The 150th Thames Sailing Barge Race.

Saturday saw the 150th annual Thames sailing barge race, which ended at Erith. The weather was scorching hot and very sunny (incidentally my method of dealing with the sun is quite traditional. I don't believe in smearing on noxious sun creams and other such potions on any exposed portions of skin. My tactic is not to expose any skin at all. I find a good quality tweed, or on the day, moleskin blazer with a stout, wide - brimmed cricket umpire's hat, which gives a sun protection factor of something like 10,000 - far better protection from the sun's rays that anything else less civilised that I can think of). Anyway, a surprisingly large crowd of onlookers turned up, both on Erith Pier, and in the Riverside Gardens, where a small fair had been set up. See the photos below (click for a larger view).

There was a periodic explosion from the judges' cannon that was moored on a small launch next to the pier, which marked a barge completing the race - something was a rather leisurely affair, due to the almost windless conditions. This did not seem to deter the competitors one bit. The whole affair finished very amicably about four thirty on Saturday afternoon.  You can see some more photos of the day by visiting my Flickr photo site here. Do leave comments below, as always.

On Tuesday I had occasion to travel up to Watford for a couple of meetings. On my return I decided that rather than staying on the underground all the way to London Bridge from Euston, I would break my journey at Bank and get the Docklands Light Railway to Woolwich Arsenal, then pick up an overland train to complete my journey to Erith. It takes a little longer this way, but when the weather is nice, it is a pleasant alternative travel route, and the DLR route through East London is an interesting one – probably due to the novelty that I only travel that way a couple of times per month. One thing that I share with Darryl of the excellent Greenwich and Charlton based 853 Blog is a fascination with the continuing saga of the Emirates Airline cable car system, better known locally as the “Arabfly Dangleway”, which reached its’ first birthday last week, as I wrote at the time. The DLR trains run directly underneath the path of the cable cars, and one can clearly see any occupants of the cars as the train passes underneath. At around 4.45pm on Tuesday afternoon – a bright, sunny and warm afternoon there were precisely zero passengers in any of the ten or so cars I could clearly see from the DLR carriage. According to Transport For London, only sixteen people regularly use the Arabfly Dangleway to journey across the river (bearing in mind that the system was originally touted as a new addition to London’s main transport infrastructure, this does not bode well).  In my opinion, the problems of the cable car are twofold. 1) It was built in the wrong location; there is no need for an additional cross – river link at that point in the Thames. The Jubilee line connects the North side of the river with North Greenwich (which confusingly is located on the South bank of the river). You can use Oyster card or travel card on the tube, and the journey takes only around three minutes. If you elect to go via cable car, you have to pay an additional fee and it takes either five, or ten minutes, depending on the time of day of your travel. The service is also problematic for travellers in that it is closed in the evening – if you go to a show at the O2 Arena, you cannot use the cable car, as it closes to passengers at 9pm. The thing has really been set up as a limited service tourist attraction, disguised as an integral part of London’s transport infrastructure. The only way this would have worked and attracted a large enough user base to have been financially viable would have been to have located it in central London, near other tourist traps like the Tower of London or the London Eye. Most novelty travel systems like a Ferris Wheel or cable car find it difficult to make a profit in any large city; even the London Eye  - the most successful and most visited big wheel in the world does not run at anything like full capacity, and it is located smack bang in the centre of London – the greatest tourist city in the World.

There has been a lot of press interest over the last few weeks in the burgeoning trend for high quality burgers. Almost every day I read press reviews and articles about new up market burger chains opening in and around the capital. The latest one to join the ranks is Five Guys Burgers, which opened in Covent Garden last week. I am not about to debate the relative merits of one brand of minced beef pattie in a bun with salad and relish over another – in general it really comes down to personal preference. It got me thinking though. We have such an amazingly wide selection of food available via takeaways and home delivery (though around the London Borough of Bexley, you really need to be careful if you are not to get food poisoning, as I have banged about repeatedly in the recent past); I would guess that London probably has the greatest variety of food on sale of any major city in the World, with the possible exception of New York city (though not having been there, I cannot be certain). I notice that one very traditional London fare is not very well represented at present; the Pie and Mash shop.  A few high streets locally still have a Pie and Mash shop – Upper Belvedere has a long established shop in Albert Road, and Bexleyheath has one in the middle of the Broadway. They are not exactly “destination” eating places, and tend to be frequented mainly by pensioners. Wouldn’t it be a good idea if some kind of promotion of Pie and Mash shops took place? Before you counter with “what about the Square Pie chain?” I don’t regard those as “proper” Pie and Mash shops, as they don’t have the ambience or character of the real thing, and in general Square Pie shops only reheat pies made offsite in a large factory; all real pie and mash shops make the pies and mashed potato from scratch in the shop – something that gives each one its’ own unique character. I am a great fan of exotic, unusual and somewhat challenging food – and we have this in many high streets in spades. What we seem to be doing nowadays is ignoring our own traditional cuisine, which is a real pity. One thing I don’t think we will be seeing in any future pie and mash shops is a food that was once a staple – the steamed or jellied eel. Very few pie and mash shops serve eel any more, as they have become scarce and the price of eel has rocketed accordingly. Erith was one of the main homes for eel fishing on the River Thames.  Nowadays the trade is almost completely dead. Coincidentally when I took the photos of the Air Ambulance landing on the site of the old swimming baths site on Erith River Front back in April, I was in Email and telephone contact with journalist Tim McFarlan of the News Shopper about human interest stories in and around Erith that he might like to write. It would appear that he made good on this; there is a story about one of the last eel fishermen on the River Thames, who plies his trade from the jetty on Erith river front that was the cause of much consternation two weeks ago when the fugitive from justice jumped off the jetty and had to be rescued by the RNLI.  You can read all about Erith’s history of eel fishing and how it has gone from a pretty important local industry to little more than a hobby for a handful of people by clicking here.

The detailed architects drawings for the new Abbey Wood station have now been published. The new, two level building will combine both the overland conventional rail service and the forthcoming Crossrail services in one large structure. The existing station building will be demolished and replaced by a temporary station by summer 2014, which will be located in the current station car park – preparatory work has recently been started - a number of shipping container shaped site offices have already been delivered and set up. In addition, two tracks for Crossrail services are currently being installed next to the existing North Kent lines and work will be carried out to raise and lengthen a number of bridges along the track so they can accommodate the overhead electric wires that will be used by Crossrail trains. Tunnelling work is well under way between Abbey Wood and Plumstead stations – the route will be underground between Plumstead and Woolwich, then back underground through Custom House to Canary Wharf station. Travel time from Abbey Wood to Canary Wharf will be only eleven minutes. Keep this in mind, as I will come back to it later. The whole travel infrastructure for the South East will be radically improved by Crossrail; the journey time from Abbey Wood to Heathrow airport, terminals 1, 2 and 3 will be slashed from over two hours down to fifty one minutes! This may well have an adverse effect on local mini cab companies, who rely on airport pick-ups and drop – offs for a substantial part of their business. Overall though I think it will be beneficial for the local area; travel time to Tottenham Court Road for the West End will be only 23 minutes, Whitechapel in 15 minutes and even Southall will be accessible in only 41 minutes – quick enough to venture there for a lunchtime curry on a weekend. One thing that will no doubt occupy the minds of many Abbey Wood, and to a lesser extent, Thamesmead residents is that property prices are bound to be affected by the improvement to the transport links. The fact that the Crossrail station in Canary Wharf will be only eleven minutes will be extremely attractive to many Wharf workers (and here I have to express a personal interest, as the new station is currently being built right next to the office where I spend a majority of my working time). Currently it takes my around seventy minutes travelling door to door to go from Pewty Acres to the Canary Wharf office – I get the overland train from Erith to Greenwich station, where I then pick up the Docklands Light Railway to Canary Wharf. At a rough guesstimate I will be able to get from my front door to the office in about 25 – 30 minutes via the forthcoming Crossrail route – not counting service interruptions due to signal failures, mechanical breakdowns, bodies on the line and cable theft, of course. How much a ticket will cost will also factor into what route commuters decide to take, though if the area around Abbey Wood station attracts a lot of people working in Canary Wharf, house prices may well shoot up. From talking to (an admittedly unrepresentative group) of Canary Wharf workers recently, I got some very interesting feedback about what they thought Abbey Wood residents would be like. The general feeling was that the outer London suburbs are the home of white van men, black cab drivers, and the kind of people that keep central London businesses ticking over (maintenance, construction, admin support and the like). I think there is an element of truth in this; certainly if you look at the cross section of passengers who travel from stations such as Erith, Belvedere and Abbey Wood at present, you get some people obviously dressed for the office, but you also get facilities maintenance engineers (usually easy to spot, as they invariably wear company branded sweatshirts), builders and other people involved in physical work. How this demographic may change if the more wealthy city and wharf workers decide to move into the area is something that only time will tell.

The owners of the New Beijing City Chinese takeaway (rated a poor two out of five stars for food hygiene in the Bexley Scores on the Doors website) in Brook Street, Northumberland Heath are in a lot of hot water right now; they were raided by the Police and immigration officials and found to be employing two illegal immigrants. If found guilty by a court, they could face fines of up to £10,000 per illegal employee. I think it is an open secret that takeaways and restaurants around the country employ a lot of illegals. To be honest, it is not much of a surprise; most people want food from these establishments, they want it served quickly, and most importantly they want it to be cheap. Employing illegals has attractions for many food outlets, especially those serving ethnic food. If you are running a Chinese or Indian takeaway, for example, you may feel more comfortable with an employee who shares your mother language and culture, and is likely to know the food, and how best to prepare it  to a greater or lesser extent. Illegals also don’t get minimum wage – they are often grateful for a roof over their heads and regular meals, and can be easy to exploit due to their immigration status – something that can be used as a threat if any complaint about employment conditions is made. I think that as long as we have takeaways, we are going to have problems with illegal immigrants – and don’t think I support the likes of the BNP, EDF or other neo Nazi groups, who would want to shut the UK borders, and “chuck them all out” – historically Britain has always been a melting pot; something that has done much to strengthen both our culture and our economy. The cliché about immigrants doing jobs that native Brits don’t want to do has more than an element of truth in it. Anyway, whilst researching some of the views and policies of the far right, I came across something rather interesting; The name “Nazi” was meant as an insult when it was first coined. If someone called Hitler a Nazi, he would have been offended (admittedly briefly, before the name caller was taken away and shot). Hitler was the head of the catchily named “Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeitpartei” – which translates as the National Socialist German Workers Party. When Hitler invented this name, he apparently did not think it through very thoroughly. Hitler’s political and moral opponents soon caught on to the fact you could shorten Nationalsozialistiche to Nazi. Why would they do this? Well, because Nazi was a very old and unrelated term of abuse in the German language. The standard butt of German jokes at the beginning of the twentieth century were stupid Bavarian peasants; just as Irish jokes always involved a man called Paddy, so Bavarian jokes always involved a peasant called Nazi. The reason for this is just as Paddy is a shortened form of Patrick, Nazi was a shortened form of the very common Bavarian name of Ignatius. This meant that Hitler’s many opponents had an open goal; He had an extreme right wing party that was filled with Bavarian hicks, and the name of that party could be shortened to the standard German joke name for Bavarian hicks. At first, Hitler did not know what to do about the derogatory nickname “Nazi”, and it was a source of embarrassment – at least until he got into power, when he and his evil cohorts persecuted their opponents. Those that managed to avoid the concentration camps ended up fleeing Germany; refugees started to turn up all over Europe in the pre WWII years, where they understandably started complaining loudly about the Nazis, and pretty much everyone who was not German got the erroneous idea that this was their official name. To this day most people go round believing that Nazis went around calling themselves Nazis, when in reality they would have probably beaten you up, or worse for saying the word!

When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. This seems to be something that has completely eluded the deputy head of Bexley Council, Colin Campbell when he appeared on the BBC1 Politics Show last Sunday morning. He was defending the council against the accusation that they wasted Police time when a chap called Nicholas Dowling requested permission to film the public realm, community safety, economic development and regeneration overview and scrutiny committee meeting on June the 19^th, as I have covered previously.  Campbell made several statements that were in direct contradiction of factual reality, and did so on one of the most prominent stages in the United Kingdom. You can read more about the story here – if you scroll down the News Shopper article, and read the comments, you will note that “Bexley is Bonkers” makes a couple of relevant points. Local activist Malcolm Knight runs the popular Bexley is Bonkers website and daily blog – he was actually present at the incident reported, and was witness to the events in question. I note that another person who has used the screen name “Sleazebuster” comments on the article: “The Deputy Leader of Bexley Council, Councillor Colin Campbell, appeared on national television on Sunday 7th July, to defend the council's decision to call the police to remove a member of the public who was attempting to film the proceedings, in accordance with instructions issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government. When asked why Bexley Council does not allow meetings to be filmed, Mr Campbell responded "If you want to film you simply call us on the day to say you would want to film, you don't even have to give a reason." Accordingly, I emailed Bexley Council to seek permission to film the Cabinet Meeting on 9th July. I have just received a response from Mr Nick Hollier, Deputy Director of Human Resources at Bexley Council, refusing to grant me permission. A complaint is on way to Bexley Council, alleging prevarication against Councillor Campbell. I am also forwarding a copy of the email to the Sunday Politics programme for their information. Mr Pickles will also get a copy of the email, asking him what he intends to do about having two fingers put up to him by his friends and colleagues at Bexley Council.” Well said, Sleazebuster! Let us see what happens now. 

And now, for the first time ever, you can watch excerpts from the original manuscript of "Star Wars" by William Shakespeare in his original folio form from 1617. This was apparently lost for many years until discovered by a little known writer and film director called George Lucas, and the rest they say, is history....

The Golden Dustman.

Bearing in mind Erith is very much a maritime town, the River Thames does not really get the exposure or use one would expect. Historically Erith was an important port outside of London. Many ships which were too large to make it into the Port of London were unloaded at Erith, with their cargoes being taken further up river by Thames sailing barges. This was before the river was fully dredged and managed as it is nowadays. Today one can watch huge container and bulk carrier ships passing Erith river front on a daily basis; the best time to see ship movements is at or around the changing of the tide. As previously mentioned, some of the small and medium sized vessels can often be seen moored on Erith Pier as well. Some rather more photogenic craft will be appearing on the Thames soon. The annual Thames sailing barge race is due to take place on Saturday the 13th of July. It will be the 150th anniversary of this historic race, which was first run in 1863, when the barges were an integral part of river traffic and a major source of local employment, with thousands of boys and men crewing the river craft. The race starts at Mucking in Essex at 8.30am and finishes at Erith Pier at around 4.30pm, where many of the barges will moor. It will be an excellent opportunity for local sailing and photography enthusiasts to get up close to a large fleet of these classic vessels. The origin of this historic competition is well documented. It was the brainchild of a man who was nick named “The Golden Dustman”. His real name was Henry Dodd. He was born in 1801 into a very poor family; his first job was as a plough boy in arable fields that were within view of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which he did until he was in his early thirties, when he found employment as a “scavenger” – a sort of prototype recycling consultant. He soon discovered that the big money was in transporting waste, rather than actually sorting it. London was rapidly growing in size, and the population was booming. As the number of people in the capital increased, the amount of rubbish they generated went up. Dodd saw this as a very lucrative business opportunity, so instead of using slow and somewhat unreliable horses and carts to haul rubbish, he first hired, then purchased a fleet of sailing barges, which could transport far greater cargoes at a higher speed than any contemporary road solution. Most of the waste material Dodd was transporting was burned outside the capital, and the resulting ash was a vital ingredient in making bricks, which in turn were used to build the expansion of London. Never one to overlook a business opening, Dodd invested in several brickworks, including a very large site on what is now Manor Road in Erith. Nowadays, this kind of end to end ownership of all stages in a manufacturing process is known as “vertical integration” and Henry Dodd was a pioneer of it. All this made Dodd incredibly wealthy; he was one of the richest commoners in England, right at the start of the then new middle class. Dodd’s money bought him a degree of respectability in Victorian society (though I am sure there were whispers behind his back – though after having been brought up in the environment he had, I somewhat doubt if this bothered him). Dodd became a very enthusiastic patron of the theatre, and through this mutual interest he became very good friends with Charles Dickens. Dickens scholars believe that Dodd was the inspiration for the character of Mr. Boffin, the millionaire dustman who appears in the novel “Our Mutual Friend”. Dodd invested a large amount of money in sailing barges, and soon discovered that there was an intense rivalry between barge skippers. Never one to miss a main chance, he decided that in 1863 he would stage a sailing barge race – for entertainment, but also as a means to improve the business. The first race was only for his own sailing barges, and was run from Erith to Canvey Island and back, with the fist barge and skipper to make the round trip being awarded a generous cash purse, which was awarded under the auspices of the Prince of Wales Yacht Club. Many in society assumed that the event had Royal patronage (something that Dodd did little to discourage), but in fact it was named after an Erith pub! In 1864 the race was opened to all comers, and after a while it became such a big event the running of it was passed over to a committee of barge owners. Within ten years, specially built racing barges were being constructed purely to try and win the race. Passenger steamers would be chartered to follow the racing barges on their course, and records show that over 10,000 people watched the race from on board these steamers. Henry Dodd, the “Golden Dustman” died in 1881; he left a fund to sustain the match – an eye watering sum of £100,000, which today is equivalent to tens of millions of pounds. In the latter years of the 19th century, the event was covered by Charles’ Dickens son (who confusingly was also called Charles) in his annual gazetteer. For the Centenary Match raced in 1963, the two principle rivals in Britain’s coasting trade, F T Everard and The London and The Rochester Trading Co. lavished money on their fastest barges in an attempt to ensure success for craft which were, by that time, an anachronism in transportation terms. The 48 mile course was from Mucking to the Mouse Lightship, and then back up to Gravesend. F T Everard’s Veronica was the winner, leaving the rest far behind in her wake. The 150th Anniversary Match on Saturday 13th July 2013, has the contest finishing at Erith for the first time since 1894. Not only is this spectacle thought to be the second oldest sailing contest in the world after the America’s Cup, unlike the America’s Cup of 1851, it is still sailed in craft virtually unchanged since those times, and as such is in itself an especially important part of this nation’s maritime heritage. Hopefully the News Shopper and the Bexley Times will be covering the event, as it is of considerable historical and local interest. I will certainly be on the pier with my camera. Many thanks to one of my small group of local informants for bringing this fascinating story to my attention.

It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. A chap in Bostall Heath called James has recently set up a Blog called “The Bostal News” (sic) in which he cites the Maggot Sandwich as his source of inspiration. I am very happy that he feels that I have motivated him to write, and to take a keen interest in his local area. Starting off a blog is not an easy task; I sometimes look back at my early postings and wince. The style and content of the Maggot Sandwich did take quite a while to settle down into the form that it takes now. It is now only a couple of weeks until  the Maggot Sandwich has its’ seventh birthday. I did not think for a moment that it would last more than a scant few months – I certainly had no inkling it would achieve the following it now has; as of today I am getting a tad over 23,500 page views per month, which is quite astonishing. I hope that James keeps at it and produces something he can be justly proud of, though at present I don't think he's discovered the Blogger spelling and grammar checking functions. Still, blogging is a continuous learning process, and you have to begin somewhere.

On Monday, I attended a meeting at the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace, near St. James’s Park. After the meeting (where I had a chat with Ian Peters CBE, the Chairman of British Gas, but that is another story), I was making my way out of the impressive Georgian building. When I reached the reception area, I saw a tall figure standing with his hands in his pockets. He looked vaguely familiar, and after a couple of seconds of trying to recall his name, I realised that there was a portrait of him on the other side of the reception area – it was Sir Tim Berners-Lee! He’s a fellow of the Royal Society, so I suppose that it was not so unlikely to see him on the premises. I did think of asking for his autograph, but then I thought that it would be a rather naff thing to do, so I nodded politely as I passed him on my way out of the building. There are very few people who can lay claim to have really changed the world, but Sir Tim Berners-Lee is most definitely one of them.

The News Shopper are reporting that the Pizza Hut in Northumberland Heath that made the national news over the appalling state of its’ cleanliness has now re – opened after a full refurbishment. Actually that’s not quite what they wrote. Once again they got Erith and Northumberland Heath confused. Erith does not actually have a Pizza Hut; it does have a Domino’s delivery shop, and a host of kebab and fried chicken places that can knock up a pizza if required. Personally I don’t use any of them, as I think that pizza is one of the biggest consumer rip – offs around. The profit margins are phenomenal – after all, it is just a bit of bread dough covered with tomato sauce, a bit of cheese and some toppings – which then retails for around £10. I also find them heavy and hard to digest – “proper” Roman style pizza is thin enough to see light through, is given a very minimal topping and is designed to be simple, rustic fare – even a Milan style pizza, which has a slightly thicker base is still thin in comparison to the type of thing offered in the UK. The eye watering array of weird and eclectic toppings that are offered by many pizza retailers strikes me as odd – where in Milan or Rome would you find a chicken tikka or lamb doner pizza I wonder? To be honest, Pizza Hut has such a poor level of hygiene overall, that just because this franchised takeaway has had its’ act cleaned up for now, there is no guarantee it will still be that way in six months or a years’ time. I avoid it for all of the reasons above. Your thoughts and feedback are welcomed, as always.
The local area seems to be having a resurgence of interest in the arts and culture recently. Not only do the Running Horses have a monthly stand up comedy night, which I have heard very good things about, but the Red Barn pub in Barnehurst are hosting regular jazz music nights, the next one being on Friday the 28^th June with music from the Neil Tucker Group. The pub has a strong historic connection with jazz, and in particular Trad Jazz – it was the centre of the Trad Jazz revival movement, which began in 1944, when a group of amateur musicians, who worked at the Vickers armaments factory in Crayford came together at the Red Barn to form a Trad Jazz combo called “George Webb and the Dixielanders” who used to have a regular Monday night gig in the pub. After the war, the Dixielanders got a recording contract with Decca, and released a number of very successful records. In 1949 the trumpeter Humphrey Littleton took over leadership of the group from George Webb. The newly revamped Dixielanders then made some historical recordings with Sidney Bechet, and later moved to the Parlophone label, where they had a major hit with a track called the “Bad Penny Blues”. Back in 1985 the Jazz master George Melly unveiled a plaque on the outside wall of the Red Barn, commemorating its’ historical place in the great Trad Jazz revival. Incidentally, I used on occasion to see George Melly at Charing Cross station, where he was probably waiting for a train to his home in Blackheath. I used to think his outrageous, lurid suits were part of his stage attire; this was not the case – he really wore them in public! You really could not miss him, even in a crowd of people.

As some of you will be aware, I was a carer for quite a few years; my Dad died in 2011 after a ten year battle with the degenerative neurological condition known as Multi System Atrophy / Lewy Body Syndrome. Although no longer a carer myself, I am acutely aware of the issues and challenges that carers experience; I am chair of the Carers’ Network at my employer (a blue chip multinational). I was interested to see an article in the News Shopper earlier this week, which stated that the London Borough of Bexley has the third highest number of unpaid carers in the whole of London. Quite how anyone can come to this figure surprises me – many carers are not registered or described anywhere as a carer, but nevertheless have caring responsibilities – it is widely accepted that the figures from the 2011 census are nothing more than a finger in the wind. Something like one in six people in the UK are currently caring for someone other than a child, it really is the elephant in the corner as far as the welfare state is concerned – if the NHS had to fund all of the caring that currently gets done for free, its’ overall budget would end up more than doubling. One phenomenon that is now commonplace is that of what is known as the “Sandwich Carer” – a person who is caring for both small children and elderly parents – the increase in average life expectancy in the last few decades is a major contributor to this. The past week has been National Carers’ Week, and you may have seen a few references to this in the press; I was interviewed by the Reuters News agency the week before last in my capacity as a corporate Carers Network chair. It will be interesting to see when the article pops up.

I was gutted to discover that the oldest continuously run business in Erith is closing due to lack of business. Owen’s Iron monger shop has been in the town since 1905 and has been selling plumbing, electrical and building materials ever since. I have used the shop on several occasions, and it is a real pleasure to shop there –the two guys that run the place really know their stuff. Until a couple of years ago, Owens could also boast that it was the home to Britain’s largest cat, which used to sit in a box on the counter, watching the world go by. I recall that on one occasion when I was in the shop to buy some two core electrical wire, a chav in a hoody came into the shop with what looked like a pit bull on a very flimsy lead. The dog saw the cat and went berserk – barking and snarling and trying to lunge at the counter where the cat was sitting. Rather than running scared, the cat slowly and methodically climbed down from the counter and walked up to the dog, who was still making a fearful din. The cat swiped the dog’s nose with a paw complete with claws – the dog howled, then ran behind the feckless owner and looked terrified. The two chaps behind the counter were somewhat amused to say the least – they knew full well how territorial their pet was, and being as large as a bulldog, the cat had absolutely no fear. I do wonder if the animal was a cross with a Lynx or other wild cat, as it was so very much larger than any other domestic cat I have ever seen. Unfortunately the cat died a while back, and from talking to the two chaps in the shop, they still get customers coming in asking after it. From September even that will be no more. I am guessing that a combination of the downturn in the economy, and the spread of chain stores like B and Q and Wickes have take their core business away. A real pity, as the place has a real charm, and you can still order things in Imperial measures if you so wish (though I did once hear a customer asking for a three metre length of two by four) – which got me intrigued – the owners did not seem to mind, and the wood was soon supplied just as the customer had requested.

As you will see from the scan of the certificate above, the Erith Watch team have won a national award; as you may already be aware, yours truly is one of a small team who operate Erith Watch, and I am webmaster of their website. It is very gratifying to see that we have received formal recognition for our work. You can view the Erith Watch website here. Erith Watch is the largest Neighbourhood Watch group in the London Borough of Bexley. The average Neighbourhood Watch group consists of around 40 houses. Erith Watch has just over 300 residential addresses under its' remit, and is looking to expand still further. Do feel free to join the Erith Watch website - even if you are not a local resident, you may learn more about safety and personal security issues that will help you wherever you actually live.

I notice that the lemon flavoured alcopop drink Hooch is now back on the shelves of supermarkets and corner shops all over the country. The drink was the poster boy of the alcopop craze in the mid to late nineties, but was taken out of production in the UK in 2003 following concerns that it, and other brightly coloured and fruit flavoured alcoholic beverages were encouraging under age drinking.  I was in Morrison’s last week when I noticed that it was back on the shelves in the off – licence area. After doing a little research, it would appear that its’ manufacturer (I won’t dignify it with the name brewer) is Molson Coors. They are targeting the re – launched Hooch at young men, attempting to woo them away from boutique ciders and other fussy concoctions.  The difference between Hooch when it was originally launched and now is that they have made the taste sharper and more lemony – partly to refute the original complaints that the drink was aimed at children who tend to have a very sweet tooth. They are also now recommending that it be served with ice – just like Magners, the “Irish” cider – which is actually made from apple pulp imported from Spain, and is coloured with caramel. It strikes me that alcopops do tend to attract the younger drinker – in my experience it tends to be young women, however – usually glugging on bottles of lurid blue WKD or similar. I don’t know if as the drinkers get older, their tastes mature too. I somehow find it hard to imagine an alcopop drinker moving on to real ale, but I would love to be proved wrong.

And now on to the ending video. I don't know if you recall that a couple of years ago, there was a Top Gear special, where Jeremy, Richard and James challenged their counterparts on Top Gear Germany to a series of car related challenges, and they famously turned up at the race track in a trio of two seat Spitfires? Well, I have found the out take video on YouTube, which shows them taking off and flying over South East England, on their way to the challenge, which was filmed in Belgium. Here you can see three normally grumpy and fractious middle aged blokes transformed into eight year old boys.