dark". Quite.

The other victory this week was with 1 & 1 Internet. As you may recall they tried to charge me for a domain registration that they never carried out; I had some sharp words with them about their frankly fraudulent activities, and they have now backed down, cancelling the invoice and refunding me my registration fee. Let's hope that it is an end to the matter.

If you wish to view my online Flickr photo albums, please click on this link to see my photographs.

One thing that occurs to me as I make my way around central London is, just how many tourist photos am I an unwitting subject of? You see people snapping away and quite often you just know you are in shot. I am not overly concerned about this as the government continually video record and subject the general population to surveillance - something I feel we should all challenge, rather than just meekly accept. You can read a great deal more about the whole situation, including the national ID card debacle and the database state by clicking here.

This weeks' video clip is from a tv show that almost single handedly justified the payment of my own licence fee. It shows my role model James May reaching the very edge of space as the passenger in an American U2 spy plane. Watch and enjoy.

Snow Leopard and Steel Panther.

The photo above shows the moment I started the upgrade of my iMac to OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Suffice to say all I had to do was insert the installation DVD and follow the simple instructions. Forty minutes and two reboots later I had a fully updated Macintosh. Snow Leopard superficially is not very different from its' predecessor, but under the bonnet it has been completely rewritten to make the operating system smaller, sleeker and more efficient. It certainly seems run make my Mac run around 20% faster with no upgrade in hardware. This is a lesson Micro$oft could do with learning – forget the bloat and concentrate on efficiency.

Talking of efficiency, this is also something the local bus company could take on board. The 99 bus service has now been running on its' new route since the middle of January; I get their double deckers running past my house – something that has taken quite a bit of getting used to. The problem is, the buses seem to get bogged down in Slade Green, in the area close to Slade Green station. Last week I waited forty minutes for a 99 bus in Erith, then three turned up at the same time! One then promptly went out of service and the passengers decamped onto the bus I was on; bearing in mind it was already crowded, it made for a very unpleasant experience. I know a lot of people have been whingeing about the situation, what I am unsure about is just how many have contacted the bus company or Transport for London to do anything about it. I have also noticed a marked increase in ticket fraud on the route – some bus drivers are more vigilant than others in policing the problem, only yesterday I witnessed two Chav girls trying to board using a single ticket; fortunately the driver spotted this and forbade either from getting on board. After much foul mouthed protestation, and with the driver threatening to call the police, both girls got off. A small victory.

My tickets have now arrived for the recording of two episodes of the excellent wartime radio comedy series Hut 33. No doubt this will merit a blog entry of its' own in due course.

I notice from the news that former deputy London Mayor Ian Clement has been charged with fraud over his expenses claims whilst in office. It will take a jury to determine his guilt or otherwise; I have to say I used to know him slightly, as we went to the same school, and if my somewhat hazy memory serves, he was a right old Tory Boy way back then.

I have seen several stories in both the local and national press, as to how gang members and other scumbag low lives are using dogs as weapons.

Local free radio station WNKR get a mention in the Media Network programme on Radio Netherlands International, the world's longest running media and entertainment radio show. You can see the on line version by following the link here. Radio Netherlands are one of the foremost shortwave broadcasters, in both Dutch and English. Shortwave radio is a rather overlooked medium nowadays, but it provides a fascinating and challenging way of hearing the world. Some of the links on the right of this text will take you to shortwave radio websites – have a click around and see what you think.

I have just added my name to the online petition to get Alan Turing a posthumous pardon and knighthood. Turing was a mathematician, cryptanalyst and Olympic standard athlete whose theories formed a large part of the foundation of modern computing - the Turing test for artificial intelligence was created by, and named after him. He was instrumental in breaking the four rotor German Naval Enigma code during WW2, and much of his theoretical work enabled Tommy Flowers and his team at the Dollis Hill Post Office research station to construct Colossus – the World's first computer. Turing was a true genius, who foresaw the computer age in what he described the “General purpose computer”. He died by his own hand, aged 41 after being persecuted, stripped of his security clearance and eventually being forced to undergo chemical castration due to his “mental illness”. His crime was being gay in pre – 1960's Britain. After insufferable persecution he ate an apple laced with cyanide in an ironic tribute to his favourite story, Snow White. The logo used by Apple Computers showing an apple with a bite taken from it is a direct tribute to Alan Turing. The video clip below from Manchester local television news covers his story, and the campaign both to clear his name and see him officially recognised for his contribution in shortening the second world war by what some historians consider may have been up to two years.

Coincidentally, I am only now discovering that my late Great Uncle Horace may well have had some part in the war time code breaking efforts. I recall when I was a child, he was always extremely reticent about his war time activities, it has only been recently uncovered that he lived in Hendon during the war, and all his adult life he worked for the GPO as a telephone exchange engineer, ending up as chief engineer for the City of London. He was certainly a far more colourful character than anyone in the family realised until only a few weeks ago. It is not beyond belief that he may well have worked at Dollis Hill – on my next visit to Bletchley Park I will attempt to find out.

I am currently sitting in my usual corner of the bar in the Robin Hood and Little John typing this entry whilst awaiting the delivery of my lunch (veggie Kiev with chips, mixed green salad and grilled mushrooms). At the table next to me are a group of six extremely intellectual and vocal Catholic priests and an archetypal bespectacled, buck toothed nun, talking shop (subjects have included the slow chanting by Carthusian monks, and their special devotion; the use of mea culpa when making a mistake in a chant, and later the morality of revolution – all heavy stuff) and mainly drinking Brakspeares best bitter – every so often, one of the younger ones keeps on breaking into bits of hymns – most off-putting. It is almost like a deleted scene from an episode of Father Ted!

Can someone please enlighten me as to why some parents are so keen on getting their babies' ears pierced? It strikes me as nothing short of child abuse – bodily mutilation under a socially acceptable guise. The child has no say in the matter, and if, at a later point they decide to remove the earrings, they are going to be left with a permanent scar. I have major issues with the whole concept of making non medical changes to ones' body. Basically I think it is unmerited – hence my previous postings regarding tattoos. I still find it beyond comprehension that the Point to point Erith tattoo parlour offers gift tokens, which many of the local population seem more than keen to take up. The place seems to be almost continually busy usually with repeat customers. I suppose it takes all sorts.

Period comedy movie about offshore radio “The Boat that Rocked” comes out on DVD and Bluray next week. As I previously posted, the film is far better than one would be led to believe; the portrayal of life on board an offshore radio station, though idealised, is far closer to the truth than I was expecting.

Here is a video of an absolutely stunning guitar / drum solo by Satchel, guitarist with the incomparable heavy rock combo Steel Panther - they rock!

The gangs of Erith.

The photo above (click on it for a larger view) was taken by me on Thursday evening in Alexandra Road, Erith. A rubbish skip had been set alight by local low lives, which had spread to some out buildings at the rear of a house. The Fire Brigade were swiftly on hand to deal with the conflagration, though the smoke the fire produced was noxious in the extreme - to my reckoning some plastics, car tyres and other hydrocarbon based materials were involved. All soon extinguished and made good though.

I was sitting quietly at the bus stop outside of Matalan, waiting for the 99 bus to take me up to Belvedere yesterday, when an altercation took place. At the opposite end of the bus shelter, a hooded figure lurked; I was not overly concerned, as I was far bigger than him, and as always, equipped with my trusty +3 boots of steel toecapped kicking. He was on his mobile telephone, then suddenly looked around to see three further threatening looking chavs accelerating towards him - within seconds the three, led by a particularly odious looking figure, has descended onto the phone bound one at the bus shelter - the leader then immediately proceeded to beat seven bells out of the protagonist. My initial instinct to intervene was overridden after some consideration; it was patently obvious that they were all members of the same gang, and had some internal dispute to resolve in their neanderthal manner. I decided to take a stroll along to the next bus stop, just around the corner and away from the fracas. The next stop is located at Erith mini bus station in front of the shopping centre. My thoughts were confirmed when the bus arrived; the original chav was on board, looking somewhat frayed at the edges, and worse for the wear - he was on his mobile phone, calling his gang mates and other confederates to arrange retribution on those that had assaulted him. From what I overheard (I was sitting directly behind the waste of protoplasm) he was a member of the notorious local T-Block gang, and there was some kind of internal dispute going on. This confirmed my initial suspicions - I am more than happy to let two groups of local organised criminals beat seven bells out of each other, or worse. The sooner they exterminate each other, the better in my opinion. In addition to the T -Block group, the other main local group of organised low - lives is known as the RA gang. The would appear to be arranged along racial lines, with the T-Block being composed of African and Afro Caribbean crooks, and the RA gang run by white scumbags. They are all as bad as each other, and the sooner that the Police can crush them the better. It is a somewhat media intensive entry this week; I have found a video posted onto YouTube by the T - Block gang, which is embedded below. Please be aware that it is not exactly Beckett - as it is full of bad language (in the rare points in the video where you can actually understand what they are on about) - most of the time they are using faux Jamaican patois, so they sound like "gangstas". You have been warned...

Local radio station WNKR are celebrating their 22nd birthday next weekend, which coincides with both the August Bank Holiday, and their change in frequency, due to interference from a Catalan language power house medium wave radio station in Spain, which obliterates their signal at night. You should find that WNKR will move from 1476 KHz medium wave to 1395 KHz, which I understand should be a clearer channel.

I was working from home on Friday; my office is located on the back of Pewty Acres, and as such I don't hear a lot that happens out in the road at the front. When I emerged to look out of the front window a somewhat familiar sight met my eyes; the road was once again closed off and filled with emergency service vehicles. It would appear that two or three vehicles had been involved in a pile up. I could not see much as the event had occurred further along the road, but later in the afternoon when things had quietened down, I managed to get the photo below of the damage caused to one particular rather elderly and unloved car. Ironically the vehicle was parked up directly outside the depot of the Erith branch of European Metal Recycling - one of the largest car scrapyards in the country - a few yards pushing would take it directly to its' fate.



Upper Belvedere pub the Eardley Arms would appear to have closed down. The place has had a reputation as a dive and hang out of local crooks and lager drinkers for some time; there have been rumours that the publican was using the place as a base from which to fence stolen goods, though this has never been confirmed. The place has however had a poor reputation for years. More news as it happens.

I have noticed that the Maggot Sandwich is getting the occasional bit of Chinese spam - a couple of comments have been posted by oriental spammers; I managed to find out what odious crap they were peddling by copying and pasting the Chinese ideograms into Google translator and cranking the handle. Disappointingly it was jut the same kind of junk as those vermin that spam in English.

As previously mentioned, this weeks' update is somewhat multimedia heavy; the next video clip is exceptionally funny - imagine if Darth Vader from the Star Wars movies had the personality of a cockney "Tasty Geezer" gangster boss. Watch the clip below - which contains a lot of bad language - you have been warned.



Bexleyheath based North Kent Amateur Radio Society have been taking part in the annual International lighthouse weekend, setting up an amateur radio station adjacent to the small lighthouse located on the River Thames at Lower Belvedere. You can read more about it by clicking here.

Now for the main video clip of the week; this is a teaser trailer for the forthcoming movie from ace director James Cameron - the most expensive ever made at well over $200 million. It is a sci fi film called Avatar, shot in Hi Definition 3D - (a first) it would appear to be a mix of the Dark Crystal, Aliens and Dances with Wolves. The full film is due out at Christmas. See what you think of the trailer, and please feel free to post a comment below.

Plumstead versus Erith.

The press advertisement above (click on the picture for a larger view) is for a computer based, multi player, virtual world played online, similar to Second Life or the World of WarCraft. Players from around the world could log in, interact, communicate with one another and both compete and collaborate in various challenges online. Nothing unusual there then. Except this was in daily use back in 1984! Many years ahead of its' time. You can read a lot more about Games Computers Play by clicking here. You needed an 8 bit Atari 800 computer, a 300 baud acoustic coupler modem, plus the special software, and a subscription to play. All far too exotic and expensive for a spotty nerd from Upper Belvedere back then, but I did aspire. Click on the image above to see a larger version of the advert - it makes interesting and very far sighted reading. Please feel free to leave a comment below.

I featured a photo of a large silo in the yard of RMC Aggregates, at the junction of James Watt Way and Wheatley Terrace Road in Erith, in a previous Maggot Sandwich posting which you can re - read here. Well, events have overtaken me, and the depot has been closed and the buildings are being demolished. The Silo has already gone, and much of the other cement production equipment is currently in the process of being demolished, cut up by a couple of blokes with Oxy - Propane torches, and taken for scrap - at least they will not have to go far, as the Erith depot of European Metal Recycling is only a few metres away. I wonder what the site will be used for in future? There has been quite some residential development behind Morrisons, on the river edge, but I do not think that the RMC site could be used for apartments, mainly due to the fact it is what is known as a Safeguarded Wharf. In essence this means that the Mayor of London and the Port of London Authority have decreed that the site must remain as a wharf and not be redeveloped for non - industrial use. Here is a shot of the outside of the place taken yesterday. It is all looking rather sad and dreary, even on a bright summer's day.



The event that prompted me to get my camera out and go for a walk along the river front yesterday, was something that occurred on my way across Morrison's car park, on my way home. A number of aeroplanes had been flying over, apparently following the path of the River Thames Eastwards, away from London. I heard the distinctive sound of a Rolls - Royce Griffon aero engine and looked up to see a Supermarine Spitfire Mk XIV in distinctive D - Day livery flying low overhead. I stopped to watch - there can be nothing quite so inspiring as seeing a Spitfire in the air, especially in the area where the Battle of Britain was fought back in 1940. My reverie was broken when I realised that almost no - one else in the car park was watching; they were all far too busy filling their cars with bags of shopping. It would have only taken a minute or so to stop what they were doing and pay a silent tribute to those who kept our shores free from the Nazis back in 1940. Some confused priorities I feel. A few moments later, a fat and spotty chav mother with two dirty faced whelps in a buggy added insult to injury by pointing skywards and saying to them "Look - it's a choo choo plane!" The brain addled, saggy uddered boiler almost certainly thought she was educating her unwashed offspring. Is this the real legacy of the RAF and the Battle of Britain - to leave us in a society where such indifference and plan wrong headedness become every day occurrences? I despair. The only small crumb of comfort I have encountered can be found if you click here.

I see that a travel company has started offering Chav free holidays; a smart marketing move that should prove a big success.

The photo above shows the small vessel, the M.V Wild Eel, and its' owner making his way ashore at Erith, after another hard day as the only full - time licenced commercial eel fisherman on the whole of the River Thames. A trade that has gone on for hundreds of years from the same location.

I have noticed that the Plumstead area is well populated with erudite, opinionated and prolific Bloggers. The likes of Plumsteadshire, Planet Plumstead, Plummy Mummy, 853, and Plumstead Zone 4 along with several others, all show that there is a high level of interest in local issues and events. Erith is only a short distance from Plumstead, it is roughly the same size, and has a very similar social and economic outlook. If you search Blogger by author location, you do come across quite a number of blogs from Erith residents most of which have been started and abandoned, or are only occasionally updated (hint - if you Blog, do it regularly, that way your readers tend to stay around). Anyway, there is no Blog covering events, issues and opinions that affect Erith and its' surroundings, other than the humble Maggot Sandwich. I wonder why? Is Erith less remarkable than Plumstead or Woolwich? I know Plumstead gets many more events, mostly organised by enthusiastic locals; things like Comedy on the Common and the Plumstead Live! music festival. All Erith gets is the River Festival, and even that got unexpectedly cancelled this year. I did Email the organiser to try and discover why, but was not granted the dignity of a reply. Why am I alone in documenting the area? Your thoughts and feedback below, if you please.

This weeks' video clip is slightly unusual, prompted as it was by my sight of a Spitfire over flying Erith yesterday afternoon; it is a complete 21 minute documentary called "Churchill's Island"; the first ever documentary to be awarded an Oscar, this Canadian film from 1941 was aimed at U.S audiences in the months before America joined with war after the Pearl Harbor attack. If the narrator's voice sounds somewhat familiar, it is because it is that of well known actor Lorne Greene. By modern standards, this propaganda film is pretty crude and it is quite obvious to someone exposed to over sixty years of cinema and television since, exactly what strings the makers were hoping to pull with the target audience. Back then, this was cutting edge and extremely rousing stuff, designed to sway American poular opinion into support for Britain and her Commonwealth allies and against Hitler and the Nazi hordes assembled just twenty two miles over the English Channel. It is certainly fascinating as a historical document - see what you think.

Get well Tony.

Above is a photo of Tony, son of Ray, the landlord of the Robin Hood & Little John pub in Bexleyheath. Since this shot was taken by me last year, he's lost a lot of weight and really got himself into good shape. I found out only last night that he went on holiday to Manila in the Philippines a couple of weeks ago. He was out one night with a group of friends in an eight seater mini bus; they were driving along a dark and unlit road when they came across a cyclist without lights, the mini bus swerved to avoid him - hit the curb, and then spun down a bank, rolling four or five times. Tony broke his skull, jaw, shoulder and arm, along with several other serious injuries. He is currently in intensive care in a very high class private hospital in Manila; his Mum and Sister have flown over to be with him, and he has received a couple of blood transfusions. I spoke to his dad last night, and apparently he is getting better by the day. I want to take this opportunity to wish Tony all of the best, and I do hope for a speedy recovery for him.

I had another unpleasant encounter on public transport on Monday of last week; I was on the 99 bus, travelling home from visiting Dad in his nursing home - as I got on the bus outside Plumstead bus station I noticed there was an altercation going on towards the back of the bus. An inspector was trying to get a family of around eight seriously under educated and over fed chavs to either pay for tickets or to get off the bus. They flat out refused - "What the F**ck are you going to do about it then?" was their communal response. The inspector gave up and got off the bus, leaving the victorious chavs on board. They then proceeded to reign over the lower deck, jabbering loudly at each other and completely indifferent to the other bus passengers. The ring leader was a woman of about 22 years old, and 22 stone in weight; she had a small toddler in arms, which she continually referred to one and all as her "baybee" - and when an alighting passenger moved to walk past her and the "baybee" she screeched at them to mind what they were doing, as they might hurt the "baybee". She then, in full view of the passengers, proceeded to change the pooey and stinking nappy of the screaming whelp. Completely demeaning and disgusting - the stench was overpowering. I was strongly minded to intervene in the usual Captain Tweed mode, but since the chav brood had several child members, I felt it was not my place to cause them distress - after all, it was not their fault they were born into a family of utter scum. I can only hope that I don't encounter their like again.

I have upgraded my Asus EeePC 901 netbook to Ubuntu 9.04 Linux, and all is fine, though the webcam is playing up now - maybe I need to do some software surgery on it, in a similar way to the Pewty Acres server farm below - ahem:



As you may be aware, a new Star Trek film is shortly to be released. It is a re-boot of the now somewhat moribund franchise, and tells the story of how the original crew came together through Starfleet Academy. There is only one contentious matter that I am aware of - the publicity material mentions "the Enterprises' first captain, Christopher Pike" when any dedicated Trekker knows that Pike was in fact the second captain of the ship - Robert April was the first. Anorak off for now.

Here is an interesting link - Leonard Plugge - the first pirate radio broadcaster in the U.K - you can read all about him and Radio Normandy in the 1930's here.

WNKR are doing a mammoth Bank Holiday long broadcast; you can pick them up on 1476 KHz medium wave, or in 128Kb / sec stereo online here.

Now for this weeks' video clip. A classic from Genesis, and the opening track from their 1976 album "A Trick of the Tail" - here is "Squonk".

Wee.

"What is this?" I hear you ask. Only a day after my normal weekly Blog posting, here I am with an impromptu start of the week update. Let me explain....

This afternoon I headed out of the office as normal to visit Dad in his nursing home in Plumstead. I got on the train at Cannon Street as I am wont to do when I am working in central London. The train got as far as Deptford when a gang of around eight (I could not be certain as they sat behind me) Chavs got on and proceeded to brag to each other how they had not paid for a ticket, and that they would "shank" (stab) any inspector who asked for it. They then decided to compete with each other to see who could get the most volume out of their mobile phones by playing music at each other. Amazingly, one of the ring leaders, who was probably about fourteen years old, played "Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas - I was dumb struck, as the song was a chart hit when most likely his parents were kids. I ended up despairing - there were too many of them to challenge, and sorely regretting the loss of my Glock 17 pistol (in the early to mid 90's I was a keen Police / Combat Pistol shooter, before the 1997 UK handgun ban). I had Captain Tweed / Charles Bronson crossover visions and thought better of it. Pick the time and the place.

I got off the train at Woolwich Arsenal Station, resolving to continue my journey by bus. I waited at the stop outside the old Woolwich Equitable head office building, opposite the station, where I was accosted by a smack head wanting spare change. I suggested that he go and copulate with himself, and if he approached anyone else at the bus stop, he would see the end of my size 12 steel toecapped boot. The scumbag slunk off in search of easier prey. A suitable bus then arrived - the notorious 380 single decker to Belmarsh high security prison. I don't have much of an idea what a majority of the inmates are like, but looking at their visitors, they have to be exceptionally scary.

Once successfully on the bus, I found a seat; at present I have a slight cold and my sense of smell is not what it normally is - a pity as it would have saved me from an extremely unpleasant experience; when I sat down, I immediately realised that the previous occupant of the seat had relieved themselves in situ - the whole of the seat was absolutely soaked in urine. My freshly laundered trousers were soaked, as was my underwear. Utterly disgusting. This evening my clothing has been in a high temperature wash in an attempt to remove the noxious reek of wee. I would gladly give a Semtex enema to the culprit if I could ever find them. I am not best pleased. Suggestions below, if you please.

Captain Tweed and the Ice Terror.

As you will see from the photo above, Wise Furnishings in Erith Riverside Centre has finally bitten the dust; no - one I spoke to could ever fathom why they ever opened a store in Erith in the first place; it is not a destination for big ticket purchases, and in any case, hardly offered the kind of goods most locals would have appreciated. I cannot recall ever seeing a customer in the store - the nearest thing to a visitor they would get would be someone sheltering in their doorway during inclement weather whilst they waited for a bus. I feel sorry for their staff, now out of a job in the middle of a horrendous financial crisis, but I had seen it coming from the very moment they opened their doors.

I have been out and about around Erith this afternoon with my trusty Nikon D300 camera, taking advantage of the unseasonal good weather to take some shots to see a mostly nicer side to the town that is Erith. You can view the results on my Flickr site here.

Captain Tweed has been involved in his biggest and most challenging case to date. The Captain's crime fighting lab has been instrumental once again in assisting the powers of law and order. Suffice to say I am unable to recount the events of the last few days in this very public forum. It is enough for me to confirm that collars have been felt, and some very nasty individuals will not be darkening our streets for quite some time.

The photo below is of one of the courtesy wheel chairs offered by Morrison's supermarket for their customers with personal mobility problems - I saw some buck toothed and unwashed chavs playing around with a wheel chair in the store earlier in the week; it would appear that this is what became of it. Given the chance, I would gladly throw the thieving scrotes into the Thames mud to retrieve the chair; the only thing is, I would make sure they were wrapped in thirty or so feet of boat anchor chain, on an incoming tide...



Two video clips this week; the first is the current TV advertisement commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the creation of Virgin Atlantic airlines. The 90 second commercial is one of the most expensive shot in the UK; apparently the budget was a shade over £6 million. The advert goes back to the launch days of the airline back on the 22nd of June 1984, and the whole thing is a glorious eighties retro - fest. You have got Rubik's cubes, Asteroids, Wimpy, and notably Our Price records (remember them?) All featured. The accompanying music track is also a bit of a curiosity; OK, most people will recognise it as the famously banned by the BBC "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, but I doubt that many will realise that it is taken from the New York 12" remix, rather than the original single. Give it a watch and leave a comment below please. Oh, and at 30 seconds into it, check out the young guy outside of the Our Price Records store - he's either got to be a Time Lord, or he's got hold of the Delorean from Back to the Future. You may notice he's holding an LP; it is "Steel Town" by Big Country. Only one slight problem - the album was not released until October 1st 1984. I do these things so you don't have to.



One thing that pleasantly surprised me this week was the updated version of Minder being shown on Channel 5. I did not watch the initial showing, but was bored and waiting for Ian to turn up on Saturday evening, and it was being re-broadcast. I channel hopped and came across it. It was actually not bad at all. Shane Ritchie absolutely channels George Cole, and it is a shameless rip off of the classic original, and has definitely been filmed with the American market in mind, the series is absolutely in love with London, and shows the city in a very positive light.

Here is a trailer giving an idea of how the show compares to the original (actually it is a complete rip - off, but fun anyway).

Scooter vs. Bus.

The photo above was taken by me through my living room window on Monday evening. The first that I knew something bad had happened was as I came downstairs from my home office to get a drink (most of you know that I work from home on weekday evenings). Unusually I could not hear any traffic noise coming from the road - my house is on a busy main road which has a lot of noisy commercial traffic travelling on it. I also saw red and blue flashing lights coming through the frosted glass panel in the middle of my front door. I turned the living room lights off and peeked through the front window. A police cordon stretched all of the way along the road outside my block of houses, and directly outside of my front gate were a number of traffic cops and two ambulance crews with para medics. They were working on a young guy of no more than 20, who looked to be in a very sorry state. He had been riding a motor scooter and had had a contretemps with a 469 single decker bus. The medics spent over an hour trying to stabilise the unfortunate scooterist, and eventually an ambulance took him off to hospital, strapped to a body board and head brace; I noticed that although they had the blue flashing lights working, they did not use the siren, or indeed make any kind of haste, they just trundled off at a sedate pace.

Once the immediate medical emergency had been handled, I popped on a coat and went out to speak to one of the traffic cops, who was measuring skid marks and bits of broken metal and plastic. I asked him about the condition of the victim, and the copper said "Serious head injury - I think they will be able to keep him alive long enough to get his parents there". Nasty. This happened at around 6.30, and the road finally re-opened at just before 10pm, when the forensics and accident investigators had completed their work. What really annoyed the emergency services, was that a gang of around 20 Chavs from the nearby estate turned up, not to see who had been hurt, or offer any kind of assistance, but merely to shout abuse at the police and paramedics. They were also filming the unfortunate victim with their mobile telephones. Incidentally, I made the decision not to take any photos of the accident victim, or the crew working on him; at the time I felt that he was quite probably in the process of kicking the bucket, and it did not seem appropriate. The local low lives had no such qualms and were treating the whole thing like a piece of street theatre. A burly traffic cop approached the scumbags and threatened to nick the lot of them - only then did the scrawny parasites deign to disperse. It is ironic that it is quite likely the victim was local, and could well have been known to some of the crowd.

The photo at the top of this entry shows a PCSO putting various pieces of clothing and other detritus from the accident into evidence bags shortly before the road was re - opened. Strangely, there has been no mention of the incident in the News Shopper, which is a bit of a surprise. The other novelty was that for an hour or so, my place felt like a Happy Shopper version of number 10 Downing Street - as I had my own police officer standing at the end of my garden path.

Talking of politics; I got the complete Yes Minister, and Yes Prime Minister boxed set of DVD's for Christmas. I am about a third of the way through watching this excellent, award winning comedy series. This weeks' video clip is short and sweet, and is taken from the show. Britain's newspaper brands, and who reads them - a pithy analysis. Watch below and enjoy.

Gas meter turmoil.

The photo above was taken by me on Wednesday evening, just as it was getting dark. The ship came alongside and moored on Erith Pier, next to Morrison's car park. Three crew members then alighted and disappeared into Morrison's. Twenty minutes later they were back with a large load of groceries in shopping bags. Shortly thereafter they untied the vessel and sailed off down the river. That is going shopping in style! Click on the photo above for a larger version.

Since last weeks' Blog posting, concerning the sudden and mysterious appearance of a new nightclub in a run down warehouse building in Fraser Road, Erith, there have been developments. I contacted Bexley Council planning enforcement team early this week, and also spoke to Linda Piper, chief reporter for the News Shopper local paper. It turns out the owner of the nightclub is managing to skirt just on the right side of the law; you can read an article about the club on the News Shopper website.

Over the last three months or so, I have received a series of increasingly strident letters from the Gas Board, telling me that they need to change my gas meter. I have no troubles with this, as my meter is located outside the front door, and they could come and do it whilst I am out at work. But no, they insist I am on the premises, and that they will deign to turn up "at some point between 8am and 8pm". Yeah... Right. Like I am going to take a day off work to wait for a gas board engineer, who, from previous experience would then not turn up. I am certainly not pandering to this kind of corporate fascism, so I am ignoring them altogether. I am following a principle established by Quentin Crisp that if you ignore something for long enough, it will eventually go away.

Click Here to listen to an excellent and extremely funny hour long interview with Billy Connolly - from back in 1989. He was talking to a U.S public service radio station KCRW and a presenter called Bob Claster, who is a real fan of British comedy.

I had the extreme misfortune to be stuck on the 99 bus from Plumstead with the worst overcrowding I have ever experienced on any bus anywhere. The driver seemed to be entirely oblivious and was allowing all and sundry to continue to board, despite already being packed to the gunwales. It certainly did not help that there were a total of seven baby buggies on the lower deck of the bus, four open and taking up almost all of the floor space, and three folded in the luggage area - this being despite the rule that any bus can only have two open buggies. One of the buggy owners had a toddler daughter who was hyperactively pushing her way through the forest of standing passengers legs, constantly shrieking, enough to seemingly break glass. The indifferent Chav mother was more interested in sending texts on her mobile phone , and making calls to her extended list of brood mates about the progress of Strictly Celebrity Wrestling on Ice in the Jungle, than looking after her offspring. Every couple of minutes she would look up from her mobile phone and half heartedly mutter "TeeaJoanna - stop that and come here now" - but the sprog blithely carried on screaming and playing about, and the mother returned to the digital valium of her mobile phone. Why do chavs give their offspring stupid, made up names? I think it started back in 1985 when the lower classes started to call female babies Kayleigh - after the Marillion track of the same name. I think the Stella addled brains of Chav mothers think the made up names sound "classy" when we all know they do exactly the opposite. Poor kids!

I have noticed that two Erith pubs both have their leases up for sale. The Nordenfelt has been closed and empty for several months now - its' location means there is no parking available, and the Victorian building is large, and difficult to maintain. The other pub is in my own road. The Royal Alfred is still open, but the lease is up for sale. I live in (probably vain) hope that a real ale brewer and pub company like Shepherd Neame, Fullers or Young's will take it on. I think, however that I am rather more likely to see Elvis riding Shergar down my street.

Steve Fraser MBE popped round to see me yesterday morning - we then went to visit my Dad in his nursing home. Really nice of Steve to make the time to do this, especially before the long and arduous journey back to the family seat in Somerset. I made sure he took a couple of bottles of Shepherd Neame Kentish real ale with him - after all, you probably can't trust the water in the provinces.

This weeks' video was taken by Ian on his mobile telephone, so the quality is a bit dodgy in parts to say the least - not his fault, the gadget was not really designed to operate in near darkness, as occurs in much of the piece. It is footage of Steve Fraser's pre MBE award party, held at the Robin Hood & Little John pub in Bexleyheath. Please feel free to leave a comment by clicking on the "Comments" link below.

Down on the Erith Delta.

Here are some photos taken this weekend in and around Erith - click on any photo for a larger version. The top shot is the Dixie Queen - a reproduction Mississippi paddle steamer that is available for hire for weddings and corporate events; it is normally moored in London, and I have no idea what prompted its' excursion deep into the Erith Delta. The yacht photo shows some members of Erith Yacht club on their vessel; the trouble was, the photo was taken at slack tide, and there was no breeze - they were effectively becalmed. The bottom two photos are of the already notorious Potion bar. I was speaking to an official from Bexley Council yesterday, who told me the original fascia, windows and internal glasswork in the former White Hart had rendered the structure a grade 2 listed status. Apparently even the old pub sign had to be preserved; When a planning officer told the new owners, ten minutes after he had left the site, they cut down the old sign with an angle grinder and put it into a skip. You can see the exterior design for the old White Hart here. The new owners have butchered the building with no thought to local history and heritage. Needless to say, the new Potion bar serves around eight super chilled and gassy lagers, and not a sight of any real ale. I will be keeping tabs on the place, as it is bound to become a dive and Chav magnet.

I have been thinking, without a conscious effort, I am actually a pretty green and environmentally friendly person; I travel exclusively by public transport (apart from the odd lift in the Maserati, I concede). I never, ever fly or travel long distances, and in the normal scheme of things, I do try and grow a small proportion of my own vegetables.

Some good news this week; Colin Turner, G3VTT is about to take his position as President of the First Class CW Operators Club - the premiere group of Morse code operators in the World. It is an extremely exclusive organisation, limited to 500 members world wide - to even be considered for membership, you need to have a Morse speed of a minimum of 30 words per minute. He is the person who taught me about radio and electronics, and got me through the Radio Amateurs' Examination. A thoroughly nice chap and a Morse code gunslinger!

I was on the Northern Line tube, travelling from Euston to London Bridge last Wednesday afternoon. After going a couple of stops, I started feeling extremely unwell; I needed to go to the loo immediately. I developed terrible sweating and it took all of my strength and concentration not to mess myself. I realised that I had to get off the tube train and find a gents with alactrity. After struggling up the escalator at Angel station - incidentally, (and to my detriment, the longest passenger escalator in Europe). Once I go to the ticket office at the top, I asked a station worker where the nearest public toilet was - to be told that there were none locally, and that I would have to use the toilets in the Burger King opposite. I staggered in to the fast food outlet, and to his credit, the manager immediately showed me to the gents toilet. Suffice to say there was an immediate and almost thermonuclear explosion of steaming Marmite Lava. Utter bliss. I was shaken and sweaty, but was able to wash and make myself presentable before resuming my journey home. I managed to endure the overland train journey back to Erith, but I was finding myself increasingly uncomfortable - I needed to drop my guts again pronto, but the train toilets were all locked. I managed to exit the train at Erith, knowing that there is a toilet for passengers use - you have to ask for the key at the ticket office. Which was shut. Plan two - there are new public toilets in Erith Health centre, with external access for the public. I got there with my bowels about to go critical, only to find the toilets shut and locked. Things were now getting extremely serious; although I was only five minutes walk from home, I knew I would never make it. I managed to shuffle into the KFC drive through at the end of my road and was finally able to get into their loo and expel something noxious to alert the Coastguard. Once home I was able to take something for the condition and have an early night. It would seem I had been the victim of a gastric bug which is currently doing the rounds. What strikes me is how few public toilets there are left in the UK; I was extremely close to losing control, and it was fortuitous that there were a couple of conveniently placed fast food outlets - my only port of call in the intestinal storm. I am normally pretty dismissive of these places, but I would really have been up a creek without a paddle without their facilities. In tribute, here is a video from some American chaps who seem to have a rather good recipe for home made beef burgers; personally I would lay off the added salt, but each to their own...