Compulsory purchase?

The building in the above photos (click on either for a larger view) is one of the landmarks of Erith. It is the first thing many visitors see when they enter the town for the first time, but it is also one of the least memorable. The large and nowadays rather run down and scruffy brick building is called Electricity House – though many locals are unaware of this. It was built back in 1938 and opened in November 1939 as a showroom and offices for the local electricity company, which at the time was run by the council. Pre – war services such as gas, water and electricity supply were quite commonly managed and supplied by local councils; the idea of private companies being involved was something that did not happen until after the war had ended. Electricity House was also a place where new electrical customers could view domestic appliances which they could buy via hire purchase (it sounds like an early version of BrightHouse, but without the crippling interest rates). As well as the showroom, Electricity House was home to what contemporary accounts say was a very upmarket dance hall with a fully sprung Canadian Maple floor; there was also a small Pathe cinema. The local electricity business was astonishingly successful – probably much helped by the fact that it offered the cheapest metered electricity in the entire UK at the time – one penny per unit. Ten thousand local people signed up for electrification in the first month alone, attracted by the offer of free connection to the local power grid – unusual at the time – many suppliers would even charge for the copper cable to connect new customers. In 1939 the Erith electricity board made a (for then) massive profit of £13,000. The idea was that the money would be used to improve local services and amenities for all, but the advent of war meant that early in 1940 Electricity House was handed over for war work, and once peace was restored, the money intended to benefit local people was absorbed by the LEB during nationalisation, and nothing was ever seen of it. Much of Erith was still lit by gas until relatively recently. I believe that some houses in West Street did not get electricity until 1947 when the London Electricity Board was formed, and the local council control of power was nationalised. For the last six years I have been writing about how Bexley Council had plans to compulsorily purchase the building, and redevelop the large site as a new gateway development for Erith. I have had some inside information from a number of confidential sources on the project, but was asked to keep quiet on certain subjects - until now, when Bexley Council have made the following public announcement:- "At its meeting next week (25th February) the Council’s Cabinet will consider options to improve the top end of Pier Road near the Queens Road Roundabout to create a new welcoming gateway for Erith town centre. The Council has been buying properties on Pier Road since July 2017 as part of the Erith Regeneration Programme and wants to create a high quality, mixed use commercial and residential area that provides a more welcoming entrance to the town centre. Cllr Louie French, Bexley’s Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Growth said: “We want Erith to become a vibrant riverside town again and upgrading the gateway to the town centre at Pier Road is an important part of this. We have been working hard over the past few years to secure the site and are now at a stage where we need to make a decision about how best to move things forward.” One option that will be considered at the meeting is whether or not to use the Council’s compulsory purchase powers to buy properties and identify a development partner to help redevelop it. If it chooses this option, the Council will work closely with those affected and keep them informed at all stages of the process". I wonder what the reaction was of the owners of the newly refurbished kebab shop in the block - what used to be Town Kebab, which closed nearly two months ago after it was sold, and the new owners extensively (and expensively) gutted the old shop and refitted it with an impressive new interior and kitchen. It has been renamed Best Kebab and Chicken. I hope that Bexley Council will properly recompense them when the compulsory purchase goes through.

Last week I wrote a long piece on wartime SOE agent Violette Szabo. I got an Email from a somewhat unexpected source as a consequence. Caroline Field of Orbit Housing Association wrote the following, very surprising article:- "I was fascinated to read your piece on Violette Szabo. I have a very loose family relationship to her – through my in-laws by marriage.  This is how we discovered it….  Long ago my 12 yr old son was extremely disgruntled to be asked to ‘find a love poem and write about it’ as homework.  I’d recently read Leo Marks’ book and gave him the ‘The life that I have’ poem.  This went down very well, spies, ciphers  and sabotage helping to make the love poem theme  a lot more palatable. Ten years or so on my father-in-law had just died.  He was a lay minister and all through his terminal illness he carried on conducting funerals, taking great care to personalise each ceremony with the bereaved.  He died the day he conducted his last funeral, having left no indication of his preference for his own.  The order of service for his last one was on the table so we turned to it for inspiration.  It included the Violette poem and my mother-in-law suggested that she would like it. I told her the story behind the poem, which she hadn’t known. ‘Violette Szabo was related to us’ she said. Not surprisingly we then decided to use the poem for the funeral and memorial service. It transpired that Aunt Brenda (mother-in-law’s sister)  had long ago travelled to Australia by sea.  Someone discovered that distant relatives would be on the voyage and put them in touch with Brenda, who would be otherwise be travelling alone. These relatives were Violette’s parents and her daughter, Tania.  Tania and Brenda have stayed in touch ever since."

It is 76 years this month since the world's first stored program digital computer was first switched on. On the 5th of February 1944, the MK1 Colossus attacked its first cipher challenge. Contrary to some erroneous accounts, Colossus was not used to break the German Enigma code – that work was done on a separate set of electromechanical analogue computers called Bombes. What Colossus did was crack the daily key settings of an even more fiendishly complicated cipher system called Lorenz, which was exclusively used by the Nazi High Command to communicate with each other. Colossus was designed and built by a team headed by an amazing electronic engineer called Tommy Flowers, who was born and raised the son of a bricklayer in Poplar, East London. Flowers was ferociously intelligent, and whilst an  apprentice electrician at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, he undertook  evening classes at the University of London, where he was awarded a BSc in Electrical Engineering. He later became the head of the Post Office Research Station in Dollis Hill, where prior to the war he was instrumental in the design of the first automatic telephone exchange. I have a personal connection with this piece of history; my late Great Uncle Horace worked in the Dollis Hill Research Station during the war. We know very little of his wartime experiences, but we do know that as well as being exempted from military service, he was also exempted from Home Guard or fire watching duties, which was extremely unusual at the time. He never said anything about what he had been doing, but it remains very likely indeed he was part of Tommy Flowers’ Colossus design and construction team, which was the most secret allied project of the war, classified even higher than the Manhattan Project to create the first nuclear weapons. Uncle Horace’s full name was Horace Payne. After the war he became the chief telephone exchange engineer for the City of London, and was based at the old international telephone exchange in Upper Thames Street (or it may have been King William Street - my memory is hazy - I was very young, and it was a long time ago), which handled all phone lines to America. He was one of only two people who had the key to the international hotline that linked London, Moscow and Washington DC, which was in a room made to look like a store cupboard.  When I was seven or eight years old, during a school holiday I got to spend the day with him at work. He showed me the hotline room, and actually it was not very impressive - no flashing lights as you would see in a cold war thriller. Instead it was very plain, and painted with what appeared to be war surplus battleship grey. There were a few panels with unlit lights, and a patch panel with some cords attached to it. There was also a small table and a matching chair, and that was about that. Reality did not match the fictional “James Bond” image, which was very disappointing for a small boy. In his office Uncle Horace had a big Victorian roll - top desk, and propped against it was a very tatty and battered looking cricket bat. I recall I was sat with a carton of Kia Ora drink whilst he made some phone calls whilst smoking a horrid roll - up cigarette. For some unknown reason he smoked roll – ups at work, but at home he smoked conventional boxed cigarettes; he had a large collection of vintage cigarette cards, some in albums, and others in large piles which he kept on top the fireplace in his back room. I would imagine that nowadays they would be worth a small fortune. A junior engineer came in and said that there was a problem with a relay rack (the City exchange was the last one in London to be converted to digital, and at this time was still electro mechanical). Horace slowly got up, stubbed out his fag, then picked up the cricket bat, before winking at me as he said “come with me lad”. We went into the open relay floors, where tens of thousands of electro mechanical relays were clattering as they made automatic phone connections. The junior engineer pointed to a rack where the relays were not moving - they appeared to be frozen or jammed. Uncle Horace said “Stand Back!” to me over the din. He then took a great swing with the cricket bat at the relay frame. There was a loud bang, and the  frozen relays all jumped back into life!. He then fished around in the pocket of his waistcoat for a piece of chalk, and marked a cross on the side of the relay frame, before saying to his assistant “we’ll take this one out tonight - get it booked”. Now - this really impressed me! That was the only time I ever got to see what he did at work; he was extremely diffident about his past, and always managed to steer the conversation elsewhere if the subject came up. Ironically I am now sitting here typing this whilst wearing Horace’s Omega dress watch, which I inherited from him when he died. He was a real enigma, and a lovely man. Colossus was an amazing feat of engineering - It occupied the size of a living room (7 ft high by 17 ft wide and 11 ft deep), weighed five tonnes, and used 8kW of power. It incorporated 2,500 valves, 501 of which are thyraton switches, about 100 logic gates and 10,000 resistors connected by 7 km of wiring. Reading 5000 characters per second (faster than anything ever produced commercially), Colossus found the start wheel positions of Lorenz-encrypted messages to enable the decryption of 63 million characters. Typically, it took Colossus up to four hours to establish the start wheel positions of messages. It is often surmised that the Allies might have been reading some of the decrypted messages even before they reached Nazi High Command. By the end of the war, 63 million characters of high-grade German messages had been decrypted by the 550 people working on the ten functioning Colossi at Bletchley Park. After the war, some of the Colossi were destroyed, and the remaining ones moved to GCHQ, where it is said they were in operation until the mid 1970’s. By the early 1980’s the story of Bletchley Park and the Colossus computer was finally coming out, after over thirty years of total secrecy. Great Uncle Horace never said a word, and it is to my great regret that we only discovered after his death what almost certainly was his involvement with the astonishing feat which has gone on to change the world. Comment and feedback to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Uncle Horace's best friend was the highly acclaimed amateur astronomer, comic actor and film star Will Hay - a name largely forgotten today, but a comic actor whose best work influenced the likes of The Goon Show, and Monty Python, and his most famous film "Oh, Mister Porter!" was a direct influence on "Dad's Army" - in fact,  Jimmy Perry, in his autobiography, wrote that the trio of Captain Mainwaring, Corporal Jones and Private Pike in Dad's Army was inspired by watching Oh, Mr Porter!  Born in Stockton in 1888, Hay’s family moved him south to Suffolk before his first birthday. As his father became a jobbing engineer so the family’s mobility quickly increased – moving next to Hemel Hempstead then to London and finally to Manchester where Hay Senior established his own firm. Wanting independence, Will refused to join the family company and started instead as an apprentice engineer for Westinghouse. Yet Hay was no typical engineer and his humour hid by the fact that, by the age of 19, he had learnt German, French and Italian to such a high level that he was able to leave engineering and became an interpreter. His nineteenth year also saw him married to fellow teenager Gladys Perkins and when his daughter Gladys Elspeth was born some eighteen months later Hay decided he could make a better living for his new family in the pre-Great War music halls. Stealing some of his sister Eppie’s staff room reminiscences – she was a full time teacher – Hay began to develop his pompous, bumbling schoolmaster act. After working for over three years with the Fred Karno troupe, where Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin had developed their craft, Hay swiftly found himself the talk of the town: selling out Britain’s biggest music halls, playing sets for the Prince of Wales and successfully touring America, South Africa and Canada. Then came Boys Will Be Boys (1935) his first starring film role with a screenplay written by Hay himself. The story wasn't overly deep – a prison teacher cons his way into a boarding school job and helps stop a diamond theft – but it did have its moments. And it was the perfect frame for Hay’s idiot teacher routines…Then, in 1937,  Graham Moffatt joined Moore Marriott as Hay’s two sidekicks in the finest comic film any of them would ever be involved with, Oh, Mr Porter! wherein Hay discovers the (Northern) Irish railway station he’s been sent to run, Buggleskelly, is actually a run-down mess. Gun-runners, ghosts, secret windmills and missing trains – Hay and his two stooges come out on top in a film that is, even now, genuinely funny, at times hilarious. Oh, Mister Porter! (1937) was a deserved box office smash in its day, taking some £500,000 in British cinemas alone – the equivalent now would be over £15 million. In the immediate pre - war years, Will Hay was the second highest paid entertainer in Britain, earning a reputed £800 per week - narrowly pipped in the earnings stakes by George Formby. Outside of show business, Will Hay was a dedicated and respected amateur astronomer. He constructed a personal observatory in his garden in Mill Hill and built a glider in 1909. He became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1932 and is noted for having discovered a Great White Spot on the planet Saturn in 1933. The spot lasted for a few months and then faded away. He also measured the positions of comets with a micrometer he built himself, and designed and built a blink comparator. He wrote the book Through My Telescope in 1935, which had a foreword by Sir Richard Gregory, formerly Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at Queen's College, London. When Hay died, a few items of his equipment were bequeathed to the British Astronomical Association. Some years ago I came across a long out of print book on the life of Will Hay, and it had some photos taken of his garden and his private observatory; in one of the early shots, the construction of his observatory is shown; several people are helping with the digging of the observatory foundations. One chap is seen stripped to his string vest and leaning on a shovel - it was my late Great Uncle Horace on what must have been a very hot day for manual labour. I wish I had a copy of the book. In 1947, Hay suffered a stroke which left him physically disabled. He died at his flat in Chelsea, London after a further stroke in 1949, and is buried in Streatham Park Cemetery, London SW16.

Pac-Man, the biggest arcade game of all time, turned 40 years old last week. Released by the Japanese company Namco in February 1980, Pac-Man was like nothing else at the time. At a time when Space Invaders and Asteroids and other games with abstracted, monochrome graphics ruled the arcade, Pac-Man offered a striking, cartoonish design with an appealing central character. It revolved around eating, not shooting; and it was designed to appeal to young women and couples, not spotty nerks in anoraks (although they all played it too). The colourful design and unique collect-the-dots maze gameplay—plus the wonderful tension of running away from those ghosts, then scrambling to eat them once you got a power pellet—made Pac-Man almost instantly addictive, eating ten pence pieces as rapaciously as its protagonist swallowed pixels. By one count, Namco sold 400,000 Pac-Man machines, head and shoulders above anything that had come before, or since. And it is still highly playable and popular in a way its contemporaries are not—few people are paying for Asteroids or Space Invaders updates today, but Namco Bandai still makes and sells variations on Pac-Man on every platform imaginable. Pac-Man’s ubiquity was our first indication that games were about to become the dominant entertainment medium of the information age. (It also arguably marked the beginning of Japan’s impending pop-cultural invasion of the rest of the world, even if players at the time didn't know where it came from).

Now for the weekly local safety and security updates from Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association. Firstly the report from Barnehurst ward:-

"This knife was recovered by an alert resident of Northumberland Way whilst out walking his dog in Castleton Avenue on the evening of 18th February. He saw a vehicle pull up next to a BT green box, saw a woman get out and then heard something metal drop behind the box. When the vehicle drove off he looked and found a 12' knife. The knife is now in possession of the police. Good news again for Barnehurst as we did not have many crimes. The Barnehurst team have been visiting residents this week and have been offering crime prevention advice. We are more than happy to come to your home and offer you crime prevention advice, so please give us a call on 02087212577. We have noticed that there has been 3 Theft from Motor Vehicles around the Colyers Lane area as we are urging residents to make sure that their vehicles are locked. We have had one burglary on Castleton Avenue, whereby entry was gained via the ground floor front door. The team also arrested a male for GBH and are continuing to provide proactive patrols across the ward. Please join us for our community contact day on TUESDAY 3rd MARCH at 11:00 hours at Barnehurst Golf Course. We will discuss any ward issues that you have and we will also provide residents with crime prevention advice". Belvedere ward:- "Overnight on the Saturday 15/02/2020 to Sunday 16/02/2020 at Jutland House, little Brights Road several of the mailboxes were broken into and contents thrown on the floor. Unknown who did this at present but enquiries are ongoing with the estate management regarding CCTV enquiries. On Sunday 16/02/2020 a burglary occurred on Orchard Road in the early hours. Someone had gained entry via the kitchen window. Documents were taken. On the Friday 14/02/2020 there was a commotion on Picardy Street whereby a male started arguing with another and a fight took place. The dental surgery also suffered damage in this affair. Investigation ongoing. Officers conducted a weapon sweep around Picardy Street on Sunday 16/02/2020 after the incident the day before and a chisel was found dumped in the bushes opposite the shops. Blade was rusty but could still cause damage if used for a nefarious purpose". Bexleyheath ward:-"Tuesday 11/02/20 1720 Robbery Air Pods Broadway. Wednesday 12/2/20 2100 – 13/2/20 0600 Theft From Motor Vehicle Martens Avenue - change stolen. Between Wednesday 12/2/20 2200 and Thursday 13/2/20 0630 Theft From Motor Vehicle Sterling Road car broken into nothing stolen. Between Friday 7/02/20 and Wednesday 12/02/20 Theft From Parking Meters Cineworld Car Park coins taken. Between Saturday 8/02/20 1500 and Sunday 9/02/20 1400 Criminal Damage Henfield Close rear gate damaged, no entry gained to property. Thursday 13/02/20 1900 Burglary Broomfield Road suspects have forced door, resident has been alerted to noise and shouted at suspects who have left scene. Friday 14/02/20 1545 Purse dropped on BROADWAY went back and found it however money and travel card were missing. Friday 14/02/20 1755 Robbery Air Pod case stolen by youths near Subway on Broadway. Saturday 15/02/20 0030 – 0600 Theft of Motor Vehicle Land Rover Latham Road. Saturday 15/02/20 1225 Robbery Russell Park. 3 suspects arrested Sunday". Crayford ward:- "We are happy to report that Crayford hasn't suffered any burglaries this week. We have managed to locate two stolen vehicles this week one was a motorcycle that was dumped by the thieves in a quiet cul de sac and car that was too badly damaged to be returned to its owner . The team have made a couple of arrest over the last few days, one for ABH after a male had assaulted an ex-partner at their home address and another male was arrested for a breach of a court order. ASB around the ward has improved lately, although we are still getting reports of youths causing issues in and around the Town Hall Square area. During evening patrols around the Dale Road area of Crayford, officers witnessed what they believed to be a drug deal in a dimly lit alley way, as they approached the two males they ran off towards Dale Close where unfortunately they were lost. However, officers retraced their steps after seeing objects fall out of the pockets of one of the males which was discovered to be a quantity of cash (notes) We have also conducted six stop and searches with some positive results". Erith ward:- "One burglary from the last week, Rear door forced open, and items of jewellery taken. We have a few sets of Smart Water left so if you would require one please email us and we will do our best to get one to you. 3 theft of motor vehicles and 2 thefts from motor vehicles. Vehicle crime is by far the largest crime across Erith. If you park your car on a drive way or outside your house it might be a good idea to invest in a camera, CCTV cameras are getting cheaper all the time, just a suggestion worth thinking about. Crimes of note from the last week: Theft of Motor vehicle Wednesday 12/02/2020 Queen Street, Residential burglary Wednesday 12/02/2020 Bramble Croft - Entry through locked rear window. Untidy search. Watch and jewellery taken". Northumberland Heath ward:- "No burglaries in the last week. 2 vehicles broken in to overnight on Thursday 13/02/2020. A log book and other paperwork were stolen from a vehicle in Camrose Avenue. A mobile phone was stolen from a vehicle in Belmont Road. Please do not leave any valuables in your vehicles at any time or any important papers etc. Due to staffing levels there will be no Community Contact Session until early in March. PCSO Lorraine is continuing ASB patrols in the park, Sussex Road and Becton Place whenever possible". Slade Green and Northend ward:- "A burglary took place between 10am and 3pm in Sun Court on Friday 14/02/2020. Items taken included a tv, car keys and jewellery. Entry was made via the kitchen window (situated at the rear of the property. Please ensure all doors and windows are locked each time you go out. We have had 3 vehicles damaged in 3 separate roads in the past week, all on different nights. A windscreen was smashed in Bridge Road, all windows smashed in Duriun Way and a wing mirror ripped off along with scratches on the car door in Hazel Road. It is unclear if these are all linked but if you happen to see anyone loitering around during night time hours, please call 101. Due to the weather we had to cancel our Smart Water event in Egerton Place last Saturday. A new date will be sent out in due course. Our next Community Contact Session is from 2.30pm on Thursday 27/02/2020 at Slade Green library". Thamesmead East ward:- "No burglaries this week Motor Vehicle Crime Kale Road Wednesday 12/2/20 between 1:00am -5:am an unknown person ,managed to gain entry to a vehicle without causing any damage, steal trainers, an iPad and a wallet containing £20.00. Hartslock Drive Saturday 15/2/20 between 12:55pm and 1:05pm the catalytic converter was stolen from a parked vehicle. Criminal Damage Glimpsing Green Between Tuesday 11/2/20 6:00pm and 7:30am on Wednesday 12/2/20 a resident reported that her post box had been damaged. Walsham Green Wednesday 12/2/20 between the hours of 3:50pm and 11:20pm ,eggs, flour and tomato ketchup had been thrown at the front of the residents property, hitting the door and windows. Good News PC's John and Nana, over the weekend, the group of youths who had been involved in shoplifting attended the Thamesmead East police office were given strong words of advice as to their future conduct and had to write letters of apology. The youths attended with their parents or an appropriate adult". West Heath ward:- "Excellent news this week no burglaries and no vehicle crimes have been reported on West Heath Ward. The Ward officers have been working collaboratively with East Wickham and Crook Log officers on proactive burglaries and motor vehicle crime patrols. On Monday 17th February 5 males were stopped and searched for drugs at various locations on the wards, one stop resulting in an investigation for possession of cannabis with the intent to supply. On Tuesday 18th West Heath officers took part in a Knife Arch Operation at Slade Green BR where three arrests were made for various offences including a suspect carrying a knife".

To celebrate the ascension to the throne of King George V, Bexley Urban District Council commissioned Walter Maxted Epps to design a clock tower for Bexleyheath town centre. Early professional cinematographer Harry Pease shot this film of the inauguration of the clock tower in July 1912. It is part of the archive film collection at Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre. Look out for the firemen standing on their horse-drawn engine. Please feel free to Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The Clock Tower.

Many people think that Erith is just a small, semi industrial outer London suburb. What they don't realise is less than fifteen minutes walk from the town centre, and you can be in an area of outstanding natural beauty, which has hardly changed since the Bronze Age. The photo above shows the salt marshes and reed beds that border the banks of the River Thames to the Eastern end of Erith. The photo was actually taken from Erith Yacht Club, and shows the characteristic Erith "big sky" which you can only find in this part of the Borough. The marshes are a great place to visit when the weather is warm - you can walk dogs, or ride a mountain bike, or just go for a stroll. If you do have a dog, you need to be able to keep it under control, as there are a couple of farms on the marsh, which have both sheep and cows grazing in the area. Worth a visit once the incessant rain and high winds finally abate. Click on the photo for a larger view.

After the unwelcome revelation last week of Erith KFC applying for a 24 hour opening licence, I forgot to mention problems I encountered whilst logging my own objection to the plan on Bexley Council’s website. As I have written in the past, the site is very comprehensive, but it is labyrinthine and very difficult to navigate. If you do persist for long enough, you can generally find what you are looking for, but the experience is very far from pleasant. One thing that many of Bexley Council’s website online contact forms have in common is that they require not only your name and Email address, but full postal address, along with multiple phone numbers. Not only are some of these forms not encrypted by HTTPS, meaning that data uploaded onto them could potentially be intercepted and stolen, but on top of this, the logic parser used by the pages does not allow for any contact fields to be left blank. Quite why the council feel the need for so much personal information is a mystery to me.  I particularly found the form field for a mobile phone number a challenge. I tried inputting “N/A” and “I don’t have a mobile phone”, but these were both rejected. I tried a string of zeroes, but this too was not accepted. In the end I was forced to make up a number. I hope some poor innocent does not get phoned by a council worker trying to get hold of me. Quite why the council think absolutely everyone has a mobile phone is a mystery. By making a mobile number a compulsory field, they are effectively blocking a small but nevertheless significant group of residents from accessing their services online. I have also discovered that it is possible that my objections, and those of others may not have been correctly recorded by the site; the council are already aware of this and are currently investigating. I have agreed with them that if Maggot Sandwich readers wish to send me Emails of protest regarding KFC potentially opening 24/7 in Manor Road, I will collate the messages and forward them to Bexley Councillor Chris Ball, who is managing the investigation of the possible website problem. You can Email any objections to hugh.neal@gmail.com and I will ensure that the correct people in the business licence team get the messages. I think it is extremely unlikely the Council will permit the vastly extended opening hours. As I wrote last week, the KFC Drive Through site is surrounded by residential housing on three out of four sides, and already causes a degree of noise and disruption due to the number of vehicles passing through the premises, allied with the smell of frying oil that surrounds the site if the wind happens to be blowing in the wrong direction. I suspect that the application may be “a play”. They may not actually want 24/7 opening, they are just requesting it, but when it gets refused, they then will submit a more “reasonable” change request with the hours that they actually want to extend to. Currently they are open 11am to 11pm. I would not be surprised if they would really like to open at 6am and close at midnight, but to be honest, this is just a guess on my part. Both the KFC and adjacent McDonald’s Drive Through are both in relatively close proximity to the residential care home / sheltered housing on the opposite side of James Watt Way; I would imagine that any licencing changes would have to take into account the potential increase in disturbance to the care home residents. Any increases in the opening hours will be vigorously opposed by local residents. Watch this space.

If this was not enough, Bexley Council Highways Department are shortly to begin work to introduce traffic calming measures to Manor Road. These will include raised pedestrian crossings, traffic cushions and narrowing of the carriageway at key points. How successful this will be is open to debate. Manor Road is very long, and mostly fairly straight. It does suffer badly from speeding vehicles, especially in the evenings when the road is otherwise quiet. It experiences a classic problem – the Western end of the road (the Erith end) is relatively high density residential, whereas the Eastern end (towards Slade Green) is populated by industrial units and heavy industry. The road gets a lot of heavy lorries using it in the daytime, but is relatively quiet in the evenings, when most of the speeding problems seem to occur. It is unclear whether the council work will also include resurfacing the road yet again, as it is crumbling and potholed, even though it has been resurfaced twice in six years. The same can be said  of Fraser Road, which in many places is in an even worse state. I was on a 99 bus last weekend, and was almost thrown out of my seat as the vehicle hit a massive hole in the road just outside of Wickes. Both of these roads urgently need major remedial work, but I somehow doubt that it will get done. The only upside of the pot holes is that some (but not all) speeding drivers may be deterred by the terrible driving conditions. I think it is only time before either a motor bike or bicycle rider has a serious accident, either caused by hitting a pothole and being thrown off their vehicle, or by swerving to avoid a hole and riding into incoming traffic. Either way the local potholes are a danger to all road users.

Some months ago I embedded a trailer for the then soon to be released movie featuring veteran rock band Status Quo, who were appearing in their very own action comedy film, called “Bula Quo”. It looked like amiable guff, and I thought no more about it until last weekend, when a friend popped round with it. I must admit that I was expecting a train wreck of a movie, and sat down in front of the television expecting to laugh at it. I think pretty much everyone who had heard of the project was of the impression that it was some kind of elaborate tax avoidance scheme on the part of the band’s management. It all sounded like a pub conversation that went too far – the Quo travel for a series of concerts on the island of Fiji, and manage to inadvertently get on the wrong side of the local Mafia chief; comic mayhem ensues. Actually, upon sitting down and watching it, the movie is actually OK. It is not going to win any awards; Rick Parfitt has trouble playing himself, and most of the cast seem to have been recent graduates of the Formica School of Acting, but overall it is actually quite enjoyable. A prime example of the humour can be summarised in the following exchange – Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi have been locked in a room with a toy that has been converted into an IED, which is seconds from exploding:- (Rossi) “It’s a doll!” (Parfitt) “It’s a bomb!” (Together) “it’s a blow up doll!” Quite. To be honest, the scenery in Fiji is so stunning that you will have something worth looking at wherever the camera is pointed, and the story unfolds at a leisurely pace. The only believable and well acted role is that played by Craig Fairbrass, who plays the band’s much put upon manager cum minder – he’s completely believable as an ex special forces guy who handles most of the fisticuffs. I commented during the film that Bula Quo is way better than Ridley Scott's pseudo Alien prequel Prometheus, as it has several things that the multi-million dollar sci fi extravaganza lacks; namely a plot that makes sense, characters who have believable motivation and who act in a logical manner. One could never accuse Prometheus of any of those points I am afraid. Bula Quo is cheesy, cheerful and fully aware of exactly how ridiculous it all is. At the end of ninety minutes I have to say that I enjoyed myself – which is most definitely not something I could say after watching  Ridley Scott’s leaden clunker.

You may recall that last week I wrote at some length about the 70^th birthday of Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer. I had a series of very interesting Emails from regular Maggot Sandwich reader Christine, whose Dad also worked at the Dollis Hill Post Office Research Centre before and during the war, and also worked at Bletchley Park. It is entirely possible that her father knew my Great Uncle Horace, who I wrote about last week – we have very little hard evidence of precisely what Horace did during the war, but there is considerable circumstantial evidence he was one of the team that built the ten Colossus computers at Bletchley Park  that cracked the Nazi Lorenz Cipher, and so shortened the war by an estimated two years, saving countless lives in the process. Since then I have recalled a couple of events that took place in the late 1970’s. Uncle Horace’s full name was Horace Payne. He was the chief telephone exchange engineer for the City of London, and was based at the old international telephone exchange in Upper Thames Street (or it may have been King William Street - my memory is hazy - I was very young, and it was a long time ago), which handled all phone lines to America. He was one of only two people who had the key to the international hotline that linked London, Moscow and Washington DC, which was in a room made to look like a store cupboard.  When I was seven or eight, during a school holiday I got to spend the day with him at work. He showed me the hotline room, and actually it was not very impressive - no flashing lights as you would see in a cold war thriller. Instead it was very plain, and painted with what appeared to be war surplus battleship grey. There were a few panels with unlit lights, and a patch panel with some cords attached to it. There was also a small table and a matching chair, and that was about that. Reality did not match the fictional “James Bond” image, which was very disappointing for a small boy. In his office Uncle Horace had a big Victorian roll - top desk, and propped against it was a very tatty and battered looking cricket bat. I recall I was sat with a carton of Kia Ora drink whilst he made some phone calls whilst smoking a horrid roll - up cigarette. For some unknown reason he smoked roll – ups at work, but at home he smoked conventional boxed cigarettes; he had a large collection of vintage cigarette cards, some in albums, and others in large piles which he kept on top the fireplace in his back room. I would imagine that nowadays they would be worth a small fortune.  A junior engineer came in and said that there was a problem with a relay rack (the City exchange was the last one in London to be converted to digital, and at this time was still electro mechanical). Horace slowly got up, stubbed out his fag, then picked up the cricket bat, before winking at me as he said “come with me lad”. We went into the open relay floors, where tens of thousands of electro mechanical relays were clattering as they made automatic phone connections. The junior engineer pointed to a rack where the relays were not moving - they appeared to be frozen or jammed. Uncle Horace said “Stand Back!” to me over the din. He then took a great swing with the cricket bat at the relay frame. There was a loud bang, and the  frozen relays all jumped back into life!. He then fished around in the pocket of his waistcoat for a piece of chalk, and marked a cross on the side of the relay frame, before saying to his assistant “we’ll take this one out tonight - get it booked”. Now - this REALLY impressed me! That was the only time I ever got to see what he did at work; he was extremely diffident about his past, and always managed to steer the conversation elsewhere if the subject came up. Ironically I am now sitting here typing this whilst wearing Horace’s Omega dress watch, which I inherited from him when he died. He was a real enigma, and a lovely man.

Whenever I write about the history of Erith and the surrounding areas, one thing comes up time and time again. People have strong memories of the Hedley Mitchell department store in Erith High Street. From what I can gather, it specialised in drapery, soft furnishings and clothing, including bespoke tailoring. I have had conversations with people who recall that the shop had an upmarket image, and was generally regarded as a premium place to shop – a bit like John Lewis and Waitrose are today. I wonder if any readers have any specific memories, or indeed period photographs of the store that they would wish to share with others? Maybe you worked there, had friends or relatives that worked in the shop, or maybe you were just a regular customer with fond recollections of the place? If so, please feel free to drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com and let me know. Any stories that I publish will get a full credit for the author; I know a lot of people are interested in the history of the shop, and regret the fact that it was demolished when the hideous concrete shopping centre and multi story car park was built in its’ place. In fact most people I have quizzed on the subject question the need for the old Erith to have been demolished in the first place. The general opinion seems to be that with a fairly extensive refurbishment, it would have been preferable to have kept the old town; by now, if suitably looked after, it would have been quite a tourist attraction. Obviously it was not to be, but it is nevertheless interesting to speculate as to what could have happened had things not been demolished in the late 1960’s. I am a little too young to remember the old shops myself, but I am pretty certain quite a few readers will have recollections that they would like to share.

Yet another thirtieth technology anniversary is coming up. A company that until this point thirty years ago which was known for producing cheap (and pretty nasty) home all – in – one hiifi systems decided that they wanted a slice of the home computing pie that was being dominated by Sinclair (the ZX Spectrum) and Acorn (the BBC Micro). The company was Amstrad, who at the time had no history in making computers. Chairman Alan Sugar (way before Sir Alan, and even further from Lord) had noticed what a commercial success affordable computers were having in both the UK and beyond, and with his business head firmly on, he told his design team that they needed to create a computer that had the following properties:- 1) It had to be an “all – in – one” unit, with a cassette deck or floppy drive, and  a monitor included (Sugar cleverly realised that many of the computers would get used in a bedroom. Back in the day, not very many children had their own TV, and a machine that would have to be connected to the family TV in the lounge might not get much use, as Mum and Dad would want to watch Coronation Street, and not have a home computer taking up their precious telly). 2) It had to be made from cheap, easily sourced components, to keep the price down. 3) There had to be a large quantity of high quality, affordable software available for the computer on the day of public launch. Unusually for a computer of the period, the design of the case was finalised before the internal architecture had even been decided. Alan Sugar made sure that a large number of functional prototypes were given to software development houses, so that they could get cracking with writing software for the machine prior to the launch date. The actual electronic design of the computer was farmed out to a number of contractors, many of which were based in the Cambridge area. There was a false start when one supplier had a breakdown and handed back their advance fee for writing the computers firmware. Another company was found, and the Amstrad CPC 464 (cassette deck) and 664 (floppy drive) models were launched on time,  with a pile of good quality software available on day one, just has Alan Sugar had promised. The prices were keen too. A CPC 464 could be had with a green screen monitor for £249, or with a full colour screen for £359 – a bargain when you consider that a colour monitor alone could cost around £200 in 1984 prices. The 664 model with the unusual 3” Hitachi floppy disk drive, accompanied by a green screen monitor became a very popular first computer for many small businesses. Accounting, purchase ledger, spreadsheet and word processing software was produced for the machine, and some of it was of exceedingly high quality for the period and the relative limitations of the eight bit architecture. The CPC range sold very well indeed; in fact in the late 1980’s the Amstrad brand was one of the few computer companies to survive the great computer crash. Even former giants like Sinclair were forced to go cap in hand to Amstrad; Alan Sugar bought all of Sinclair’s intellectual property and assets for a bargain price of £5 million. Three years earlier, Sinclair had been valued at in excess of £200 million. Amstrad expanded their range of computers to include the dedicated word processor and printer bundle called the PCW 8256, which was incredibly successful, shipping eight million units worldwide from 1985 to 1989. The print quality from its’ dot matrix printer was not very good, but the word processing “LocoScript” software was excellent – very easy to use, and quite powerful considering the rock bottom price. Many former, self confessed “technophobes” were introduced to computing by the PCW 8256, and the machines were in popular use for many years after they went out of production.

The advert above was found in a local publication dating back to 1947; the dance studio featured was located directly above the Montague Burton bespoke tailors shop (you may recall I featured a period advert from that retailer last week - who says that I don't plan these things?) I would surmise that F.W Kemp was a precursor to Len Goodman, who has his dance studio in Dartford. It all sounds faintly glamorous, but in reality it is not. Just like the historic Burton dance studio being located above a shop, the Len Goodman Dance Studio is located above a Londis convenience store. I wrote about it, complete with photograph, back in November 2011. You can read all about it by clicking here.

The ending video this week is a real gem. It is a four minute long silent, black and white film that shows the unveiling of Bexleyheath Clock Tower, back in July 1912. The film was shot by pioneering early professional cinematographer Harry Pease. The original film is in the collection of Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre, which to my knowledge is not relocating to Bromley after all. It is fascinating to see how much Bexleyheath has changed in the last 102 years, although it is still recognisable. One thing is for certain - it was a lot smarter then than now, and the people were much better dressed. Nowadays most of the people hanging around the Clock Tower are tracksuit wearing, tattooed and multi pierced. I think if you were to wear a tweed or flannel three piece suit in Bexleyheath nowadays, a certain percentage of the natives would think you had come from another planet. Do feel free to leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Erith KFC 24/7?

On Thursday afternoon I was walking along Manor Road, past the KFC Drive Through (not "Thru" as it says on the sign - their branding team are imbeciles)  when I happened to see a notice in the window of the fast food outlet. I am always curious about such things, so I went down the steps to the entrance in order to more closely investigate. Quite a lot of the stories I publish come from carefully checking planning applications, either directly posted in the street, or submitted to Bexley Council's labyrinthine planning website. What I saw was a copy of a licencing application that the company that owns the KFC franchise has recently submitted to Bexley Council. What I saw horrified me. You can see a photograph of the application below. Apologies for the glare and reflections - the light was not the best.

In essence, the store wants to increase its opening hours to include the period between 11pm and 5am seven days a week. Apart from an hour or so closed in the evening, and another hour after 5am, presumably to allow cleaning, this would in effect mean that the drive through would be permanently open to customers. If they were to succeed in their application, there would be a constant stream of drunks, druggies, violent criminals and all sorts of anti social undesirables brought into what is a fundamentally residential area. You may think I am over - reacting, but if one looks at what has happened to the nearby existing 24/7 fast food drive through - the McDonald's at Plumstead, which is in a far more suitable location (opposite the Plumstead Bus Garage, next to the Post Office sorting office, and well away from any residential housing), they have had to employ around the clock security guards due to constant problems of alcohol and drug related violence, anti social behaviour and all sorts of other associated criminality. What makes the situation in Manor Road even worse is that the KFC is directly opposite a McDonald's Drive Through. If the KFC succeeds, the McDonald's will be forced to also open 24/7 in order to compete. The McDonald's backs directly onto the Compton Place housing estate - and I am sure that local residents will have a lot to say on the subject. The KFC itself is directly opposite the block of flats on what used to be the site of Erith Odeon (a grade II* listed Art Deco building that was illegally demolished by the developers of the current flats), and it backs onto what used to be Erith Trades and Social Club, which has just been demolished to make way for key worker apartments. There are also houses that form part of Compton Place opposite the front of the fast food outlet; basically it is hemmed in on three sides by residential accommodation. I have had a chat with my contact in the local Police - and they are not happy about the planning application. Apart from the concerns already mentioned, there is apparently a history of burglars parking vans in drive through restaurant car parks, before the occupants go off to burgle nearby houses. An unusual van parked in a street or cul de sac attracts attention, but a van parked in a drive through does not, thus enabling them to break into a number of houses, then bring their stolen booty back to the van before making another sortie, undisturbed. I am also led to understand that both the McDonald's and KFC car parks are used to conduct drug deals from time to time. If you have strong feelings about the matter, it is possible to log an online complaint by clicking on this link to the Bexley Council Licencing Complaints Website. Whatever your personal opinion of the large fast food chains like McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King, for example, one can at least say that if you are in an unfamiliar town and find yourself in need of sustenance, visiting one of the large fast food chains will mean that you will know what you will get, and the standard of cooking and food hygiene will be consistently high. The food itself may well be bland and uninspiring, but reliability is often the key. I was therefore extremely surprised that the Erith drive through branch of McDonald’s currently has a “Scores on the Doors” food hygiene rating of only two out of five stars. For an organisation that prides itself on cleanliness and good ingredient handling practices, this is a real blow. In their defence, McDonald’s have issued the following public statement:- “The management team had recently changed resulting in a breakdown in the supervision of the cleanliness system.  The areas highlighted in the inspection have now been rectified and the cleaning system has been re-implemented”. I am certain that things will have markedly improved now, several months after the last inspection, but it does beg the question, how could a multinational mega brand allow one of its stores get into a position that it can only rate a two out of five star rating? It is immaterial whether the store is company owned or a franchise – the standards expected are identical. The damage to the McDonald’s brand should such information become widely known is difficult to calculate, but it certainly would not be good. It is ironic that a two star rating in Erith is actually at the upper end of the high ratings – pretty much anywhere else has one or no stars, with the notable exception of the Mambocino coffee shop / cafe, and the T-Bone Cafe in Fraser Road, both of which score a very creditable four stars out of five. I will have to take a look to see if McDonald’s have their pitiful rating sticker on display. Something tells me that would be very unlikely.

This Wednesday marked a very important date that remarkably few people are aware of. It was the seventieth anniversary of the switching on of Colossus – the World’s first programmable digital computer. On the 5^th of February 1944, the MK1 Colossus attacked its first cipher challenge. Contrary to some erroneous accounts, Colossus was not used to break the German Enigma code – that work was done on a separate set of electromechanical analogue computers called Bombes. What Colossus did was crack the daily key settings of an even more fiendishly complicated code system called Lorenz, which was exclusively used by the Nazi High Command to communicate with each other. Colossus was designed and built by a team headed by an amazing electronic engineer called Tommy Flowers, who was born and raised the son of a bricklayer in Poplar, East London. Flowers was ferociously intelligent, and whilst an  apprentice electrician at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, he undertook  evening classes at the University of London, where he was awarded a BSc in Electrical Engineering. He later became the head of the Post Office Research Station in Dollis Hill, where prior to the war he was instrumental in the design of the first automatic telephone exchange. I have a personal connection with this piece of history; my late Great Uncle Horace worked in the Dollis Hill Research Station during the war. We know very little of his wartime experiences, but we do know that as well as being exempted from military service, he was also exempted from Home Guard or fire watching duties, which was extremely unusual at the time. He never said anything about what he had been doing, but it remains likely he was part of Tommy Flowers’ Colossus design and construction team, which was the most secret allied project of the war, classified even higher than the Manhattan Project to create the first nuclear weapons. Colossus was an amazing feat of engineering - It occupied the size of a living room (7 ft high by 17 ft wide and 11 ft deep), weighed five tonnes, and used 8kW of power. It incorporated 2,500 valves, 501 of which are thyraton switches, about 100 logic gates and 10,000 resistors connected by 7 km of wiring. Reading 5000 characters per second (faster than anything ever produced commercially), Colossus found the start wheel positions of Lorenz-encrypted messages to enable the decryption of 63 million characters. Typically, it took Colossus up to four hours to establish the start wheel positions of messages. It is often surmised that the Allies might have been reading some of the decrypted messages even before they reached Nazi High Command. By the end of the war, 63 million characters of high-grade German messages had been decrypted by the 550 people working on the ten functioning Colossi at Bletchley Park. After the war, some of the Colossi were destroyed, and the remaining ones moved to GCHQ, where it is said they were in operation until the mid 1970’s. By the early 1980’s the story of Bletchley Park and the Colossus computer was finally coming out, after over thirty years of total secrecy. Great Uncle Horace never said a word, and it is to my great regret that we only discovered after his death what may have been his involvement with the astonishing feat which has gone on to change the world. Up until very recently I would have recommended Bletchley Park as an ideal day out for anyone with an interest in history, computers, radio, or who just wants a day out somewhere with lovely formal gardens and a picturesque lake. Things have changed, however. It used to be that visitors could pay a one – off entrance fee, which would grant them access to all of the facilities in the grounds of Bletchley Park; there was a motor museum, a museum dedicated to Winston Churchill memorabilia, the National Radio Centre (run by the Radio Society of Great Britain, of which I am an inductee) an old fashioned post office and a model railway. On top of this, the two main attractions were the main Bletchley Park House and the surrounding huts, used by the wartime code breakers, and the National Museum of Computing, home to the rebuilt Colossus. Recently a new Chief Executive was appointed by Bletchley Park Trust (the charity which has overall responsibility for the place). The new chap, called Ian Standen has decided that he wants to turn the park into the “Disneyland of code breaking”. He’s closed down the Churchill Museum, and made every facility except the main house and the huts an extra entrance fee, and also fired a number of the volunteer curators for not being “on message” despite the fact that many of the volunteers worked at Bletchley Park, or later at GCHQ and have an intimate personal knowledge of the history of the place. Instead he wants to use actors to play "characters" loosely based on real life people to guide visitors around the museum. To add insult to injury, he has had the National Museum of Computing fenced off and excluded from guided tours, even though the huts they occupy were an integral part of the original organisational setup. Visitors now have to navigate a series of gates and pay an additional fee to enter the computing section, even if all they want to do is see the Tony Sale Colossus computer rebuild (as pictured above), which to be honest is the focal point for any visit to Bletchley Park. As you may appreciate, these changes, which are designed to create additional visitor revenue may well have done exactly the opposite. A campaign is now under way to get Ian Standen sacked, and the whole Bletchley Park setup returned to how it originally was established. The campaign are currently trying to recruit Stephen Fry as their figurehead, and from what I have read, they already have a huge amount of support, both from visitors and the IT industry. At present Bletchley Park is being torn apart by a small coterie of people who have no appreciation or understanding of the place, and merely want to turn a quick buck. The place is not an amusement park; it is a British technological and cultural institution that should be treated with suitable dignity. I suspect that the “re – organisation” will be cut short by those who really care about Bletchley Park. In the meantime I would urge readers to boycott the place in order to send a message to the likes of Ian Standen that he cannot play fast and loose with a national treasure, where the wartime code breakers shortened the war by an estimated two years, saved countless lives and in so doing created the computer revolution. You can see an online album of photos of Bletchley Park by clicking here.

The News Shopper are reporting that the Crossrail tunnel from just outside of Plumstead Station going Northwards under the River Thames to North Greenwich has now been completed. Around seventy percent of the Crossrail project has now been completed, and I understand not only that, but the work has been done on time and on budget. Although seventy percent of the tunnelling is completed, the full project is at the halfway point. There are many stations to be built, and infrastructure to be commissioned too. Crossrail are opening some of their building sites to the general public, who will be able to view the progress of work for themselves. You can visit their website here to book free tickets for a number of events.  The Crossrail project is a massive venture; it is costing £73 billion, and employing around 10,000 people, including 280 apprentices.

Following my musing on local bespoke tailors nowadays and in history, another skilled craft came to my attention recently. Whilst putting together each Maggot Sandwich weekly update, I sit in my dedicated home office in front of my iMac. I have a very comfortable orthopaedic chair which originally belonged to my late Dad. He gave it to me years before he got seriously ill; I must have had it for around fifteen years I guess. The chair was custom made for him by what used to be the orthopaedic department of the now long defunct New Cross Hospital when he had a hip replacement operation. Even though the chair was custom made for him, he never really took to it, and it remained only occasionally employed, until he gave it to me. I have used it daily ever since. Nowadays the chair is looking very shabby; the black vinyl seat covering is split, and the foam stuffing is visible; it would be very easy for me to go out and buy a new office chair for around £70 or so, but not only has my old chair got sentimental connections, apart from needing re – upholstering, the thing is in very good order. There are still a few professional furniture upholsterers around, and last Saturday morning I turned up at the door of Perry’s Upholsterers at Plumstead Corner. The shop has been there for as long as I can recall. The owner was very open and friendly, took a quick look at my chair, and immediately said that he would be happy to restore it, but there was a six month waiting list for his services! I was gobsmacked – I had (incorrectly) assumed that very few people would require the services of an upholsterer. I thought that most people would have rather gone out and purchased a new three – piece suite from DFS or Land of Leather, rather than having their existing one professionally rebuilt. How wrong I was. The proprietor informed me that he gets a lot of work, as there is still a demand for furniture refurbishment and recovering, there are really only two high class upholsterers in the borough, and demand for their services is very high. He went on to say that when he first started, as apprentice to his father some thirty odd years ago, there was a lot of competition and prices were low in order to win work; now the opposite is true – prices are high, competition low and waiting lists long. This seems to resonate with my story about the rarity of the bespoke tailor in UK society nowadays. Back in 1939, Burton’s had opened a bespoke tailors shop in Erith High Street, and you could get a custom made suit for 45 shillings (£2.50 equivalent).  Local Historian Ken Chamberlain has memories of the place being extremely impressive, and sent me the advert with the very dashing looking chap in the photo above - click on the image for a larger view. I notice that the sharp styling is heavily influenced by American fashions of the time – wide shoulders and a narrow waist – a look that featured in many period gangster movies which were very popular then. Regular Maggot Sandwich reader Lance has been doing some investigations into the comparative cost of pre – WW2 bespoke tailoring compared with now, and has come up with some interesting findings. Lance writes:-“ Did a couple of quick comparisons against 1938 cost of living.  Firstly multiples of a loaf of bread.  In 1938 that was 2p or 6 to the shilling, so 26 shillings gives us 156 loaves of bread or at today’s price of £1.50 it’s £234.00. Secondly fractions of the price of a house.  In 1938 the average house price was £600 and 26 shillings is 1.3 pounds so 600/1.3 is 462.  Today’s average house price is £240,000 divided by 462 is £519.00 . Gives us a range between £234 and £519, which would fit in with your hypothesis about bespoke tailoring being relatively more affordable”. Interesting stuff indeed, as a bespoke man’s suit from Sidcup based Mold and Russell with set you back something in the region of £950 today, depending on material and finish.

Regular readers may recall that back in August last year, I mourned the closure of my favourite restaurant, which had been serving authentic home – style curries in Brick Lane since 1969. Sweet and Spicy closed its doors for the final time due to a massive increase in both rent and business rates, levied by Tower Hamlets Council. Sweet and Spicy catered mainly to the Bangladeshi and Pakistani local residents, rather than the tourists that most of the other more mainstream establishments in Brick Lane attract. It would appear that Sweet and Spicy may have just been the first of many food outlets to close – as the rules created and enforced by the council have suddenly been changed. The Evening Standard are reporting that many of the curry houses in Brick Lane have licences that allow them to serve food and drink until one or two AM on weekdays. The council have a bye law that says that no “sit down” restaurant  in Tower Hamlets can admit customers after eleven PM, and that all restaurants must be closed by midnight, or the owners would be faced by a fine of £20,000. They say that this ruling overrides the terms of the food and drink licensing, though I understand that this has yet to be legally challenged. Understandably many local restaurant owners are up in arms over this issue – they regard it as a restraint of trade, as the Brick Lane Restaurant Association say that on average, restaurants get around a third of their total income from sales made after midnight, and a curfew would mean that many of the sixty restaurants in Brick Lane would be forced to close for good. Tower Hamlets Council say that the midnight curfew is to stop “anti social behaviour”. I suspect an ulterior motive on the part of the council – when I first started visiting Brick Lane in the mid nineties, it was still home to the rag trade, with many small “sweat shop” factories, and trade outlet shops selling cheap clothing to vendors such as market traders. There were quite a few restaurants, but overall it was a grimy and not very welcoming place if you were not a local. Very slowly, over the intervening years, the Lane has slowly got smarter, and has become a tourist attraction dedicated almost exclusively to Indian restaurants. The area in and around Brick Lane was rebranded as “Bangla Town”, and a campaign to re-name Whitechapel tube station to Brick Lane Tube station started. Whilst this was all happening, the former Truman brewery in the lane was converted into a retail space with offices for a number of start up technology companies, and the surrounding roads, still with original crumbling Huguenot terraced houses became fashionable – one by one they were bought up and restored, and they are now some of the most desirable properties in central London. In short, the area has become gentrified. I suspect that Tower Hamlets Council are enforcing the midnight customer curfew as they actually want to drastically reduce the number of curry houses in the road; after all, the amount of Council and Business Tax that can be generated from a small but busy restaurant is limited. By killing the restaurants off, the council would be able to get property developers to move in, and thus attract wealthy foreign investors. London is already the hottest property location in the World – millionaires from places like Russia and China are attracted to the UK, and specifically London for a number of reasons: The UK is politically stable, has a very well respected legal system, and property is a very good investment, especially when foreigners may lack confidence in their own countries. As we have seen in the news not that long ago, some Russian oligarchs have been both  imprisoned and had their assets seized because they fell foul  of President Putin. Much money is flooding into the UK from foreign sources, as it is regarded as a safe haven.  I reckon that Tower Hamlets Council have realised that with some cunning dealing, they can secure a slice of this potentially lucrative cake. Please feel to leave a comment below, or email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com

The ending video is somewhat appropriate; it is a short explanatory film about Bletchley Park and the code breaking work carried out by the Colossi during World War 2. There are interviews with a number of the original operators and engineers. If my Great Uncle Horace had still been alive, it is possible that he would have featured in the documentary. Do give it a watch and please feel free to leave a comment below.