Alex K

Post the car description and the licence plate alphanumeric, please. A neighbour of the driver may see the posting, print it off, and put it under her / his door, windscreen-wiper blade, or the like. That alone might calm our roads somewhat.

James, thank you for identifying this item of our streetscape as warranting repair -- for moving the process of repair forward -- and for adding, with the colour!, a welcome bit of dash and fizz. Of course other things in East Dulwich need done. (See above.) But that THIS thing has been done, and done well, is cause for congratulations to you and to your team.

Im Dorfe gruesst man sich, in der Groszstadt gruesst man sich nicht, as my cousin explained to me forty years ago. East Dulwich isn't a village, not any more.

Who is God and why is it impossible to get in touch with Her?!

Scottish for baps -- would that be "mammocks"? Enquiring Sassenach minds want to know.

Someone wanting to sell a house, perhaps, and concerned lest "subsidence" be chalked up against saleability? A complaint to the council might lead to felling of a tree.

So odd. As if not going to McDonald's conferred moral stature. It's not food, it's FUEL. Predictable, uniform, fast. Useful on a late-night drunk when one doesn't wish to provoke multibacterial gastritis with the choices at a scabby kebabi. Useful on a motorway when one is trying to get somewhere quickly. Useful when infanticide looms (for SO MANY REASONS) and one wants to avoid provoking children's finickinesses. Mickey D is an apple, Simpson's-on-the-Strand, Nobu, Angels and Gypsies are oranges. Sometimes the circumstances call for an apple. If you can arrange your circumstances so that you never need eat an apple, hurrah! Enviable you. I'll keep at hand my walletful of BIG MAC WITH FRIES ?1.99 coupons from Metro. Just in case.

Jeremy, apologies for replying so late. The forecourt of the station is a public way. I think that the broader, the more free of obstructions and narrowings, that public way is kept the better it can be used. I should like any bike lockers / stands / sheds not to occupy space on the public way in front of the station. If they are along the railway verges, on what at present is brambled waste-ground (as is that to both sides along the path between street and inbound platform), I shall have no objection. Huguenot, "bizarre" is strong. It might better be applied to your argument that advocates one mis-use of public space because another mis-use already exists. Surely both mis-uses are wrong. Again: For Charlie83 to occupy a square metre (in the form of a bike locker) of the station forecourt, the public way, is to skim cream and to leave the rest of us only milk. For him to do so is, in my opinion, selfish. If Charlie83 were to stow his bicycle within his own dwelling or its curtilage, no one could have any objection to his behaviour. The same if he were to stow his bicycle within an area off the station forecourt.

Fallback / first choice: King's. Take a look at the back of the paper form issued you. It doesn't specify (or didn't until VERY recently, and you may have an older one) that you may not attend KCH / Denmark Hill for your blood-draw. Point that out, as I did, to the phlebotomist and watch him / her say -- OK. Come on in and put out your arm. KCH are now, as I understand it, distributing newer forms to GPs in the Trust's catchment area. But the KCH personnel will, if appealed to, accede to making your lives easier and to promoting your health. A bit of persistence and you will walk away phlebotomised!

No discussion above of the pros / cons of withdrawing obstetric surgical coverage from a lying-in ward. The costs of a delayed cesarean section (blue-light ta-tu-ta-tu transfer to tertiary hospital, etc.) are substantial: How much "extra" does lifelong care run for a person who suffered hypoxic / ischaemic brain injury whilst being born? Considered in the lump rather than parcelled out year by year, they might provide an argument for retaining at Lewisham this service.

This gets complicated. Your choices depend on the media used -- works on paper are a different kettle of fish from works employing oil on board / canvas. I can recommend for w.o.p. but for w.e.o.o.b./c., no, sorry. Check in Camberwell at the College, which has for years trained conservators.

Mixed emotions, Charlie83. Good for you -- getting fit and all that -- but if your getting fit means that public space (in the form of the footprint of a locker under that bridge) is sacrificed to your wishes / needs, then, well, you're skimming cream for yourself and leaving milk for your neighbours. If you were to clutter your front hall with the bike, rather than our streets, I'd be happier.

Two experiences -- a telephone call to HAART and to what has now become ONEMOVE, about ten years apart -- the day after the telephone call, in both instances, the signs were gone. Surprised to learn that other estate agents are less obliging.

Lady D, I learnt from your post. Thank you.

The sales are on -- purchase an egg-cooker from John Lewis. Since ours entered the house a year ago, minor adjustments to account for out-of-the-fridge versus long-since-room-temperature aside, we have never had an unsatisfactory egg. NEVER. Easily a contender with our French press for best poncy kitchen appliance ever.

If this comes down to "shame" and "abhorrence", then are either foie gras or the methods used to produce it subjects for logic? Gavage of poultry... no, I've never done that. But I've caponised half a spring's hatch when the cockerels started to declare themselves, squeaky adolescent attempts at crowing. As I learnt through this forum, caponising fowl is regarded in the UK as no better than declawing cats. No shame. No abhorrence of the act, no vow to crush that set of caponising tools now on some shelf in my brother's shed in another country, to drown my book. Forty-five years ago those tools meant meat over winter from half of spring's chickens, the half that would never lay eggs, that otherwise were really not of much use to anyone. (And capon was MUCH better than culled post-menopausal failed old ex-laying hen, which was best as soup.) Nowadays I can pick up a tender chicken, ready drawn and plucked, from Sainsbury's all year round, although I do wish that they came with giblets... The tools can gather dust for all I care. I don't need to caponise cockerels any longer, and I don't. Looking back, I don't feel bad about those cockerels. "But you ought to," someone might respond. "But I don't," is my answer. Maybe, in a Whiggish perspective, one day I shall, and be the better for it. Maybe. What I should like is that the choice to eat capon, or foie gras, or not to eat either, be left with me; that I be the one to assess "ought to" and "abhorrence" and "shame". That's not possible in Britain any longer. We're a meddlesome society, fingers all through each other's pies, steadily less tolerant of one another, or so it seems to me. Odd that "An Englishman's home is his castle" should have been so thoroughly swept away.

The then Mayor swore me in, amongst a remarkable pick-and-mix of immigrants from EVERYWHERE, some years ago as a British subject, before a photoportrait of the Queen. He was in ceremonial robes, with a chain of office. I do not recollect if he had a sash. We could for the budget cited keep one in a cupboard, on casters perhaps for ease of trundling from appearance to appearance, equipped with a mini-Tannoy bluetoothed to a recording. The sincerity would be much the same.

The pavement lights are back! Joy to the world / The tarmac's gone... la la la. Haven't wobbled past after dark or, for that matter, before, so can't say if they are functional yet, but huzzah! And thank you, James.

Low-lying clouds, AM? Well... then you're shard out of luck. Thank you -- thank you -- you've been a wonderful audience -- I'm here all week...

One of the best features of this forum is that now and again a poster swoops in through clouds and clouds of murky speculation with a brilliant FACT. **cue other posters shrinking back, shielding their eyes and yelping, It burns! It burns!** James Barber, thanks for the allocation details and a tip of the hat, please, to your colleague. If as Sue recommended he can wring another few freebie tickets out of the Shard's management, well, yes. Please. But with library-based queueing, for continued comedy.

These last few days I myself have been leafleting, political / neighbourhood-project informational materials, on my road and those adjoining it -- have seen the NO JUNK MAIL stickers -- and have ignored them, using the sophistry of, "But this isn't junk mail; it's something that will improve your life, not junk at all!" Pizza-takeaway enthusiasts might feel the same way about their filled-crust two-for-one brochures. A real and effective deterrent to junk mail: Put the letterbox slot not at the usual, convenient, door-handle height but instead in the bottom transverse member of your house-door. Doors like those I'd gladly pass by. Only a strong sense of perceived civic duty has kept me stooping all the way over (oof!) to lift the flap and push those flyers through.

And I thought that that attempt to build houses / flats had, in turn, been seen off. Maybe James Barber will know...?

What a shame -- gone, are they? I liked them, when they were working. Long time ago, that.

Certainly I do. Free on-line and VERY entertaining. Any paper that lets me follow Liz Jones...

So BHO is again US President. I was afraid that Romney might be elected; I am disappointed that Obama -- and not, for example, Hillary Clinton -- was the Democrat alternative. You've been elected to the Presidency, Mr Obama? Ah. This time, live up to it.