A Saturday

Written by a 54 year old Self employed male living in North Kent.

Written on September 11th 2010.

My wife and I got up at about 06:30 today, as we were going off to Woolwich in SE London to take part in an archaeological survey being run by the Foreshore Recording & Observation Group (FROG's) and Digging Dad's Army (DDA) group. We had loaded up my car yesterday evening with two spades, our archaeological tools in a bag. We had previously carried out the FROG's part one course in February this year, and this was a chance to get our part two.

At the site - Tripness Point, there is an concrete Observation Point which DDA wanted to record. Both of us had a 'disturbed' sleep during the night and so were feeling very sleepy. We had porridge and honey for breakfast and I had a cup of coffee. I collected all our pens and paper for recording and we set off at about 07:30 hours. The address was put in the cars satnav and off we went. Traffic was very light at that time of day on a Saturday, which made it a pleasant drive. My wife nodded. Snoozed on the way.

When we reached Thamesmead, we were suprised to see all the new houses and flats. The street was however deserted, only cars parked on the street. We found somewhere to park and walked to where we thought we should be. Andy...DDA's research director was not there, so we phoned him on our mobile phone, but got no reply. My wife picked a wild blackberry, which we shared. About 09:20, my mobile phone rang, it was Andy...he was going to be late, but he did tell us where to locate the OP. We both then walked back towards Thamesmead, and bumped into the others who were coming for the FROG's archaeological dig on the foreshore. The dig had been going for two days, and the others had found four hulk remains of 19th century barges. They went off to continue their work.

Chris, my wife and I decided that we should take a look at the OP, which we did. It was a very overcast day and started to rain, but we carried on taking photos of the structure and I made some notes. After an hour Andy met up with us and we joined the other FROG members who were busy cleaning and exposing the timbers of four hulks. It was extremely muddy and a very dirty job. Then we were asked to start recording the timber structures…so Chris, my wife and I started drawing and measuring. Just after 12:00 the tide started to come in, and so we abandoned the site and took all of the tools with us. It was hard work, but we both enjoyed the experience, and we got our second part of the course signed off... My wife and I cleaned up and returned to where we had parked our car. We had our lunch in the car, which consisted of half round of a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato (BLT) sandwich and some Sushi. As we sat we observed the local population. In the half hour or so we sat there, we did not see a white person either coming or going to the flats or houses. All the residents in this part of Thamesmead were black…

We then drove off to Andy’s house for a cup of coffee and a chat about a historical project that DDA was going to start. It would work in conjunction with research I will be doing for a MA at University of York. We are intending to audit all the remaining public and private air raid shelters remaining in the Borough and to record oral history from people. I will do the same in Sittingbourne, so as to have a comparison. I am quite excited by this project. I have been given access to 13 boxes of un-catalogued Civil Defence archives dating back to WW2 at thee Greenwich Heritage Centre. I will be using this data also in my studies. After an hour we left and drove to Rainham to pick up my wife’s mum and dad who were coming over to our house for the afternoon, this was about 3pm . For our tea we had home made special fried rice and curry, with a cheesecake with fresh raspberries for desert. Yum, we are rather unorthodox in our house as most meals are either curry or at the very least spicy.

We took mum and dad home at about eight pm. On returning home we found that we were both exhausted and so went to bed. We lay in bed watching a film on the TV, but started to nod and so put the TV and light off and want to sleep at about 9.30pm.

REE