Dorothy

What would happen if I were to call local plod and say I had seen a drugs dealing thing going on and could give quite a good description of the dealer and also an address in ED I saw him going in to. Anything?

Leee John's (of Imagination fame) mother's retirement party.

Ha ha! I thought about this thread when he said that Mrs TP (was there too) and I nearly laughed out loud. By the way, did you hear him near as darnit saying "forget about being offered a place here unless you put us no. 1 on your list"? Of course he can't say anything as overt as that, but he made it extremely plain in a number of other ways. I cannot begin to convey my frustration with that school and its cloak and dagger admissions policy.

Oh dear, poor old Southwark, now we may be going back to weekly collections. For what its worth I think we should have: - paper sacks for garden rubbish only. You put a paper sack out, they put a new one through your door. I imagine that only about 1 in 10 of those garden rubbish bins are actually filled every week - we have probably one of the bigger back gardens in the area and hardly ever fill it completely. - mini brown bin outside for food waste. Those of us who have been on the trial were given the option of having these, they are about the size of a small pedal bin but you keep them outside and have a small kitchen caddy inside. We are a family of four and fill our kitchen caddy about twice in a week, although we also compost things like vegetable peelings, but that would easily fit in one of these mini brown bins I'm talking about. - a second blue box for people who do not want a hideous blue bin - a smaller green bin for anyone who requests one It would be great if neighbours, particularly in flats, could come to bin sharing arrangements, so that maybe there are four wheelies between two houses, instead of three in every front garden/outside every front door.

Yes, please can we keep all comments on one thread? I believe I am the first to complain about the blue wheelie impact on our landscape, it was about a fortnight ago.

No, Coach Beth, the banding system definitely does not work like that - if it did we would be living in a sort of pseudo-grammar system.

Couldn't agree more with you Mrs TP. There is no "system" and no proper range of provision in the secondary schools in this Borough. Poor kids, I feel sorry for them.

Hi Renata I am applying to Charter (unlikely to get a place due to where we live), Kingsdale (very unlikely to get a place due to their selection process) and Sydenham Girls (hoping for a place) for my very academic non-sporty non-musical daughter. Which schools should I put in places 4, 5 and 6, given that I would like her to go to school relatively locally? Thank you.

If you use disposable nappies, shake the poo down the loo! We have been on the bi-weekly rubbish collection scheme for at least a year and it has been absolutely fine but I am really narked that we are going to be given a third (blue) wheelie bin for bottles and cans etc which are now going to be collected fortnightly instead of weekly. I just don't want a third bin in my small front garden and I realise I am lucky to have a front garden, lots of my neighbours have to leave their bins on the street which is crowded enough already with two bins outside each house. They are ugly and significantly reduce the space on the pavement, and make our neighbourhoods look dirty and cluttered. I am going to refuse a third bin and recycle at the supermarket more frequently.

What can I do? I can still post on here if I go back to my old Internet Explorer browser. But I prefer GoogleChrome (much faster) but get told "sorry, only recognised posters can post on this forum". Do I need to re-register or something? Can I keep my posting name?

No, really, it is the very best time of the year and (today excepted obviously) traditionally has the most wonderful weather. In Autumn you expect cooler, chillier weather and the gorgeously sunny days of September are a bonus. In August you are hoping against hope for sun and the clouds and drizzle just let you down day after day. My son and I both have September birthdays. When he was born it was absolutely sweltering. My birthday is right at the end of the month but I usually have an outdoor lunch or meal out somewhere to celebrate.

I was just wondering if in general people got a secondary school place that they were happy with? Has the Charter catchment shrunk even further, is Kingsdale's admissions process any clearer? With the new school year starting, I guess that all the shaking-down that was going to happen has now done so. Are there still any 11 year olds out there without a secondary school place? Am interested as the parent of a 10 year old who has just started Year 6.

Next maternity dress, cardigan, socks, bra, slippers for my crash c-section. Theatre gown for my elective.

Meant to say I would never eat any kind of ready meal pasta. It just doesn't work.

Marks & Spencer melting middle salmon fishcakes with watercress sauce Marco Pierre White Indian Chicken Soup (can get from Sainsbs)

I have lived in ED for coming up to 16 years too, but WHAT is the point of this thread Dulwich Fox? I have seen plenty of planes today.

Thanks for replying. Well, I phoned A&E to get a sense of their wait times and they advised me to go to the walk-in GP Centre in Peckham (the one linked to by taper). All fine, quite smart actually, and was seen very quickly by a nurse practitioner. She gave me a prescription to be collected from the Day Lewis pharmacy attached. But pharmacy was closed between 2 and 3pm! And I also had to pay for the prescription which grates ever so slightly because, presumably, if I'd been seen at A&E or at my GP Surgery I wouldn't have had to pay. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I am a tiny bit annoyed about that. Just a tiny bit.

My doctors surgery (The Gardens) has just told me I have to go to A&E for a tetanus injection. Is there anywhere else I can walk in for one locally? I can't bear the idea of a 4 hour wait at King's.

Lucky Were you not invited to the meeting we are discussing on this thread?

"If parents are for or against the proposal by the school governors for Goodwich (sic) to beocme an academy they should be properly informed and allowed to vote on it. If they decide yes ... they should then vote on which school to federate with, with each selling itself to the parents." How does that square with your assertion that the Governors were too slow to react to the offer from Kingsdale James?: "And I can confirm Kingsdale did ask Goodrich and two other schools earlier this year whether they would like to federate with them - the other two schools had emergency governor meeings within 24hours and fed back their responses within 24hours. Goodrich governors did not treat this offer with urgency and I'd be amazed if they didn't burn of some goodwill in the process." The Governors are now consulting with the parents, we are in the process. It does seem inevitable that there will be more and more Academies across the country, since this is the stated aim of the present Government. I am not happy about it (and sceptical that it will achieve the magic Outstanding rating for Goodrich within two years). More than anything I'd like to see more consistency in the teaching at the school, more long-serving teachers, less staff turnover. My daughter has been at the school since Nursery and has had eight teachers in that time, only three of whom are still there.

How odd! I've been to this cafe twice (weekday lunchtimes). Have no complaints about the food or service, but haven't been back because on both occasions I've been the only person in there without a baby or toddler in tow. Both times I've eaten at this cafe I have sat next to a table of at least 8 NCT mums and babies. To me my impression of this cafe is that you only go there if you are with very small children.

I never wanted one - but it wasn't too onerous for me to put nappies straight in to the outside bin, I appreciate that that's different if you live in a flat or have mobility issues. By the way, if you line the nappies with a disposable nappy liner and flush that away after each pooey change then the whole thing of having nappies in the wheelie bin becomes a lot less unpleasant.

Most of them now seem to have been painted over again.

I was sorry to see the level of hostility shown towards the governors last night. Who are, after all, hardly doing the job for fun. I have tried hard to imagine a scenario in which a governor at the school could gain something personally, for themselves or their child (if they are a parent-g), which would cause them to push for this conversion as opposed to leaving the status quo. In the absence of any proof of personal benefit to the governors then I have to believe that this process has been started with their genuine collective belief that this is a positive move for the school. I agree that it is unfortunate that this needs to be consulted upon right now, as the general unrest at the school in recent months is doubtless clouding the issue. I think the academy v non-academy debate is separate to anything that needs to be said about teaching and learning at the school. A friend who is a parent governor at an "Outstanding" school in Southwark tells me their school is going through the same process right now.

Crikey! Is it wrong that I now find this completely hilarious?