Quintet.

The front doors of the former Carnegie Library in Walnut Tree Road, Erith, were open to the public for the first time in well over a decade last Sunday afternoon. The reason for this was a performance by five members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra of three pieces of classical music, including one by a little known composer from Erith, whose work has not been performed in public in living memory. A capacity audience of 130 visitors listened to the nearly two hour long recital, which was held to raise money to refurbish the book lift in the Grade II listed library building, which is being restored and converted into a community, arts and education centre by not for profit group The Exchange. The programme of music consisted of:- Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Phantasy Quintet, followed by a piece by Percy Hilder Miles (1878-1922, of Erith) String Quintet in A - which to me in some parts sounded very similar to the theme from the "Band of Brothers" TV series by HBO, but I digress. This piece was followed by a short interval, then the recital was concluded by W.A. Mozart (1756-1791) String Quintet in C. The recital was hugely popular; I spoke to many concert goers who were keen for recitals of this type to be staged on a regular basis. The BBC Symphony Orchestra members who formed the string quintet were so impressed by the excellent acoustics in the building that they are keen to return to make some recordings. The Phantasy Quintet by Percy Hilder Miles was performed in public for what may well have been the first time in nearly a century; Miles was born in Crayford 1878, he lived nearly all his life in Erith, at 18 Queen's Road. Percy was a child prodigy, composing from the age of 8. He was also a very talented violinist and performed the Beethoven violin concerto with an orchestra at the age of 13. At 15 he entered the Royal Academy of Music and one year  later composed this quintet in A major, which was the piece played last Sunday. Later, in 1917 he reminisced about the work in a letter to his cello-playing brother Maurice: “A thing of mine I have a very warm affection for is the A major quintet...for grace and charm, general euphony, transparency and naturalness, I have never beaten that A major quintet”. It is a short work which reveals the influence of Brahms and Dvorak, both of whom had written viola quintets only a few years earlier. Percy became a Professor of Harmony and Counterpoint at the Academy upon graduation and later became an examiner for the Associated Board. As such he travelled all over the Empire, going six times around the world, including a stint in Australia. Percy never married and sadly he died of pneumonia in 1922 aged just 43. He left behind over 150 compositions, mainly Chamber Music, but also some songs and a few orchestral works and concertos. He is buried with his parents in Brook Street cemetery. There are plans for the first ever CD recording of his music in the Autumn.

Another event to shortly be taking place in the former library is that visitors from the parallel world of Par Bexia are inviting residents to visit their planet at two special performances at the The Old Library, Erith. The visit to the Old Library, Erith on 21 and 28 June is connected to the Performing Places project and is being hosted by The Exchange, who manage The Old Library.  The Old Library plays host to an exciting programme of events and is also home to the fabulous Bookstore Café. Performing Places features beings from a parallel universe Bexleyheath, called Par Bexia. Par Bexia is falling apart. The Par Bexians want to understand more about our Bexleyheath and how we care for the town centre and the people that live, work and visit it. They believe they will learn how to care for their own place from this visit. The Performing Places concept was developed by Professor Sally Mackey from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and has already been delivered successfully in several other towns, including Oldham, Abergavenny and Camden. The Old Library event, called The Bexliest Day of our Lives, promised to treat Bexley residents like real VIPs. They will shoot through the galaxy in our time travelling space portal, be offered a Bexley burger in our famous Earth Café, the chance to meet our very own Bexley human replica robots - and maybe even audition for a special Parbexian episode of ‘Bexley’s Got Talent’. This piece of children’s theatre will be performed by Drama, Applied Theatre and Education students from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and is aimed at 10 and 11 year olds, with their families. You can find more about the event, and book spaces by clicking here.

As I covered back in April, Bexley Council and a couple of their hired consulting firms undertook two open days in the empty commercial units at 68 Pier Road, Erith. This was to encourage opinion and feedback on the proposals the council had published relating to improvements in the public realm in the local area. Over two hundred people turned up to these events, and the council have now decided to expand the consultation with two additional open days. The events are held as part of the Erith Kitchen, at Pier Road on Friday, June 14 4pm-9pm and Friday, July 12 4pm-9pm. Residents can also fill out a survey online at www.greatererith.com/riversidegardens.

Residents in Sandcliff Road in Erith are up in arms yet again – and with very good reason. They are blighted by the incompetence of Thames Water. Ever since 1998 the road has had drainage problems – a giant chemical effluent leak caused several thousand gallons of industrial liquid waste to seep up through the drains and flood a number of houses in the road; I recall at the time that several houses were evacuated for months on end – and one was condemned as unfit for human habitation, Thames Water were subsequently fined £250,000 by the Department of the Environment for the spillage, and their apparent inability to properly organise the subsequent clean up. There have been a number of sewage floods in the road since, to the point where locals re – named the road “Poo Mews” – something which seems to have stuck. Back in 2012 there were floods of liquid excrement – you can read all about it on the News Shopper website here. Since then, nothing much has been done to permanently rectify the situation. In the last few days with the heavy rain, Sandcliff Road has once again been flooded with raw sewage. It strikes me that the local residents are blighted not just by the actual floods, but by the damage to the reputation of the road. I would not be surprised if house prices are badly affected by the situation – after all, who would want to live in an area where you had a strong chance of ending up knee deep in other people’s number twos when you ventured outside your front door? From Thames Water’s perspective, it is a PR disaster; I think the main reason that they don’t take a more proactive approach to the problem is that Sandcliff Road is a little travelled side lane, with a predominantly working class population. If a flood of dung was to happen in somewhere rather more affluent (rather than effluent) like Bexley Village, I reckon that the “sharp elbowed middle classes” would have got a rather better reaction from the powers that be. I have walked down Sandcliff Road several times recently, and I can confirm the aroma of multiple bowel movements is hard to ignore; it is just as well I am a non smoker, as the volume of methane in the air could well be close to a combustible level. I feel sorry for the residents, and hope that the problem can eventually be resolved. If you have any insight into this situation, please Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com - any messages will be treated in the strictest confidence. 

In last week's Blog update I wrote at some length about historical local engineer Thorsten Nordenfelt and his work on early submarines; I touched on the subject of his collaborator, the Reverend George Garrett, and now I will expand on this. The Reverend George Garrett (1852–1902), clergyman and submarine designer, was born on the 4th July 1852 at 45 Waterloo Road, Lambeth, London, the third son of John Garrett, an Irish curate, and his wife, Georgina. The Garretts moved to Manchester in the early 1860s, and George attended Rossall School in Fleetwood until 1867, when the family was financially ruined and he was moved to Manchester grammar school. From 1869 he worked as a schoolteacher and studied chemistry at Owens College, Manchester. The combination of work and study reflected the financial pressures on his father. At Owens he developed an effective system for self-contained breathing, using caustic potash to remove carbon dioxide from the exhaled air. Work on this device probably damaged his lungs, and brought about his early death. In 1871 he went to work and study in Ireland, and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, with an honours degree in experimental sciences in 1875. After a year travelling in the south seas Garrett married Jane Parker of Waterford—they had four children—took the Cambridge theology examination, and in 1877 became curate to his father. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8 and the war scare that gripped the British empire inspired Garrett to develop a simple one-man submersible, built in Birkenhead and demonstrated by the autumn of 1878. This secured support for a company from a mystery backer, possibly the Swedish armaments magnate Thorsten Nordenfelt, for the construction of a larger, 33 ton, steam-driven version. This craft, the Resurgam, was completed at Birkenhead in November 1879. Extensive trials were conducted at Liverpool and at sea, demonstrating that it could be submerged, if only briefly, and propelled underwater. This was the first time any vessel had been mechanically propelled below the surface. In February 1880, while on a voyage to Portsmouth for Royal Navy inspection, the boat was lost off Rhyl in a storm. In August 1882 Garrett travelled to Sweden to work for Nordernfelt's Submarine Torpedo Boat Company. Here the interests of inventor and owner clashed; Garrett sought an effective submersible, while Nordenfelt wanted a torpedo boat that could submerge. While Nordernfelt's name graced the product, the design was essentially Garrett's. The new boat carried a single locomotive torpedo. The boat was completed in August 1883, but underwater trials were hampered by the poisonous fumes from the steam plant. However, public trials were held in September 1885. Despite Garrett's best efforts the flawed design did little more than show that it could operate on the surface and run briefly underwater. It was sold by Nordenfelt's agent Basil Zaharoff to the Greek navy, and delivered in January 1886. While trials in Greece were a failure the Turks were persuaded otherwise, and bought two boats. These were badly built, inferior, if larger, versions of the prototype, and did not work when completed in 1887, though Garrett did manage to carry out the first submerged launch of a torpedo. In their efforts to make the boats work the Turks even commissioned Garrett as commander, though on an honorary basis. A fourth boat was built at Barrow in Furness to an improved design, but the hectic schedule of work in Britain and Turkey finally caught up with Garrett, never in good health, who suffered a breakdown. He recovered in time to demonstrate the latest craft at Portsmouth in May 1887, and at the jubilee naval review in July. Eventually the Russians agreed to try the vessel on a sale-or-return basis, but it was wrecked, en route on the Danish coast. Garrett, who was living in some style at Southampton, continued to work on enclosed steam systems, but when the Nordenfelt company was subsumed into the new Barrow Shipbuilding concern, which eventually became Vickers, Garrett lost his major backer. The Germans built two Garrett/Nordenfelt submarines, but paid no royalties. Not surprisingly, they also made them work rather better than the originals. In 1890, after discussions with John Jacob Astor, Garrett moved to the United States to become a farmer in Florida. He was already seriously ill with the pulmonary disease that was to kill him. Farming proved disastrous, and after a spell as a railway fireman in New York, and an American soldier during the Spanish-American War of 1898, when he became an American citizen, he died of tuberculosis in New York Metropolitan Hospital on 26 February 1902, aged forty-nine. He was buried in Mount Olivet cemetery, Maspeth, New York on 1 March. Garrett's career combined innovation, triumph, absurdity, and failure in a way that quickly obscured his real contribution. By creating a submersible, though it failed, he spurred the work of others, notably the American John Holland, which resulted in effective submersible warships entering service within a decade of Garrett's death. The Garrett family remained in the United States, and subsequently prospered. At the time of writing the Resurgam had been located by divers, with the possibility of being raised.

Monty Python’s Spamalot is a musical comedy adapted from the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Like the motion picture, it is a highly irreverent parody of the Arthurian legend, but it differs from the film in many ways. The original 2005 Broadway production, directed by Mike Nichols, received 14 Tony Awards nominations, winning in three categories, including Best Musical. This is the amateur premiere by members of Erith Playhouse. You can read more about the production and also book tickets by clicking on the link here.

Now for the weekly local safety and security updates from Bexley Borough Neighbourhood Watch Association, starting with the report from Barnehurst ward:- "Good news for Barnehurst, no burglaries have been reported in the last week. We have had another theft from motor vehicle in Barnehurst Avenue on Friday 07th June 2019 at 1900 hours. On this occasion a hole was made to access the vehicle however nothing was taken. This area has been targeted particularly over the last month. Can we ask you double check your vehicle is locked as thieves will go round trying door handles until they get lucky. Remove all items even if you feel they have no value. Sensor lights may quickly discourage thieves away from your vehicle too. A quantity of drugs were found following a drugs warrant being executed on Friday 07th June 2019 in the local area. Investigations are ongoing. Just a reminder our community contact session will be on Tuesday 18/06/2019 at 4.00pm in Barnehurst Golf Club, Mayplace Road East, hope to see you there". Belvedere ward:- "On two consecutive nights recently there were reported break-ins at B&Q in Lower Road. These offences took place in the early hours of both Wednesday 5th and Thursday 6th June at around 2am. Two males were seen to break into the store via the locked exit doors after having smashed through glass panels with a hammer in order to gain entry. In total around £6500.00 worth of goods were removed from the store. There was a burglary in Abbey Road on Sunday 9th June at around 7.30pm. A male gained entry to the property via the rear door before being disturbed and challenged by a resident of the address. The suspect made his way from the property without having taken anything from within. An attempted garage burglary took place in Grosvenor Road on Sunday 9th June at 5.35pm. Two young males were caught on CCTV as they were observed trying to enter several garages without success. All of these incidents are still being investigated. The team also attended the Sikh Temple in Lower Road on Sunday 9th June to offer Smartwater kits to the community". Bexleyheath ward:- "Good news: There have been no reports of residential burglaries over the last week. There has been a report of a theft of motor vehicle along Heversham Road on Monday 10/06/2019 between 3 & 4pm. Ward officers are conducting regular patrols along drug hot spots on the ward along Albion Road and surrounding areas, so far the team has had approximately 18 stop and searches. Car parks on the ward are also included in the patrols. ASB patrols also take place around the war memorial as the team have received complaints about ASB and drugs. If you do wish to pass on information to Police then please contact Crime Stoppers on 0800 555111. Please do not hesitate to contact us via Twitter, Facebook, email and the ward phone. If you are after crime prevention advice, please look at the Met Police website which has lots of information that you may find useful. Remember in an emergency please dial 999 and 101 for non-urgent reporting". Crayford ward:- "On Monday 3rd June property was stolen from a delivery vehicle at the rear of Currys. The rear number plate was stolen from a vehicle parked in Old Road on 5th June. A white Ford Transit van was stolen from Bexley Lane at 00.20 on 7th June, this has since been recovered by Crayford Safer Neighbourhood team in Shearwood Crescent. A bag was stolen from the locked staff room of a local business in Waterside on Friday 7th June between 18.15-18.20. The bag was discarded nearby but money, ID, and an IPhone were stolen. Between Thursday 6th and Friday 7th June a car was broken in to and money taken in Woodside Road. A front number plate DY59FHM was stolen on 8th June from Maiden Lane, this should be on a blue Fiat Punto. A blue Nissan was stolen from Ridge Way between Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th June, it has since been recovered from Halcot Avenue. A lady had her money taken on Monday 10th June at 14.00 whilst near Stadium Way, at this time there are no further details. £10,000 worth of tools have been reported stolen from a building site at Mayplace Primary School in Woodside Road on Tuesday 11th June, no further details given at this time. A light metallic grey sports car with a canvas roof has been stolen from the garage area of Claremont Crescent on Monday 10th June, the wing mirror was broken on the driver's side, the garage door had already been damaged. We have been very busy around the ward this week with our officers conducting uniform and plain clothes patrols, many stop and searches completed and class A and B offences detected". Erith ward:- "We have been hit again with quite a few theft from motor vehicles, do all you can by not leaving anything on show in your vehicle overnight, even a little bit of small change left is enough to tempt some people. Also remember to lock the vehicle doors, you will be surprised at how many people forget to do this. One Burglary from the week at Bexley college where a male broke into the café and stole some items of food and drink this was captured on CCTV. Crimes of note from the week: Shoplift <£200 Wednesday 05/06/2019 Morrisons, James Watt Way; Theft from motor vehicle Monday 03/06/2019 Winifred Road; Theft from motor vehicle Thursday 30/05/2019 Pembroke Road; Theft from MV Thursday 16/05/2019, Erith Road; Other theft Saturday 08/06/2019 W M Morrison petrol station, James Watt Way; Burg-Bus/Com Monday 10/06/2019 Bexley College, Walnut Tree Road; Theft from motor vehicle Wednesday 05/06/2019 Chandlers Drive; Theft from motor vehicle Tuesday 11/06/2019 Chichester Wharf".

Northumberland Heath ward:- "Unfortunately we had two garages broken into. Burglars will usually try a shed or garage first because they can potentially find tools needed to get into a house nearby. It's worth having a good padlock on the door with no exposed screws. Pay attention to hinges as these are sometimes easily removable. Consider a battery operated alarm; they look low-key but respond to movement or contact with an extremely loud siren. If you have windows then these could be vulnerable unless they are secured with wire mesh or grills. Drape a sheet or blanket over items inside to keep them covered from view. Ideally lock everything away securely. Never leave your garage or shed door unlocked if you are not around. Check that your insurance covers the contents of your outbuildings. A set of number plates has been taken from a parked and unattended vehicle in Frinsted Road. If you happen to see registration number RN51CCY please contact police so further enquiries can be made. Should you wish to protect your vehicle from this type of offence drop us a line and we may be able to provide appropriate anti-theft devices. Our next open surgery to give local residents an opportunity to speak to us about any issues or concerns is due to take place 4pm Friday 21/6/19 at the Library in Mill Road DA8 1HW. The surgery is scheduled to run for an hour and no prior notification is required to attend". Slade Green and Northend ward:- "Two vehicle crimes in the last week to report. Tools were stolen from a van in Peareswood Road overnight on Sunday June 9th and overnight on Monday June 10th some Rayban sunglasses were taken from the glove box of a car parking in Hazel Road. Please do not leave anything valuable in your car, even if it is parked on a driveway as both of these vehicles were. The police helicopter was flying over and the ward in the early hours of Sunday June 9th and noticed a moped driving dangerously on the pavements in Slade Green. Units were called and after a short chase, both suspects were caught, arrested and interviewed. We just are awaiting a charging decision but our thanks goes to our colleagues in the air. 2 positive stop and searches from Mark and James this last week with a PND fine issued to a suspect after a car was stopped in Whitehall Lane with 3 occupants. The vehicle and suspects were all searched with some drugs recovered. The team helped Immigration Officers last week on an operation in Belvedere, no arrests made. Photo's were sent to us by Orbit Housing showing a group of youths on the roof of Grange House Sunday afternoon. No positive ID's at this time but enquiries are ongoing and the access door to the roof area has been secured with warning letters sent out to all residents in the block and in Daleview". Thamesmead East ward:- "Vehicle Crime - Theft of Motor Vehicle Martham Close Thursday 06/06/19 between 10am – 6pm Vehicle seen on drive at 10am Victims husband arrived home at 6pm the vehicle was no longer at the location however there was evidence of broken glass on the ground. Victim had been home all day and heard nothing. Thamesbank Place Friday 07/06/19 between 2:30pm – 8am 08/06/19 Victims vehicle has been removed from location without permission my suspect/s unknown. Chadwick Way Monday 10/06/19 between 12pm – 9:40pm suspect/s unknown taking victims vehicle from the location without permission. Theft from Vehicle. Maran Way Monday 10/06/19 between 9:15pm – 8am 11/06/19 Victim states vehicle broken into suspect/s removed items within". West Heath ward:- Unfortunately we have two burglaries and an attempted burglary over the last week. On Thursday June 6th between 07.15 and 07.30 the victim was at their home address in Woolwich Road when the victim was at her home address in her bedroom. At approx. 0715 hours the victim's husband left their home address via the side gate as he does every morning. At approx. 0720 hours the victim heard a noise as if a door was being closed and thought nothing of this as she normally hears next door in their property. A few minutes later she went downstairs and noticed her phone had been taken from the kitchen side along with her purse containing multiple store/membership cards and 2x debit cards. A Lloyds Bank car and royal bank of Scotland card which was also taken. There was no sign of forced entry. On Monday June 10th between 1am to 2pm a window was forced to a property in Amberley Way several electrical items were taken. One attempted burglary in Long Lane on Monday June 19th at approximately 11.30pm. The property was empty following the recent death of the resident, a window was forced but entry was not gained. We have also had several reports of motor vehicle crime this week. A black Ford Fiesta was stolen from Woolwich Road overnight between Tuesday June 4th between 5pm and 5.30pm the following day. A green Volkswagen Polo was stolen from Brampton Road between midnight and 6.30pm on Thursday June 6th. The team executed a warrant in Darenth Road on Wednesday June 12th to seize a believed pit bull to assess the dog and to ascertain if it could potentially be of a dangerous breed".

The end video this week comes courtesy of long established local recycling firm, Abbey Car Breakers, whose large facility is located at Wheatley Terrace Road in Erith, close to Morrison's supermarket. They have around seven hundred vehicles for breaking and recycling on site at any one time, and also sell new and refurbished spare parts for a wide range of vehicles. I had occasion to visit Abbey Car Breakers last week, on the lookout for a rare and  hard to located component for a friend's car. The last time I visited Abbey Car Breakers was about thirty years ago, and the place seems to have changed little - they still have a huge supply of new and used spares for a wide range of vehicles. Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com. 

The Osprey.

As I scooped back in March, Bexley College have now signed up to a "merger" with Bromley College, which should put the Erith based Bexley College in a better financial position. This will happen on the 1st of August. Several heads have rolled in the process, most notably that of Bexley College Principal Danny Ridgeway. I predicted he would be sacrificed when I first wrote about the situation back on the 20th March. I copped quite a lot of flak back then for what I wrote. I had been contacted by two Bexley College insiders with the "smoking gun" regarding the effective takeover of the institution by Bromley College, and I then carried out due dilligence by referring the story to someone with impeccable insight who shall remain anonymous. Suffice to say everything I wrote back then is about to, or has already come to pass. It is a sad situation for Bexley College to find itself in, only a scarce two years from opening its shiny new campus on Walnut Tree Road. I just hope that the college can come out of this stronger than before. On Wednesday the Bexley Times published details of the "merger" and announced that Danny Ridgeway would be retiring as Principal of Bexley College. Make of this what you will. Comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

News broke this week that the Peabody Trust is set to spend £1.5 billion in renovating and expanding the housing in and around Thamesmead. They intend extensively refurbishing many of the existing tower blocks, as well as building  a total of twenty five thousand new homes. This will make Thamesmead the same size as the city of Winchester. By the year 2024 more than £20 billion will have been invested in the area. The existing brutalist concrete tower blocks will be maintained, although they will be extensively refurbished inside and out, as well as being re – clad with a modern finish. The existing low level housing will be demolished and replaced with new housing. All of this investment and redevelopment is down to the imminent arrival of Crossrail at Abbey Wood. The travel times into central London will be drastically cut when the service opens – Abbey Wood to Canary Wharf will take eleven minutes, and to Tottenham Court Road will take around twenty minutes. The Peabody Trust owns eighty percent of the land in Thamesmead, and is understood to be lobbying Sadiq Khan, the new Mayor of London to extend the Docklands Light Railway to Thamesmead, and to get a river crossing between Thamesmead and Dagenham. It will be a tough task to rebuild and re – image Thamesmead – whilst it was conceived and constructed as a modern “city in the air”, due to poor design the town soon gained a reputation for crime and anti – social behaviour. The high level walkways were designed to avoid flooding, and the underground car parks which were designed to optimise the use of space actually acted as dark and unseen areas where drug dealing and vandalism could take place. As the town went downhill, it became a dumping ground for problem families from around Greater London, and the situation became a vicious circle.  In an interview with the Times on Monday this week, spokesperson for Peabody, Pauline Ford said “This is a great opportunity to release the potential of this sleeping beauty; the perceptions formed by A Clockwork Orange are just wrong, but we know that we need to spend a great deal of money on good design. This is a place on the cusp of something special”. In the same article, long time Thamesmead resident Douglas Rove said “We were promised the earth to move here; I hate living here now, all of the people have come in are riff – raff”. He also worries that Peabody will “gentrify” Thamesmead by building bistros and wine bars “Plans like that are not for people who live here now are they? They are hoping that the locals will move out, and the yuppies will move in”. The good news is that in addition to the refurbishment of the existing tower blocks, and the construction of new low level housing, there will be a new library, cinema, shops and public squares. The Times reports that between five and eight thousand new local jobs will be created to serve the new development, though the increase in property prices may well prevent locals from affording the new houses and apartments. Peabody admit that they are part funding the development by counting on the new property prices rising, and that they will be selling off some of the development in order to finance the rest. This may become a self – fulfilling prophesy if recent events can be taken into consideration; house prices in Abbey Wood have shot up by thirty five percent in the last year, and Thamesmead will surely follow suit. What do you think? Are you affected by the forthcoming redevelopment work? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Online shopping is hitting a major problem. The keen prices many online retailers can offer when compared to a high street shop may soon be at an end. The reason is straightforward – the huge number of items ordered on the web which are subsequently returned to the vendor – usually at the vendor’s expense. A quarter of handbags and a fifth of shoes are returned as unsuitable. There is a discernible pattern of returns; women are far more likely to return an item bought online compared with men, who seem to only return items when they are actually faulty. A study by Barclaycard found that one in four women admitted to ordering more goods online than they intended to keep. In comparison only one man in ten did the same thing. The practice is driving up the cost of internet shopping as websites struggle the sheer volume of items  coming back. The study also discovered that one in six items of clothing bought online is returned, with twenty percent of women admitting to ordering the same garment in several sizes to see one fits best. Man apparently are far less likely to do this. “The speed and convenience of online shopping, and the speed and convenience of returning has led to the emergence of the serial returner, and women are far more likely to fall into this category. Shoppers are deliberately over purchasing safe in the knowledge that they can choose from the ever growing number of ways to quickly and easily send items back, such as hourly courier services and local drop – off points. With six in ten consumers saying that a website’s returns policy impacts their purchasing decision, online retailers are caught between trying to attract customers and remaining competitive whilst also ensuring that they protect their bottom line”. The study pointed out that online businesses did not always lose out, as more than a quarter of shoppers saying that they had intended to return an unwanted or faulty item bought online, but they had never go round to it.

The photo above was taken by me last Sunday, as I returned home from the “Our Erith” art exhibition held at Christ Church, Erith. I was walking over the railway bridge at Bexley Road when I noticed some workers on the railway line. I surmised that as the line was shut for further engineering work on the Crossrail development between Abbey Wood and Plumstead, it would appear that the local maintenance teams are taking the opportunity of the closed line to carry out some repairs. The photo shows the workers a couple of hundred metres outside of Erith station, on the Slade Green and Dartford bound line. The freight trains one sees on a fairly regular basis travelling on the North Kent line almost exclusively transport sand and gravel to various sites in the region. They load up at Angerstein Wharf, which is located on the banks of the River Thames between Charlton and Greenwich. There is a branch line which connects to the main line just outside of Charlton station on the London bound side. This branch line is believed to be the oldest privately owned standard gauge siding in the world. Angerstein Wharf was built and opened by Russian born Charlton landowner John Angerstein in 1852 in order to get rail access to the to Angerstein Wharf on the River Thames; it also ran deep into the old East Greenwich gas works. Nowadays it is purely used for freight. Many of the ballast and gravel trains one sees passing along the North Kent line divert onto the Angerstein Wharf branch line. Gravel and sand that has been dredged from the sea is collected by the freight trains for use in the construction industry. No passenger trains run on the branch line, with the notable exception of the very rare special trains run by railway enthusiasts, which as far as I can tell, last travelled along the Angerstein Wharf branch line back on the 8th of November 2014. You can see a video of this unusual journey by clicking here. 

One of the problems associated with increased density of housing in any area is the requirement for improved infrastructure to cope – better water, electricity gas and drainage are needed whenever new properties are built. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Once again the residents of Sandcliff Road have got raw sewage flowing down their road. They are intensely annoyed - and with good reason. They are blighted by the incompetence of Thames Water. Ever since 1998 the road has had drainage problems – a giant chemical effluent leak caused several thousand gallons of industrial liquid waste to seep up through the drains and flood a number of houses in the road; I recall at the time that several houses were evacuated for months on end – and one was condemned as unfit for human habitation. Thames Water were subsequently fined £250,000 by the Department of the Environment for the spillage, and their apparent inability to properly organise the subsequent clean up. There have been a number of sewage floods in the road since, to the point where locals re – named the road “Poo Mews”. It strikes me that the local residents are blighted not just by the actual floods, but by the damage to the reputation of the road. I would be surprised if house prices are badly affected by the situation – after all, who would want to live in an area where you had a strong chance of ending up knee deep in other people’s number twos when you ventured outside your front door? From Thames Water’s perspective, it is a PR disaster; I think the main reason that they don’t take a more proactive approach to the problem is that Sandcliff Road is a little travelled side lane, with a predominantly working class population. If a flood of dung was to happen in somewhere rather more affluent (rather than effluent) like Bexley Village, I reckon that the “sharp elbowed middle classes” would have got a rather better reaction from the powers that be. I have walked down Sandcliff Road several times recently, and I can confirm the aroma of multiple bowel movements is hard to ignore; it is just as well I am a non-smoker, as the volume of methane in the air could well be close to a combustible level. I feel sorry for the residents, and hope that the problem can eventually be resolved. The existing drains are not up to the job(by), and really need to be completely replaced. The problem will only get worse when the nearby Erith Quarry site becomes operational.

Commercially viable (rather than just experimental) magnetic tape recording had its seventieth birthday last week - an event which has not been covered in the press.  Thanks to the good fortune of suffering from insomnia, a curious observation by John T. "Jack" Mullin led to the introduction of tape recording and, by extension, the entire home media business. Mullin, a slight and surprisingly humble man, considering his future status in the recording business, graduated from the University of Santa Clara with a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1937, then worked for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph in San Francisco until the war started. By 1944, he had attained the rank of major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and was attached to the RAF's radar research labs in Farnborough, England. While working late that spring night, Mullin was happy to find something pleasing playing on the radio — the Berlin Philharmonic playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on Radio Berlin. But Mullin was mystified: The performance's fidelity was far too fine to be a 16-inch wax disc recording, the prevailing radio recording technology at the time. And since there were no breaks every 15 minutes to change discs, Mullin figured it had to be a live broadcast. But it couldn't be — if it was 2 am in London, it was 3 am in Berlin. Mullin was right — the orchestra wasn’t up late, and it was a recording. Just not the usual kind, which is why Mullin was confused. After the war, Mullin was assigned to the Technical Liaison Division of the Signal Corp in Paris. "Our task, amongst other things, was to discover what the Germans had been working on in communications stuff — radio, radar, wireless, telegraph, teletype," explained Mullin. Mullin ended up in Frankfurt on one such expedition. There he encountered a British officer, who told him a rumour about a new type of recorder at a Radio Frankfurt station in Bad Nauheim. Mullin didn't exactly believe the report — he had encountered dozens of low-fi magnetic recorders all over Germany. He pondered his decision of pursuing the rumour, literally, at a fork in the road. To his right lay Paris, to the left, Radio Frankfurt. Fortuitously for the future of the home media business, Mullin turned left. He found four hi-fi Magnetophons and some 50 reels of red oxide BASF tape. He tinkered with them a bit back in Paris and made a report to the Army. "We now had a number of these lying around. I packed up two of them and sent them home (to San Francisco). Souvenirs of war. "(You could take) almost anything you could find that was not of great value. (And) anything Germany had done was public domain — it was not patentable." He also sent himself the 50 reels of the red-oxide coated tape. When Mullin returned home, he started tinkering to improve the Magnetophons. On May 16, 1946, exactly 70 years ago last week, Mullin stunned attendees at the annual Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) conference in San Francisco by switching between a live jazz combo and a recording, literally asking the question "Is it live or...?" None of the golden ears in the audience could tell. It was the world's first public demonstration of audio tape recording. Bing Crosby hated doing live radio. And he hated recording his shows on wax records because the fidelity sounded terrible to the noted aural perfectionist performer. When Crosby's engineers heard about Mullin and his Magnetophons, they quickly hired him and his machine. In August 1947, Crosby became the first performer to record a radio programme on tape; the show was broadcast on October 1st. Bing Crosby wasn't the only one interested in Mullin's Magnetophons. Up in Redwood City, California, a small company called Ampex was looking for something to replace the radar gear they'd been producing for the government. Ampex hooked up with Mullin and, in April 1948, perfected and started selling the first commercially available audio tape recorder, the Ampex Model 200. Crosby, Mullin, Ampex and American electronics giant RCA all sort of formulated the same follow-up thought at around the same time: If you could record audio on tape, why not video? Crosby and Mullin teamed up. Ampex formed a team that included a high school student named Ray Dolby. And David Sarnoff gave his engineers their marching orders. A highly-public race began to see who could invent the video tape recorder. Ampex had a leg up on its more well-heeled competition. It had a deal with a Chicago research consortium called Armour Research Institute, now the Illinois Institute of Technology. Working for Armour was none other than wire recording maven Marvin Camras, who solved the most vexing problem facing all the video tape inventor wannabees: Tape speed. Audio recording is accomplished by pulling tape past a stationary recording head. Video, however, is a far fatter signal, which meant tape had to be pulled past the recording heads at ridiculous speeds. A two-foot wide reel of tape could hold, tops, 15 minutes of video — not exactly practical. So instead of spinning the tape, Camras, who got the idea from watching vacuum cleaner brushes, he calculated that he would spin the recording heads instead. Once Ampex got ahold of this key, its engineers shot past Crosby/Mullin and RCA. Even with the spinning head secret, it took five years for Ampex's sometimes part-time six-member team to get things right. On April 14, 1956 — 60 years ago last month — Ampex introduced the desk-sized Mark IV, the first commercial video tape recorder, to a stunned group of TV execs and engineers at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Chicago. To say that this machine changed the world is an obvious understatement. It would take almost another 10 years before Philips reduced audio tape to a cassette and ignited the home audio recording craze, and another nearly 10 years before Sony introduced the Betamax and won a U.S Supreme Court case to allow users to legally record TV shows at home and create the home video business. The U.K had few such concerns - one of the reasons why Britain had the largest number of video recorders per head of population back in the 80's / 90's. Ultimately it was the introduction of Jack Mullin's rebuilt Magnetophons that were the first shots fired in the home media revolution, 70 years ago last week - and nothing got mentioned in the popular press, more is the pity.

If you were around the Northumberland Heath / Erith / Slade Green area on Wednesday afternoon, you might well have seen something extremely unusual flying overhead at around 4.45pm. A rather strange machine called a Bell – Boeing V-22 Osprey. The Osprey is  an American multi-mission, tiltrotor military aircraft with both vertical take - off and landing (VTOL), and short take - off and landing (STOL) capabilities. It is designed to combine the functionality of a conventional helicopter with the long-range, high-speed cruise performance of a turboprop aircraft. I have found out that several of these unusual aircraft are being leased by the Ministry of Defence from the Americans, and British pilots are currently undergoing training from U.S Marine and Army flying instructors here in the U.K. The Ospreys are going to be used to transport special forces troops in the event of a Paris – type terrorist attack in the U.K. The Osprey is almost twice as fast as the SAS’s current fleet of transport helicopters and can carry at least 24 fully equipped personnel. With a top speed of 360 mph it can deploy soldiers from Hereford to London in 30 minutes to bolster the SAS’s anti-terror squad which is permanently based in the capital, and to Manchester in about the same time. The Osprey has machine guns installed in the nose and on the rear ramp. Its range is also much greater than transport helicopters currently in service. It can fly for up to 1,000 miles or eight hours without refuelling, meaning that if terrorists launch strikes across the UK, the same aircraft could fly troops to several locations. I am guessing that the Osprey seen over Erith on Wednesday afternoon was travelling from London down to Chatham, where The Royal Engineers have a large base. The Chinook helicopters currently used for anti – terrorist operations also travel down to Chatham for weekly maintenance and repair sessions. I would expect that we will see more of the Ospreys flying over the local area from now on. At least now you know why.

One of Britain's oldest people died this week - and he lived in Erith. 105 year old Frederick ‘Fred’ Salter died in the Queen Elizabeth hospital on Sunday, May 8. In 2010 he was presented with his Pride of Britain award by Strictly Come Dancing host Bruce Forsyth, with Prince Charles and prime minister David Cameron present at the ceremony. The reason for this was that he took up competitive ballroom dancing at the age of 90, after his family encouraged him to get out of the house more often. Although he suffered a minor stroke in 2010, which caused him to lose the power of speech for about a month, he recovered and returned to the dancefloor. He was also a keen football fan; he was made a patron of Charlton Athletic - he had a great love of the club. Mr Salter is survived by four of his five children and more than 35 great grandchildren.

The end video this week is a piece of local history; it shows Abbey Wood and Thamesmead back in 1968, just as the first phases of Thamesmead opened to residents. I have to say that the amateur footage does make the newly completed apartment towers look very fresh and inviting. Much of the brutalist architecture has now already been demolished, or shortly will be as part of the Peabody funded regeneration, as discussed earlier. If you have any memories of Thamesmead's early days that you would like to share, then drop me a line to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Poo Mews.

The white line painting pixies have been out in force in Erith this week; I awoke on Wednesday morning, and as I walked to the station on my way to work, I noticed that overnight many of the main roads had been repainted with fresh road markings. My guess is that this was undertaken in the wee small hours of the night, as the area is too busy with traffic at pretty much any other time.

Apparently there has been a massive increase in the number of ukuleles sold in the country. The instrument, with its’ somewhat comical image, is now the best selling musical instrument in the UK. Many schools are encouraging their pupils to take up the ukulele in preference to the recorder – probably as a badly played ukulele will not grate on the nerves anything like as badly as a recorder – a device seemingly designed to aurally torture all within range. It is said that the ukulele is also the easiest musical instrument to learn, and become reasonably proficient in. One celebrity ukulele player is journalist and presenter Nicky Campbell, who plays at various music festivals, and occasionally regales listeners to his BBC Radio 2 show with tunes on his ukulele. The video clip below shows an absolutely virtuoso ukulele player showing just what can be done with the simple instrument. The video has gone viral, so apologies if you have seen it before. Do feel free to leave a comment below.

As many people now know, Erith Pier is the longest structure on the River Thames; since it was refurbished during the construction of Morrison’s supermarket in 1998 / 99 it has become quite a local attraction; people like to promenade (in the original sense of the word) along it when the weather is nice, and there is a vibrant community of anglers who can be found fishing off the pier at all hours of the day and night. You can often see their mini tents and Tilley lamps glowing in the dark. The pier certainly gets more use now than it ever did when it was used commercially as the landing point for giant rolls of newsprint, freshly delivered by ship from the giant paper mills in Scandinavia. The rolls were then loaded onto lorries to be stored in warehouses on the Europa Industrial Estate in Fraser Road, prior to then being driven up to what was then Fleet Street for use in newspapers. In those days the pier was not open to the public, and it was a dirty and dangerous place to be. Nowadays the opposite is the case – I would like to see the pier get more recognition as a really nice place to visit on a sunny day (it has to be said that in the winter, it can be bitterly cold, with the East wind seemingly coming upriver, straight from the Siberian Steppes). Outside of Erith, nobody seems to be aware of the existence of the pier, which is a real pity. I would be interested to see what the reception would be if the Thames Clipper Ferries that operate on the London reaches of the River Thames were to extend their service to Erith? I would be keen to commute via the river, rather than the traditional route of the train. I would imagine that it might take a little longer than the overland route, but it would surely be a more relaxing way to travel. There is little traffic on the river, and not much to get in the way of a ferry. I wonder what you think about regular travel into the capital by ship? The river seems to be an under used resource that gets treated as a barrier, rather than a thoroughfare in its’ own right.

Home owners in Sandcliff Road are up in arms yet again – and with good reason. They are blighted by the incompetence of Thames Water. Ever since 1998 the road has had drainage problems – a giant chemical effluent leak caused several thousand gallons of industrial liquid waste to seep up through the drains and flood a number of houses in the road; I recall at the time that several houses were evacuated for months on end – and one was condemned as unfit for human habitation, Thames Water were subsequently fined £250,000 by the Department of the Environment for the spillage, and their apparent inability to properly organise the subsequent clean up. There have been a number of sewage floods in the road since, to the point where locals re – named the road “Poo Mews” – something which seems to have stuck. Now there have been a further five floods of liquid excrement in the last month – you can read all about it on the News Shopper website here. It strikes me that the local residents are blighted not just by the actual floods, but by the damage to the reputation of the road. I would be surprised if house prices are badly affected by the situation – after all, who would want to live in an area where you had a strong chance of ending up knee deep in other people’s number twos when you ventured outside your front door? From Thames Water’s perspective, it is a PR disaster; I think the main reason that they don’t take a more proactive approach to the problem is that Sandcliff Road is a little travelled side lane, with a predominantly working class population. If a flood of dung was to happen in somewhere rather more affluent (rather than effluent) like Bexley Village, I reckon that the “sharp elbowed middle classes” would have got a rather better reaction from the powers that be. I have walked down Sandcliff Road several times recently, and I can confirm the aroma of multiple bowel movements is hard to ignore; it is just as well I am a non smoker, as the volume of methane in the air could well be close to a combustible level. I feel sorry for the residents, and hope that the problem can eventually be resolved.

Back in the late 1980’s there was much consternation in the scientific community – to the extent that the story quite soon made it into the mainstream press. The story concerned a potentially world changing new method of generating potentially limitless energy from a derivative of seawater. The process was called Cold Fusion. Scientists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman claimed that they had found a way to generate large quantities of energy at room temperature, with almost no harmful radiation. You can read all about them here. Cutting a long and complex story short, when Pons and Fleischman posted the results of their experiments, other scientists around the world attempted to replicate them. They could not. After eighteen months or so of various attempts, the word got out that the whole thing was a dud, and that the original outstanding results were suspect due to chemical contamination in the test samples, along with a large dose of wishful thinking on the part of the experimenters. Pons and Fleischman continued on their own for years, but all scientific credibility (and thus funding) had evaporated. Cold Fusion became a bit of a bye word for a white elephant, and for most people the whole subject was consigned to the bin of history. I recall having detailed discussions with my physicist friend Doctor Barry Singleton at the time; he said “it is not fusion in a conventional sense, but there is definitely something going on”. A small handful of researchers have continued the experiments over the intervening years, though they now don’t use the phrase cold fusion – steeped as it now is in a tarnished reputation. Nowadays they refer to the process as “Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” (LENR). A trio of Italian scientists – Fabio Penon, Fulvio Fabiani, and David Bianchini have just announced the results of a series of experiments they have been carrying out with the LENR generator developed by another scientist by the name of Andrea Rossi. His device, the ECAT is claimed not only to work, and output much more energy than is input, but to be ready to be engineered into a working one megawatt power supply. He claims to have discovered a LENR process which can bring on a revolution in energy production. In a nut shell, he claims with his apparatus that he has found a way to input electricity that interacts with hydrogen in a way to cause nickel to convert into copper. In the process gamma rays are given off which creates large amounts of thermal energy – more energy than the electrical energy that was put in. Rossi is now taking orders for 1MW thermal heating units. Keep in mind that thermal energy can be easily and cheaply converted into electrical energy, so you can see how the ECAT could be a big deal. What’s important here, if Rossi’s claims hold up, is there is not a chemical reaction creating this thermal energy. There is something else going on, perhaps a true Low Energy Nuclear Reaction. The most energy dense chemical compound found in everyday use is petrol (gasoline to the Americans), which has an energy density of 13 kilowatt hours per kilo. The energy output from the ECAT generator was independently measured at 578 kilowatt hours per kilo – roughly 45 times greater than that found with petrol. That is an amazing result, looking almost too good to be true. Thereby hangs the problem. If something looks too good to be true, it generally is. Andrea  Rossi claims that the reason for the secrecy surrounding the project is that there are four other teams working on a similar process, and the first one to patent the technology will be looking at vast wealth, along with a Nobel Prize. Others are more sceptical about the whole thing. I feel that this is a very under reported story right now, and it will be interesting to see when (if?) the mainstream press pick up on it. Comments below, as always.

Since my piece on Bexley Councillor Peter Craske last week, I have been corrected; apparently he did not appear in court, he was arrested on a charge of misconduct in a public office and appeared at Bexleyheath Police station. He is however, due to appear again on October the 16th. My confidential source suspects that this case may be dropped without ever going to court. I will say nothing further for now. Craske is innocent until proven guilty – and if it does not go to court, he’s innocent in the eyes of the law.

There has been some unusual activity in the row of shops in Pier Road (opposite the car park that years ago was home to Erith Market). The old carpet shop very quietly closed down – I don’t think it had done anything in the way of business for years; I walked past it daily on my way home from work, and I cannot recall ever seeing a customer in the place. It is a bit of a wonder it lasted as long as it did. The shop building was almost immediately taken over and a number of workers could be seen refurbishing the interior. They were adding some internal partitions and a hatch type window leading onto what I guessed was going to be a waiting area. My curiosity was piqued. I could not see the need for another mini cab office on the edge of the town centre, and I could not fathom what else the unusual internal configuration of the shop could be for. Earlier this week the penny finally dropped. The small unit a few shop fronts closer to the Tunnel of Doom (tm) which has housed the Point 2 Point tattoo studio for the last few years (see the photo above) had a sign in the window, saying that they were moving to bigger premises further along the block. This suddenly made sense – the waiting room in the new unit was for the tattooist’s victims. In some ways I was not surprised that Point 2 Point were moving to larger premises; whenever I walked past their old shop, there was always someone waiting to be seen, and on top of this, I get the feeling that the proportion of tattooed to non tattooed Erith residents is quite high. My personal philosophy is “if it works for you” – I am a libertarian, and think that people should be able to do pretty much anything they like, with the proviso that it neither directly or indirectly causes harm, distress or inconvenience to others. Personally the whole idea of tattooing repels me; the desire to have one’s body permanently disfigured I find bewildering – I just cannot see the point of it all. It would seem that I am very much in the minority in the local area though. I do recall that some years ago I reported on Point 2 Point offering gift vouchers – something that I found somewhat surreal at the time – and to be honest, my view is unchanged. Still, it is an independent local business that is supplying a demand, so I can only give it my wholehearted support – though it does feel very strange for me to do so.

The video this week is on a subject very close to my heart. It is a full, hour long BBC documentary about Bill Tutte and Tommy Flowers - two men who not only contributed a huge amount to the allied victory in World War 2, but also had a major influence on the development of the computer. They were not involved in breaking the Enigma code, but an even more complex and devious cipher known as Lorenz, which was used by Hitler and his senior generals. Whilst information is pretty hazy, it is thought that my great uncle Horace may well have worked with Tommy Flowers at the Post Office Research Centre at Dollis Hill - where they created the world's first computer - Colossus, in order to break this extremely high level encryption. Do give the film a watch, and leave a comment below accordingly.