tomskip

And "I consider feeding junk food to kids is abuse" - for heaven's sake! Read the op, read the actual words he/or she posted and try to understand them. Giving a kid the occasional McDonald's isn't in the same league!

Penguin's post was irrelevant and a thread de-railer. I hope the opening post has rung bells with someone and that that poor child (or children) can be helped.

Thanks all. Seabag, I have taken your advice and ordered from Fosse Meadows Farm for collection in Brockley on Christmas Eve. Am hopeful it will be a great success.

... wwyd? I like a turkey on the 25th but I just can't get my head round ordering things for Christmas when I don't even really acknowledge Christmas is happening until about the 15th. I need a free range bird but other than that am not absolutely precious about it. No matter how hard I try I never seem to be able to hit the Sainsbury's Dog Kennel Hill tiny window of opportunity for getting the small free range ones off the shelf. Any tips on a good time to get to Sainsbos? And if not there, then were else? Does the Co-Op do them? Lidl in Peckham? Waitrose in Beckenham? Given that the weather is balmy and my fridge is quite small, I'm not going to want to store it for too long. Cheers.

I agree that the solo of Once In Royal David's City on R4 is a very significant moment, but for me Christmas starts mid-December when we put our tree up (we do have fairly young children). By then we have sent most of the Christmas cards - if not bought all the presents or the food shop and so we are starting to feel a wee bit Christmassy. It will be 12th/13th December for us this year.

Do you have a place to move to yet elln? I only ask because I am sure there are no addresses in East Dulwich which would qualify for a catchment place at all of those schools.

Ah. Habs was the one we just didn't bother with second time around.

It's infuriating all this isn't it? Most of us just want our children to go to a reasonably local school with reasonable results given their mixed intake (and most of SE London will have a mixed intake with odd unusual pockets like Dulwich Village to liven things up a bit). But NO! it seems to be impossible. And you really do have to be a clued-up, sharp-elbowed and pretty determined parent to ensure your child gets the best offer possible. Of course there are thousands of children in Southwark and Lewisham who don't have such an adult on their side.

The banding tests are a pita, and when it came to applying for our second child we certainly didn't bother with sending him for the tests at those schools where we had no chance of getting a place (utter waste of time). However, while we don't have a Schools Admissions Forum, I can't see what you hope to achieve, op, by boycotting them? In Lewisham, certainly, they are used to ensure that a school takes an even mix of abilities. Harris and Kingsdale are a law unto themselves (another reason why an Admissions Forum would be welcome) as ITATM says.

Thanks. You can't do it if you are driving down Denmark Hill towards Camberwell Green? This is obviously where I went horribly wrong.

What is the trick to finding one's way to the car park behind Morrisons in Camberwell (I think the shopping centre is called Butterfly Walk). Thanks.

Without being intrusive, it would be nice to know how the critically injured pupil is doing. I'm sure the school is learning every lesson possible.

Honestly, don't watch ITV!

ITV always take a negative stance, but then you can't really put a positive spin on this incident.

Oh merci Monkey! I will send you a pm.

Hello, I just wondered if there are any native or fluent French speakers in the Family Room who would be willing to record themselves reading out my daughter's French homework so that she can practice her accent and pronounciation? It is only a 3-4 minute piece, which she has already written, but it is vital for her French gcse oral exam. We would be so grateful! Please pm if you can help. I would need about 5 minutes of your time some time on Friday, or Saturday morning. Thank you.

Thanks for that summary first mate. Helpful for those of us who haven't been following the whole saga. I too would have preferred a Waitrose to M&S, but even better if it could have stayed as was with affordable housing above.

Decathlon usually have flip flops year round.

Its a terrible situation to be in, and one shared by so many single parents. As a family unit, your housing costs must now be very much higher (?) but even so a contribution of ?400 for two children seems very low from someone earning a salary like that.

So, one half of a couple leaves the other, leaves the two young children behind, and then never has to worry again about the cost of their childcare? How can anyone even think that is logical or acceptable? Presumably HelloSailor has "work needs" because she needs to provide for the children apart from anything else. The alternative is to give up work and become totally dependent on benefits.

Perhaps not many children from East Dulwich go to Harris Crystal Palace? I've lived here for a long time and have yet to meet one that does. Isn't it like a super-selective grammar for those outside their catchment? It is yet another school with yet another set of admissions rules in a supposedly comprehensive area! When you try to explain it to your 10 year old you find we have an inconsistent system that argues on the one hand it is absolutely imperative for secondary aged children and all of their siblings go to their closest school (see Charter ED's proposed admissions priorities). But if you don't happen to live quite close enough or have an older sibling with a place, then parents should instead be adventurous and grateful and send their child to a school, even a faith school in a faith they do not share, quite a distance away where he or she will know not one soul on the first day of term. And all that time the child will be crossing paths on their school journey with children who live much further afield travelling in to the school which, actually, they would have liked to attend. When you say "I have no idea what people think should be done" LondonMix, I could say - specifically in East Dulwich - that 1. Harris Boys and Girls could become co-ed and with no selective element as most parents seems to prefer co-ed 2. Kingsdale could become a "local" not pan-London secondary, without a selective element, and class sizes of 30 and, more generally 3. the sibling priority dropped at secondary age T'aint never going to happen though is it, while there is no equivalent of the old Local Authority input.

I don't know, but wherever you choose can you post your destination here so that the rest of us can avoid it ;)

I don't believe for one minute that any child in East Dulwich has a chance of getting in to six reasonably local secondary schools (if they are not going for private or grammar). I'm really curious to know if anyone in the whole country does, actually. It seems to me that if you are made to put down six preferences then that helps when the Government wants to provide statistics showing that nearly 100% of parents get one of their preferred schools. When in reality we all only have two, at best three, schools that our children could get in to or indeed want to get in to. When I was applying for my first child I actually put this question to Renata and she suggested Deptford Green or, did I have a religion and could I put down a faith school? I put down the three schools we had a chance of getting in to (this included Kingsdale - so a very remote chance) and just filled up the bottom three places on this list with schools vaguely in the vicinity. With my second child I did not make the mistake of wasting his time taking him to banding tests at, for example, Habs. As I understand it, Dunraven is Streatham's equivalent of the Charter School and has a minute catchment area, so no, we are nowhere near close enough.

I saw it today. What has happened about that planning application to build in the back garden? (I thought they should have converted it to one 3 or 4 bed house above, with a self contained lower ground floor flat, with half the garden each by the way).

If she has been with you for years and standards have only just dipped then surely you need to be speaking to her and asking her if everything is ok with her? Trying to find out why things have changed, not just assuming that she is ripping you off or needs to be got rid of.