Sitting on the Dock of Dagenham's Bay

Inspired by Made in Dagenham, it’s time to visit the Ford Motor Works and Dagenham's industrial hinterland. Despite many a trip to Dagenham Heathway when my sister lived there, this was my first visit to the mysterious area of white by the Thames, as denoted in the London A-Z.

The Ford Works, once the biggest car works in Europe but much smaller these days, lie down Dagenham Heathway. Once you’ve recovered from the shock of classical music playing at Dagenham Heathway tube station, turn right past the nail salon and pie and mash shop and head towards the wind turbines that rotate steadily beneath the slate sky.

The Heathway’s full of identikit post-war current and former council homes striving for individuality through cottage cladding, mock Tudor cladding, porches, extensions, new doors and in several cases palm trees planted incongruously in the front garden.

It terminates at a crossroads where there’s three Bangladeshi Indian restaurants, Kevin’s Corner selling washing machines and RTV Satellite set in a mock-Tudor block of shops that’s unsurprisingly covered in a vast array of dishes.

The Heathway becomes a narrower industrial gulch called Chequers Lane. To the right is a new Homebase warehouse, plus Halfords and KFC. On my left is the Jobcentreplus, as if to emphasise that here lie your only options for work, and then the large red brick Ford works with a sign reading Ford Stamping Operations, which sounds a little violent to me.

This being Essex, there are two palm trees by the entrance. There’s little evidence of activity apart from two men in luminous jackets having a fag break outside.

Ahead lies the flyover of the A13 Thames Gateway section (the Thames Gateway housing development has been metaphorically bricked up, cut by the coalition) and a park of rust-coloured containers stacked five-high.

POST APOCALYPTIC ESSEX
Chequers Lane leads the post-apocalyptic pedestrian to the unstaffed Dagenham Docks station. A concrete stairwell leads up to a barbed wire defended bridge that straddles the railway line. “Danger of death” warns a sign by the tracks. The vista here is huge pylons, rail tracks, motorway, the black pool of Dagenham Breach and a wind turbine on Barking Power Station.

It doesn’t feel like London. The wind picks up and you start to smell the river. There are no other pedestrians here at 3pm. It’s all very 28 Days Later merged with The Sweeney. This would be a great place to dispose of bodies, do dodgy deals or set up a ruck between the ICF and Millwall’s F Troop.

On the other side of the tracks the road widens, there’s a bus stop with no-one waiting and wide pavements leading past the square blocks of the Doctor Who-esque power station and Chequers Lane Sustainable Industrial Park.

Then the cement lorries and Hovis trucks start to rumble by. Here there are fenced off warehouses, a Hovis depot full of brown bread-carrying yellow lorries. A blue cyclists’ sign points down Choats Lane with the words “Thames View”. Opposite Kuehne + Nagel Drinks Logistics (is there anything logistical about drinking?) the brave cyclist turns down Hindmans Way.

WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH
This is narrower and is an unofficial dumping ground for every piece of detritus in Dagenham. Rusting temporary fences conceal tyres, bits of sofas, mattresses, beds, carpets in bin bags, cans, plastic bags and paper coffee cups.

It all feels very blue collar and Bruce Springsteen. Here men do geezerish things like drive trucks fast down empty roads and throw their lunch in the hedge. Would Bruce have taken his girl down to The River via the mud of Hindmans Way? Probably not if he ever wanted to see her again.

The pavement ends and becomes mud surrounded by concrete markers. As ever-more heavy lorries trundle past it starts to feel dangerous and seeking safety from death under large wheels I find my DMs trudging through soft, oozing grey mud. My phone battery runs out adding to the sense of doom as the road passes a set of gasometers. “Danger of flooding” reads a road sign. A black pool has mysterious broken pipes rising out of it. Reeds flank the road to marshland.

Then the lane terminates with a solid black fence at a T-junction and signs for TDG and Cemex. There’s a sentry post with a hut and a red and white pole barrier. The operative eyes me with bemusement.

DOWN TO THE RIVER
And suddenly by some disused tram tracks there’s the riverbank and a curved pier stretching out into the choppy waters of the Thames. There’s a silo and a lorry at the end of it. I stand on the pier to escape the danger of demise by speeding cement lorry.

So here I am at last, sitting on the dock of Dagenham’s bay like Otis Redding, watching the ships go by, wasting my time. That song was about unemployment and poor Otis would have had to get himself down to the Jobcentreplus by the motor works had he lived in Dagenham.

The waters of the Thames meet a bank of reeds, mud, fishing trays, floats and blue plastic bags. Across the river lies Thamesmead (featured in A Clockwork Orange) and two strange funnel-like industrial structures. I’m standing on the evocatively named No 7 Jetty. A trendy Dockland Quarter it is not.

The January dusk draws in and there’s an urge to escape before falling off the edge of the known world. I pace past Prax Petroleum braving oozing cementy earth and along the wide pavements past more Hovis lorries, and in to Dagenham Docks station. Three young salesman in suits get off the train and head for the industrial park with a look of apprehension. I dash on to the train and discover people and digital signage and that Fenchurch Street is only 20 minutes away. All so different to the otherworldiness of the Essex industrial marshes.

Good Griff

It’s been an Essex end to 2010. Our family has just seen Griff Rhys Jones star as Fagin in Oliver! at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He made a fine over-the-top Fagin with lots of silly voices and facial contortions. To judge by the encore, Griff really enjoyed himself as he leapt around the stage exhorting the audience to louder cheers.

Rhys Jones is also the author of Semi-Detached, a captivating Essex memoir on growing up in suburban Epping and attending Brentwood school. There’s lots on the bogs of Epping Forest, Harlow’s municipal swimming pool and its terrifying diving board and endless trips with his dad sailing around Mersea and ending up marooned on mud with his snoring snoring family. And it has a whole chapter on 339 bus from Brentwood to Epping. Respect, Mr Jones.

And a fitting end to 2010 has come with New Year’s Eve Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 featuring Sandie Shaw from Dagenham. Sandie actually worked for six months punching cards at the Ford factory in Dagenham and sang the soundtrack to the film Made in Dagenham, a song written by Billy Bragg.

Shaw still had great Essex wit as she took Kirsty Young through her three marriages, blowing a fortune, Buddhism and dancing Hand in Glove with Morrissey while wearing stilettos. Clearly not anyone’s Puppet on a String.

Welcome 2011. The future is Essex.

Camping it up in Loughton

I’m holding a flint flake made by an Essex Man 2,500 years ago. Before the big freeze our family took the train to Loughton and explored Epping Forest. It’s an amazing place when the leaves are falling and the lack of signage means it’s easy to imagine yourself miles from the nearest city.

We picnicked at Loughton Camp, an iron age hill fort on top of a hill in the middle of the forest. There are still huge circular earthworks and ditches, plus pits where flints were mined and worked. The flakes from this early example of entrepreneurial Essex are still easily found.

Loughton Camp is also the place where dandy highwayman Dick Turpin was said to have used it as his hide out after committing highway robbery on the A13. There’s also an unsubstantiated legend linking it with Boudica and her big bundle with the Romans.

We tend to think of hill forts as being at places like Maiden Castle in Dorset, or Old Sarum in Wiltshire. Who’d have thought that Essex has its own version right on the Central line. We’ll be finding our own stone ‘enge next.

The only way is Sugar Hut?

Just been on Radio Essex on the strength of my piece in the Guardian today on Essex's annus mirabilis. Had an interesting debate with presenter Ian Puckey about the merits of The Only Way is Essex.

He was very against the old stereotypes recycled on TOWIE. Fair enough, but my argument was that 20 years on from Essex Man perhaps Essex men and women can laugh at themselves too. And the rest of the country surely realises it's an exaggeration of a stereotype, that like all stereotypes has some basis in truth.

And the stars of TOWIE do represent something of the hunger and desire to succeed that epitomised early entrepreneurial Essex Man. Amy might not know the meaning of certain words like but isn't scared to ask and doesn't seem to be at all worried by her geographically-challenged notions of London/Essex. And we have to admire the ambition of someone who can class herself as an "eyelash technician".

Its stars do seem to be doing such a great job at milking their stardom, having cornered the celeb mags and the Sun's bizarre column, that they might be in the running for young business people of the year.

It might be naff, but it's made me laugh. Merry Essexmas Mark, Lauren, Kirk, Amy, Sam and co.

Essex appeal

Blimey. The vajazzle has gone posh. Harriet Addison of the Times booked in for a vajazzle and recently wrote about in the paper's Body + Soul section. She went to the salon Strip Wax in the City, where it's known by the more subtle term, "the Bollywood". Could the upper middle classes be going all Essexy down there?

Meanwhile Essex's annus mirabilis (available from all top beauty technicians) continues with the news that Jamie Oliver's book of 30-minute recipes is the fastest selling non-fiction book ever and Jessie J from Romford is set to be a huge star too after winning the Brits Critics' Choice Award and her song Do It Like A Dude has had 4.6 million hits on YouTube.

At this rate Essex will soon have to annex Kent…

Matt goes effing mental

It's Essex and drugs and rock 'n' roll. Matt Cardle has won The X Factor and revealed to the Sun that he was a "boozy, dope-smoking waster".

The painter and decorator from near Colchester told of twice being nicked by the Old Bill: "I was a rebel, drifting about having a laugh and a drink with my mates. I never went mental but I was stupid."

Mental, now there's a good Essex word, non-PC but rather descriptive. Indeed, the other week, with West Ham astonishingly 4-0 up against Man United, the whole Bobby Moore Stand broke into a chorus of "Let's go ***ing mental!"

Is there any other county where mental is still used?

Meanwhile Matt is still going mental - but mainly with the likes of "make-up girl" Lauren Clements with whom he enjoyed what the Sun termed "a liaison moments before going on stage in the semi-final".

Malibu and pineapples all round

Oh my gosh! Essex's annus mirabilis (that's not something connected to a vajazzle) continues with the news that the gushing and rather glorious Essex motormouth Stacey Solomon has won I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! Oh, and painter and decorator Matt Cardle is in the final of X Factor after doing all sorts of Essexian things with make-up girls according to the Sun.

Never mind the Australian jungle. "I can't wait to get back to Dagenham. I'm going to see my friends and go down the pub for a Malibu and pineapple, maybe two," says Stace. The future is Essex.