civilservant

Doesn't look like it - judging from the posts, he's found a little friend but he's already cruising perilously close to a bruising He's got a family? My heartfelt sympathies to them.

there are worse - the ones which demand extra-wide parking spaces for when they go shopping with their mangy cubs

Dear ED parents, do you think that Damian H might be placated if we were to go home NOW and execute our children because they are the unique cause of our wicked sense of entitlement and greed for extra-wide parking spaces? After all, it's been done before e.g. massacre of the innocents, Rwanda...

light my fire - the doors

welcome back, Sue, hope laptop better soon agree that John's map is fascinating TM, sorry to hear about your hedgehog near-miss. I must admit I've only ever been near one on two occasions - once when I thought that one was hibernating in the box in my garage and another time when I heard strange sounds coming from my elderly neighbour's overgrown garden. There seemed to be a thing or things charging around through the long grass making the most extraordinary loud grunting noises. After a lot of peering into the grass from over the collapsed fence, I discovered that the hullabaloo was coming from a quite small pair of hedgehogs, who were getting to know each other rather better...

Damian H, I thought about replying But frankly, your sad one-man crusade against pram pushers just isn't worth my time.

Folsom Prison Blues - Johnny Cash

ok - maybe 'serious problem' was a slight exaggeration, although I do find it hard to get down NXRd if I'm in a hurry, say to catch a bus. Maybe I should use another (longer) route. but the smell and fishy waste water from the fish van IS disgusting, and it is positioned at a particularly awkward bottleneck bit of the pavement. I do too love your argument, which can be summarised as "it's been disgusting there for 20 years, so it should continue to be disgusting for ever".

Damian H, I too do not drive and I too do my shopping on foot, and yes, I too "end up with plastic bag handles cutting into my hands, sore feet and do my shopping at busy times frequently because, as you correctly observe, I earn a living during the day." But unlike you, I have a small child. so in addition to working full time, I have the additional burden of ensuring that she is fed, clothed and properly 'parented'. I suspect that you do not have any children yourself, as you don't seem to be aware of exactly how much hard work that is. (I admit that I am lucky enough to have a partner who does drive and who does much of the family shopping. But he has no problem with parking in an 'ordinary' space, because he knows from experience how much they are needed by people with very small children (or people with a disability, for that matter). Yes, at times, ED can seem like a hideous amalgam of Nappy Valley and the Stepford Wives. I know exactly what you mean. But I'm not going to insist that everyone with small children be banished to some sort of kinder-ghetto or be made stay at home because of the inconvenience that prams and buggies and babies might cause to the child-free. My child is now just old enough to be a good and caring younger member of the ED community. What helped to make her so was every little bit of help that I had from the community when I too was pregnant or pushing a buggy. So there is a return on your investment of patience and sympathy, but it's a long-term one, and you've got to be prepared to wait.

wow, flapjackdavey (sue???), immortality beckons - the Flapjack Map of the ED Valley no less!

> Where Do The Children Play?: Cat Stevens Suffer Little Children - The Smiths

You'll find there are a load of other threads about this elsewhere on the Forum I'm all for having stalls facing the road - it eases the congestion on the pavement which has been a serious problem for non-market going road users. That's the whole point of blocking off the road, isn't it, that people can stroll and browse? and I wish that the fish van would turn around to face the road - the pavement there is unspeakable after it's been. but agree that Southwark needs to put a lot more into it if it wants to turn the market into the hoped-for council revenue generating cash-cow

love the irony, TM, wonder whether they renamed it Ratgrove I'm not for a moment calling for foxes to be put down - you might have seen from some of my posts on other threads that I'm all for allowing our local wildlife to find its own balance, including foxes and rats. My concern is about the unnecessary human impact on wildlife. I hear from the experts that the main threat to hedgehogs is human tidying up of the environment. The main problems are 'habitat fragmentation' i.e. roads and unbroken fences between gardens that hedgehogs (who need to range) can't cross, barriers such as netting that hedgehogs get trapped in and tear their limbs on, mowers and strimmers that can injure hedgehogs hiding in long grass, poisons such as slug pellets and insecticides, and of course bonfires and terriers and other dogs. Hedgehogs are not very bright. They are fazed by most man-made obstacles. They pose absolutely no threat to humans - even their fleas are hedgehog-specific. Their response to danger is passive-aggressive i.e. rolling up into a ball. I can't think of any other British animal that is so helpless in the face of the march of urban/suburban tidying up of the landscape. http://www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/images/new%20image/hedgehog%20being%20hand%20fed.jpg I'm going to be finding about what we can do and will share info as soon as I can.

not sure that would stop him,and hedgehog babies aren't very prickly...

apparently they prefer beetles and worms the problem with slugs and snails seems to be that they carry lungworm and other parasites which can be fatal for mammals, including dogs but my dream of persuading the neighbours to help set up a hedgehog sanctuary across our back gardens has taken a bad knock - it turns out that there's a major hedgehog peril actually living in our house i.e. our little ruffian of a terrier!

John's post sent me back to look at the hedgehog website. It appears that I was wrong to suggest that hedgehogs eat frogs - and also wrong to think that they relish slugs and snails. I didn't see the info about fox population density, but suspect that we've got a few more than 6 fox families in our valley.

thirded, buggie

sweet! but alas I suspect that hoglets eat froglets... when I lived in Surrey, I supplied a hedgehog with a comfy cardboard box to hibernate in and took care not to disturb it all winter long, only to find in the spring that the occupant had moved out some time earlier without leaving a forwarding address!

Sadly not, it seems, edh I got in touch with Hugh Warwick at the British Hedgehog Preservation Society some time ago - his book here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prickly-Affair-Charm-Hedgehog/dp/0141034297/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313268496&sr=1-1 - and one thing he said was that their hedgehog census showed that the hedgehog population is particularly low in SE London, which I find hard to understand given that we have big parks and so many leafy spaces. I'm sure that he/they can advise on what we can do in ED.

Rick Channing - your three days' worth of posts certainly looks like trolling to me. What I can't understand is why you choose to locate yourself and your family among a bunch of "f@ckin' hippies". If DJKQ and I (http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?20,722334,724666,page=3#msg-724666) can manage to find common cause with the Daily Telegraph, how come you can't find even one point of agreement with your neighbors?

o children - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

riposte - Its actual title is For What It's Worth. But "The song's title appears nowhere in its lyrics; it is more easily remembered by the first line of chorus: "Stop, children, what's that sound?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_What_It%27s_Worth_%28Buffalo_Springfield_song%29 so no we aren't back to Rise Jah Jah Children

stop, Children, what's that sound - buffalo springfield

solutions, SNT = Safer Neighbourhood Team Here is a link to the ED one - http://www.met.police.uk/teams/southwark/eastdulwich/

Who'll stop the rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival