Darkness falls across Manor House and all is well with the Power Point.

Darkness falls across Manor House,

A wintry gloom and darkness has fallen across Manor House and the final day of October draws to a close. The traffic on the road inches slowly and deliberately towards the traffic lights, car headlights blinking sharply in the pronounced amber glow of early evening. Once again winter is ready to creep out stealthily from its very clandestine hiding place. People rush hither and thither along well trodden pavements and the commuters from busy offices wind their weary way home. This is the way it has to be for the next six months or so because summer has packed away its suitcase for another year and it won't be coming back for the foreseeable future. At least until the clocks go forward next spring.

Next door to us the hum of commerce and trade is still murmuring away in quite the most profitable fashion. The hair- dressers are sweeping up the last remnants of ladies flowing locks while the hair dryers are applying the final elegant touches. Magazines are neatly tidied away, cups of tea and coffee now no more than a fond reminder of the day's frenetic activities. There follows the final, topical banter of the day gleefully exchanged with a gossipy turn of phrase or just a happy reminiscence of a summer holiday.

On the corner of our road an attractive looking opticians winds down for another day with all manner of signs promoting the very latest of smart glasses, designed exclusively for men and women alike although strangely children have not been included or maybe I've missed something. The window is almost a huge tribute to the glasses industry with the emphasis firmly on dark framed glasses, reactor light glasses, the very latest developments in contact lens technology with just a respectful nod to sunglasses. You can see why this opticians has attracted so much local interest and popularity.

Then your gaze turns towards the neighbourhood chemists, a haven of therapeutic medicine, bottles of cough mixtures and liquids that never seem to work and whole shelves devoted to healthy diet chocolate biscuits. Among this dizzy cornucopia of bottles there are more bottles of restorative liquids, packets and packets of pills and tablets, everything to fend off those draining winter ailments. Two chairs are reserved for the elderly and pregnant and that has to be comforting.

The main attractions though are the two late night mini supermarkets that seem to sell everything. But what catches my eye are the bags of cat litter and the kitchen brooms that sit snugly outside the late night shop immediately next to us. Ordinarily this wouldn't have made much difference to my day today but I couldn't help but notice the huge quantities of cat litter and kitchen brooms on offer. Inside there are the traditional wines and spirits that used to be available quite visibly near the Ilford home I grew up in.

In fact as I walk into the shop I'm reminded of that magical smell of yeast, hops and barley that constituted the regular supply of pale ale, lager and wine in our local Off Licence- or the Offie as it was affectionately known. And if you didn't know it was an Off Licence you could have sworn it was one of the many pubs in Ilford and Gants Hill. I can still hear see those crates of booze rattling around in joyous togetherness, empty bottles of Watney's pale ale stacked on top of each other, the faint scent of alcohol lingering harmlessly on the nose.

Still I digress. Back in the late night mini supermarket there is a flurry of feet, as early evening shoppers wander in for their early evening investment in lottery tickets, alcohol, cigarettes and, quite possibly, the cat litter and kitchen brooms that they may have forgotten. But these are big bags of cat food and you begin to wonder just how ravenous these cats must be because quite frankly these bags are large enough to feed a whole community of tabbies.

Last but not least there is our local dry cleaners. Now no neighbourhood should ever be without its dry cleaners. Over the years our dry cleaners have changed hands quite frequently and cheerfully without any disturbance to the natural order of things. This new dry cleaning incarnation is an extremely pleasant one, a shop owned by a lovely Indian family and to say it's busy and hectic would be a gross understatement. It is when you step inside that you're introduced to a singularly spectacular world of dry cleaning at its most dramatic.

Recently I've had cause to take in a number of suits, jackets, trousers and dresses and it remains a constant source of amazement. This is no ordinary dry cleaners. Suddenly you are surrounded by massive dry cleaning machines that look like washing machines but quite clearly aren't. The machines spin and swirl around almost gracefully while around the shop members of the family industriously beaver away. forever darting in and out of the shop before heading straight back to their customers serving counter and doing the same thing all day long. Wonderful.

 In front of the shop a charming old lady concentrates intently on a well worn sewing machine, silky fabrics chattering away furiously next to the heavy, clumping noise of the dry cleaning machine. Clothes bounce up and down while at the back of the shop an elderly man presses shirts with an enormous iron and affectionate care. Then there are the racks of meticulously cleaned shirts and trousers that are hooked off the rails rather like a fishermen grabs hold of a pike.

But overnight something appeared on our street with an almost surreal unexpectedness. Across the road the advertising board was extolling the virtues of summer holidays and a bloke with a bunch of carrots. Everything was as it should be on the crowded roads and streets of Manor House but across the road from where we live there was something that just seemed to drop down from the sky or just moved in without any planning permission from the local council.

Here was the most peculiar street furniture I've ever seen. It was next to our post box and wasn't really recognisable as anything you would normally expect to see in your local street. It looks like a giant electronic scoreboard but without any text. It's sponsored by BT and, on closer inspection, must be a Power Point for USB memory sticks or maybe a charging point for your Tablet or I- Pad. It was hard to tell. There was something very technologically striking about this new addition to our way of life here in Manor House.

Still it was more than welcome even if some of us haven't a clue why it's there. There were numbers to press and an Audio button which looked as if it was designed to be listened to. For a moment it occurred to me that the new electric car is currently being road tested and this could be the facility for this brand new innovation. I suppose we'll all be told much more about this smart looking gadget - whatever it is? For now the anticipation can almost be felt in the air.

So it is that this night of Halloween brings down the curtain of another October in our lives. The pumpkins will look suitably scary and spooky, the deepening mysteries of the night may well remain a mystery. Out there in the dark night sky, witches will fly across Britain inexplicably and children will knock on our doors desperately searching for sweets. It always seems like magnificent nonsense and nicely precedes the weekend's Guy Fawkes celebrations. Hold on who needs fireworks when you've got a BT Power Point on your doorstep? Manor House is quite definitely the happening place.