The Doctor and the Tramshed.

The photo above (click for a larger view) shows the controversial Erith wind turbine; the photo was taken from the end of Erith Pier, looking Eastwards and down river. In the background you can see the QEII Bridge across the River Thames. The wind turbine is 288 feet tall, and has quickly become a local landmark. I can see it clearly from the window in my office in Pewty Acres. I like it a lot. It tells me what direction and approximate speed the wind is blowing, and provides an instant low cloud indicator - all by me looking out of my window. It is also a far more aesthetically pleasing and practical piece of industrial sculpture than the hideous (and useless) psychedelic fish sculpture I have bemoaned in the past.

Work has now begun on first phase of the conversion of the former Cross Keys pub into offices for the multinational management consultancy the Aleff Group. I went along to the Grade II listed building on Thursday afternoon for a look. Builders were just in the process of packing up for the day. There were large blue tarpaulins over the first floor balcony and windows, and lights were on in the rooms on the second floor; it looks like the existing windows were being replaced with identical looking new ones. A high quality CCTV system has been added, with multiple cameras covering what looks like every corner of the structure. The work has only just begun; as I recently wrote, the previous owners had run the Cross Keys into the ground, and a huge amount of remedial work will be needed before the directors and staff of the Aleff Group can move in and carry out their business.  I will be keeping a close eye on the progress and reporting back regularly. I have already secured a tour round the building and an interview with Dr. Julian Hilton, the Chief Executive, once the place is ready to open. It is heartening to see a historic local building being restored and returned to service, rather than converted into unwanted flats or otherwise demolished, as has happened in the past to other local listed buildings such as the former Odeon cinema turned Bingo hall that used to be on the corner of Erith High Street and James Watt Way. It was a grade 2* listed building (essentially halfway to a grade 1 listing). The developers decided it was going to be too expensive to sympathetically convert it for residential use, so instead they knocked it down, stating it was full of blue asbestos. I walked past the demolition site every day on the way to and from work, and I saw no sign whatsoever of any kind of asbestos. I get the feeling this was just a ruse to enable the developers to maximise their profits.  You can see an old photo of what the cinema used to look like below. Click for a slightly larger version. 

One thing the area sorely lacks is a medium sized live music venue. Aside from local bands playing in pubs, there is no outlet for  musical talent, which is a great pity. Years ago the Tramshed in Woolwich was a great venue for seeing local, up and coming bands. I recall that whilst I was still at school, a friend played bass in a hobby band; they were lucky enough to get booked to play support for a then unknown band. By the time the day of the gig arrived, the band he was supporting had a number one hit single, and suddenly the profile of the event went through the roof. The band were Doctor and the Medics, who had a big hit with their cover of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky”. I had a front row seat for the gig, which was compared by the then unknown comedy duo Hale and Pace, before their subsequent TV fame. Nowadays the only place that offers anything remotely similar is the Mick Jagger Centre in Dartford, though this is mainly geared for larger groups. Other than that, there is very little opportunity for bands who are too popular to still play the pub circuit, but not yet big enough for theatre sized venues to play. Somewhere like the now long abandoned Erith Trade and Social Club in James Watt Way. This building would make an ideal music venue; the trouble is that it would require too much expensive refurbishment and conversion, and it has now been standing empty and abandoned for so long that the fabric has deteriorated to the point which I think demolition is the only viable option. The local area has fostered some remarkable musical talent in the past; it seems that it will be more difficult for new talent to find a live outlet in future, and however useful YouTube is for showcasing talent, it is no substitute for a noisy, sweaty live venue. It is not widely known that Woolwich was host to a number of big name gigs in the past. Buddy Holly famously played two concerts in the Woolwich Granada cinema on the 14th March 1958. It was quite common in those days for artists to play a matinee, and then a later evening performance. In 1985, Level 42 recorded much of their live album "A Physical Presence" in the Woolwich Coronet on the evening of March the 30th 1985. You can see some photos taken at the gig by clicking here.

Whilst researching the history of local live music, I also came across an interesting fact. The 3rd of June 2013 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles only local performance, which also took place at the Woolwich Granada, where they performed on the same bill as Roy Orbison. Many locals know that Kate Bush started off in Welling, and played her early gigs in the We Anchor In Hope pub on Shooter’s Hill. What is not so well known is that bassist, arranger and multi instrumentalist  John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin comes from Sidcup.

The national horse meat scandal continues unabated; I don’t know what all the fuss is about –the health authorities have been telling us for years that ready meals contain too much salt and Shergar! I understand that Findus took quite a long time to identify horse meat in their ready meal Lasagna, as it was covered in Marscapone cheese (think about it and groan).

The Arabfly Dangleway seems to hit problem after problem, and the passenger figures are now even further reduced. I have passed underneath it a few times since I last wrote about it, and it seems that the operators are getting so few passengers at certain times of the day that they are switching the cable cars off to save electricity when there are no passengers on board. It already closes down when the wind gets too strong, which at this time of year is quite often. The Transport for London website has weekly passenger usage figures, and for the week commencing the 9th of February, the cable car only carried 16,400 people, which equates to something like one per minute for the entire system. The figures also show that 60% of travellers use the cable car at weekends only, and they only make one round trip journey. It is clear that the system is being used for entertainment (figures also show a slight upward blip at school holidays) – it is clear the system is not being used by commuters as was heavily touted when it opened. The fact that Oyster and standard overland travel cards cannot be used with the system would seem to have impacted on the uptake by the regular commuter.  I have not heard anything in respect of the progress of the plans to move the QEII to be moored on the banks of the Thames to become a floating hotel; about the only thing that could save the Arabfly Dangleway. Let’s see what the spring brings.

There has been some coverage of the widespread take-up of electronic cigarettes by former smokers. The medical opinion seems to be that the ingestion of regulated doses of pure vapourised nicotine is far less unhealthy than traditional smoking, as the part of the cigarette that causes the major health problems is the tar that burning tobacco produces. The electronic cigarette does not generate tar, and is thus thought to be a safer alternative. All this is a bit confusing to me as a lifelong non smoker. I was always under the impression that nicotine was a potent poison in itself. It certainly makes a very effective natural insecticide (if you steep cigarette butts in water for a couple of hours, and collect the resulting liquid, this can be used as a very effective organic poison against greenfly and other nasties, just by spraying your plants with the solution. It is advised that any vegetables should be thoroughly washed before being eaten – again reinforcing the fact that nicotine is poisonous. All very confusing. It seems strange to me that some medical authorities are promoting the use of the electronic fags. It may be that it is a question of degree – they are substantially less hazardous than conventional  gaspers, and they have a very welcome feature in that they don’t smell. One of my confidential contacts demonstrated this to me recently; he had an electronic cigarette and it gave off no noxious pong whatsoever – the small puff coming out of the end of the device was actually water vapour with no aroma at all. Will this mean that these devices will be permitted in public where ordinary cigarettes are now banned? I don’t know, as when the current anti smoking regulations were created, such devices did not exist. Perhaps a reader can enlighten me?

I see that our local MP Teresa Pearce has backed the Scrap Metal Dealers bill which is currently going through the House of Lords on its’ way to becoming law. The bill will make the practice of scrap dealers handing over cash for metal illegal; all trades will have to be done via accredited bank transfers to registered users – and thus stop the current huge level of trader and scrap dealer tax fiddling. The bill will also ensure that all scrap dealers will have to be properly licenced and regulated – I was appalled to discover that many scrap dealers currently are unlicenced. Bearing in mind it is estimated that the scrap metal business is worth something like £5.6 billion a year in the UK alone, there looks to be a ton of money washing around that is essentially anonymous and untaxed. The benefit to the UK as a whole of getting this money out of the dealers pockets and into the general economy must be huge. The bill also seeks to give the Police more power to investigate metal thefts, and greater penalties for those thieving scumbags who get caught. I have written about metal theft on a number of recent occasions; it is a country wide problem, but the London Borough of Bexley is one of the very worst affected areas, and many local residents have bitter first hand experience of metal theft, whether it be from having their front garden gate nicked, to being late for work due to the rail power lines having been dug up and stolen. Metal theft is not a victimless crime, and it is reassuring that at last the Government are taking it seriously. It will be instructive to see what sentences the courts hand out to convicted metal thieves once the new law comes into effect.

Back at the end of last October, I wrote at some length about the area’s independent record shops, and lamented at the passing of Erith’s T.W Records – something that was picked up by a number of readers. I have since discovered that one of the stores I featured – Cruisin’ Records in Welling has lost its’ owner, who recently died after a short battle with cancer. The shop is still open, and hopefully a permanent arrangement can be made so that the excellent shop can continue to provide specialist services to the music loving public. The big music chains such as HMV have been hit by a combination of digital downloads, and by the large supermarket chains, who sell top 20 CD’s at eye wateringly low prices, often as loss leaders to attract customers into their stores. Independent record shops are never going to be able to compete on price – that is a battle they will never be able to win; instead they need, as Cruisin’ Records does, to supply specialist / obscure records, to offer more than just the current album by an artist or group – keeping a stock of back catalogue records for example, or by concentrating on niche markets, as Bexleyheath based record label / online music store Talking Elephant Records does. They are the pre – eminent specialists in folk , folk rock and roots music, and the “go to “ people for these genres. It would seem that by specialising, record shops can not only survive against the big boys, but can actually thrive.

A few days ago I had an Email from local resident, webmaster of the excellent Erithtown.net web resource and Maggot Sandwich reader Brian. He wrote the following: “I checked out Ark of Erith, today. In over eight years living here, I'd never been in. But I fancied a baked potato for lunch and it looked pleasant inside. And it certainly was pleasant. And friendly. And my baked potato was freshly-prepared, taking something like 10 mins until it was ready. In the meantime, I enjoyed a mug of tea and a newspaper - brought to my table. When it arrived, the potato was crammed with cheese and tasted excellent. I'd also add that the man there introduced himself and started a conversation, but in a non-intrusive way. He did tell me that it was a Christian bookshop (I'm not a Christian) but the religious bit didn't seem pushy. One other thing to note are the books, mainly donated. I spotted some 60 year old Penguins in excellent condition, selling for 50p. I told the man they were probably worth more and have since discovered they sell for upwards of £6 on eBay. I do hope he takes my advice and sells them there himself”. Brian’s observations and conclusions are very interesting; as you will no doubt recall, I gave several local food out lets a bit of a pasting for their poor performance on the “Scores on the Doors” hygiene rating system. The Ark Christian book shop and cafe scored a disappointing two out of five stars when it was visited by Bexley Environmental Health department inspectors on the 1st of August 2012; I get the feeling that they have substantially improved their hygiene standards in the following few months - Brian’s findings would tend to support this. It is good to hear of local businesses making a success of things, and hopefully the Ark can be an example to other Erith food outlets to improve.

Did you know that the area has a professional recording studio? Abbey Studios, which house a high end recording facility, as well as rehearsal rooms and all sorts of resources for both professional and amateur musicians is located in the old Goldie Leigh hospital site in Bostall Heath.  It amazes me that such facilities can have been around for years, yet they are almost “under your nose” without ever being apparent. It is in an ideal location – secluded in a woodland setting, yet only moments away from Woolwich Road and connections into London and elsewhere.

One of the perks of my day job is that I get to test out all sorts of new and existing technology; part of my role is to find new and interesting uses for technology, and to work out ways to deploy it in the work environment. I bought a couple of Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet computers running Android 4.1.1 and have been using one of the pair for the best part of a week. The experienced has rather reinforced my opinion of tablet computers. I think they are fine if you are a consumer of content – if you watch a lot of online video content, or listen to music; the caveat here is that unlike a laptop, you have to hold the tablet in order to watch the screen, unless you shell out some money for a case that doubles as an angled support. If, like me, you are primarily a content creator (using a lot of office type applications, or blogging) then they are less suitable. The on screen keyboard on Android devices is pretty intelligent, but typing more than a couple of lines on an unyielding surface is hard work on the finger tips. An external Bluetooth keyboard is really required for any serious text entry. Personally I prefer a “”proper” laptop with an integrated, full travel keyboard, as banging out 2,500 or so words each week on the Maggot Sandwich takes a lot of hard typing. All the stuff above also holds true for the Apple iPad; they are great as passive devices, but not so much fun if you need to use them in an interactive manner. Now that I have had some time with a tablet device, it has confirmed my suspicions that they are not really for me. As ever, your mileage may vary.

The story about the fatal shooting of Kevin McKinley in Overy Street, Dartford on Tuesday night made the national press. From what I have read, the murder victim was no saint, but the reaction of readers of the News Shopper website has been nothing short of venomous; I have said on several occasions that the un-moderated talkback feature on the News Shopper website would sooner or later get them into hot water with the authorities, and I am wondering if this is the story that causes it. In essence, the heated mudslinging seems to be divided into three camps: The first are people claiming to be McKinley’s direct family, claiming what a good person he was. The second group are those who claim to know him and say what a bad lad he was, and the third group would seem to be people who have read a little bit about the story, and have jumped to their own, sometimes wildly improbable conclusions. Those writers who really are in the know about the background to the murder should definitely not be posting information online; they should be talking to the Police in confidence. Everyone else should really be very careful of anything they post online, as it has the potential to influence a future court case. I only know what I read about the case, and that amounts to very little indeed. I am sure that more detail will come out as the case is investigated.

The ending video this week is another cookery lesson from the excellent Titli Nihaan. Will someone please give her a TV series? Comments and feedback below.

High Street implosion?

Sometimes I get the distinct feeling that my powers of prediction are rather better than they really should be. As you may well know, the days of me sitting down at my computer on Sunday afternoon to write the latest update to the Maggot Sandwich are long gone. The amount of research, and the sheer work involved putting together a weekly update that averages 2,800 words, means that I now start the next entry within hours of the previous one being published. By Monday evening, it is not uncommon for me to already have around a thousand words written for the next entry. The down side of this, is that sometimes my musings can be overtaken by events. On Monday evening I wrote that I thought that Blockbuster, who have a large store in Erith, would be one of the next retailers to go broke. By Wednesday afternoon my prediction was proved correct rather more quickly than I anticipated. More on this shortly.

There has been a lot of fuss in the press this week about horse meat being found in cheap and nasty burgers from Tesco, Aldi and a few other high street outlets. Personally I don't have a problem with eating horse - I have done in the past, and it it not very dissimilar to lean steak; I have also eaten Ostrich (very tasty indeed - like a cross between turkey and fillet steak) and Wildebeest (not very nice - it tastes like the smell of new leather) I fail to see what the problem is. Teresa May was quoted in the week, saying that "this was an issue of concern to all consumers" - not to me it isn't - I shop at Waitrose.

I have come to the conclusion that Matalan in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre only sells garments in Small, Medium, or Extra Extra Extra Large. I can never find anything in sizes to fit me, whatever it is that I am looking for.  I have heard the same complaint from others; it strikes me that if they don’t give more attention to both stocking levels and customer service (Matalan never seem to have any staff, other than on one or two tills) they will end up going the way of HMV, who famously went bust last week. HMV have been a “zombie company” for quite a while, despite posting record profits only two years ago. To my mind HMV were always an “also ran” in the entertainment media market; they never had the breadth of stock of somewhere like Virgin Records, and they could never offer the keen prices of the long gone and much lamented Our Price Records, a store chain I am sure I am not alone in missing. Digital downloads are only part of the reason for the demise of HMV; until their very recent ruthless price cuts they were always an expensive option. Many people still want a physical recording, rather than a download, but put off by the previous high prices in HMV, they inevitably end up buying from Amazon instead. This change in content purchasing behaviour from a majority of physical purchases now changing to a majority of downloads is set to continue.  Blockbuster famously also bit the dust last week. The American owned chain was the death knell for nearly every independent video store in the early 90’s. You may recall that in the 1980’s, almost every village would have a family run video hire store, stocked to the gunwales with VHS video cassettes. These shops were very successful for a number of years – before the advent of satellite and cable TV, the terrestrial television stations showed very few new movies, except a small handful at Christmas. VHS video machines were incredibly popular at the time, due I suspect at least partly to the lack of movie choice. The independent video hire shops fed this market with a diet of a sprinkling of Hollywood blockbusters, padded out with an incredible number of B movies and low budget direct to video films usually starring Chuck Norris or Cynthia Rothrock (who I suspect was actually a shaved Chuck Norris in a wig, as you never saw the two of them in the same place, a la Batman and Bruce Wayne). Quite often, groups of kids would hang around the shops, playing arcade games and waiting for one of the scarce copies of the premium movies to be returned by the previous renter - there would often be a scrum to get to the counter to snatch this precious cassette and bag the rights to take it home for the evening. Happy days. All this came to an end when big hitter Blockbuster arrived across the pond from the USA, building large stores on the edge of towns where you got free parking and discounts on multiple film hires – they were even fairly flexible about returning movies. The downfall also coincided with the advent of DVD. Many family run video hire shops could not afford the overheads of restocking with the (then) very expensive DVD format, and quietly closed up. Blockbuster effectively became the only significant player on the block, a position it has held until relatively recently. Now it has been being assailed by the likes of Netflix and Lovefilm. Blockbuster launched its’ own online movie rental service, but it did not seem to have made much difference to its' market traction. Blockbuster had an extensive estate of large and expensive physical stores. The shop in Erith Riverside Shopping Centre was seldom busy, and must have cost a small fortune to run; I doubt it ever made a profit. I feel sorry for those who will lose their jobs in the liquidation, but the whole physical media hire business model has become unsustainable now that fast broadband network access has become ubiquitous and cheap. To mourn for the loss of jobs in the video hire industry is akin to mourning the loss of lamplighter jobs in the late Edwardian era – it is something inevitable now that technology has changed, and business practices are forced to change to accommodate it.  Better to get out before the physical hire market collapses completely, and to get into another line of work. It is going to happen, it is merely a question of how long before the business finally goes down the tubes. Now that Blockbuster have crashed, there is little left for physical media hire. We are most definitely seeing the end of an era.

Blog comments, like buses seem thin on the ground, then suddenly a bunch of them will turn up at once, as was the case following last week’s update regarding the noisome Pizza Hut takeaway in Northumberland Heath. It would seem that I struck somewhat of a chord with certain readers. The unanimous opinion seems to be that Bexley Council Environmental Health Department should automatically shut any food outlet scoring zero stars on the “scores on the doors” points system. Bearing in mind that there are currently fifty such unhygienic establishments in the borough, that would be a lot of enforcement for them to carry out.

Over the past year or so, I have been reporting on a number of technological anniversaries, and this week is not an exception. It it the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Apple Lisa computer. The Lisa was the first generally available computer to have a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Xerox had produced a couple of earlier models, the Xerox Alto, and the later Xerox Star computers, both of which had a GUI in the mid 1970's. Neither was a commercial product, more of a research project with a limited production run. Apple did licence the desktop analogy and aspects of the overall look and feel from Xerox, which they then developed into the Lisa. The Lisa cost $10,000 in 1983 (an absolute fortune), and to be honest it was a slow and underpowered machine, even by the standards of the day. It is generally regarded that the Lisa was a flop, but it did make Apple $100 million profit, even though relatively few units (100,000) were shipped. The Apple Macintosh was developed in tandem with the Lisa (in fact, most of the original Mac software was developed on Lisas). What the Lisa did do was bring the concept of the GUI to end users and the general public, and completely shape the face of modern computing like no other single product. Apple Lisas are now exceedingly rare indeed. There is a complete, fully working one in mint condition on EBay right now - and look at the price of it! You can read more about the Lisa by clicking here. The video below is a very rare American TV commercial for  the Lisa; it features a very young "before they were famous" Kevin Costner as the Lisa using businessman. Those of you with very long memories may recall I featured this clip about four years ago, but I feel that it could to with a a swift re-showing, just for the cheesy eighties feel of it. 

Word reaches Pewty Acres that E4 have given the green light to the producers of sci fi comedy series "Misfits" for a fifth season of the show. I suspect that this may well be the final season, as many of the locations that are key to the look and feel of the show are shortly to be demolished. "Misfits" is filmed in and around Thamesmead, principally at Tavy Bridge and Southmere Lake Community Centre. Much of the area is being redeveloped, and the current, late 60's brutalist concrete architecture which features so heavily in the show will be no more.

Last week’s video of the documentary about the Avro Vulcan raid on Port Stanley airport during the Falklands War in 1982 has brought some very interesting feedback from an unexpected source. More of that in a bit; my own memories of the Falklands War are still strong. I had been given a poster featuring the crest of every ship in the Royal Navy some time before the conflict began, and I dutifully crossed out each ship as it was sunk or badly damaged. By the end of the war there were a depressingly large number of black crosses. I was still at school at the time, and smack bang in the middle of the Falklands War, I went on a geography field trip to Barry Island in Wales. The school party stayed at Barry Island Butlins – at the time a scruffy and run – down place with indifferent staff and greasy, inedible food. During the evenings the school kids were given pretty much free rein of the holiday camp, providing we did not leave the premises. There was a kids disco run by a very dubious looking Welsh Jimmy Saville clone. One evening he was playing some terrible records (“Come on Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners seemed to be on almost constant rotation) when one of a large group of Spanish school kids that were also staying at the camp ran up onto the low stage and grabbed the DJ’s microphone. He began a chant amongst the Spanish kids of “Malvinas, Malvinas!” It had to be said this ended in pretty short order when Phil Peskitt, school bully and all round hard man, leapt onto the stage and punched the Spanish kid on the nose, knocking him over. A small riot then ensued. All of the teachers from my school who were supervising the event seemed to be looking in the opposite direction during the whole incident! There was plenty of military activity around much of South Wales at the time; mainly due to the fact that the army used the area for training. We got to see lots of Harrier jets and military transports rushing here and there, and when we visited Pen Y Fan, the second highest peak in Wales, there was a small group of scruffy and very tired looking blokes in old fashioned army greatcoats and hob nailed boots climbing up and down the mountain. We did not really think very much about them, but with hindsight, these were almost certainly troops training for SAS selection. Anyway, for more memories from that dark time in our recent history, we have a guest contributor to the Maggot Sandwich – Malcolm Knight of the Bexley is Bonkers website, who had a very important role in the Falklands conflict. Here are his memories of the time:- From 1979 until 1984 the phone line to Port Stanley was entirely my responsibility. Not many calls and no one was very interested in it. It only operated for 2 x 2 hours a day and Stanley/London was their only public comms to the outside world. In Jan 82 the number of calls started going up and I upped the hours of operation eventually to 24/7. I didn't monitor the conversations, in retrospect I wish I had broken the rules and done so. I reported up the management chain that something weird was going on but was ignored and to be honest I never suspected an invasion or I might have kicked up a bigger fuss. Before the Vulcan raid the MoD got twitchy about the local small population on Ascension telling their relations abroad about the RAF build up. Ascension Is. comms was entirely mine too and they had no other access to the outside world - so I stopped the potential leaks by the only method I could think of. I pulled the appropriate plug. The day after the Vulcan raid the MoD called me to say I could stick the Ascension plug back in again and I asked if they were going to bomb Stanley again. Probably they said (with appropriate reticence) so I said in that case I wasn't going to restore the Ascension plug. They took some persuading that pulling the plug before the night of a raid was going to send a signal to the outside world. The pattern would be detected, if not by someone in Argentina but certainly by the Spanish nationals I employed in the exchange and whose loyalties could not be trusted. They got the point eventually. I spoke to the manager of the Falklands telecoms during the conflict and met him afterwards. He said his staff worked with machine guns pointing at their backs so they didn't try to send 'coded' messages abroad. One of the things the Argies did as soon as they got on the island was set up a public phone service to Buenos Aires. The Falklands had no satellite link at the time - it went in pretty quickly afterwards! - so the Argie link was HF (Shortwave) radio, no encryption, nothing, so I sat a Spanish speaking Englishwoman on the end of a suitable receiver connected to British Telecom's aerial system at Rugby, so I could know what was going on. Not official, just me being nosey. All we got was government talk about changing the currency and putting Argentinian postage stamps in the post office. They certainly intended to stay. Half way through the war the Argentinians came up on the Stanley circuit, which had been dead since they took over, and asked to speak to me and together we arranged to re-establish normal telephone services immediately. This was standard practice between nations at war, just carry on regardless as far as possible. The agreement was that on our single circuit one call would come from them alternating with one from us.  In typical British fashion we had queued the UK requests for calls and proceeded to connect them in that order. Unfortunately that meant that all the calls came from newspapers and the Argies got very stroppy with me accusing me of some underhand trick when none was intended. I had to agree that all calls would be inbound from then on. Most were from worried Falklanders anxious to call friends in the UK as there had been no telephone service for several weeks. Sometimes the calls got No Reply and when the Falklander claimed special urgency I got in the habit of phoning the appropriate local radio station if available and getting them to put out an SOS to get back to their phone quickly! All very unofficial of course but in most cases it worked a treat and the radio station staff were always pleased to do it. I met the Falklands' comms manager because Mrs. Thatcher invited him to London for the victory parade. The Ascension Island people didn’t get their service restored until the war was over.  What a fascinating story. Not something I have seen recorded in any history of the Falklands conflict. Thanks for letting me re-tell your memories Malcolm!

A story that seems to have thus far got under the radar of most local news outlets is that the owners of the famous, and now decommissioned cruise liner the Queen Elizabeth II are hoping to be allowed to permanently moor the vessel at Carlsberg Wharf, directly opposite the O2 Arena on the  banks of the River Thames. They want to convert the ship into a luxury floating hotel with 550 cabins, seven international restaurants and a cinema. If the plans get approved (and Boris is backing it) the ship would employ a crew of around 1,500 people, bringing permanent jobs to what is an otherwise economically depressed area. It would also add a touch of glamour to Greenwich Peninsular – not the most aesthetically pleasing place at present. Bearing in mind the cruise liners and gigantic luxury super yachts that filled the South Quay in Canary Wharf at the time of the Olympics (click here to see my photos) I think that this project could well be a winner. The QEII is currently moored in storage in Dubai; whilst the work to convert her into a floating hotel would be extensive, I think that the kind of publicity the project would bring to the region could only be a positive thing. I am sure the novelty of a luxurious floating hotel would add a sparkle of glamour to a part of South East London that could surely use it. If the project does not take off, there is a strong possibility that the QEII would be scrapped. Not a pleasant demise for what is one of the World’s best known passenger ships.

Erith Model Railway Society have their annual exhibition at the Bexley Business Academy in Yarnton Way, Thamesmead on the 26th and 27th of January. Over eighty stands and twenty five different model railway layouts will be featured. The entry price will be £6 for adults, £5 for concessions and £3 per child. You can read more about the exhibition by clicking here. You can see some HD footage of last years exhibition in the video below. It certainly looks like a hell of a lot of work goes into the event; I wish them well. Comments below, as always.