cathg

I'd always be sceptical about ambitious transport notions. I moved into Camberwell in 1984 and shortly afterwards there was talk of plans to extend the bakerloo line from the elephant. I even saw maps which showed where they would position the new camberwell station on the corner of the green, just by where the father redcap is today In compliance with medieval grazing rights they had to agree to extend the green southwards onto church street to be allowed to build on the north corner of it. Twenty-four years on i'm still waiting for this to happen...

Actually when i think about it ED was on its way up back in the eighties. I lived in camberwell in the late eighties and was an avid reader of City Limits who once recommended the original East Dulwich Deli near the EDT as a great place to get real, fresh parmesan. I distinctly remember my first pioneering trip over denmark hill to lordship lane to invest in a chunk. A couple of years later Mr Lui got a mention in a best chinese round-up and i tried that. Then in about 1989 the EDT started running comedy nights and I became a regular there. The rest is lost in a blur of frenzied upwardly mobile history. Maybe Blue Mountain customers can be divided into those who first used it pre- and post-mosaics.

well, when we moved here in 1995 house prices had just hit rock bottom after the last slump and the only place you could get a capuccinno was blue mountain. how times change...

I don't want to get too competitive about journey times, but I've had to go to some meetings in sloane square recently and I've had some fantastically fast stress-free trips there. I cycle to herne hill (which takes 6 minutes), using the live departure boards website before i leave home so i arrive with a minute to buy ticket from machine. take bike on train which takes about 9 minutes to victoria if i can get a non-stop one, then delicious five-minute relaxed cycle to sloane square admirring the belgravia architecture on the way. 20 minutes door-to-door. though i do travel outside commuter hours and not sure what the deal is taking non-foldable bike on train in rush hour. and if the ticket machine at hh was ever out of order I'd be stuffed...

Nero Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Once again, I'll put in a good word for my postie. > He just gets on with it, is cheerful but not too > ebullient, friendly, efficient and he doesn't drop > red laccy bands. Nero ah thanks for solving a longstanding mystery Nero. I thought those elastic bands on my step every morning were being pinged at my door by pesky SE22 15-year-olds on their way home from the pub.

am i a bit mental today? having read both these threads it seems as if grantc72 has both found a kitten and lost one within the same day. It's all very feline in ivanhoe road isn't it.

Never mind the telegraph charting ED's upward mobility, i've just spotted the ultimate in unexpected gentrification ? the plough cafe on the corner of crystal palace road and lordship lane now has decking in the front so that workers can scoff their bacon butties al fresco. and have a fag with their eggs presumably. also another sure sign that the parade opposite the bombay bicycle club is coming up in the world.

Without wishing to trivilise a serious incident, this group is obviously regularly walking the ED streets and so, clearly, are a lot of forumites. Does anyone remember the old seaside competitions where tabloid readers had to spot somebody called Lobby Ludd and win a crisp fiver? Surely if a similar prize was offered this time we'd have these minxes sorted before sunset.

Amazing stuff. But what I can't get over is the fact that having just checked his date of birth John Thaw is only 32 in those pictures. How come people aged so fast in the seventies? Maureen Lipman's jacket is nice.

..and spookily on paul o'grady this afternoon Jenny Eclair was presented with her regular friday night curry in the studio direct from New Dewaniam in Camberwell.

just to keep you posted in case you didn't know, I've been told the refurb is a little behind schedule - gigs now due to restart on oct 13.

Muttley Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Before it became Le Chardon, that restaurant was > called "Thistells". It was somebody trying to be > arty with the word thistles - or maybe they just > couldn't spell. The place became increasingly > eccentric. Towards the end, we went for a meal > and asked for tea after the dessert. The young > lad acting as waiter brought us the teapot, and > after a couple of minutes we poured our tea only > to find that it was incredibly weak. The manager > (the lad's mum I think) came and the two of them > peered inside the teapot. They'd forgotten to put > a teabag in. > > The Thistells name lives on because "Chardon" > means thistle, of course. > > Back in the 1980s there was another French > restaurant called Le Careme, I believe. It was > somewhere around the bottom of LL, but don't know > if it was on the Chardon site. Le Careme was where Sema Thai is today. Back in 1983 when I was a starving student in Camberwell my parents visited and took me to Sunday lunch there after it had a rave review in City Limits magazine. I can still remember a little bowl of peanuts being served alongside the roast beef, which I thought a little odd.

Soon after we moved to ED in 95 the small toy shop near the Cheese Block closed down. It was a great place to buy real toys like airfix kits and lego, not la-di-da dolls made out of fairtrade muesli. i can't help thinking if it had lasted a few more years when the area turned into nappy valley the owners would have been laughing and could have retired on the vast profits. I think there was another branch in Gypsy Hill, but what was its name?

An update since this morning ? there was a knock at my door around 1pm and it was the parcels postie with more packages (strange cos i rarely get one a week, but that's by the by....). I asked him if he had left the package by the door this morning and he said yes, he thought he was saving me a trip to collect it. I asked him not to do it in future which he seemed to accept, so hopefully all sorted. Until the next change of staff...

i think this has been touched on before but i just want to sound people out on this latest twist. Just arrived home at 10.30am and parcel left by front door. As it happens i work mainly from home but the ever-changing postmen don't know that. Is there any kind of official policy to dump things that don't fit in letterbox or do they simply do it because they can't be bothered to write card and carry it back to the sorting office. I presume it's the latter, but is there any point in complaining? I remember one complaint mentioned on another thread prompting a tirade of abuse from a postie. I suppose they could argue that they were doing it to help me out and save me a trip to the depot, but that wouldn't do much good if someone else helped themselves to the package.

Hi Muttley - I walked past the tyre shop at the weekend and it wasn't the 01 number that gave me a twinge of nostalgia, it was the fading Access sign sticking out at the side like an antique For Sale board. I'd completely forgotten about Access cards, which I think were one of the very first credit cards available in the UK. I wonder how many of those are still around in London.

Sorry to hear about your incident - particularly as this sounds like the same gang that threw apples at my car three sundays ago (not sure of week but definitely a Sunday) - although this was right up by the dulwich library. I didn't report it for fear of seeming like a middle-aged curmudgeon who would get short shrift from the hard-pressed police for complaining about teenage hi-jinx. Next time i will.