Alex K

I'm so sorry. We are wonderfully lucky that they condescend to share their lives with us, and we miss them dreadfully when they depart.

**condescension**? I addressed you as an equal; no thought of "descending" to a level below mine. If I've triggered a deep-seated flare of self-perceived inadequacy, I do apologise. I have no idea when a poster's psyche harbours an explosive device of that sort, much less when its fuse is live, and certainly I did not mean to set off in you such a flare. If a complaint is made in a forum none of whose readers can act to resolve the complaint... the falling tree, the forest, no one to hear it, is the tree's noisy complaint acted on? I sympathise with the *non*ranter, then, in his *non*rant, but am at a loss as to what to do beyond extending condolences. TopTree, above, has made a practical suggestion. Let me endorse it: Complain to BoJo. And **Does dissent bother you...**? Why should it? I can't follow that train of associations at all.

Whilst I am sympathetic to rant and ranter, I do wonder: Which of the EDF readers is best poised to take your concern forward -- or will that be a matter for another venue?

El Pibe -- what StraferJack wrote. You put that very well.

I should be delighted if Paul were to come to Lordship Lane.

Certainly not ash. Tilia sp., lime-tree / linden, is my bet. But again: Close-up of leaves and of leaf-on-twig, twig-on-bough arrangement, will be most useful.

**grin** THANK YOU TALLULAH ! ! !

Of course when the DAILY MAIL told me that only 53 Sainsbury's stores nationwide were posh enough to be stocked with certain wines and spirits I had to check the list. Yes: The Dog Kennel Hill branch ("Dulwich") is among them. My corner shop... I have so much more to live up to now.

http://www.twentysomethinglondon.com/andersons-co-cafe-peckham/ seems to be the venue. An upshift to Friday / Saturday evening meal service, steak / frites, is described.

Thanks, James. Hoping for the best!

State funeral? If offering him one can tempt him to exit the scene, I'm for it.

Two-up, two-down tarpaper shack (but terraced rather than free-standing, and double-glazed) in the cul-de-sac estate tucked between Dulwich Hamlet Football Club and the railway line. ?435 for the last three months' worth of nPower combined electricity and gas. Similar timed approach: Two hours in the morning, three in the evening. Around November we started baking the breakfast bacon crispy (electric) rather than stove-top frying it (gas). Bet that's what done it.

Back to those uplighters, James -- none of them lit yesterday, and the one at the Domino's end of the arc is still a plug of cement rather than a light. Broken already? And the contractor needs to be chivvied into finishing the job, or so it seems. **sigh** I liked the twinkly multicolour bit of sidewalk and I should be sorry to learn that it is already a thing of the past.

Report it now, tell police "If I see I'll photograph". Who'll take you seriously if a month from now you toddle in with photographs and a stale, stale story? Whereas if you report it, give the best description you can, and then supply more information later...

Maxxi, I live on that estate. I've heard the woodpeckers' drumming. To hear it makes me happy.

Sue -- "If somebody can communicate reasonably effectively, what does it matter whether their spelling and grammar meet your stringent standards or not?" -- surely "If somebody can communicate reasonably effectively, what does it matter whether his or her spelling and grammar meet your stringent standards or not?" **grin**

http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/varietyandmusichall/ -- a national museum, in Sheffield, for materials like those that I imagine your mother collected; http://britishmusichallsociety.wordpress.com -- a blog / bulletin-board for persons interested in such materials; why not ring the V&A, ring the Sheffield curator, and ask about venues for sale, or post to the blog with links to images?

Funny business, isn't it, this impermissibility of knives? The other day I overslept and took, as my lunch, two slices of bread and not a container of properly assembled ham salad but instead, grabbed from the fridge on the run toward the door, the hambone on which the scraps were that SHOULD have bone into that p.a.h.s. And a knife to let me carve those scraps from the bone when lunchtime approached. I suppose that on the way to or from work I could have been scanned, and asked to re-think my plans for the morning or afternoon, and been invited to assist the police with their enquiries. At least on the way toward work I could have brandished the exculpatory hambone.

Sue, if you're pleased, I'm pleased for you. My experiences, and my feeling that the GPs who have attended me are... well, "throughput-oriented"? Will that do? -- seem to differ from yours. Perhaps we visit different DMC branches. My experience is with what once was the Isidore Crown Medical Centre (off Bellenden Road) where before the DMC take-over I was seen regularly by one physician who knew me and my quirks. That now is a DMC outpost, and the sense of engaged continuity of care is long since, for me, run into the sand.

This is a lovely thread.

You will not have a doctor if you go to DMC. You will have the members of a practice, and their squinting access on-line to a set of notes, and their fumblings through formularies to take the next recommended step when a treatment seems not quite to be doing the job. You will be very much on your own in guiding yourself through the NHS. (Will this be any different elsewhere? Likely not.) I should like to respect my doctor. I find this difficult at DMC.

-- moved topic --

Rowr! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2297228/BUDGET-2013-Stay-home-mother-mauls-Clegg-One-woman-speaks-mums-stop-work-raise-family--feel-Coalition-thinks-theyre-worthless.html

Good heavens -- if Renata and James can't get these cowboys off their high horses, what hope for you and me?

True enough, John L. But -- without vigilantism, a "We see what you're getting up to, and we don't care for it" worked wonders on my behaviour as a village lad. What Mrs Brown didn't care for ALWAYS found its way to my parents' ears. "The driver of the Citroen C3, silver, licence OYP 2X -- bit of a cowboy, watch out", if posted on this forum as a way to get the information "You're being watched" back to that driver, is unobjectionable. That's our licence and car, by the way.