tomskip

I hope you sought medical attention for your dog bite op! There has recently been a story about death caused by a dog bite in the news.

So sorry, how horrible for you. Hope you weren't badly hurt.

Of course the sweets are going to be expensive. They have to shift an awful lot of confectionery to cover a Lordship Lane rent.

Thanks sheilarose - I was trying to remember if it was called The Secret Garden in Walworth Road. In the summer you could actually eat out in the wild and wonderful secret garden.

He probably used the meagre pickings to buy drugs or alcohol or pay for his gambling addiction so that's rather tragic in itself (annoying for you of course!). Someone broke into my car and stole a bulging Sainsburys carrier bag. All it contained was home-made compost donated by my Mum. A tiny part of me still feels sorry for him/her.

And another opticians which I really don't think our high street needs. The fact is that our online shopping habits have reduced the need for local shops. Perhaps, in view of the acute housing shortage in London, we should be thinking of reverting commercial premises back to domestic (as has been the case in various side streets in ED).

Oh my, these two most recent posts are very amusing!

I'm going to keep going with the paper bags I think. Just prefer them to having my front garden completely cluttered up with fugly bins.

Wasn't it called The Secret Garden restaurant on Walworth Road? Was very fond of that place. I think they kept the name for a while when they relocated to ED.

Perhaps we should ask our neighbours in Lewisham how they manage it. A friend of mine in Catford says she pays "about ?70" for garden waste collection (she couldn't remember the exact figure). I'll ask what she does about naughty people using her bin.

We eat out as a family once in a blue moon partly because we are rarely all together but also, yes, because of the cost! I'd love to earn what you lot are earning.

Ah, sad to see there hasn't been much demand for the bowling.

Wtf with the minimising of such crimes on this thread? The photo of the mugger on Gilkes Crescent is awful. So sorry to hear of teens having their confidence battered and the police apparently unable to do anything about it.

954m for Charter ED? that excludes an awful lot of SE22 then (as predicted).

I went to Superdrug today ... in Forest Hill. At least in Forest Hill I can get 1.5 hours guaranteed parking free of charge. Won't be able to say the same in East Dulwich soon, sadly.

?30.00 p/a. ?1.15 every two weeks to have a brown wheelie bin full of garden waste taken away. Doesn't seem bad value to me.

I'm with you NXJen - such an inordinate amount of fuss over almost nothing. Where my Mum lives (a city but not London) the council still doesn't even collect glass for recycling.

Yes Dimples, 1 blue bin, 1 small green bin, 1 brown kerbside caddy (kept outside the back door) therefore 2 bins in my front garden. We got rid of our large brown bin years ago as it is an eyesore and not needed.

Sandyman - you'll have the smaller one because food waste collection will still be free of charge. If you don't fill your large brown bin with garden waste every week then ask the council to take it back. If you have such a large garden that you generate a lot of garden waste, then you'll have room for a compost bin or compost heap. The rest of the time you can use the paper sacks. My small brown bin sits outside the back door until collection day so we only have 2 bins (and the green one is a small size one despite us being a family of 4 adults yet somehow we manage) in our front garden now. It's not rocket surgery.

Yes, siblings automatically getting a place on the first sibling's lucky outcome in the lottery. Odd.

"The solution is to make all the schools as desirable as the most popular ones ..." easier said than done, I think! The removal of the sibling priority would make the whole process fairer (and yes, in an area with many single sex schools it's an oddity in itself) and would discourage the adroit moving into and out of rental properties that we all know goes on. Also, Kingsdale should not operate a lottery system in a vacuum. Either all schools in a borough do it or none do. But I and many other parents were saying all this back in 2011 - so good luck with your petition Oscar 38!

This has been an issue in East Dulwich for years! It's a shame that the new Charter school (with virtually the same catchment as Charter 1) doesn't appear to have alleviated the problem and there are still black hole areas. I think the removal of sibling priority would help but as motorbird says, when all the schools are in charge of their own admissions and there is no overall Local Authority control, then an "I'm all right Jack" mentality prevails. Automatic sibling priority doesn't even apply equally to all children in the borough. It's a mess.

I think if you have a garden in SE22 and need a brown bin emptied weekly to deal with all the cuttings, then you probably can afford ?30 per year for having that waste taken away. I'm not sure I know what a Corbynista agenda is but local authorities have to find a way to pay for schools, social care and everything else while having their budgets cut and cut again under the Conservative austerity "we're all in it together" policy.

I love this thread - but I'm sorry for your dilemma JW! We once moved a 3 seat sofa bed into a tiny Devon cottage. It had to go over a 5ft high wall into the rear courtyard and in through the back door. One of the movers who achieved this feat was little more than 5ft himself. I'm sorry, I know that's not helpful.

EDPineapple - we asked to swap our large brown wheelie for a kerbside bin several years ago. We also swapped our green bin for a slightly smaller one. It was done within a week. Iirc it just took a phone call to the Council. You could probably just fill in an online form now.