Cut one head off, and it grows another.

On odd occasions, as the end of the week approaches, I start to rack my brain to think of something to post on the Maggot Sandwich. If it has been a quiet week, it can be a real challenge to come up with content that will entertain, and hopefully inform as well. This was not one of those occasions - I was strolling through Erith town centre on my way home from work on Friday, saw the notice above, and the thought immediately formed in my head "sometimes, the Blog just writes itself!"

The photos above (click on either for a larger view) were taken by me yesterday in Erith town centre. The dark doorway to the right of the upper picture is the entrance to what used to be Tease, formerly T's nightclub, the notorious chav infested dive of a venue that was closed down about three years ago, after years of casual weekend violence, drug dealing and general nefarious shenannigans. The place is located above Farm Foods (for when Iceland is just not quite chavvy enough) and is adjacent to the rebuilt town centre, which now includes a large number of residential apartments above the shops. If you look closely at the photo of the new club licencing application, it states that the new club wishes to open seven days a week from 10pm until 7am in the morning! Bearing in mind that Erith is a depressed, scruffy and sometimes dangerous south east London suburb, rather than a trendy destination in the West End, can anyone see a demand for an all - night venue? Anyone able to stay up raving all night during the week would have to be without a job, and thus unable to afford to go out to such places in the first place - leaving aside any criminal enterprises (and don't think I am implying that anyone without a job is a crook - I am not). Clubbers would leave the building just as workers such as myself were passing on the way to the railway station - I can envisage much conflict if this ever comes to pass. Incidentally, I notice that the planning application has a  posting date of the 15th of July; I walk past the place daily on my way to Erith station, and to my knowledge the notice was only posted on the door late last week - an error or a deliberate omission by the applicant? I will be contacting the planning department of Bexley Council for more details on the situation. I have a gut feeling that it may well be the same people who tried to illegally open GC's Nightclub in the Fraser Road industrial estate around a year ago - something that was successfully blocked by the News Shopper, Council, Police and a small amount of input from Captain Tweed. I don't object to a night club in Erith at all - it's not something that interests me personally, but I am sure there is a market for one. I am just cautious about the whole enterprise, as unless it is done correctly I can see a return to the levels of town centre lawlessness and brutality we used to witness when T's was open. I walked past the place on New Year's Eve 1998 when a drugged and drunken nutter tried to mug me with a carving knife. Fortunately all ended well, with the malefactor being promptly hauled off by the Police for a night in the cells and an appointment with the beak in the morning. Nevertheless it was a traumatic experience, and not something I would want to go though again. The problem is that any place that serves alcohol (specifically lagers such as the ubiquitous Stella Artois that aggravate the nervous system) and open late into the night are going to attract nasty elements - Erith has a higher than average quotient of scumbags and ne'er do wells to begin with, and to further concentrate them after filling them with noxious and gassy aggression enhancers is really asking for trouble.

Can someone please enlighten me as to why there is still a hard copy print edition of the Yellow Pages? Yet again I find myself ripping off the plastic wrapping before dumping the directory unread in the paper recycling bin in Morrison's car park. What a waste of resources and effort - the online Yell.com is an okay alternative. I wonder how long it will take them to realise that a hard copy edition should nowadays be an opt - in arrangement, rather than a blanket door - to - door physical spam as it currently is.

No further information following the attempted burglary of Vinton Metals early last Monday morning; I hope to speak to the Police to get an update in the next couple of days.

The photo above is taken of the promenade along Erith river front, showing some of the apartments that overlook the Thames; I must give some balance and show there are some pleasant parts to the town - it is not all doom and gloom here, after all. Just don't look over the railings and into the mud at low tide - it is a shopping trolley spotters' idea of paradise.

Ian has started his own blog now. He's still getting a handle on the whole blogging concept, but I don't think it will be long before he has a great online presence. You can read the View from the Hill here.

The gold stall still seems to be doing sterling service (ouch!) in the Riverside Centre; I watched a consumer documentary about the whole gold phenomenon the other day; apparently most of these gold purchasing organisations are only giving around 50% of the actual value of the metal, and the street based vendors are apparently some of the worst. The advice seems to be if you really want to get rid of your precious metals, shop around and don't be tempted to take the first offer. Personally these online gold buyers that send out post free packets for you to send in your gold for valuation and purchase by them are a burglars' wet dream. I predict the level of property theft will only increase because of this - I reckon Monday's copper burglars have most likely already branched off into this line of crime.

The video this week is something topical; it is an edited home movie taken by some visitors to Erith; they document their walk along Erith riverside to finish up at Woolwich. It certainly gives a good idea of what the area adjacent to the River Thames looks like - pretty much the best part of the town. See what you think and feel free to post a comment below.

Gulag Erith.

Erith's latest leisure venue - GC's night club, which opened last night. Click on any photo for a larger version. It is located on Fraser Road, in part of what is left of the run down Europa Industrial Estate. Not what I would consider the prime location for a venue, but no doubt the property was cheap. Reports suggest that building work was still going on an hour before the opening time. Apparently the club was playing "Happy Hardcore" when my spy walked past in the early hours of the morning. I think that is the kind of dance music that goes "whumpf whumpf" - not that I could really care much either way; I have serious doubts that the place will ever serve real ale or play Jethro Tull album tracks. I am not sure if the venue has a proper licence or permission, but at least it is away from a residential area, and stuck bang in the middle of a spectacularly grotty industrial estate that dominates eastern Erith. They are welcome to it. I took these photos early on Sunday afternoon in that kind of light drizzle that permeates everything, just prior to taking some photographs of Erith Riverside shopping centre, showing the works to modify and extend the roof to cover the whole of the shopping area. So keen to get this completed, the builders were actually working (okay, standing around drinking tea, but you get the idea) on a Sunday!

Just as I finished taking photographs, a security guard came over and told me that photography was forbidden in the centre. I asked him where the notice was, and that it was hardly a nuclear weapons facility, also that anyway it was a public space, and incidentally, had he heard of the Magna Carta? This was met with a blank look. The bloke himself was relatively well spoken and polite compared with some of the micro browed goons the property management company normally digs up from care in the community or suchlike, so I decided to save the big fight for another day. You can see what all the fuss was about by looking at my Flickr photo site. I did mention to the guard that he was born out of time - he would have made an excellent sentry for one of Stalin's gulags.

Have you noticed that you can still purchase dead media formats like audio cassettes? Shops like Morrison's and W.H Smith still stock them. I can understand people wanting to continue using vinyl, but audio tapes were always a poor engineering solution - audio manufacturers mainly spent their to minimise the inherent shortcomings of the design (poor signal to noise ratio, audio print through (hearing the music a fraction of a second before you were supposed to, where the magnetic signal had transferred from the tape layer wrapped around it) and relative fragility - they were also subject to serial access - you had to fast forward / rewind to find a particular track, if you were not unlucky to have the tape come spewing out of the cassette to certain ruin). Somebody somewhere must still like and use them though. I think the only hifi company to really make audio cassettes sound halfway to acceptable were Nakamichi, and unfortunately their kit was always hideously expensive, and you could not play tapes recorded on a Nakamichi machine on any other recorder, as they did not use the standard audio protocols or format.

I have seen something that had I not witnessed it on at least four occasions with my own eyes, I would dismiss as an urban myth. Pigeons use the railway. Seriously, When I get on to the Plumstead bound overland train from Cannon Street in the afternoons when the station is relatively quiet; occasionally a feral pigeon will hop onto the carriage and walk down the aisle between the seats. The doors then shut and the train then makes its' way to London Bridge, where the flying rodent then alights. This has happened too often to be a freak of nature - the pigeons cannot be bothered to fly from one station to the other, so they take the train. I don't see them with tickets either, but maybe that is something for another day.

You may or may not be aware that Paramount Pictures are gambling around $150 Million on rebooting the Star Trek franchise. The last couple of movies, and the rather poor TV series Enterprise did a lot to damage the brand, and Trek is currently looking rather unwell. Paramount have hired successful cult TV / movie writer and director JJ Abrams to do for Trek what Casino Royale did for James Bond. Below is a low resolution video of the new cinema trailer for the movie, which is due out in May 2009. Quality is somewhat below par, but it is the best available at the moment - and apologies if it gets pulled from YouTube at some point. Please feel free to leave comments below.