Sue

Would the parent geese not attack a dog (whatever size) who came anywhere near the goslings? They were keeping very close to them on Friday, and when one of the goslings wandered just a little way off from the others, one of the parents followed it. This was on land, very close to the railings, not on the water.

As they are ongoing issues in the area, I expect they want residents to be assured that they are still taking action on them?

I have someone from Which Tech phoning on Monday afternoon. I couldn't get an earlier appointment. I am hoping that now there is a visible display, they will be able to get me online and then remotely control the laptop and identify what went wrong and whether it is an ongoing fault or, if not, whether it is likely to recur. If they can't, or if they identify a hardware fault, I will have to grit my teeth and let John Lewis's third party "repair" company take it away and deal with it 😭 I'm very grateful for your advice, but when I saw "Windows will restart automatically" my immediate reaction was to think "but suppose it doesn't" and "suppose the screen goes black again" which I know is very negative but I'd rather someone else was there when I did it, albeit on the end of the phone! Meanwhile, every cloud etc, as I have installed Word on my phone, which I didn't know was possible, and I have been editing and printing documents from there. I haven't investigated whether I can do the same with Excel, but I will see what happens on Monday.

If you mean the area immediately adjacent to the water, I have never seen either a dog or a human in there. Surely it would be extremely difficult for someone - or their dog - to get over the fence (I thought they were iron railings. Are we talking about different parts of the pond/lake?)

Do rats eat ducklings/goslings? I'd have thought anything on four legs approaching a gosling would have been seen off by the parents, whereas the heron swooping down can just fly off with it 😥

Four little goslings by the pond, with their mum and dad keeping a close watch on them yesterday! It seems very early? Apparently they were born last week, and there were five then 😭 Let's hope the rest of them escape what I presume was the heron. Sorry just realised this should be on the nature watch thread, maybe admin could move it? Apologies.

Eats Dulwich has just reviewed Arapina, including its hot chocolate! I assume they read the original first and very long post on this thread before almost all of it was removed. Interesting to have another opinion!

I see you have just reviewed Arapina's hot chocolate 🤣

It isn't necessarily possible to tell if a tree is diseased just by looking at it. It depends what the disease is. It could be in the roots, for example, or inside the main part of the tree where it can't be seen.

To be fair, do we know who put the notice on the wrong tree? The people wielding chainsaws almost certainly won't be the experts who identify the problems with the trees? They just go along and hack down what they're told to hack down? I might be wrong, but whilst actual tree surgery needs expertise, I wouldn't have thought hacking down a whole tree did? Apart from knowing how to use a chainsaw, obviously.

They used to come out if the noise was ongoing when you phoned them. I don't know if they still do. But obviously it's good to keep a record anyway, especially if several neighbours do it, as you say.

Yes, better idea!

Helen Hayes made sterling efforts to prevent the closure of the Sylvester Road delivery office, including attending a public (I think. I was there, anyway!) meeting about it, and coming to a demo outside the delivery office. The demo was publicised locally, but only about half a dozen SE22 residents turned up, which was embarrassing and didn't exactly show Royal Mail that there was any strong local feeling about it 🙄 When the delivery office closed, whilst Helen was still our MP before the boundary changes, she made great efforts to get the service from Peckham improved, including more than one (I think) visit there. Sometimes the service would get better for a short time, then it would just deteriorate again. Some of the underlying causes are indeed due to the Sylvester Road delivery office closure, but I suspect others are due to poor management both at local and higher levels, plus wider issues with Royal Mail at a national level. I'm not sure that Ellie Reeves could succeed where all Helen Hayes's efforts didn't, but by all means encourage her to try! I wonder whether bombarding the CEO with complaints might have more of an impact, but I wouldn't hold my breath, not least because he would probably never see them, and even if he did, some minion in his office would just send a polite standard reply.

Fingers crossed they do well!

I also recently waited 30 minutes to speak to someone at HMRC. First of all, they had indicated the wait time from the outset. Secondly, it is a very busy time for them, with the 31 January deadline looming. Thirdly, I might be confusing them with some other organisation, but I think they gave other options including for them to phone you back if you didn't want to hang on. Anyway, my main point is that I don't know whether the person I spoke to was working from home or not, but there was no background noise, she was incredibly sympathetic and helpful, and to my utter disbelief she extended the deadline for me to the end of March 😮 The reason was that I couldn't do my online return due to my laptop meltdown, and had been told repair could take up to 28 working days. She thought that a deadline of the end of February might not be long enough I was fully expecting to be told that it was my own fault for not getting the return in before. So credit where credit's due, basically. I've previously found HMRC staff very helpful in patiently explaining in simple language stuff in the rules which I couldn't understand. As for working from home, I'm long retired from working for others, but I have both on occasion worked well into the night/over weekends to meet critical project deadlines, and also on occasion skived. But in the first job I was being paid a lot, and in the second job I wasn't 🤣

I can't help with pinpointing the source of the bass, but I have found playing white noise helps to mask unwanted sounds, and it's also quite soothing (in a way). I ask Alexa to play white noise, which must make a nice change for her from asking what the temperature and/or weather is outside, or asking her to sing the Doggy Song, which is usually all she does (present from my brother). But probably you can get a white noise app on your phone. Have you contacted Southwark Noise Control (?) who may be able to trace where the bass is coming from?

I enjoyed reading your reviews! What are you going to do when you run out of local places to eat? Start at the beginning again?!

😮 That's completely unprofessional. I would have complained to HMRC.

Do you mean one spelling error?

I'm sorry to hear that it has closed, but Grove Vale wouldn't immediately spring to mind as the ideal location for a shop (?gallery?) solely selling ceramics. Plus you had to go in and ask to find out the price of anything, which was a bit off-putting (well, it put me off asking again after my first sharp intake of breath 🤣 ) Perhaps they overestimated the effect of gentrification?

Certainly it is necessary to put in place a very much better system of "ownership" and upkeep, if they are to be used for information about local non profit organisations. What do you mean by "try something else"? If for local businesses, that has already been discussed above. Quite apart from anything else, it would seem very odd to have commercial enterprises' adverts locked up behind glass in wooden frames!

Sorry if I offended you. I was trying to be helpful. I did not mean to imply you know nothing about WiFi, but I have found as I said that connecting away from home can sometimes be difficult, especially when travelling. On at least one occasion I found that the reason I couldn't connect to the WiFi was because I wasn't doing things correctly, and on other occasions the problem was with the Oxford Tube WiFi. If you can connect OK to free WiFi elsewhere, would that not seem to imply that the problem is specifically with the train and station WiFi? So either there is something wrong at their end, or (if other people can connect to it at a time when you can't) something wrong at your end, which could be the phone, but why would it connect to free WiFi at other places but not on trains? I don't have the name of a reputable phone shop, sorry. What I actually meant by that was that I would avoid shops like the many small phone shops in Peckham. I didn't particularly want to spell that out. I'm sure some of them are fine, but my daughter had a phone battery replaced at one, and it failed very shortly afterwards. Unless you have a recommendation for an independent phone shop from a reliable source, I would stick to the major high street phone shops? I am with iD. They have various ways to contact them, including online chat. I just had a look. You say you are classified as a vulnerable person, and their website says they have special provisions for vulnerable people? There is a link on their website to find out more. I'm not sure why you would not want to use those provisions if they might get you help more quickly? I imagine that is what they are there for? But to the best of my knowledge the WiFi problems you are having would have nothing to do with your phone call supplier? I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong. I only asked the phone's age in case that was a contributing factor. If it's only 2 or 3 years old, then of course it shouldn't be. Yes I'm having problems with my laptop, but I'm not sure why that's relevant? I only bought it in May, it's still under guarantee, it developed a clear fault out of the blue, it's been a pain, and I'm very grateful to the local people who have helped. I never claimed to be any kind of technical expert, far far from it. I'm in my mid seventies and technology is a complete mystery to me 🤣 Anyway, again, I'm sorry if you were offended by anything I said, and I hope you will get things sorted out soon. Just noticed you said you have "regular scams" as well. I think we all get those, at least I do! You should be able to report the phone number as spam and also block the number (and similarly for emails) however sadly I think it's pretty impossible to get rid of them altogether. I save the number in my contacts as spam, so if it should get through again it comes up marked as spam, and I just don't answer it. If I get a call from a number I don't recognise I do usually answer it, as sometimes it's a genuine call, but if it's spam I just tell them to eff off (except I don't say eff) and then block the number.

Have you talked to iD? I've been with them for ages and have never had any problems. They run on 3's network. But the WiFi isn't anything to do with your phone call provider, is it? Have you tried asking a (reputable) phone shop which isn't just Apple? How old is the iPhone? Not being funny, but if it's just train WiFi you have issues with, are you sure you are going through the correct process to connect with it on your phone? I use the Oxford Tube (aka bus) WiFi quite a lot, and it can be confusing, plus they actually say that the connection may sometimes be iffy, depending on circumstances. That is down to their WiFi, not your phone. Could the same be happening on the trains?

Thanks!

Thanks Spartacus! I'd have to come out of safe mode to do this, wouldn't I? Where do I find System Restore, to click on it? When you say at the end to open the System Protection tab, what then? And where would I look to see if I have recovery switched on? Sorry for so many questions! I'm really grateful to the friend who got me this far, and I'm terrified of now doing something which could undo all his hard work!