The "No Phone" zone.

The photo above shows the Erith Mural. It is located next to the Kassiopi Cove children's soft play centre (what used to be the Blockbuster video hire store) in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre in Colebrook Street. The mural has nine panels depicting scenes inspired by the history of Erith, including the murder of Thomas A Beckett and the reign of Henry the VIII. The mural was designed and built by the artist William Mitchell between 1966 and 1970. The mural is constructed using an artistic technique called "Cloisonne" - which is similar to the production of stained glass windows. The mural was originally located on the side wall of the old Riverside Swimming Pool in Erith High Street, but was moved to its current location in the centre of the town just before the old pool site was demolished. 

Sky have launched their Ultra High Definition 4K satellite receiver, as I previewed a few weeks ago. The Sky Q service costs a not inconsiderable £54 a month for a new subscriber, plus a one – off setup cost of £299. On top of this, if you want Sky Sports there is an additional monthly fee of £27.50, and yet another £17 a month if you want Sky Movies. Totting this all up, it means an initial expenditure of £397.50, followed by a contractually obligated minimum of eighteen months payments of £98.50, which equates to £1773.00 over the duration of the contract.  I think that Sky may well be over – reaching themselves this time. If you were to use Freeview, along with subscriptions to Netflix (£7.49 a month) and Amazon Prime (£79 a year - £6.58 a month), the bill over eighteen months would come to £253.26, a saving of £1818.74 over the cost of Sky Q plus subscription, and the one off joining fee. I know that the content offered will not be quite equivalent – dumping Sky would lose a lot of live sport, but conversely the range of shows available on Amazon Prime and Netflix far outstrips Sky in every way, and on top of this there are no adverts – something that endlessly annoys me with Sky – why pay for a premium service, and still have adverts? Currently the two streaming services don’t offer 4K resolution, but many channels on Sky Q will still be in either HD or SD resolution, so it would not be the loss it might initially appear. I understand that Sky is already losing customers to their standard HD service due to viewers switching to the cheaper and better content services offered by both Amazon Prime and Netflix. I think that this will only accelerate over time. When Sky launched their original analogue satellite based service back in February 1989, there was no broadband infrastructure in the UK (or anywhere for that matter), as the World Wide Web had yet to be invented by Tim Berners – Lee. Satellites were the only economic method of broadcasting to large areas of the planet. Now the use of satellites for broadcasting is soon to go the way of using hot air balloons for air travel – yes you can still do it, but why would you bother? Fibre optic broadband is the way forward. Mark my words, the age of Sky using hugely expensive satellites to broadcast will soon be at an end; they will either change their operating model and switch to online, or they will slowly die. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

After the very unusual publishing of the last Maggot Sandwich update on Saturday, rather than Sunday last week, a couple of readers have asked me how I go about writing each update. The process normally begins as soon as the last edition “goes to press” at around 1pm on each Sunday afternoon. I keep notes of stories that may have relevance or interest to readers, and I keep a list of ideas written on a notepad; the actual content gets written gradually over the course of the week. I get the impression that some readers think I sit down and write the whole thing on Sunday morning, but nothing could be further from the case. What happens on Sunday morning is that I edit together all of the little scraps I have written during the week into what I hope is a readable and entertaining form. I add the active web links (a chore which takes well over an hour in itself), and I also run some final sense checks, including checking that any submitted content from a third party or guest writer does not break any rules of taste or copyright. Last week I had a rare failure in this respect – partly I think because of the rush to get the update “out of the door” on Saturday. I would like to apologise to Andy Doran as it is clear that I inadvertently used text from what I later found out was on his website. I get sent stories from all number of sources – P.R companies (more on them later) volunteer organisations, Maggot Sandwich readers and a number of trusted sources that wish to be anonymous. I had been sent a Word document with a well – written piece on the history of Mobo Toys from someone who has sent me stories before;  they declined to be a guest author, so I just grabbed the text from the file and uploaded it into Blogger. It turned out my source, or someone who passed it to her had scraped the text almost word for word from the D and S pedal car restoration website. My error was in not checking this before publication; my only defence is that I was in a hurry to get the update published a day early, and in doing so I skipped the “due diligence” I normally carry out.  I know what it is like to be plagiarised; a certain local paper (now no longer in publication) used to semi regularly nick not only my stories, but my photos too. So I can well understand the feeling this generates.

The photo above was taken by Richard of the Thamesmead Grump blog, when we met at the Bexley History Fair at Hall Place last Sunday. I am seated in the photo, talking to a visitor about the Friends of Christ Church Erith, of which I am a committee member. The event went well, but it has to be said that Hall Place was bitterly cold; even though the Friends stand was located next to a very underpowered radiator, which felt like it was possibly the only (barely) working one in the building. Thanks to the number of Maggot Sandwich readers who came over to say "hello" and to introduce themselves. If you would like to learn more about the Friends of Christ Church Erith, click here, and to learn more about our forthcoming "Our Erith" art exhibition, you should click here.

On Wednesday morning I was standing on the London – bound platform of Erith station when the automated announcement heralding the arrival of the next train stated “this service will comprise of four carriages”. For a moment I thought that I had heard incorrectly , but when the train turned up it was indeed composed of only four carriages – half the normal length. I got on, and when the train arrived at Belvedere, the driver came on the public address system, and announced that the trains was now going to travel non – stop to London Bridge station. About two thirds of the passengers, myself included then got off and waited on the platform at Belvedere Station. An announcement which had many passengers scratching their heads in disbelief “The next London bound train is cancelled due to greater than normal passenger numbers”. Eventually a very crowded train turned up, and I was then able to travel to Greenwich to pick up my connection via the DLR to Canary Wharf and the office. If this was not bad enough, on Thursday afternoon I had to wait over forty minutes for a train from Greenwich back to Erith, when there is meant to be one every ten minutes. There were a fairly large number of very inconvenienced and annoyed people. Southeastern Trains and Network Rail need to share the blame. The News Shopper has been giving them a hard time, as have several local MP's - with very good cause in my opinion. Teresa Pearce said "I have just one train line running through my constituency, two tracks, three stations, one train rail line, what could go wrong? Well, Southeastern could go wrong. Before Southeastern we had Connex and Connex was terrible and we thought Southeastern would be better and we were wrong. I have a real appreciation of the frustration of the what it’s like to stand on a platform in the certain knowledge of the uncertainty of the train service.” In the same News Shopper interview, Jim Dowd, MP for Lewisham West and Penge, said: “I join in the general wailing and gnashing of teeth about the service that is is allegedly provided by Southeastern, it’s not unreasonable to expect a reasonable service particularly in light of the amount of money they pay. I wish though Southeastern would put as much effort into running the trains on time as they do into providing some of the excuses for why they don’t.” Well said that man! More on Southeastern and their continual delays and cancellations later. 

There has been extensive coverage in the press this week as to how the major betting companies, and Paddy Power in particular have been exploiting vulnerable “high stakes” gamblers. Much of the problem with these high spending, big losers is not down to traditional bets placed on horses, dogs or football, but is instead due to an addiction to fixed odds betting terminals (FOBT), these are a kind of electronic gambling machine, with far higher odds than the traditional “one armed bandit”. A recent report makes for extremely troubling reading; it reveals that in the 55 most deprived boroughs in the UK – overwhelmingly located in Northern cities and urban Greater London have a  total of 2,691 bookmakers shops, in which £13 billion was gambled on FOBT machines, and £470 million lost by gamblers in the last year alone. In the same time period, there were 1,258 bookmakers shops in the 115 wealthiest areas, adjusted to cover the same volume of population, within which players gambled a total of £6.5 billion, losing £231 million.  The report was commissioned by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, and shows that the large betting companies have targeted the poorest areas that have the highest unemployment, lowest per capita income and higher crime rates. The last year has also seen a large increase in the number of high street betting shops, mainly due to the leap in the total number of FOBT machines, such as digital roulette in use. In December 2013 there was a total of 9,343 active betting shop licences in the entire United Kingdom, which was an increase of 280 since 2012. The most deprived town council in the UK was identified as being Liverpool. A total of £118 million was gambled in 570 machines, and £23 million was siphoned off by bookmakers in the process. In the same time scale, the place voted as the most desirable place to live in the UK – the Hart district of Hampshire there are just seven betting shops with a total of 24 Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. Liverpool council have understandably got very worried by the figures, and are now keen to place strong control measures on the betting shop operators. The problem with FOBT machines is that large amounts of money can be spent on the machines very quickly, and losses can mount up almost before the gambler realises. A hundred pounds can be lost in no more than thirty seconds. Nick Small, of Liverpool City Council said of the situation “millions of pounds that should be used for paying for food and rent was being sucked into the FOBT machines. Bookies are arriving all the time into prime retail locations. This is all driven for FOBTs. I have no doubt of it. We are seeing horrific reports of family breakdown caused by gambling debts, problems with loan sharks. We are pretty sure organised crime is using the machines to launder money. It's out of control in a city like ours, where there are a lot of poorer people”.  The same situation exists all around the UK, with poorer areas – just like Erith, being hit far harder than wealthier regions. Industry observers have commented that one way to reduce the problem specific to FOBT machines would be to limit the maximum stake gambled to £2 – like ordinary one armed bandit machines, and to limit the maximum pay out to £100. The gambling industry is not keen on this approach, for obvious reasons. To add to this, the Government are now showing an interest, as the subject is gaining column inches in the press now - despite the Government deciding not to place limits on the payouts of FOBT machines when it debated the issue last Summer. The issue has been ongoing for a number of years now, with little interest from the press. This would now appear to be changing, mainly due to a shocking story that was widely reported earlier this week. Bookmaker Paddy Power encouraged a problem gambler to keep betting until he lost five jobs, his home and access to his children, according to a report by the Gambling Commission. The company also failed to perform sufficient checks to ensure customers were not using its betting machines to launder the proceeds of crime. The betting regulators said that Paddy Power would make a voluntary payment of £310,000 to a “socially responsible” cause following its findings. Paddy Power will also be forced to review procedures designed to prevent money laundering and problem gambling and agree to share details of its own failings with the rest of the industry. In one case, Paddy Power admitted that senior staff encouraged a man with a gambling problem to keep betting despite warnings by more junior employees. The man  was a frequent user of fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs), which have been referred to as the “crack cocaine” of gambling. The machines allow customers to bet up to £100 every 20 seconds on games such as roulette and blackjack, for which the odds are fixed. In May 2014, Paddy Power staff became aware that the anonymous man was working at five separate jobs to fund his gambling and “had no money”, the Gambling Commission said. Although he claimed to be comfortable with his level of gambling, shop staff passed their concerns up the chain to senior staff, who advised monitoring him. Later that month, the shop manager informed a more senior member of staff that the man would be visiting the shop less frequently. The senior employee responded by advising that “steps should be taken to try to increase the customer visits and time spent in the gambling premises”. All of the large gambling chains have signed up to responsible gambling initiatives, and it would appear that in many cases, shop staff have indeed reported customers who seemed to be gambling larger amounts than they could afford, or coming into the betting shop more frequently than normal, but it would seem that senior management have been culturally inclined to ignore these reports in order to keep their profits up. It has also recently come to light that fixed odds betting terminals are being used by criminals to launder illegally acquired cash. Criminals can use games such as roulette to launder money at a small cost. For instance, someone with £100 in cash could place £48 on black, £48 on red and £2 on green, or 0. The maximum they could lose would be £4, at which point they could ask a bookmaker to put the remaining £96 on their debit card. The money would then appear as a legitimate payment from a bookmaker, hiding the fact that it could have been cash from a criminal enterprise. The Gambling Commission said that in August 2014, a shop manager suspected that a woman they called Customer B, a longstanding user of Paddy Power shops, was using gambling facilities to launder Scottish bank notes. The manager related their suspicions to more senior members of staff on four occasions over six months. But senior staff “repeatedly overruled” the shop manager, saying that as the notes were British currency and were not stained or counterfeit, it was unlikely that the money was being laundered. None of the suspicions were reported to the company’s money laundering reporting officer. Paddy Power only barred the customer after police raised fears that Scottish banknotes that were the proceeds of crime were being laundered in London. Subsequent checks revealed the customer could not validate ownership of a business she claimed to belong to her. The company initially told the Gambling Commission it had followed its money laundering policy but later admitted it had not dealt with its staff members’ suspicions properly. Now that this information is in the public domain, attitudes towards the big betting companies may now begin to change. At least they are very visible on many high streets, whereas online gambling is far less high profile and anonymous. Personally I have no interest in any form of gambling, but it would appear to be a large number of people do, and the line between “fun” betting and addiction would seem to be a very fine one. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

You may recall I recently covered the story concerning the very sudden closure of the Paper Moon in Dartford, and the (unsuccessful) campaign to keep the popular venue open. Pub owner Wetherspoon’s are undergoing a campaign to close down unprofitable pubs, and then open new pubs in areas where new business is thought to be located. Generally I am pretty ambivalent when discussions turn to Wetherspoon’s pubs – in general I find them a bit formulaic and samey, albeit with a good selection of reasonably priced real ales and not bad food. I very much prefer traditional pubs, but I can understand the attraction of a chain where reliability and predictability are key. I visited the newly refurbished New Cross Turnpike in Bellegrove Road, Welling last Saturday. The place has not long been reopened following an extensive refurbishment after being gutted by an accidental fire last August. I have to say that I was very impressed by the place. The refurbishment included some architectural redesigns within the building, as well as the use of higher quality materials than before. The pub is still on two levels (something that the serving staff must hate, as meals have to be taken upstairs to customers on the upper level by hand). I am very surprised that the designers / architects did not think to include a “dumb waiter”. The place is light and airy, with lots of glass, but the pub does suffer the problem so very common with Wetherspoon’s in general – the toilets are a very long way from the public areas, involving somewhat of a route march. I get the feeling that after a couple of shandies, by the time you make it back to the bar from the bogs, it would be time to go to the loo again. Having said that, I was very impressed – the place is clean and well run, with well – trained, helpful and attentive staff; the food was very good, and reasonably priced, and this obviously reflects well with the customers. By 12.30 on Saturday lunchtime, both the upper and lower floors were heaving with people, many of whom were ordering food as well as drinks. It may have helped that Welling United were playing at home later in the afternoon, but the diversity of the crowd suggested that many of the visitors were not there for a pre – match drink. It was certainly busy. I think that Wetherspoon’s have a lot they could teach Marston’s – the pub company / brewer who own and operate the Morgan in Clydesdale Road, Lower Belvedere. The Morgan is a pub / restaurant in a similar vein to Wetherspoon’s, and has been open for roughly a year. I have visited the place three times recently, and had cause to complain on two of the visits. I recently wrote to the manager saying “I thought it best to bring  a few observations concerning staff training and service levels to your attention in respect of a visit this lunchtime. A group of five people including myself visited the Morgan at 12.30pm this afternoon; we were seated at table 24. My friend ordered a pot of tea - when it was delivered, it was evident that the cup had not been properly washed up. The lady who served the tea had to sort through three other cups in order to find one that was acceptably clean. When this was delivered it too was found to be dirty, and a fourth replacement had to be sourced. This is unacceptable. Cleaning standards need to be improved.  Secondly, when the same friend went to the bar to place a drinks order, she was acknowledged by the server (a lady with a badge name of "Aeron") but when further customers approached the bar, my friend was ignored in preference of the new customers. The fact that my good friend is a British African lady made the situation look racist. At the very least it was an extremely unprofessional way to treat a paying guest. On top of this, "Aeron" opened a bottle of blackcurrant cordial, dropped the lid on the floor, then immediately replaced it on the bottle, in contravention of Health and Safety regulations.  Two of my group of five opted for the carvery meal - it was evident that the meat had been reheated and was dry and tough , and the mashed potato was made from an instant potato mix - again not acceptable at a Marston's restaurant  - you have a reputation for quality which was not met on this occasion. It is apparent that there are insufficient staff available for main service at the location - most of the staff are helpful, if not very well trained - as you may recall, I contacted you three months ago, after being double charged for a meal, which you agreed was an error, but have not still not refunded. The Morgan could be very good and a real asset to the local community, but a lack of training, and some poor quality staff do not help matters”. I got a very vague and slopey shouldered reply from the Morgan Management, which I won’t publish here, but suffice to say it did little to allay my concerns. It shows that two very similar enterprises, only separated by a few miles can have completely different approaches to customer service, and in my eyes Wetherspoon’s is easily the winner. Have you experienced something similar, or have you had excellent service in the Morgan? I would love to revisit and give it a glowing report, as it could be excellent with a few changes to the way it is run. At present however, it barely scrapes a three out of five, whereas the New Cross Turnpike gets a solid four and a half out of five. The benchmark for pub hospitality and service is set by the family run freehouse The Robin Hood and Little John in Lion Road Bexleyheath. It is the only hostelry in the borough to get the Arthur Pewty five stars of excellence award.

As I mentioned last week, I get all sorts of promotional junk sent to me by public relations companies, most of which gets read and binned by me. On Tuesday I received a message which I thought might well be of interest to some readers, especially bearing in mind that today is Mothering Sunday, and my previous experiences above relating to pub eating that I have just recounted. On top of this it mirrors my very own well - publicised antipathy towards mobile phones. See what you think:- "The introduction of the smoking ban saw an end to restaurants being split into smoking and non-smoking areas but this Sunday, Beefeater are introducing a new kind of dining segregation - a 'No Phone Zone'. Launched to coincide with Mother's Day, Britain's best-known steak restaurant has taken the bold step to create 'phone free' areas in response to research that outlines behaviour that can ruin family outings. Top of the table on the list of family outing-ruiners was 'constantly checking phones at the table', which 54 percent listed as the single most likely occurrence to cause an argument. The second and third most likely argument starters were a family member being underdressed or scruffy for the occasion (28 percent) and family members having earphones constantly plugged in (18 percent). Conversely, 'family conversation' is rated as the single most beneficial aspect of a good day out, with nearly two-thirds of respondents suggesting that just having a nice chat is the best bit of a family outing. Beefeater guests will be able to book a 'No Phone Zone' table for Sunday 6th March and those in the zone will have to hand their mobile phones to staff 'as a deposit' when they arrive. Hawk-eyed Beefeater staff will patrol the 'No Phone Zone' for mobiles and have the right to move guests who do not comply with the new rule. The 'No Phone Zone' will be trialled across sites this weekend, with a view to make the areas permanent if well received by diners. Sarah Tinsley, Head of Marketing for Beefeater said; "There's no denying the huge benefits our smartphones provide us, but there is a time and a place for their use and, especially on Mother's Day, we think we can do without them for an hour or two. Mums don't ask much of us and rarely even let us spend any money on them – so the least we can do is give Mums our undivided attention. "We hope this small adjustment to our setup enables a few more families to add some seasoned conversation to their meal." Beefeater is a British brand that first fired up the grill in 1974 and now has over 140 restaurants nationwide. The combination of great steak, friendly service and relaxed surroundings made Beefeater a big hit in Britain in the 70s, 80s and 90s and today is no different. For bookings please contact your local Beefeater or visit www.beefeater.co.uk". This could turn into quite a popular move, though I don't for one minute think it is anything other than a publicity stunt for Beefeater, thought up by the P.R company. We already have "quiet" carriages on some long distance train routes - I wonder if "quiet" areas in restaurants will take off in the same way?

The ending video this week is an update from Crossrail, showing the latest construction works being undertaken at Abbey Wood Station. If you watch carefully, during the interview with Nigel Fenn of Crossrail Engineering Management, which seem to have been held over the space of an hour or so on the London bound platform, and then edited together, you can see on the digital display board behind the interviewee that every single train heading towards London is delayed. Not that this has anything to do with Crossrail - it is the responsibility of Southeastern and Network rail, but it does reinforce the impression that Southeastern are a bunch of incompetents.

When Arthur met Reg.

The photo above (click for a larger version) show the mural that used to form part of the side wall of the old Erith Swimming Baths. When the building was demolished, the mural was saved and given a rather over enthusiastic restoration. When it was installed in its' new location adjacent to Blockbuster, the ultra bright, garish colours used by the restorers looked cartoonish and nothing like the mural did before. A couple of years of sunlight, and the strong wind coming straight off the River Thames have now faded it slightly, making it (to my mind at least) more aesthetically pleasing now, and a lot more close to how it looked when situated in its' original location.

I am pleased to say that my week long loss of broadband has now been resolved by British Telecom; it turned out to be caused by a somewhat unusual combination of hardware failures. I am now back up and running, and no longer needing to borrow my Mum's Apple iMac to post updates. talking of iMacs, I have just placed an order for the replacement for "The Beast" - my nearly five year old iMac that died shortly before Christmas. The new machine should be a screamer, as it will be heavily customised and uprated when compared with a standard "off the shelf" iMac. More further down the update. 

The construction workers are still on site at Erith Station – they have been occupying a series of site offices and workshops built from converted shipping containers for what seems like an interminable time. The only obvious results of their labours have been the wooden fencing that backs on to the still unopened extensions to both platforms. The original fencing (which looks just like ordinary wooden garden fence) which was installed shortly before Christmas has been ripped out and replaced – with fencing that looks almost exactly the same. I really have not got a clue as to exactly what is going on at the station – and nobody on site seems to have an idea either. It does seem to be keeping a sizable work crew in employment for what appears to be a disproportionately large amount of time, with little or nothing of substance to show for it.  If anyone has more information, please get in contact  with me. On the subject of the railways and Southeastern Trains, I have noticed that when trains get cancelled or delayed, that the behaviour of commuters seems to be in at least part dictated by the station on which they begin their journey; it would seem that I am not alone in this observation. Inevitably the train carriages become congested. When things are really bad, and there is absolutely no space for additional people to get on, it seems that commuters from Westcombe Park and Maze Hill are the most vocal and demonstrative.  One commenter on the News Shopper website describes a similar situation on the Blackheath and Lewisham line where packed trains pull into Blackheath station and the locals “expect the peasants from zones 4 – 6 to do as you say, and move into spaces where there are no spaces”.  This pretty much sums up the experience at Westcombe Park and Maze Hill. I have no idea if it is something in the water, or if there is some other reason why commuters from the more prosperous areas on the Dartford to London Bridge via Greenwich rail line seem  to be ruder and less considerate to others. What do you think? Please leave a comment below.

I don’t know if I have had an abrupt sense of humour failure, but BBC comedy show “Mrs Brown’s Boys” leaves me utterly cold. I cannot abide it – it is crass, crude, badly written and to my mind makes “On the Buses” look like Samuel Beckett. It cannot hold an LED torch, let alone a candle to that other Irish sitcom “Father Ted” – which was a work of twisted and surreal genius. Obviously a lot of people do like the foul mouthed Mrs Brown and her fictional family, but I for one cannot fathom why. It would have been considered unsophisticated in the early 1970’s, so just why it can have the ratings success it enjoys is a real mystery. There was an interesting article on the subject in the Guardian recently, which you can read by clicking here.

As mentioned near the top of this weeks' update, the Maggot Sandwich is finally out of exile and running under its’ own steam once again. I have to say that BT have been pretty good; their help desk were polite and efficient, and the engineer who came on both cases was cheerful and knew his way around a screwdriver. Nevertheless I was offline for a week because of hardware failure. It turns out that my fibre optic modem had a known issue, and should have been swapped out for a new model around six months ago. BT outsourced the mass swap – out job to a third party company, who made rather a mess of the operation; some BT Infinity customers were not notified of the problem with their modem, and did not get it changed. I was one of those unlucky people. All now back to normal, thankfully.

Earlier in the week, news broke of the untimely death from Lung Cancer of The Troggs front man Reg Presley. I had the pleasure of meeting him, many years ago when I was still working for Radio Caroline. It was during the period when the Radio Caroline ship, the Ross Revenge was moored in the old Dover Commercial Dock after it had been salvaged after running aground on the Goodwin Sands. Refurbishment work on the ship had begun, and a legal 28 day low power broadcasting licence had been granted to Caroline to undertake their first licensed radio broadcast to the town of Dover and the surrounding area. News soon got out, and we had a stream of celebrity visitors coming down to the dock to have a look around the famous ship. Caroline management had made it quite clear to staff that then Capital Gold DJ Tony Blackburn was not to be permitted on board, as apparently he had made some negative remarks about Radio Caroline during his own radio show. I was on deck one morning, organising a group of volunteers into a painting detail when a bright red Austin Montego swept around the dockside, and stopping at the foot of the gangplank;  four blokes got out, and one started climbing the gangplank. Bearing in mind the instructions regarding Blackburn, and our general caution regarding strange visitors, I blocked the top of the gangplank and asked “Who the hell are you then?”. The bloke, understandably taken aback replied “Reg Presley – we’re The Troggs. We are here to be interviewed”. Suitably chastened, I apologised and escorted the party to the ships’ mess room and made them cups of tea. Fortunately Presley was in a good mood, and when I explained the reason for my initial response, he said “good for you – that Blackburn is an utter git" (or words to that effect - his actual comment is unprintable).  Bearing in mind that at the time this encounter took place, the group Wet Wet Wet had been number one in the charts with their cover of the Reg Presley song “Love is in the Air” for fifteen weeks, making Presley millions in song royalties. A nice bloke who will be missed.

If you watch the popular BBC TV show “Call the Midwife”, did you know that almost all of the external locations for the programme are filmed in and around Chatham Historic Dockyard? They now even carry out “Call the Midwife” location tours. You can read more about these by clicking here.

You may recall that back in March 2011 I covered the results of a chap who killed himself by jumping off the end of Erith Pier. He drowned in the River Thames. Subsequent to this, his friends and family created a shrine to his memory from the small white boarded structure at the piers’ end. You can see my original entry and thoughts on the matter by clicking here. Nowadays the graffiti has been painted over, the urine filled lager bottles have long gone, and the small building returned to normal. I was walking with my camera on the pier a couple of weeks ago, then I noticed a small metal plaque on one wall of the structure. It was a permanent memorial to the lad who died. I thought it was a tasteful and poignant reminder, but it would have been all the more powerful if it had been worded correctly – click here to see what I mean. The local habit of saying “them” instead of “those”, as in “them people”, and “was” instead  of “were”, as in “we was” is rife. I cannot understand how people continue to mangle English into nonsense.  I appreciate that the English language is in a state of constant flux, but to completely ignore the rules of grammar astonishes me.  The same can be said of punctuation, especially the use of apostrophes; it is glaringly obvious to me that many people have never been taught the rules for the use of apostrophes – a local carpet shop is currently displaying a sign with proudly announces “New range of Carpet’s in stock” – AARGH! Has nobody explained the use of the possessive "s" to the writer? I see this all of the time. The writers don’t have a clue as to whether an apostrophe is required or not, so they bung one in just in case.  It is not difficult – something learned for life at primary school. Rant over – for now.

As you may already be aware, following my piece last week about the possible changes to the structure of Bexley Metropolitan Police, it would seem that there is every possibility that we will lose every physical Police presence in the borough. The Police station in Nuxley Road, Upper Belvedere was downgraded some time ago as a full front line station; the counter service still in operation there is now being removed, and it seems increasingly likely that the building will be sold off for development – no doubt for more unwanted flats. Bexleyheath nick may also be a victim to the proposal to merge the forces of Bexley and Bromley (as I mentioned last week, the forthcoming new boss of Bexley Police is a Superintendent not a Chief Superintendent like his predecessor – which would indicate that he will take order from his boss, the head of Bromley Police).  At this point, this is all conjecture, but I would be surprised if at least some of this does indeed come to pass. *Update* - I have just had word from my most trusted local informant that at a public meeting on Thursday night, current Bexley Police chief Victor Olisa told those in attendance that plans to merge Bromley and Bexley police forces have now been dropped. Good news for once, and thanks to my confidential source. 

On a related matter, Bexley Police are going to be carrying out bicycle marking services in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre between 11am and 4pm on the 22nd February and the 15th of March, Officers with bike marking gear and laptop access to the Police bike database are going to be located outside of Wilkinson’s and opposite the Mambocino Cafe / Coffee shop and will security mark your bike if you take it along; they will also be able to provide security advice on preventing thefts. To be honest, this is a bit late in the day; there have been a number of bike thefts locally from back gardens- especially through shed break – ins. I would not be surprised if a few of the local scumbags took along stolen bikes to get them security marked as belonging to themselves, thus “laundering” the stolen bike and legitimising it as their own property.

I am currently undertaking some research on mobile tablet devices at work, looking into new and unconventional uses for the Android based computers. It got me thinking; it used to be a relatively common thing to see Internet cafes in most high streets. Erith has had a cyber cafe in the former solicitor’s office in Cross Street for several years. It seems that they are becoming an endangered species though. Rather than go to a cyber cafe to log on using one of their computers, most people now will have a laptop or tablet, and will merely look for a local coffee shop or fast food outlet like McDonald’s that offer free wifi access to their customers. It would seem that this “value added” approach will break down the Internet cafes’ business model – mobile computing devices are nowadays so ubiquitous that the provision of bulky fixed desktop PC’s has become outmoded.  I can see exceptions to this though; I note that Internet cafes are still popular in areas with a population that is predominantly composed of low income, transient residents. I can see the attraction – if you don’t have a lot of spare cash, and are not likely to be around the area for very long, you are unlikely to want to invest any money in a computer which may only work on UK voltage – cheaper and more convenient to keep in touch with the folks at home by paying a couple of quid to use someone else’s computer for an hour over a cup of coffee. This seems to hold true both in Erith and Plumstead, despite both towns having large and wifi enabled McDonalds close by the cyber cafe. I would be interested in others’ views on this.

Bexley Council are currently running a poster campaign “where will you dine with your Valentine?” In an effort to promote the national “Scores on the Doors” food hygiene rating scheme. This is all fine and dandy, except for two things; firstly, very few food outlets display their star ratings in their window – this is especially understandable in and around Erith, as so many places have terrible ratings of two out of five stars or less – the notable exceptions being the Mambocino coffee house / cafe, and the excellent T-Bone cafe in Fraser Road, both of which have four stars. The second and somewhat more telling point is that Bexley Council have not visited every food outlet in the borough, so there are numerous gaps where one can have no real idea who hygienic the omitted outlets are. Personally I would like to see the scheme made compulsory, and the rating sticker like a car tax disc that must be displayed. I would also like to see places with a zero, or one star out of five closed down immediately for remedial action. I know that I am not alone in this desire, but it would seem that Bexley Council have neither the resources or the will to follow this path of action. Next week I will be featuring a guest review of a local eaterie, in what I hope will be a semi regular feature. Watch this space.

Because I spend so much time travelling in and around London on public transport, I get to see the travelling public in all their sundry forms. One behaviour that is now so common as to be the norm is to see travellers engrossed in their mobile phones, whilst simultaneously listening to music, usually from the aforementioned phone. This insulation from events around them means that commuters thus ensconced are oblivious to things such as train announcements or platform changes. The Royal Marines call this “a lack of situational awareness”, and whilst it is not likely to get people killed (unlike in the Marines) it still can lead to inconvenience and confusion. Personally I like to be fully aware of what is going on around me, even if that can sometimes in itself be an annoyance. On Wednesday I was travelling from Bank to Woolwich Arsenal on the Docklands Light Railway. A woman sat on the seat opposite me. She was carrying out an animated conversation with someone. It took me a couple of minutes to realise that she was not using a Bluetooth headset or other hands free device, and that she was actually carrying out the conversation with a voice in her head. She seemed happy enough in herself, and got off the train at Pontoon Dock. All part of the rich tapestry of London I suppose.

After my earlier rant about the dreadful mess that is Mrs Brown's Boys, I thought that I ought to redress the balance; here is a documentary about the phenomenon that was Father Ted - in my opinion the best comedy ever to have come out of Ireland, and leagues away from the embarrassment that is Mrs Brown. Give it a watch and leave a comment below.