ChavWivaLawDegree

The Plough is my local pub, and I thought it was just being tarted up a bit in advance of the smoking ban. Cheap beer, shit food, pool tables, cheap beer, what more could a girl want??

Jonboy - as a life-long Everton fan, it just seemed wrong

Jonboy - yeh but wanted to send him packing when he signed for Chelsea.

I'm going to start selling some tasteful white T-shirts with Burberry print writing on declaring 'Proud to Be Chav' and 'Chav Power' for a tenner a pop. Any takers?

Alan - maybe I should rename myself ChavishWivaLawDegree. Ex-ChavWivaLawDegree would seem like I am a social-climber, when I have no intention of ever becoming socially acceptable to polite society. SeanMG - Drinks on you then?? Impressed you met the mighty Mr Hicks

I only just got my degree at a 'new' university, The University of Westminster, but was too smart to be arsed with all that boring kind of stuff when I was young!! Suit?? Only if I was in the dock!! James - I think you are right about the name brand bit.

Alan - I was only 62% chav, so I seem to be some kind of hybrid chav and I got into the habit of abbreviating words from texting, trying to keep my message under the limit, so I wouldn't have to pay for another text on my pay-as-u-go phone. Why does buying a bargain bucket or getting a state education count towards chavdom by the way?

Saw another chavette on a bike with a staff yesterday, so just incase you think she is me, here is my blog so you can tell us apart!!

Keef - I chose the name to stick up for chavs, and try to show that chavvy people like me, can be more than the stereotype. Also one thing I noticed after moving here from Elephant is that there seems to be a bigger divide between the social classes here resulting in more misunderstanding, fear and hostility than I'm used to. I was a posh chav down my old ends, but feel slightly looked down on here! I'm also a natural bridge builder, sorry i can't help it. I hope that by bringing another perspective, all you good forumites, will be able to build bridges with your local chavs, instead of seeing them always as 'the other' and so promote social cohesion and lovliness all around! Annasfield - Couldn't stop grinning all the way through your post, spot on.

Sean - Gotta say Bill Hicks is (was) the man, and Robert Newman comes in a close 2nd. Elton has been a bit of a letdown, a lot like his hero, Blair. I'm in the Green Party myself, a party that is too young and lacking power at present to have any major traitors yet!

Tillie - I suppose for me it helped that all my kids did martial arts as soon as they could walk, and my ex-husband was a bit of a scary dude, so they didn't have too many problems growing up where they did. My son (who is 21 now) is as a youth worker and teaches sports on a crime prevention project to the seriously disturbed kids who are among those killing each other in Peckham. Things are much worse now than when he was growing up, I was a youth worker then, and I think it's not just coincidence that the kids who are the worst now, are the ones who were born at the end of the Thatcher years, when life for me and millions of others was a constant struggle and many parents in my area couldn't cope, ending up addicted to hard drugs or alcohol. Sorry to be boring Claire, but Thatcher's legacy is only now being fully realised.

Nero - teaching your kids to assertively deal with gang mentality and avoid becoming victims of a knife or other serious attack would seem to me to be an important part of parenting in London and many other cities, and could never be seen as being over-protective, but denying children freedom to explore at a safe distance from their parent/s is a totally different thing and in my view is over-protective and unhelpful in the development of their much needed assertiveness.

I'm not sure actually, I do know a few over-protective working class parents, but the ones I can think of right now are Turkish, Jamaican and Bengali, and it applies more to their girls than boys, but you don't see them out en masse to 'exercise' their kids, so I suppose it's less noticeable.

Nero - like the green roof idea but how would u get the mower up there tho

Asset - I wasn't trying to say that having 2 parents with a kid is being overprotective, that was just an observation. What I think was disturbing tho, was the fact that they never seemed to give their kids any adult-free space at all. Maybe that's just because they are at the park, and they give them free space somewhere else. It just seemed strange to me because I'd never seen it before.

As the token chav on this site, I'll try my best to provide an unpaid translation service to those of you who have only ever seen one of us from afar!! I lived on an high density council estate in Elephant & Castle and our kids played with other kids of all ages and usually no adults in the communal gardens in the centre where we all looked out for them from our overlooking balconies. I moved to Dulwich in January and really like it here but it's been a bit of a culture shock. When I took my daughter to the playground in Dulwick park I was amused by the fact that there were more parents in the playground than kids and I'd seriously never seen anything like that before. The situation on our estate had been totally different. Usually if I was going to be taking my kids to the park or anywhere else, it would be me, and maybe a friend, with some of the other kids from our estate tagging along. Most of my friends on the estate are single parents, and we would take it in turn to give each other a break from the kids. The adults would usually chat and leave the kids to play, only intervening if someone got hurt or was arguing with another kid. But when I took my daughter to Dulwich park, very few of the kids had one parent with them, most had two, and it was rare to see more than 2 kids with any couple of adults. Plus what I found wierd was that most of the parents were actually in the playground bit, trying to show their kids how to play, not with the other kids, just how to play on the swing, the slide etc and talking to them and fussing over them constantly. By their accents they did mainly seem middle-class and I am definately working class. I hate class divisions but I don't understand what their motivation for this was. Is this a middle-class thing or not? I don't know, but I don't understand the over-protectiveness of a lot of those parents. The lack of freedom is very sad to me. I try to give my kids enough freedom to challenge them, but not enough to overwhelm them, and am always there to protect them if they need it, and they are all confident and well rounded. I'm not sure what effect an over-protective background will have on any kids, but I don't see how it could be good for them. Is it because most of the parents are older when they had their kids, and they react differently to them? I really would like an insight into this. p.s. I have only ever left my kids in the car on their own when they were over about 7 or so, with all the windows closed and doors locked, if I needed to pop into a shop or something for a minute or so, and took the keys with me (just incase they want to take it for a spin!) so I think I may also have been a bit shocked to see the baby left in the car with the door open, but I'd hate to think I would be judgmental about someone else doing it without knowing why they did it.

Talking about trees, why not ask for some fruit trees to be planted in community spaces instead of the ones that just sit there doing nothing except reducing CO2. I remember scrumping fruit from trees when I was young, and most fruit now is picked way before it's ripe and is no-where near as healthy as it should be. Do you think they'd object incase of possible fruit related injuries tho?

I think the ones in Dulwich have long waiting lists, they did when I tried to get one. I have a massive allotment in Mottingham which was free for the first year (?86 per year thereafter) because it needed clearing of brambles and young trees. They are the biggest allotments I've ever seen, but you can get half plots if you want. There are still quite a few up for grabs all pretty overgrown in need of a chainsaw and a few energetic friends to clear them, but worth it if you can't get one closer. They are in Middle Park Avenue and are dealt with by Greenwich Parks in Shooters Hill, phone: 0208 856 2232. You don't need to be a Greenwich Resident to get one.

Don't know if the Dulwich area covers Peckham Rye cos I'm new around here, but I saw that the adventure playground was closed and it looks like it could do with a face-lift. Could some of the money be put towards improving it?

If we are talking about annoying phrases, I'm sure I use loads of them, but I personally hate "can you borrow me" something.

Hi, thought I got blocked for my rant at Hugo hehe, sorry ur not as precious as I'd imagined. Couldn't get in for a bit cos the forum was playing up. Glad I'm not blocked tho cos u lot actually seem quite nice!!

Alan Dale - I need to earn some dough, my kids are fed up with cheese on toast! I did some asylum and immigration stuff and am hoping to take the accreditation exams, or at least one of them this summer and get work as a caseworker or paralegal for now. In the meantime, I'm just taking it easy cos my kids forgot what I looked like for the last 2 months of my degree and my granddaughter is too gorgeous to ignore.

Brendan- As my brother predicted, all that book-lernin did me no good. I seem to have morphed into a chavvy eco-warrior/political activist. I also prefer silver to gold, sorry. Hannibal doesn't smoke, cos its bad for his health, but I draw the line at making him eat veggie dog food. Incase you think I may not even be chavvy at all, I've got 4 (very loud and hyperactive)kids to 3 dads, a 5 month old granddaughter from my (married) 19 yr old daughter, a toyboy younger than my son, live in a council house and every 2nd word out of my mouth when I'm drunk or animated is a swear word. But I'm a very nice person really. Huguenot - Get over it, the world is a scary place (except, so it seems, East Dulwich). I hate bullies too, but there are more ways of bullying than just physically. I grew up in a very violent area and had 2 younger brothers to protect so instead of being a victim I had to learn to fight. And for the record I actually said scaring condescending posh kids, not slapping them. I have never hit anyone who didn't hit me, my family or my friends first and I lost as many fights as I won, because it wasn't always 1 on 1, I am just someone who finds it hard to eat shit or back down from bullies, including up their arse, middle-class, moralising petty little Hitlers who love rules and laws restricting everyone elses freedoms because they have never got over their childhood fears of others.

Huguenot - no, it would appease your pre-conceived ideas of the underlying motivation when I trained him

Huguenot - you wouldn't like him if I'd called him Flopsie, cos you're not exactly a dog lover are you?