Compulsory purchase?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Kentish Belle.

The photo above (click on it for a larger version) shows the former Port of London Authority hut next to the recently repaired wooden jetty adjacent to Erith Riverside Gardens. As regular readers will be aware, I have been calling for this to be put to some constructive use for several years. The hut has been empty and unused for over a decade. It has drainage, running fresh water and electricity, and I had suggested that it would make an ideal substation for the RNLI. My suggestions have not been taken up, but the hut has recently come back into productive use. The hut is now used as a rest point for local bus drivers between shifts. They use the hut to put their feet up and have a cup of tea during their legally required rest breaks. It is not quite the outcome that I had anticipated, but the hut is being used, which to my mind is a very good thing. I also noticed that the new mini bushes have now been planted in the Riverside Gardens, and these will hopefully look really good in a few months’ time. I do have concerns that the bushes may suffer due to the recent lack of rain. Hopefully they will get watered from time to time. FORGE (the Friends of Riverside Gardens Erith) have been instrumental in obtaining and planting the new bushes.

Yesterday morning there was a very serious assault that took place at the junction of Bilton Road and Manor Road in Erith; a man was stabbed in the head, and suffered life threatening injuries. Details of the case are still sketchy, but the London Air Ambulance was called to take the victim to hospital, and a man in his thirties was arrested by the Police. I understand that he was found in possession of a knife, and has been charged with GBH. Anyone who witnessed the incident or has any information is asked to contact police on 101 or via Twitter @MetCC Alternatively, Crimestoppers can be contacted anonymously on 0800 555 111.

The Association of Bexley Charities '78 is holding a Spring Fair at the United Reformed Church, Geddes Place, Bexleyheath DA6 7DJ (near the Broadway Shopping Centre) on Saturday 29th April 2017 from 9.45 am  - 1.00 pm. Do give this worthwhile event your support.

Press reports in the last week have given weight to my long held personal concerns over the use of mobile phones, and their possible long - term health effects. An Italian court has ruled that excessive, work-related use of a mobile phone caused an executive to develop a benign brain tumour. In what could become a landmark ruling, the court in the northern town of Ivrea awarded the plaintiff a state-funded pension. The judgment, which was handed down on 11th of April but only made public on Thursday, is subject to a possible appeal. Roberto Romeo, 57, had testified that his work duties obliged him to use his mobile for three to four hours of each working day for 15 years. “For the first time in the world, a court has recognised a causal link between inappropriate use of a mobile phone and a brain tumour,” his lawyers said in a statement. Romeo said he did not want to demonise mobiles, “but I believe we have to be more aware about how to use them. I had no choice but to use my mobile to talk to colleagues and organise work – for 15 years I was calling all the time, from home, in the car. I started to have the feeling of my right ear being blocked all the time and the tumour was diagnosed in 2010. Happily, it was benign but I can no longer hear anything because they had to remove my acoustic nerve.” A medical expert estimated the damage to Romeo at 23 percent of his bodily function, prompting the judge to make a compensation award of €500 per month to be paid by a national insurance scheme covering workplace accidents. It will be interesting to see if this sets a precedent.

You may recall that some months ago I reported that it was hoped that a micro pub was being planned for Barnehurst, but due to a number of factors, the plans ended up falling through. Well, now there is some good news; whilst the Barnehurst deal failed, another entrepreneur is currently transforming the shop at number 8, Pickford Lane, Bexleyheath into a micro pub which will open in June. It is going to be called The Kentish Belle, due at least partly to its close proximity to Bexleyheath Station, which is only seventy five metres from the venue. You can see the Twitter account for the forthcoming micro pub here. When looking at the location of the micro pub, some observers may think that the William Camden pub very close by would mean that the new venture would struggle to attract customers. I feel strongly that this will absolutely not be the case. The two places cater for very different customers; the William Camden is primarily a lager and football pub, whereas The Kentish Belle will cater for discerning real ale enthusiasts. Experience in other areas shows that micro pubs not only survive, but in fact thrive in the presence of mainstream pubs in their vicinity. The Kentish Belle also will benefit from a large foot fall from passing commuters getting off the train at Bexleyheath Station on their way home. I would imagine a number would pop in for a swift pint before their dinner. I will be visiting The Kentish Belle as soon as it opens, and I will be contacting the owners in the meantime; more on this subject in the coming weeks. It is just as well that a new micro pub is opening in the local area, as news was released this week that the number of pubs in London has fallen by more than a quarter because of developers and rising business rates, according to City Hall research. In total the number of pubs in the capital decreased from 4,835 to 3,615 between 2001 and 2016, a decline of 1,220 at a rate of 81 pubs a year. Mayor Sadiq Khan commissioned the research as part of his 2030 Cultural Infrastructure Plan to identify which buildings and businesses should be protected to maintain the capital’s cultural and community life. The study was conducted in partnership with the Campaign for Real Ale and looked only at pubs, as opposed to bars and restaurants. The study is to become an annual audit. In an interview with the London Evening Standard this week, Mayor Mr Khan said: “I’m shocked at the rate of closure highlighted by these statistics. We have partnered with CAMRA to ensure we can track the number of pubs open in the capital and redouble our efforts to stem the rate of closures.”

Many people like tablet computers such as the Apple iPad range; personally for any small and portable computing device, I really need a keyboard. Tablet devices are fine for consuming content, such as watching YouTube videos, but less than satisfactory for creating content, such as writing a Blog. Back in 2012 I experimented with what was then a very new technology; Google had recently announced their range of Chrome OS devices, not to be confused with tablets and mobile phones running the similar, but separate Android operating system, also developed by engineers at Google. I have been surprisingly satisfied with it. If you have not heard about Chromebooks, they are a cut down laptop that runs Googles’ Chrome operating system (basically a customised version of Linux) and the Chrome web browser. Chromebooks don’t directly run any software other than the browser, which might make them sound rather restricted. Nowadays however, most people spend a vast majority of their time using a computer on the web – Email, social networking, video watching etc, so a browser only machine is not as stupid an approach as initially thought. The upsides of a Chromebook are 1) very fast start time (my £229 Chromebook starts from cold in seven seconds; half the time of my custom build, very high end iMac, which cost well over ten times as much). 2) They have a very long battery life – eight hours between charges, even with WiFi on and showing HD video. 3) They integrate seamlessly with GMail, Google Docs and other online services (they should  - that is what they were designed for). 4) They are pretty secure – all updates occur automatically in the background. I suppose I have to reboot the machine once a month – that’s it. 5) Unlike a tablet, you don’t need to tether a Bluetooth keyboard to it in order to do some serious typing – and the keyboard (on the Samsung model, anyway) is actually rather good – something that is very important to someone like me who writes around 6,000 words a week online, over half of that on the blog). 6) They are cheap – you can get some models for under two hundred pounds, brand new on Amazon and elsewhere. Chromebooks won’t replace the full computer, but they are great as a second machine on which to surf the web, catch up on Emails and generally keep up with the online world. Something that has happened in the USA, and will almost certainly also happen here. The late 2013 introduction of the low-cost Chromebook has given U.S school districts an affordable alternative that they are gravitating to with enthusiasm. Official numbers from market research firm IDC confirmed the news last December when the company announced that while Apple had shipped 702,000 iPads to U.S educational buyers in the third quarter, Google partners had shipped 715,000 Chromebooks. They are cheaper, more robust, easier to remotely administer, and are better suited to use in classrooms. I wonder how long it will be until we see widespread use of Chromebooks in British schools? And now onto another computer related subject, but one that is far older. 

One of my favoured sources of accurate and up to date information on IT and technical related issues is the excellent website – The Register. Stories that get into the general press usually break on The Register at least a day earlier, and in greater detail. The site is very tongue in cheek, and often finds a humorous angle on technology issues. It broke a story recently that caught my attention; an employment agency are looking for programmers who have skills in writing and maintaining software for the DEC PDP-11 series of mini computers. What is so unusual about that? I hear some of you ask. Well, the PDP 11 computer range was first introduced in 1970, and went out of general production in 1990. The machines were large – even a relatively small installation would be the equivalent of three or four full height fridge freezers, plus a terminal the size of a small school desk. By any modern standards they are museum pieces – indeed, The National Museum of Computing does have some examples of PDP hardware in its collection. When they were first offered for sale, they offered a relatively cheap and reliable entry into business and industrial computing; indeed many PDP 11’s were used to control machine tools in factories – some of the early car welding robots were controlled in this way. Other key users were (and in some cases still are) large banks and insurance companies, who require reliability and very high up time over performance and the latest features. Quite often the old computers such as the PDP 11 range are still employed on the “back end” systems that the customers (and indeed many of the staff) never see. Many of such organisations are exceptionally risk averse, and would rather support an ancient technology than take a chance on upgrading to a modern alternative that may have new and undocumented bugs, possibly causing loss of earnings and damage to reputation. I know that there are a small handful of independent contractors who earn a very good living continuing to support these old clunkers – because the knowledge required to maintain and repair the hardware and software is so specialised, they are able to charge pretty much what they like for their services, as they have their clients “over a barrel” – nice work if you can get it. My first foray into the world of “serious” computers was back in the early 1980’s, when I had a Saturday job as an assistant in Silica Shop in Sidcup. During the 1980’s, Silica Shop were the largest privately owned, independent computer retailers in the UK. They specialised in the early 8 – bit home computers, especially the range made by Atari – for whom they were the European dealers. Silica Shop had its’ HQ in Hatherley Road, Sidcup, where there was a large retail unit on the lower floor of the two storey building, and on the upstairs was a warehouse, an office, and an air conditioned computer room, which housed a large DEC PDP 11- 44 mini  computer - almost identical to the one in the photograph above. As well as working in the shop on Saturdays, I was also able to work during school holidays; during this time I would sometimes be called out of the shop to help the computer system administrator, who for a while made me his unofficial assistant. I learned lots about working with large scale business computers, and all of the basics of system administration – adding and removing users, changing security settings, creating files, running batch processes and the like. Even back then, the 11-44 was quite an elderly piece of kit – the company having purchased the machine second hand, as new they were well over two hundred thousand pounds, depending on the specification and peripherals required. One quirk of the 11-44 operating system was that you could not reformat the large 8 inch floppy disks it used (earlier versions of the machine used reels of magnetic tape). In order to re – use the expensive floppy disks, you first had to manually wipe them of data using a degaussing machine – which was basically a large electromagnet. I think everyone was scared of the degausser – it hummed and buzzed, occasionally emitting a crackle of electricity, accompanied by a faint smell of ozone. I think even by the lax health and safety standards of the time, the machine should have been condemned! What I did to avoid the dreaded machine was looking back, pretty imaginative. The computer room had several old – style telephones with rotary dials. I would place a small pile of disks underneath a phone, then ring it from another extension. The bell ringer built into the phone was an electromagnet, and in ringing it would wipe the disks! Silica Shop wrote their own customer database; what would nowadays be called a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. Whenever someone came into the shop and bought something, a sales docket would be completed by the shop assistant. It included the buyer's name, address and what they bought, along with an itemised total. Each item of stock was allocated a unique part number, which staff could look up on VT100 computer terminals in the shop, which would also record how many of that particular item were left in stock; the real old hands would know most, if not all of the popular stock item codes off the top of their heads. When the stock level got down to a certain point, the system would automatically place a re – order, and debit the company account accordingly. The system would also target postal advertising at customers according to what they had already purchased – there was no point in sending a leaflet on Atari 800XL software to a customer who had bought a Commodore 64 for example. You can see an example of a typical Silica Shop advertising flyer below - notice the large amount of detailed text - this was a Silica Shop trait - they lumped huge amounts of technical detail into all of their advertising; something that would put off a lot of potential shoppers today. All this is targetted advertising is routine nowadays, but back in 1983 it was unique, and debatably the most sophisticated customer database used anywhere in the United Kingdom. My own thoughts are that if Silica Shop had taken this ground breaking business software and ported it onto the then new IBM PC, they would have had a huge business in selling and supporting enterprise level CRM applications now. Instead they continued to shift boxes of home computers, and eventually went out of business in the mid 1990’s. If the management had employed a more creative vision, Silica could have been a global software name like Oracle now. I have to say that I learned more about computing in my few years working at Silica Shop than I have learned anywhere else. My entire career in IT has been built on stuff I picked up in a quiet side street in Sidcup.

Don't forget that the twelfth Bexley Beer Festival will be taking place in the Old Dartfordians Rugby Club. The popular festival will take place between Thursday, May 4th to Sunday, May 6th, though the busiest day is the Friday afternoon / evening session, which is when I will be attending. Do come over and say hello if you happen to see me.

KFC have just announced that they are partnering with takeaway food delivery company JustEat to enable local people to order fried chicken and chips and have it delivered to their homes. The pilot scheme is taking place in the following fast food outlet locations:- Bexleyheath, Bromley, Erith, Thamesmead and Welling. The Bexley Times are reporting that Graham Corfield, UK Managing Director at Just Eat commented: “We’re adding KFC restaurants every week, meaning more customers will be able to enjoy KFC at the click of a button in their area very soon.” The growing appetite for home delivery has reportedly seen growing favour for chicken, with JustEat claiming it as one of the top five cuisines ordered through the service in the past 12 months. Not my kind of thing I am afraid. There are additional costs to having your KFC delivered, which the new adverts neglect to mention. Suffice to say that I live a couple of hundred metres from the Erith KFC, but have only visited the outlet twice - and the second time was merely to use their toilets when I had a seriously upset stomach. I don't think that I need to say more.

It seems that the illegal activities of uninsured, unlicensed and no - helmet wearing bikers are not now limited to the Slade Green and Crayford Marshes. Reports have been made to the Police in respect of illegal biker activity in Lower Belvedere. Local Safer Neighbourhood officer PC Robert Holmes reported "Over the Easter period the team have been out and out about across the ward. We have been attending Frank’s Park responding to residents’ concerns over off road bikes driving in the woods. The team did stop one youth and warned him about his conduct. His mother was also spoken to advised on the legality of her son using an off road bike, as well as safety implications. Upcoming events: Police Surgery on the 28/04/2017, Belvedere Library, Woolwich Road at 14:00. Coffee with Cops on 03/05/2017 at the Pop In Parlour, Woolwich Road (next to the library) at 11:30". Another bike related crime has recently taken place in Barnehurst. PCSO Cathy Nolan reports "Barnehurst Ward have suffered another incident of vehicle crime in Martens Close whereby a Silver PCX Honda Moped was taken. Witness saw two persons riding a similar moped to the one that was stolen, both riders were wearing dark clothing with helmets on. The moped was seen driving down Martens Close, one person got off the bike, approached victims bike and was seen then to drive off on it. This incident happened at 21:15 on 12th April 2017. If anyone has any information please call 101 or contact your Local Policing Team. Barnehurst Team will be available to discuss any local issues at Barnehurst Golf Club on Friday 21st April 2017 between 11:00 – 12:00".

The great comic actor Will Hay, a comedy legend in his own lifetime and a huge star of early British film, died this week back in 1949. Will Hay is largely forgotten today, but a comic actor whose best work influenced the likes of The Goon Show, and Monty Python, and his most famous film "Oh, Mister Porter!" was a direct influence on "Dad's Army". I have to declare a family connection with Will Hay; my Great Uncle Horace (whom I have written about previously) was a very close friend of Will Hay for many years. Born in Stockton in 1888, Hay’s family moved him south to Suffolk before his first birthday. As his father became a jobbing engineer so the family’s mobility quickly increased – moving next to Hemel Hempstead then to London and finally to Manchester where Hay Senior established his own firm. Wanting independence, Will refused to join the family company and started instead as an apprentice engineer for Westinghouse. Yet Hay was no typical engineer and his humour hid by the fact that, by the age of 19, he had learnt German, French and Italian to such a high level that he was able to leave engineering and became an interpreter. His nineteenth year also saw him married to fellow teenager Gladys Perkins and when his daughter Gladys Elspeth was born some eighteen months later Hay decided he could make a better living for his new family in the pre-Great War music halls. Stealing some of his sister Eppie’s staff room reminiscences – she was a full time teacher – Hay began to develop his pompous, bumbling schoolmaster act. After working for over three years with the Fred Karno troupe, where Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin had developed their craft, Hay swiftly found himself the talk of the town: selling out Britain’s biggest music halls, playing sets for the Prince of Wales and successfully touring America, South Africa and Canada. Then came Boys Will Be Boys (1935) his first starring film role with a screenplay written by Hay himself. The story wasn't overly deep – a prison teacher cons his way into a boarding school job and helps stop a diamond theft – but it did have its moments. And it was the perfect frame for Hay’s idiot teacher routines. Then, in 1937,  Graham Moffat joined Moore Marriott as Hay’s two sidekicks in the finest comic film any of them would ever be involved with, Oh, Mr Porter! wherein Hay discovers the (Northern) Irish railway station he’s been sent to run, Buggleskelly, is actually a run-down mess. Gun-runners, ghosts, secret windmills and missing trains – Hay and his two stooges come out on top in a film that is, even now, genuinely funny, at times hilarious. Oh, Mister Porter! (1937) was a deserved box office smash in its day, taking some £500,000 in British cinemas alone – the equivalent now would be over £30 million. In the immediate pre - war years, Will Hay was the second highest paid entertainer in Britain, earning a reputed £800 per week - narrowly pipped in the earnings stakes by George Formby. Outside of show business, Will Hay was a dedicated and respected amateur astronomer. He constructed a personal observatory in his garden in Mill Hill and built a glider in 1909. He became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1932 and is noted for having discovered a Great White Spot on the planet Saturn in 1933. The spot lasted for a few months and then faded away. He also measured the positions of comets with a micrometer he built himself, and designed and built a blink comparator. He wrote the book Through My Telescope in 1935, which had a foreword by Sir Richard Gregory, formerly Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at Queen's College, London. When Hay died, a few items of his equipment were bequeathed to the British Astronomical Association. Some years ago I came across a long out of print book on the life of Will Hay, and it had some photos taken of his garden and his private observatory; in one of the early shots, the construction of his observatory is shown; several people are helping with the digging. One chap is seen stripped to his string vest and leaning on a shovel - it was my late Great Uncle Horace on what must have been a very hot day for manual labour. I wish I had a copy of the book. In 1947, Will Hay suffered a stroke which left him physically disabled. He died at his flat in Chelsea, London after a further stroke in 1949, and is buried in Streatham Park Cemetery, London SW16.

The video clip below dates from the time when Will Hay was approaching the height of his fame and fortune; it shows Danson Park as it looked back in 1935. Do give it a watch and either leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Will Hay and Uncle Horace.

The photo above (click on it for a larger view) shows the flats being constructed in James Watt Way, between the KFC Drive Through, and Morrison’s petrol station. The construction of the block of affordable flats for social rent has been suspended for nearly six months; this has been due to the contractor that was building the block going bust. The developer, who is backed by the Mayor of London’s office has taken an extremely long time to get building work going again, and much of the thanks for repeatedly asking for status updates from the developer must go to local Councillor Abena Oppong – Asare, who has effectively nagged the developer into getting work underway again. Hopefully the social housing will be finished and open for the first residents before Christmas. The area has a huge amount of house building going on – from Erith Park, which is a giant estate of mixed social and commercial housing, to Tower Hill – the new development by Barratt Homes on the old Bexley College site, and of course Erith Quarry, the brown field site that is set to be the location for the six hundred homes and a primary school development; planning permission has been granted, and the first phase of the construction on the former quarry site is due to be completed by September 2017. All of this new housing is going to attract roughly five thousand new people into the area. My concern is that local infrastructure (gas, water, drainage, electricity) will need to be substantially upgraded to cope, and public transport, health care and shops will need to be expanded for the additional residents. The opening of Crossrail in 2018 will mean that South East London / North Kent will be a lot more accessible than it has until now; one of the major factors in why house prices are less outrageous than in other London suburbs is the historical lack of public transport links into central London – with no tube or DLR connections, the only way to commute into town has been by overland rail on the North Kent Line. If there are any problems with the trains, you really have had little option. With the colossal Paramount theme park almost certain to get the green light, the development will transform an 872-acre brownfield site on the Swanscombe peninsula and be twice the size of the Olympic Park in East London. It will feature Europe’s largest indoor water park, theatres, live music venues, attractions, cinemas, restaurants, event space and hotels. Allied to the project will be a training academy for the entertainment and hospitality sectors, a new country park, a large science and education visitor complex and the biggest performing arts centre in Europe. It is almost inconceivable that the Crossrail project, which is currently set to terminate at Abbey Wood will not be extended down to Swanscombe to cater for visitors to the massive entertainment complex and new town. This would mean that Belvedere, Erith, and Slade Green would be prime commuting areas both into London and down to the Paramount Park – where something like 25,000 new, full time jobs will be required. This is almost certain to be a huge financial and social boost to the entire South East, and could well turn Erith into a new Hoxton. The downside of all this could well mean the end to affordable housing within easy reach of the capital. Many people who live in the local area and who work in central London do so in the service industries – engineering, cleaning, shop workers, facilities maintenance and the like. If they cannot afford to live within commuting distance of London, businesses are going to suffer, and jobs won't get done. There would seem to be a delicate balance to keep things ticking over and the lights lit in London.

Pac-Man, the biggest arcade game of all time, turned 35 years old last week. Released by the Japanese company Namco on May 22, 1980, Pac-Man was like nothing else at the time. At a time when Space Invaders and Asteroids and other games with abstracted, monochrome graphics ruled the arcade, Pac-Man offered a striking, cartoonish design with an appealing central character. It revolved around eating, not shooting; and it was designed to appeal to young women and couples, not spotty nerks in anoraks (although they all played it too). The colourful design and unique collect-the-dots maze gameplay—plus the wonderful tension of running away from those ghosts, then scrambling to eat them once you got a power pellet—made Pac-Man almost instantly addictive, eating ten pence pieces as rapaciously as its protagonist swallowed pixels. By one count, Namco sold 400,000 Pac-Man machines, head and shoulders above anything that had come before, or since. And it is still highly playable and popular in a way its contemporaries are not—few people are paying for Asteroids or Space Invaders updates today, but Namco Bandai still makes and sells variations on Pac-Man on every platform imaginable. Pac-Man’s ubiquity was our first indication that games were about to become the dominant entertainment medium of the information age. (It also arguably marked the beginning of Japan’s impending pop-cultural invasion of the rest of the world, even if players at the time didn't know where it came from.)

Bexley CAMRA have named The Penny Farthing in Waterside, Crayford, as its pub of the year for 2015. Another of the borough’s micropubs, The Door Hinge in Welling, was runner-up. The Penny Farthing only opened in September last year on the site of an old children’s craft shop and is run by couple Bob and Bev Baldwin. This is really good news for local real ale fans; the excellent Robin Hood and Little John in Lion Road, Bexleyheath won the CAMRA award for ten years running, and there really was very little in the way of competition until the micro pubs started appearing a couple of years ago. I am a great fan of micro pubs / ale houses, as they usually sell quality real ales from the local area; in this case, the Bexley Brewery in Erith. The Penny Farthing now goes forward to compete to be crowned the London region CAMRA Pub of the Year, competing against twelve other pubs including Petts Wood micropub One Inn The Wood. The Penny Farthing is also involved in the upcoming Crayford Fun Day on June 13th, hosting its own mini beer festival from June 11th to the 14th, with at least eight beers on sale. I will be paying the place a visit soon.

On Thursday afternoon I was alerted by one of my local informants that a couple of workers were installing metal anti burglar / vandal shuttering outside of the former Potion Bar / White Hart pub. I made my way to the venue and had a friendly chat with the two men; they knew absolutely nothing about the future plans for the building, and had just been hired to secure the place on behalf of the owners. My informant and I share the opinion that shuttered buildings tend to foster crime and anti - social behaviour in areas. I have been in contact with a couple of people who are in a position to find out exactly what the owners of the building intend for its future, and I will report back in due course.

The much anticipated soft play centre for children is now beginning to take shape in the former Blockbuster video hire store in the corner unit of Erith Riverside Shopping Centre. Builders are hard at work converting the store into a giant play area for small children. The windows have been whitewashed over, but it is still possible to peek inside to see what is going on. Lots of work still needs to be completed before the place is ready to open, but I reckon it should be ready by the middle of July, at the rate construction is running. The soft play area is going to be called the Kassiopi Cove, and will have a pirate theme. The company running it have been operating in the area for sixteen years, and have a well-established child-minding and after school group in Northumberland Heath called Jacqueline's Gems childcare services. It looks like they are very well qualified and experienced to run a new child – centric business in Erith; I will be contacting them once the soft play centre nears completion, and I hope to get some photos.  It is good to see the retail unit back in use; since Blockbuster went bankrupt early in 2013, it has been empty and unloved. There are lots of small children that need to be kept occupied and entertained in Erith – I think the soft play centre should do rather well. 

Some worrying statistics have been published earlier this week by Transport for London. There were 567 sexual offences reported on London Underground and on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) in 2014/15 compared with 429 in 2013/14. There were also more sexual offences reported on London buses, with 684 in 2014/15 compared with 513 in 2013/14. TfL attributed the rise in reporting of sex attacks to a joint initiative with police called Project Guardian. The project aims to raise public awareness of unwanted sexual behaviour and encourages victims to report these historically under-reported crimes. In other areas statistics showed improvement - there were 27,758 crimes on London’s public transport network overall, which is 8.3 percent fewer than in 2013/14. London mayor Boris Johnson said he was “very pleased that Londoners have been given greater confidence to report sexual offences following the launch of Project Guardian.” Mick Cash, general secretary of the RMT transport union, had a different reaction to the year’s statistics. “We warned right from the off that cash-led cuts to station staffing would turn London Underground into a criminals’ paradise. “Those who ignored those warnings, and in particular Boris Johnson, should be hanging their heads in shame today, apologising to Londoners and reversing their lethal cuts programme” he said. Oh well, as normal the politicians and union leaders use people's misery to back up their political arguments. For the South East region, the overland trains and the bus service are the two areas of greatest local concern – there is not much call for the tube in Slade Green! The local buses are a big worry – especially late in the evening. I think more should be done to encourage the Police to travel around by bus whenever possible.

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece about the Erith Odeon cinema. Local historian Ken Chamberlain sent me the photos you can see above, which show the cinema when it opened on the 26th of February 1938, showing the Hollywood movie "Stella Dallas". By the looks of it, the Odeon was a very grand building inside, and a landmark piece of Art Deco architecture outside. I can recall that even when it was empty and abandoned in the late 1990's, it still had a real presence. The current block of flats with offices underneath does have some echoes of the original structural design, but it is not a patch on the original. It is ironic that now Art Deco is very much back in vogue, if the cinema building had survived until today, it would most likely have been preserved. The Odeon showed a wide variety of films during its existence as a cinema, in the years before it declined and became a Bingo hall - the fate of many cinemas around the UK. One film star whose movies were shown at the Odeon Erith was Will Hay - a name largely forgotten today, but a comic actor whose best work influenced the likes of the Goon Show, and Monty Python, and his most famous film "Oh, Mister Porter!" was a direct influence on "Dad's Army". I have to declare a family connection with Will Hay; my Great Uncle Horace (whom I have written about previously) was a very close friend of Will Hay for many years. This week marks the 80th anniversary of Will Hay having his first starring role in a British film. Born in Stockton in 1888, Hay’s family moved him south to Suffolk before his first birthday. As his father became a jobbing engineer so the family’s mobility quickly increased – moving next to Hemel Hempstead then to London and finally to Manchester where Hay Senior established his own firm. Wanting independence, Will refused to join the family company and started instead as an apprentice engineer for Westinghouse. Yet Hay was no typical engineer and his humour hid by the fact that, by the age of 19, he had learnt German, French and Italian to such a high level that he was able to leave engineering and became an interpreter. His nineteenth year also saw him married to fellow teenager Gladys Perkins and when his daughter Gladys Elspeth was born some eighteen months later Hay decided he could make a better living for his new family in the pre-Great War music halls. Stealing some of his sister Eppie’s staff room reminiscences – she was a full time teacher – Hay began to develop his pompous, bumbling schoolmaster act. After working for over three years with the Fred Karno troupe, where Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin had developed their craft, Hay swiftly found himself the talk of the town: selling out Britain’s biggest music halls, playing sets for the Prince of Wales and successfully touring America, South Africa and Canada. Then came Boys Will Be Boys (1935) his first starring film role with a screenplay written by Hay himself. The story wasn't overly deep – a prison teacher cons his way into a boarding school job and helps stop a diamond theft – but it did have its moments. And it was the perfect frame for Hay’s idiot teacher routines…Then, in 1937,  Graham Moffat joined Moore Marriott as Hay’s two sidekicks in the finest comic film any of them would ever be involved with, Oh, Mr Porter! wherein Hay discovers the (Northern) Irish railway station he’s been sent to run, Buggleskelly, is actually a run-down mess. Gun-runners, ghosts, secret windmills and missing trains – Hay and his two stooges come out on top in a film that is, even now, genuinely funny, at times hilarious. Oh, Mister Porter! (1937) was a deserved box office smash in its day, taking some £500,000 in British cinemas alone – the equivalent now would be over £15 million. In the immediate pre - war years, Will Hay was the second highest paid entertainer in Britain, earning a reputed £800 per week - narrowly pipped in the earnings stakes by George Formby. Outside of show business, Will Hay was a dedicated and respected amateur astronomer. He constructed a personal observatory in his garden in Mill Hill and built a glider in 1909. He became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1932 and is noted for having discovered a Great White Spot on the planet Saturn in 1933. The spot lasted for a few months and then faded away. He also measured the positions of comets with a micrometer he built himself, and designed and built a blink comparator. He wrote the book Through My Telescope in 1935, which had a foreword by Sir Richard Gregory, formerly Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at Queen's College, London. When Hay died, a few items of his equipment were bequeathed to the British Astronomical Association. Some years ago I came across a long out of print book on the life of Will Hay, and it had some photos taken of his garden and his private observatory; in one of the early shots, the construction of his observatory is shown; several people are helping with the digging. One chap is seen stripped to his string vest and leaning on a shovel - it was my late Great Uncle Horace on what must have been a very hot day for manual labour. I wish I had a copy of the book. In 1947, Hay suffered a stroke which left him physically disabled. He died at his flat in Chelsea, London after a further stroke in 1949, and is buried in Streatham Park Cemetery, London SW16. Will Hay's films are now out of copyright, and have been released into the public domain. Below you can see Will Hay's greatest work - one of the best British comedy films of all time, the excellent "Oh, Mister Porter!" in full. Click to make the video window full screen, sit back and enjoy the movie.

One local Maggot Sandwich reader made the following observations regarding my piece on the long unused and empty former Port of London Authority building adjacent to the Erith Riverfront Gardens that I published last week; I have to say that I was aware of some of the points he raised, as I too am a Shoreline member of the RNLI, and have been since I was working at sea for Radio Caroline, back in the late 1980's / early 1990's. Anyone who has spent any length of time at sea will have nothing but immense respect and admiration for the men and women volunteers for the organisation. "I noted your comments regarding a possible RNLI station at Erith. As a basic member/supporter of the RNLI I can say that it would be very unlikely to happen for a number of reasons. Firstly the RNLI is currently reviewing the number of stations it has and the number and type of call outs it gets. Some stations have already been reviewed and the type of cover and vessel stationed changed. The North East and East Coast of Scotland around recently underwent changes of this type. Reviews of this type are regularly taken by all of the emergency services too. Generally speaking the crews are all volunteers who are 'on call' while doing their usual employment, not at a station. So volunteers from the local area would have to be sought and trained, not easy as their jobs must allow them to drop everything at a moments notice.  I personally do not feel that there is a need for any sub-station at Erith as the regular river users from the rowing and yacht clubs are experienced sailors and are always watching out for each other, and while the RNLI is there for everyone who needs them I just don't see any justification for a station at Erith with the attendant expense of a boat, security etc when events you mentioned are relatively rare. Problems like where to moor a vessel given the silting around Erith, security of the vessel when not in use etc. Like all charities the RNLI has limited funds as has to allocate where the most benefit can be accrued, and setting up a station, buying a boat, training crew members is a massive expense that at this time is probably not feasible A list of the call outs of all boats can be found on the RNLI website and gives an excellent picture of the reasons they are deployed ". Excellent and very informative stuff. My original piece was designed to encourage discussion, debate and positive feedback; in that case it appears to have been successful. The riverfront building definitely needs to be put back into productive use sooner rather than later. If you have any observations or opinions on what it could be used for, I would be more than interested to hear from you on the subject. The building is one of those unusual ones that seems to "hide in plain sight" - people pass it all of the time, but nobody ever seems to pay it the slightest bit of attention. I think this is a waste of what could be a very useful structure, bang on the riverfront. I think we are collectively missing a trick.

With all of the attention the Police have been giving the illegal bikers who have been tearing up Slade Green Marshes, you would have thought that the bikers would have got the message at least for a while and gone to ground until the heat was off. Not a bit of it, I am afraid. One of the main offenders has been caught on camera on the A2 near the Dartford River Crossing – as you can see in the photo above, he’s pulling wheelies on his quad bike on a motorway. Personally if he wants to kill himself with acts of stupidity, that is his lookout, but he’s likely to injure or potentially even kill others in the process. I recognise the distinctive design of the bike as being one that has frequently been ridden illegally in and around Erith – of course, the scumbag does not have the bike registered, so no number plate to give the game away. I know that the local Police are aware who a majority of the offenders are. This guy needs to be collared as soon as possible, especially after the news last week that another biker called Ernest Miller, known as "Della" to his friends, died after his motorbike collided with a car in Beckenham at around 8am on May 13th.  Witnesses described seeing the 26-year-old thrown from his motorbike over the top of a car and into the road. He died shortly thereafter. Ernest Miller was a member of Bike Life TV UK (probably more accurately described as "Chavs on mopeds"), linked to groups known for haring along Lower Belvedere and Thamesmead’s roads and pavements on motorcycles performing tricks. I have featured them in a previous update. It is ironic that on this occasion he was not riding irresponsibly. Nevertheless groups like Bike Life TV foster and encourage illegal and dangerous riding – and if more deaths are to be avoided, they need to be reined in by the authorities. On top of all this, several serious incidents have been reported this week, involving the two 13 / 14 year old youths on a high powered sports bike that I have remarked upon before. On Thursday afternoon they raced their stolen bike along James Watt Way; A Police patrol car was parked in the road, as the officers were dealing with an incident. The rider of the high powered motorbike slowed down, allowing the passenger to kick off the wing mirror of the Police car - they then rode off at speed. An even more serious incident happened some time later. A local resident was walking his dog along the riverside pathway close to the far end of James Watt Way, near where the traveller pony lives on a small piece of wasteland. The two young crooks came racing along the pathway on the bike, and narrowly missed hitting the man and his dog in the process. The skid marks from the frantic braking can still be clearly seen on the paving slabs. The bike is huge and very powerful - it may be a Suzuki GSX-R 1000, or something similar. The Police know the number plate, and have confirmed to me that the vehicle is indeed stolen. The two youths need to be caught soon; they are a danger both to themselves and others. From what I have been told by a very reliable source, the Police think that the two scumbags are deliberately trying to provoke a chase with them. My own thoughts are that they probably have a couple of GoPro cameras mounted on the stolen super bike, so that they can later upload videos of their exploits onto YouTube to gain bragging rights from their criminal mates. I would imagine that law abiding bikers are getting heartily sick of the antics of a small group of criminals, who don’t do anything to enhance the image of the responsible bike rider. What do you think? Leave a comment below, or Email me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

The ending video this week show the work of the Lesnes Abbey Conservation Volunteers (LACV). It is a fascinating insight into the work of this little - known local volunteer group who do such good work for the area in and around Lesnes Abbey Wood and Lesnes Abbey Ruins. Give it a watch - you might learn something (I know that I certainly did).