tomskip

For ArchieCarlos - Billings on Sydenham High Street is also an excellent butchers and fishmongers.

It's a strange thread heading for sure. There are thousands of dual income hard-working families locally! Most of them aren't in a position to pay private school fees. Of course a 20% cost uplift is going to be hard for many private school parents, but the real question is - why is a private education in a weird loophole of not being seen as discretionary spending? As adults we pay VAT on clothing, heating, fuel, furniture, most purchases other than some foods. So private school fees being VAT exempt seems extraordinary.

Good luck to them. I should think anyone inclined to crowd fund in this borough has had their fingers stung by the non-starter projects of the proposed Lido at Peckham Rye and a green walkway following the train route from Peckham Rye? (memory a bit hazy) which have resulted in nothing.

I think it's an ambitious asking price, yes.

I've said it before and I'll say it again! I really don't think anyone needs a large brown wheelie bin unless they have a vast garden/are such keen gardeners that they fill it every week. You can buy paper garden sacks from the council. Put one or two of those out when you've had a busy pruning session. Keep a small compost heap in the garden for all your small prunings and fruit/veg waste, dead flowers etc. Say goodbye to that ugly brown bin on your driveway and get a brown kerbside bin. Keep that outside your back door for your non compostable food waste. Surely in a borough with mainly small or modest back gardens, a full sized brown wheelie is just not needed for the majority of households. You don't need it if it spends most of the year empty or nearly empty.

Just been outside to discover a parcel delivered by Royal Mail tucked slightly out of view under my bay window. It could have been there since before Christmas. The contents have been damaged by all the recent rain. No card through the door to alert us to this delivery. The person who sent it to me spent nearly £5.00 on that. So even if there has been an improvement this year (has there, really?) it's still a p*s* poor service imo.

This forum has readers in Dulwich Village (postcode is London SE21), East Dulwich (London SE22), West Dulwich (also SE21 mainly) and Peckham (London SE15) and house prices tend to vary rather a lot across the post codes. So it would be helpful to know what sort of house or flat you have in mind and what is your budget? I would recommend joining Mumsnet and posting on there. It's a huge site and you'll get lots of responses from people living in SE London. This forum is nice but a lot quieter.

Spinach Restaurant has been my favourite place for lunch, and dinner at the weekend, in recent years.

Thanks Angelina. Neither of the products I bought are available locally, sadly. And even if they were it would be from a large chain store. We don't use Amazon often at all - probably a year since last time - so I started my thread to see if this was the norm now or a problem just on my road.

We've had two deliveries from Amazon in the last two weeks. Both just dumped on our doorstep, in full view of the street, and no knock on the door. Both times we were at home. Both times we happened to open the door and see the box soon after it was delivered, just luck really. Do the drivers cover the same routes all the time or is it likely to be a variety of drivers?

What is the unused 1960s housing - where is it specifically? Any street views?

I always quite admire the smartly painted shop fronts on the row of shops on Lordship Lane leading up to Dulwich Common. Otoh, what has happened to the old Harvester Pub is a disgrace. Not sure if that's a council issue or a Dulwich Estate issue, but it's still awful.

I've posted about my son's late birthday cards on this forum for years. He's just received one - 9 days late. Not as bad as some years but still, enraging. And someone paid £1.10 for that service, which is rising to £1.25 from October 2nd! I guess sending letters and cards will become a thing of the past even sooner than we thought.

The problem with Ziffit is that what they pay per book is negligible and really not worth the effort. Most people, including OP it would seem, would prefer the books to go to charity where at least the charity gets 50p per paperback or something. If you give 50 paperbacks to charity and they earn £25 from them then that seems so much more worthwhile than earning £5 for yourself.