tomskip

For ArchieCarlos - Billings on Sydenham High Street is also an excellent butchers and fishmongers.

It's a strange thread heading for sure. There are thousands of dual income hard-working families locally! Most of them aren't in a position to pay private school fees. Of course a 20% cost uplift is going to be hard for many private school parents, but the real question is - why is a private education in a weird loophole of not being seen as discretionary spending? As adults we pay VAT on clothing, heating, fuel, furniture, most purchases other than some foods. So private school fees being VAT exempt seems extraordinary.

Good luck to them. I should think anyone inclined to crowd fund in this borough has had their fingers stung by the non-starter projects of the proposed Lido at Peckham Rye and a green walkway following the train route from Peckham Rye? (memory a bit hazy) which have resulted in nothing.

I think it's an ambitious asking price, yes.

I've said it before and I'll say it again! I really don't think anyone needs a large brown wheelie bin unless they have a vast garden/are such keen gardeners that they fill it every week. You can buy paper garden sacks from the council. Put one or two of those out when you've had a busy pruning session. Keep a small compost heap in the garden for all your small prunings and fruit/veg waste, dead flowers etc. Say goodbye to that ugly brown bin on your driveway and get a brown kerbside bin. Keep that outside your back door for your non compostable food waste. Surely in a borough with mainly small or modest back gardens, a full sized brown wheelie is just not needed for the majority of households. You don't need it if it spends most of the year empty or nearly empty.

Just been outside to discover a parcel delivered by Royal Mail tucked slightly out of view under my bay window. It could have been there since before Christmas. The contents have been damaged by all the recent rain. No card through the door to alert us to this delivery. The person who sent it to me spent nearly £5.00 on that. So even if there has been an improvement this year (has there, really?) it's still a p*s* poor service imo.

This forum has readers in Dulwich Village (postcode is London SE21), East Dulwich (London SE22), West Dulwich (also SE21 mainly) and Peckham (London SE15) and house prices tend to vary rather a lot across the post codes. So it would be helpful to know what sort of house or flat you have in mind and what is your budget? I would recommend joining Mumsnet and posting on there. It's a huge site and you'll get lots of responses from people living in SE London. This forum is nice but a lot quieter.

Spinach Restaurant has been my favourite place for lunch, and dinner at the weekend, in recent years.

Thanks Angelina. Neither of the products I bought are available locally, sadly. And even if they were it would be from a large chain store. We don't use Amazon often at all - probably a year since last time - so I started my thread to see if this was the norm now or a problem just on my road.

We've had two deliveries from Amazon in the last two weeks. Both just dumped on our doorstep, in full view of the street, and no knock on the door. Both times we were at home. Both times we happened to open the door and see the box soon after it was delivered, just luck really. Do the drivers cover the same routes all the time or is it likely to be a variety of drivers?

What is the unused 1960s housing - where is it specifically? Any street views?

I always quite admire the smartly painted shop fronts on the row of shops on Lordship Lane leading up to Dulwich Common. Otoh, what has happened to the old Harvester Pub is a disgrace. Not sure if that's a council issue or a Dulwich Estate issue, but it's still awful.

I've posted about my son's late birthday cards on this forum for years. He's just received one - 9 days late. Not as bad as some years but still, enraging. And someone paid £1.10 for that service, which is rising to £1.25 from October 2nd! I guess sending letters and cards will become a thing of the past even sooner than we thought.

The problem with Ziffit is that what they pay per book is negligible and really not worth the effort. Most people, including OP it would seem, would prefer the books to go to charity where at least the charity gets 50p per paperback or something. If you give 50 paperbacks to charity and they earn £25 from them then that seems so much more worthwhile than earning £5 for yourself.

Vertical cracks on the staircase @malumbu. I was hoping for some local knowledge as I know that SE London and other properties built on clay soil can subside.

How do you know if your property is subsiding and who do you go to to get a sensible survey? And if the worst happens and subsidence is confirmed, what is it like to have it put right? Can you still live in the property while it is happening. Does buildings insurance cover it? Thanks in advance for all/any advice ...

I hope this cat is OK? We love to stop and say hello. He's popped into our house more than once. But I haven't seen him in a while, thinking about it.

For no particular reason, I'm wondering how many new homes have been built in East Dulwich since I moved here in 1996. I was out on an urban walk today and noticed a few new new-builds and it got me thinking. The big developments I can think of are Altima Court on the site of the old Ford salesroom. And the houses where the old wood yard used to be on the corner of Barry/Underhill Road and the houses on the other side. The flats above M&S (both sites). The houses at the lower numbers of Upland Road which used to be shops. I'm pretty sure we haven't added as many dwellings as we should have.

I just put mine out - never more than 2 or 3 at a time - and they are collected. I don't book anything separately. I imagine the £1 per bag is mostly the collection fee? So it's cost me about £15 this year to have my garden waste collected. I do also have a compost heap. Food waste goes in one of those small kerbside bins which I store outside the back door until bin day.

A year ago I bought 20 paper garden waste sacks for £20 and still have about 5 or 6 left despite having a very large garden. I'd suggest going down that route and the great bonus is you then don't need a fugly brown wheelie bin in your front garden or outside on the pavement.

Do we know when it opens?

I don't know if that was directed at me or not, but Upland Road and Dunstans Road could accommodate the cars of residents fairly comfortably until the removal of parking spaces from the mini roundabout at Goodrich / Upland up to the school gates. So residents from that stretch of the road, some with multiple vehicles, are parking further up meaning it is very common indeed now for people living further up the road from the school having to park on Dunstans Road (there is a lot of free space at the top near the fork with Upland). But now, with timed restrictions coming in on Dunstans, and residents parking permits if that scheme comes in, it won't be possible for us to use our car when we need to for our occasional commutes. So we will have to create a parking space in our front garden. It has nothing to do with "our spaces" or nimbyism. We are perfectly happy to park a distance from our house in order to keep our front garden. But not more than 2 streets away, that just isn't practical. So yes, I am complaining about people using their cars for the school run and behaving inconsiderately. The restrictions would not be necessary if parents didn't do this.

It's going to be gruesome on Upland Road when it starts. It's quite infuriating that so many residents on Upland, Dunstans and Goodrich are being inconvenienced just because some parents insist on driving their children right up to the school gates! Why not fine them every time? It would soon stop. From our point of view it looks like we'll have to fell our mature magnolia tree and pave over our front garden for a drive, which is something we've resisted doing since we moved here in 2004.

But why are they only asking more than 2 months later?