Erith
Confusingly planned ex-sailing town
Residents of Zone 6, #17 – Erith
 | "I dunno why I got this jacket for! I'm not even pregnant!" |
It probably looked really good on paper, but the route from the station to Erith (pronounced 'ear riff', by the way) is pretty torturous. The whitewashed clapboard station has its platforms staggered on either side of the track, so if you get off the wrong end of the train, boy you've got a walk in front of you. Then, you must negotiate not one but TWO underpasses, both with varying types of graffiti. If you're in the underpass with the drawing of the monkey smoking a spliff, then you're nearly there.
Three or four sloping, intermittently lit pathways later, you get to the town centre. In theory, at least. Because it seems that Erith doesn't really have a town centre. There are a lot of backstreets, car parks and alleyways, but they all join up together. It's easy to walk through several turnings, up and down stairs and ramps and step over barriers to find yourself smack back in the same place again.
Shops in Erith you would never find in London in a million years
- Farmfoods
- Starburgers
- Forbuoys
Erith's logo, which is displayed liberally around the town on dustbins, looks like a kind of inverted Nike "Just Do It!" swoosh.
To be fair on the place, there is a large construction site somewhere in one of the backstreets that says "Working To Redevelop Erith Town Centre". Bexley Council doesn't seem to have much to work with here, though, although surely something could be done with this swinging hot-spot:
Erith Playhouse is the town's cultural centre, and is full of the nearly dead. The posters on the side of the theatre, advertising Aladdin, are charmingly amateurish. To make your own, cut a lamp shape out of gold-coloured paper with blunt scissors, get some red crepe paper, and then stick the two together onto a cork board.
Other sights in central Erith include a beautiful red-brick town hall which has somehow survived the pollution from the roundabout it now stands on, Erith Museum ("Please Enquire About Opening Times". So you have to wait until it's open to find out when it opens?) and a 'Wind, Wave and Sail' sculpture, supposed to represent Erith's history as a commercial sailing port. It either wasn't there anymore, was hidden down another alleyway or had sailed away to oceans new.
The river, of course, is a large part of Erith's identity. After a lot of faffing around, it is possible to get there, but (once again) you have to walk round and round and up and down stairs to get to the promenade. The Thames is enormous here, and on the otherside you can see cranes and silos of the docks at Purfleet. Further west, you can see what was probably the Blade Runner set.
Vandalised signs dot the river with panicking stick figures being sucked into a swamp. "DANGER: Soft mud," they say. "Risk of drowning." Then below, another, also vandalised sign says "You could be putting your life at risk if you vandalise this sign." Along the river bank there are gates onto long groynes, probably used for fishing, but they could just as well be used as primitive throwbacks to walking the plank.
Probably futile lost dog poster
Perhaps due to this impending sense of death by drowning, Erith also seems to have some cultish tendencies. The "TREASUREHOUSE CHURCH" is near the bus station, and nearby there's a white van belonging to the alarming VLBC: The Church of Victory! Victory Life Bible Church. Could they be having a football match? Who can tell?
With most of its business on the river having gone, it's understandable Erith's people are searching for something bigger than themselves. It's probably best summed up by the scribbles on the shutters of Erith's main pharmacy:
Statistics
Last train to Zone 1 Mon-Sat 2341, Sun 2231
Time to Zone 1 35min on South Eastern (London Bridge)
What to do if you get stuck in Erith after the last train to Zone 1
Amazingly, Erith is a night bus terminus for the N89. As to where exactly buses do terminate, that's tricky. Keep wandering round and round in circles and you'll find a bus stop. Try not to fall in the Thames.
