civilservant

Places that used to be good but are now crap - 39 posts so far Places that used to be crap but are now good - 14 posts, not counting this one Is everywhere going to hell in a handcart? Or is ED not populated by little rays of sunshine?

here's one we love - a slow-cooked Japanese mackerel dish by Hugh Fearlessly-Eating-All http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/chefs/hugh-fearnley-whittingstall/japanese-slow-cooked-mackerel-07-11-08 It's actually very quick to make. Once you've gobbled up all the fish, the left-over juices are lovely on plain rice

the Horniman conservatory would get my vote. I'm very keen on the Festival Hall as well, but doubt if you would be allowed to have a private party with cake and candles there.

The last line is not rude towards your daughter. It seems to be aimed at the parent. I think oimissus is right about the reason why. School trips, especially the 'big' one at Year 6, are aimed at helping children develop independence and resilience and are important in teaching them about how to get on with their peers. Why do you think that a week away from music practice will hurt?

Mine increased in frequency but declined slightly in virulence over the years until I was having 24-hour migraines twice a month when peri-menopausal GPs were no help at all, with some even questioning the link to hormones! The best thing I could do was take pain-killers in anticipation, and try to sleep them off - not easy when working full-time. I would have benefited a lot from the advice on this thread. Thankfully they have now ceased, and I feel 'normal' again. Hormones are over-rated IMO!

Who was Akerman? Sorry no idea. However the new Health Centre is on Patmos Road which is probably named because it leads to the church of St John the Divine i.e. St John of Patmos To help your blue-plaque pilgrimage, here's a guide to plaques commemorating Music Hall and Variety artistes http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Plaques/MusicHallArtistesCommemorativePlaques.htm See also this about the history of the local area http://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/a-z-articles The maps of the local area are fascinating and show how quickly DV and ED transformed from open fields to suburb within a very few decades

having a good old grouch on the EDF

FtG, fair enough, I just wondered why no mention (or not much). I'd have thought it was a red rag to the good old EDF. Since it's been done, no point starting up another whole thread about it. Simples! and thanks Alan M, I'm assuming that's a compliment? I'm smiling about your assumption though!

There's a blue plaque to Dan Leno just off Myatt's Fields in Camberwell. But I think Quids is right. I couldn't find any info about a Camberwell prison either. You might however be interested in Millbank prison http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millbank_Prison - this stood where the Tate Britain now stands. The Prison Service HQ is still on that site

Rites of passage are important I guess. But I've always been interested by the fact that proms seem to give rise to conflicting emotions in their home territory. In most US movies involving proms, the prom is presented as the pinnacle of a suburban life. The prom queen will shine for one night - at the age of 16 - before she vanishes into decades of dreary domesticity, while the prom king usually progresses into some dead-end job e.g. used-car dealer and develops a spare tyre of his own. Or else the prom is the vehicle for a revenge fantasy a la Carrie. Luckily I've got a few more years before I have to make a final decision on where I stand on end of secondary school rites of passage!

I think we've forgotten what it could be like for girls and women in the days before the pill and readily available contraception. In those days, if a girl from a 'respectable' family 'fell', the consequences were so much more serious for her than for anyone else. So maybe being mysterious and prudish about sex and reproduction might have had a protective function. I don't know for certain. All kinds of things have been done in the name of 'protecting' men and women from themselves. It's good to know that openly talking about this is helping to move us away from that. I saw this the other day - advice from the excellent Mariella Frostrup - and remarked to my partner that this was exactly what I would tell my daughter when she is older. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/10/mariella-frostrup-stable-tempted-ex. However, this is parental advice that I can permit myself now at the beginning of the 21st Century. A hundred years ago, I know that my advice would have been very different. And my partner agreed. A hundred years ago, what might he have said!

Cologne is 300 miles away and in another country but Westminster is 5 miles up the road Mick mac, why don't we talk about interesting decisions made by courts closer to home instead? Such as this one http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18835915 I'd have thought that this was ideal discussion material for the forum

sorry - should have read back a bit further on thread than I did

Saffron Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Just b/c FGM may not be in the "same league" as > male circumcision, does not mean that male > circumcision is not also an awful thing. The > foreskin is physiologically functional tissue. > You wouldn't cut off a baby's finger tip. Why cut > off the end of his penis? Whatever its origins, > modern medical science should seek to discourage > this practice on infants. Agree, but there are degrees of awfulness - and it's not comparing like for like to say that FGM is against the law so male circumcision should be too. This is a minefield, and while I too think circumcision is a barbaric practice, I'm in the comfortable position of being neither Jewish nor Muslim (nor African for that matter). But I am getting uncomfortable with the tone of this thread. Are people discussing issues of consent? Or are they complaining about Muslim/Jewish religious practice?

I'm with Saffron re terminology, and calling things by their right names IF one is using the terminology. However, there's the whole issue of medicalising female reproduction, and so why not use 'common' or 'vulgar' terms to designate the different bits? IMO it just indicates that these are normal body parts that are referred to in ordinary language. You can call a femur a thigh bone after all and no one will contest you on that. And why isn't anyone asking anyone else to talk to their little boy about his 'penis' rather than his 'willy'?

going to bed with a good book

El Pibe Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Is there any reason why it shouldn't be deemed > assault? Are ritualistic scarrings and female > circumcision banned, if so why *not* this? 'Female circumcision' is nowhere in the same league as ritualistic scarring or male circumcision. The correct term is Female genital mutilation, or FGM for the queasy. It involves EXcision or completely cutting away external genitalia - not just the removal of a flap of skin as in circumcision. These are all local cultural practices which seem to have become conflated with religious practice in the days when culture and religion were the same thing. Edited to add - FGM has sometimes been identified as a Muslim practice and exported to other parts of the world as such. It is not - it is a predominantly African cultural practice.

It was claimed by staff at Mary Chipperfield Promotions that she was the baby Asian elephant that famously appeared on children?s TV?s Blue Peter ... http://www.ad-international.org/animals_in_entertainment/go.php?id=2228&ssi=10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd-LtWtNvDw female elephants: teamwork, problem-solving, compassion, strong useful noses - what's not to like?

in ED possibly!

Sillywoman, don't get me wrong on this! Having been one of the protected ones, I'm very keen for my girl to learn independence earlier than I did. (Although being over-protected as a child has made me value independence that much more highly) My point was that it's important to consider how easy a route would be for a child to negotiate on his/her own. Even a quiet road can be a challenge to children - or even older people - if there's no properly marked crossing on it. Anyway, I think you'll agree that there's no point making a child do something that they aren't yet ready for, on the grounds that 'it's good for them'.

'smelly paddles' is this due to a. the fish van, about which many have already commented on other threads b. the rain, keeping everything wet and puddly? increased sightings of rats the rain and attendant flooding has driven the poor creatures out of their usual haunts and they are having to go out and about in daytime outside their normal hours street cleaners I've seen them hard at work right through the week dealing with the stuff that people insist on dumping on the street I wouldn't expect a street cleaner to be working after hours on a Saturday, would you? The stall holders also have a responsibility to clean up, and from what I can see, most of them do a decent job - although the smelly fish van could do more to hose its bit of the pavement down.

My nieces identified friends and older girls who were heading the same way when they started travelling to secondary school at age 11/12. They have a bus and a train ride to get there, but at least they have safety in numbers, and don't feel that they are being forced to rely on adult support. Before that I do feel that they are too young. When I walk with my daughter to her school, we sometimes meet a child walking alone to primary school. She's about 10 I think. I've noticed that she is quite nervous about crossing the road where there's no pelican crossing or lights and waits until someone else crosses and follows them over.

actually it's the front end that Moos... Nette for Dame-in-Chief, no contest!

My 8 year-old (girl) has known about 'mummy nappies' for ages but we haven't gone into the details of what they are for. She knows all about the different bits, and knows all about where babies grow, and about how they are fed etc - but we haven't yet had the discussion about exactly how they are made. I find that answering questions up-front - like Quids - means that she goes away satisfied, at least for the moment. IMO no point beating about the bush ;-) on the subject, although admit that I'm not sure how sanguine I'd be about little boys' pride in how 'big they'd made it'!