Symptoms

Those long lunch hours coincided with a most productive and creative periods of my working life ... I suspect it had much to do with a 'well-lubricated' relationship with my colleagues - a working lunch, if you like. I agree with you that it wouldn't be permitted these days.

Lived in Greenwich, worked in Poplar (Isle of Dogs). Nobody I knew had 20 mins lunch breaks back then, most had at least an hour and many approaching a couple of hours like me. I recall it only took 6 minutes to walk down the shaft, under the river, up the shaft on the other side so there was plenty of time to go in either direction for pubs (loads also in Greenwich). Even if folks had civilised lunch breaks now they'd be sh*t scared of going to a pub for fear of getting the sack for having the smell of a pint on their breath.

I wonder how many of the crowd chucked themselves into the Tyne screaming, once the Cramlington Budgie Strangler got on Stage?

KeithL, thanks for that link. The Isle of Dogs in the 60s & 70s was a very interesting place and very, very Dickensian. Narrow cobbled street everywhere with tall dark warehousing* looming over everything. If you looked up all these warehouses had iron cranes swinging over the cobbles (to lift goods off carts and up to high-level doors). There were pubs everywhere to serve all the merchant seamen off the ships and the hordes of dockers ... it was obvious to me that another type of 'business' went on in rooms upstairs in some of the pubs. It was a great place to pub crawl. There was another pub called The Gun, just along from the Watermans, and at the entrance to the West India Dock and beside the Met Police River HQ. Even in the dying days of the docks there was still plenty of shipping to watch whilst supping pints on the pub balcony and on one occasion we watched the River Peelers drag a couple of recovered dead bodies off their launch and onto their pontoon jetty (no body bags back then!) I lived in Greenwich at the time and would go through the foot tunnel to get the Isle of Dogs (the Greenwich entrance is right next to the Cutty Sark ship), the other end in the Island Gardens near the Watermans Arms. For some unknown reason half-way under the river the foot tunnel got seriously smaller in diameter ... perhaps the original builders got their dimensions mixed-up. *most of that warehousing has been converted into very swish apartment blocks selling for really serious money.

Looking at various historical maps and applying a bit of basic trigonometry on each of them, it would appear to be in the same place. The variation in the road grading over time would account for the change in the plinth height. Even comparing those juxtaposed photos the cross appears to be in the same place ... curve of road, chimney and gable of that distant building, telegraph pole. Blame the Market Place Club for obscuring the church tower but looking at modern OS maps the sightlines look right. I think what has happened is that Front St must have been slightly re-aligned at some stage and that might have created the impression that the cross had moved. http://communities.northumberland.gov.uk/Bedlington_C14.htm#006188

I've said it before here and I'll say it again ... ALL politicians ARE corrupt (or can be corrupted). The voters' choice will always come down to a perception - who can damage them the least. History is littered with the discarded entrails of political parties and movements who promised so much and delivered a range of outcomes which stretch from horror through to inertia. Many have sweetened their foul tasting brew by pandering to the fears many folks have about the security of their jobs, services and homes but it's all smoke and mirrors. The masses will always get stiffed by these shysters whilst the ruling elites gaze down on them with smirks on their faces. Bastards the lot of them! Owen Jones new book on the Establishment should be a good read as it shows what a "stranglehold" these elites have over the rest of us. Yep, he is a left-wing author and commentator but fairly points an accusatory finger left and right.

Yep, I can imagine some of the locals putting the windows in but they'd have nothing to fear from the residents of the hostel. Because the site is so close to the school it couldn't house kiddy-fiddlers, so we'd be spared those embarrassing telly images of fat folk in shell suits protesting with banners showing incorrect spelling of the word peadophile.

In London back in the 70's and 80's I used to get 1hr 40mins ... most of it spent having 'lunch' it the pub with colleagues. That really hot summer of 76 we usually went to the Waterman's Arms* on the Isle of Dogs and quenched our thirsts; the docks were just finishing then but there was still a bit of activity to watch from the river wall just outside the pub. Happy days! *The Waterman's Arms, like quite a few London boozers back then, had an old style Music Hall theatre in the building. It was a rock venue in the 70's.

I thought that if you didn't want to get a soaking then you coughed-up the dosh ... a bit like a fine.

Hostel for recently released offenders, perhaps?

And don't forget the pinball machines.

Gorilla pop-up shops or resturants, perhaps. Google that phrase to see how successful they are and filter for images.

Not for me! Too much ice cold water shrivels the whatits just as Eggy will remember from Cambois. As lads we had some canny fishing off the power station hot pipe.

I'm sure that the Peelers will catch the "scumbags" but the magistrates will only dish out 35 minutes of community service. It might not even get to the Beaks as the DPP'll will probably deem it not in the public interest to proceed with a prosecution.

Or even bitumen sands ... but my tar sands is fine: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tar-sands-and-keystone-xl-pipeline-impact-on-global-warming/ http://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/campaigns/Energy/tarsands/ http://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/tarsands/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands

Take your pick from any of the oil rich states (many reports suggest Saudi is knee-deep in it) or the military industrial complex. In the medium term however, once the Yankees have become self-sufficient again in hyrdro-carbon production (oil from the huge deposits of north American tar sands and gas from their fracking operations), my hunch will be that they'll just nuke the whole of the Middle East and be done with it.

Brilliant job ... and the lass with the cerise locks knew exactly where the blame rightly lay for for it all coming to an end. I'm sure that the Thatcher apologists who lurk here will be along shortly to blame it all on the Unions.

Just discovered this photo of Muter's delivery lorry: Apologies if it already exists in one of the galleries here but I can't remember seeing it before.

The parochial nature of life generally back then meant that we rarely heard reports of crime from elsewhere unless it was something really horrific like the Moor Murders or the Shepherd's Bush Massacre, for example. My paper round in the 60s was mainly The Journal in the morning and The 'Chronic' in the evening with a very rare national rag chucked in so the emphasis seemed always to be 'local' stuff.

Westridge looks neglected ... almost as if it's waiting for the demolition men to arrive. Maybe the 60 year-old buildings are now 'not fit for purpose' and need to be tumbled for new stuff to be built.

Nice plaque ... but if it's made of metal how long before scumbag nicks it for scrap value?

Eggs ... I didn't go to Whitley either; I attended the Bedlington First School* on Ridge Terrace. I knew Micky and Martin from Westridge and Ken from when I went to the Grammar Sixth Form to do A Levels. *I'm sure that's officially what it was called but we called it 'West End Junior'.

The lad second left back row looks very much like Micky Henderson and the lad on the right back row I'm sure is Martin Henderson: I'm not sure if they were related. Both played for Westridge teams ... I remember Micky being a brilliant footballer. Ken went to the Grammar School and played for them ... I remember him being a little bit 'tubby' in the 6th Form but still a really good player.

GGG wrote: "One third pint bottles. Actually I tell a lie about one particular school in Gosforth; the unused stuff quickly disappeared into the kitchens to be used in the school dinners, which were - of course - billed to parents! :)" Aye! ... an example of true capitalism at work and straight out of the Tories playbook of depriving the poor kiddies and then 'stiffing' the parents. GGG's tale may be an urban myth ( "... I tell a lie ..." ) but you never know.

But what about that lush growth on Mal's mush ... obviously well fed with Babybio*. *for any non-gardeners out there Babybio is proprietary plant grub and not something that Operation Yewtree would be interested in.