genwilliams

(Also, wasn't sure if this or the "items wanted" forum was more appropriate - I bow to the wisdom of the moderator!)

Can anyone point me towards any super cheap art studio space? My requirements are pretty minimal: I just need a small space with straight walls, ideally natural light (but frankly I'll manage without if need be, as long as it's not dark or dingy) and a power socket. My work is dry (soft pastel or oil pastel) and pretty portable so I don't really need storage etc. I'd be more than happy with somewhere I could rent on a day or afternoon rate; I'm not really looking for somewhere along the "?xx pcm" lines, because I work fulltime in the week! Just somewhere I can drop in at the weekend and work. I'm in Sydenham but looking in all surrounding areas - Forest Hill, East Dulwich, Peckham/Camberwell etc. Thank you!

Spider spray does help a bit - they don't like the smell (peppermint!) so will avoid rooms where you use it. I love my spider spray. Sprayed liberally on the thresholds of doors and windows! I'm told they are generally averse to citrus, peppermint and eucalyptus smells. All smells I am perfectly happy to have around my home, especially if they keep the horrid little beasties away. That said, there is a tiny little chap who seems to have taken up residence in a glass in my room. He's about 75mm across, and for a spider, *almost* cute (he's a bit like a cartoon spider), so given that he doesn't move a great deal, I'm happy for him to hang out as long as he doesn't do anything surprising.

I'm a pretty trenchant feminist. But if someone offers me their seat on the train (I don't expect them to, I'm in my early 30s so no-one would assume I need it), I'm happily surprised - I'll take it and say thank you. Transport during rush hour can be pretty self-serving and unfriendly, people shoving each other to get on packed trains etc - so something like that is refreshingly unselfish. A chap about my age got up and gave me his seat on the tube the other day and I just thought "how kind!" and thanked him. I can't tell you what his motivation for doing so was, but he wasn't flirty, creepy or patronising, so I just took it as a simple act of kindness. I agree that expectations about this sort of thing should generally be reserved for those less able to stand. But I don't think the pursuit of equality has to stop people doing nice things for each other. I like benefitting from chivalry, and I pay it back to both men and women; I like the idea of delinking it from problematic oldskool expectations about how men & women relate to each other. I guess if men and women all behaved in traditionally 'chivalrous' ways to each other, rather than it being how men "should" treat women (or are told they shouldn't any more), as a society we would just look out for each other more. LadyDeliah Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > No don't! With chivalry comes expectations and > preconditions, plus a load of other baggage women > have tried to get rid of for the past century. > > Eff that. I'd rather stand up than have someone > patronise me. > > If someone is less able to stand, whether they are > male or female, they should be given a seat. If > your feet are killing because you are wearing high > or tight shoes, get a pair of trainers.

I don't think one can compare the Overground service in south London to a tube service. The Overground is definitely useful particularly for commuting, but even setting aside the difference in frequency of trains, the seemingly constant engineering works mean that there's often limited or no weekend service anyway. That's true on both the Clapham Junction line and the Crystal Palace line - this weekend was a delight, finding that a return trip that should have taken about an hour and a half took twice that because the Overground was largely out of action. By the way, here's a fun bit of info I was told by someone who works for TFL: contractors often book station/line closures for works, but don't necessarily carry out the works - something changes, and the date gets shifted. The stations remain closed, though, because they didn't bother to cancel the closures and tell anyone they won't be showing up. So that's good, isn't it?

I'm moving house on Sat and tried to book Little Green Van (who've always been good) but they're fully booked over the weekend. Has anyone got any recommendations for other decent and modestly price local man+vans? Thanks!

Hello, Does anyone know where locally I might be able to shred some paper (for recycling)? I'm moving house and have a big pile of old papers/bills etc that I'd like to recycle, but I don't feel happy putting things with my personal details in a recycling bin. Thanks in advance x

I'd avoid trying to get an appointment at the Melbourne Grove surgery. I've been with them for years, and the service/care isn't bad, but just try getting through on the phone. I called this afternoon, and after a few minutes of the usual merry dance of "Call busy" / try again / "call busy" / try again that usually happens when you call them, I finally got through to an automated message which told me I was in a queue - number 3. Fine. Ten minutes later, I reached number 1, and then the phone started to ring. And ring. And ring. It's a slow day at work, so I let it carry on - just a ringing tone for ten minutes, with no sign of life on the other side. After a total of 25 minutes on hold, I hung up, and tried again. "Call busy". Total time wasted: about half an hour, to get nowhere at all. Useless.

If it's any use (and if you didn't already find someone), I used Little Green Van this weekend just past to move house, and they were excellent. The chap showed up early (though was happy to wait til the appointed hour if needed), was efficient and helpful, and the price was fair. I've used them before and I'd always recommend them.

I've been in & out of Kings a fair bit recently, in more than one department, and would like to second the words from other people here; I've been constantly impressed, in particular, by how much care the staff take to just be kind and reassuring to people. Being nice to people sounds like a no-brainer but when you see how full their waiting rooms are, how many people they have to look after, and how calm and patient the staff are all the time, it really does impress me.

My tuppence: the gardens at the back of 123 Grove Park are beautiful - I've been in a couple of times and it's a veritable forest - mostly untrodden by people, so a real haven for the kind of city wildlife that is fast running out of habitat in London. It's now rare to find such untouched spots in London. If the area behind 20/21 Grove Park is comparable, I hope it can be saved!

Haha! I managed to avoid odd stares by pretending to retie my shoelaces when anyone walked past. Obviously now everyone will know what I'm up to. Oh dear.

Good call. It may sound...er... eccentric, but when I went out today I took a tiny pot of honey with me. And managed to save a forlorn looking honey bee! It was lying sluggishly on the pavement. I fed it a bit of honey, and watched it fly off, to buzz another day. Hurrah.

Inside the home is the only place I'd ever previously seen dead bumblebees... I guess that's why it's so weird and unsettling seeing this many of them locally. And it really does seem to be within a few streets - between the corner of Soames Street and the fork at Bellenden Road / Avondale Rise seems to be a hotspot for it, I haven't seen them anywhere else. My bee knowledge is scant to say the least, but after a bit of googling it seems the one I saw earlier today (alive, then dead) might have been a queen - very big, black with an orangey-yellow end. Very beautiful actually, I was sorry to see it didn't survive. DulwichFox Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I found one in my living-room , not dead but very > 'drowsy' ??? > > Took it outside and tried to feed with orange > cordial. (Did not have any Honey which has worked > before) > > He was there for hours. but was still alive. ??? > Just.. > > Next time he was gone. ?? > > So either flew off or was blown away. ?? > > The Bee was very small. ?? > > Fox.

Um.. I'm a little perplexed as to why this was moved to the lounge? I posted it on the main board because it's specific to the local area and I wondered if any gardeners around here might be able to shed some light on what's making the bees die (i.e. maybe someone's using something toxic in their garden?). If something is killing them off it's a bit worrying.

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this... over the past month or so, I've seen lots of dead bumblebees around the Bellenden Road area. Usually just dead on the pavement or in the road. I know the weather's been pretty unpleasant of late but I see them even on drier or finer days - and would the wet weather account for them all? I saw four dead ones on Soames Street today alone (well, 3 dead ones and one that was crawling along the ground looking somewhat confused.. when I passed again an hour later, the poor little critter was dead.) Anyone else spotted this... any idea what might be causing it? A bit of googling suggests pesticides, illnesses among a colony, even mobile phone masts...! It's quite upsetting. I like bees.

It's a nice street. I live there, and quite happily tell people I live in Peckham Rye; SE15 = NOT East Dulwich! Mind you, if you cross the railway tracks (over the bridge on Avondale Rise) you'll start hearing residents tell you you're in Camberwell... :) Never had any trouble round here, and our neighbours are all lovely.

Boo. I like the bendy buses. As others have said, crowded as they are, at least you can usually get on. Overcrowded routes like the 12 (and the 453) are awful on doubledeckers and just result in angry passengers left at bus stops.

Agreed. A quick hello is fine but beyond that I'd rather be left to browse until I request some help (at which point, attentiveness is appreciated!)

(Also, that '78 bus route consultation' link above doesn't seem to work... it just opens a blank page?)

An extension to New Cross? Yes please.

A fine piece of writing, much of which I agree with, and a shame to see some of the cynical comments that have followed it. (If it's too long, don't read it, go and comment on something else. If you disagree, engage and talk about it, don't just dismiss it with a one-liner.) People seem to be confusing 'explain' with 'excuse'. No-one's saying those kids were right or justified in what they did, but if we don't try and understand why, and do something about it, we will never stop it happening again! You can't just erase the people that make your lives difficult by sticking them in infinite prison cells forever. Poverty and underprivilege has always resulted in violent unrest. It happened nearly 650 years ago in this city when a poor underclass demanded something different, and London was burned and looted and people were attacked and murdered. It has happened in various parts of the world many more times than my limited knowledge would allow me to document. When will people learn that you can squash one occurrence, but you will never stop it from happening again unless you address the ROOT CAUSES? Thugs aren't born, and these kids aren't mindless or plain stupid - something deeprooted caused the frenzy of the last few days, beyond the one documented trigger of Mark Duggan's death, and it's too simplistic to just call it unprovoked greed.

BB100, you're right. When my sister and I were teenagers and both of my parents worked fulltime, we spent most of our summers at inner-city summer clubs, held 5 days a week in school buildings during the holidays. It was basically a daytime youth club with set start & finish times - it mixed specific organised activities (typically sports and art activities) and general hanging out in a supervised environment with other kids, with occasional field trips. My parents would have been up the creek without access to these council-organised services. What else could we have done? Sat at home watching TV all day? Greeeat. Roamed the streets? No thanks. One of our parents having to take the whole summer off work to supervise us? Not an option. I'd have been happy in the library some of the time, but I was a bookworm, and not all kids are. And that was back before so many of the services for kids were cut. The options now are deeply limited. I saw a pertinent interview with an eloquent teenage girl in Wood Green yesterday. She explained that if there are no youth clubs to go to, the teenagers she knows just hang out together outside their local station, McDonalds etc. She said they don't want trouble, but sometimes other groups approach and threaten them or pick fights etc. And then she described going to a party, bringing a male friend (with permission from the host), and then seeing a group of kids attack her friend for being from the wrong area. The excessive amounts of their spare time that teenagers spend on the streets, with nothing engaging to occupy them, makes it unsurprising that groups of them become territorial, drawing lines around 'their patch' and starting trouble with other kids from outside it. I think much of it stems from boredom and what they see young adults doing in their areas. No wonder some teenagers feel safer joining gangs and surrounding themselves with a protective bunch of 'mates'. Teenagers, though they may try to ape adults (sometimes in the worst ways), are NOT adults, and they need support, supervision and provision of time and services from the adult world around them, or they can become a frustrated and apathetic force to be reckoned with. BB100 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > twofourseven Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > > It is a fact that if any kids brings home > stolen > > goods then the parents are accessory to the > crime > > committed. So, where are the parents of these > > people. > > > > Believe it or not some parents are actually at > work whilst their children are left to do as they > please. My neighbour, who is a single parent, has > two young teenagers she leaves at home when she > goes to work and one of them causes trouble when > she is not there and has been invloved with the > police. > > Councils have had to drastically cut the youth > provision during school hols this year so there > are not the activities available there have been > in the past. This year there is no 'Summer Uni' in > Lewisham for teenagers which was a really fabulous > provision for two weeks of the summer hols. > Additionally, LAs tend to cater for early and > middle childhood but there is very little for > teenagers to do. Where there are activities they > can be very expensive - sometimes upto ?30 per > day. This year my teenagers have very little to do > because of the cuts so I sent them out of London > to spend time with family but not many people can > do that. If they play in the street people > complain if a ball nudges their car. If they go to > the shops adults stare at them suspiciously. If > they go to the free swimming they get bullied by > other boys. There used to be free organised ball > games in the local park but this has been stopped > by the cuts. The parks are not well supervised and > my boys have been mugged by other boys even when I > was walking a distance behind them. They refuse to > go to the adventure playgrounds because it's full > of younger children. The local library has > closed....I could go on. > > Children's services have been cut in a disgraceful > way and unfortunately when young people feel > society does not care about them they have little > reason to care for society.