beth

Love those samosas! Yum, YUM! And nice bread! And fab vege roti wraps! God, you can tell I'm desparate now for any destraction from my work can't you?

ha, ha Dulwich mum! When I was pregnant, I would look at mums with their buggies in cafes and think how pathetic, I shall never be one of those selfish mums, I shall always park my buggie outside and carry my infant in my arms and quietly have a coffee without taking up so much room. Well, boy, did I get my come-up-pance! Very quickly, after having the sprog, I realised the problem. A baby under 6 months old or so can't sit in a highchair - too small, not enough muscles to keep it from slipping forward etc. So, you go into a cafe to have lunch or coffee. It's difficult to eat with a squirming sprog in arms. Also if sprog is asleep, you are desparate to enjoy a coffee and paper - again, leaving the babe in the buggy is the best option. I could go on and on but I'll leave it there - all I can say, is be smug about what you'd do as a parent before you've had kids at your peril - it'll just come straight back on you if you do have kiddies!

I would go along to something and give my time and support around the fundraising and setting up the trust but with a toddler in tow, I don't have the energy to be the leader or co-ordinator to get it together! It does really need a couple of energentic people with the time and energy to get it going. Also Keef and others, bear in mind that setting up a development trust isn't going to generate money for individuals - all money raised and profit gained will go back into the trust so the board running it would have to be prepared to be volunteers and not make a dime from the project themselves!

I went to the DTA website to look at the funding situation. I found this link which leads to some exciting new developments http://www.dta.org.uk/whatsnew/dtahottopics.htms: This includes the transfer of ?30 million worth of funding from councils to community led assets like development trusts. There is also the new unclaimed assets funding stream that is being set up by the Treasury to support community social enterprises which the trust could access. So I think it would be worth looking at the idea - particularly if the East Dulwich Community Trust could tap into some seed corn funding to get the ball rolling. Then, if the fesablity is done and the property is choosen with a strong potential to be income generating, the whole thing should be self-sustaining. And the profit would be plowed back into the trust. Anyway, I've got a background in putting together funding bids so I'd be willing to get involved if someone else wants to organise an initial meeting to look into this idea. Local councelliors should be involved as it's important so have some political will behind the project. 'DTA submits proposals to Unclaimed Assets Commission The DTA has submitted its response to the commission, with proposals for the creation of a fund of around ?150 - ?200 million over the next eight to ten years to help 500-650 community enterprise organisations acquire assets that will generate long-term benefits in their community. The DTA's response is in support of the commissions initial proposals to invest unclaimed assets into the third sector.'

Yes, I can but it would take alot of unpaid committment by volunteers and local residents to get the idea off the ground. I believe there are loans you can access for development trusts which would allow an initial property to be bought by the trust. (Charity Bank give loans to charities to buy property) Once the property starts genering income, the trust could use that income to purchase other property. The trust would be run by a board of directors - and therefore, the liablity for the directors would be limited (the trust would also become a company). All profits would go back into the trust - and the trust would have to generate enough profits to cover not only the property including maintence but fees for a paid worker to manage the activities of the trust and the properties - as in order to keep things running propertly the trust couldn't really depend on the time/labour of volunteer Directors. A trust could also access funding and grants from the state and even the Big Lottery which run a Community Buildings funding programme. See http://www.thebiglottery.org.uk Support for the idea could perhaps be sought from the relevant Southwark Council officers in the first instance? Or the local CVS - SAVO (Southwark Action for Voluntary Organisations). Initially, funding could be sought for a fesablity study - from a statutory funder or charitable trust. The Development Trusts Association might have more information about potential funders.

Again, look at the development trust idea as per my post above. It has worked in Coin Street and Notting Hill.

You could look at setting up a community development trust - such as the Coin Street Community Builders and the Notting Hill Trust that was set up many years ago with the same purpose and idea as what you are suggesting. There is a national organisation that supports community development trusts - click here for more info http://www.dta.org.uk/ Or you could look at setting up a Social Enterprise - go to Social Enterprise London at http://www.sel.org.uk for more information about social enterprises. The benefits to these options is that the risk to individuals is lessened and it becomes a truly community owned enterprise.

Rachel Cusk - Arlington Park

Yes, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'd like to echo Claire about Goose Green. My friend has sent her 10 year old to Goose Green and she has done really well. The school had a terrible reputation about 10 or so years ago but was designated a Fresh Start School - which meant the head and alot of teachers were sacked. The Headteacher Stuart May took over and is still there and according to my friend continuing to raise standards. Two years ago the school featured in the Evening Standard as the 2nd most improved school in all of England. The most recent league tables show that the school is achieving similiar results as Dog Kennel Hill, Goodrich, etc. It has a very strict anti-bullying policy and alot of after school activities, and a very good after-school club. Many local parents are put off by the previous reputation but there has been a steady stream of local middle class parents returning to the school. I plan on sending my boy there as it's our local school and I know of others planning the same. Another friend of mine is a supply teacher so he teaches at alot of schools in the area and says it's a good school, great spirit. His main comment was that the equipment i.e computers and so on were abit dated and scruffy but otherwise he recommends it. I've been to visit the school and been to their fete's and festival with my friend and I quite like it. Also, the nursery has a superb reputation and has lots of new equipment and play areas. Whatever you do, don't pin your hopes on just one school - some schools here are impossibly over-subscribed.

Yes, Peitou is the best, a great cafe where everyone knows your name, and owners Matt and Claire are lovely - but a bit mad at peak time! My guide to local cafe's is as follows (based on much experience of) Peititou, Chomert Rd- great cakes, scrambled eggs on toast divine and tuna with balasmic vinger fab. Everyone knows your name - crazy with kids at peak time but a wonderful place to go anytime - with or without the kiddies. Lucus and Richards (Bellenden Road) - Slightly subdued atmosphere but a nice place to read the paper and drink your tea in peace particularly if you don't have a kid in tow. Cafe Nero - Chain but lots of space for buggies/wheelchairs.Comfy chairs for breastfeeding Easy to work in and can easily avoid paying for broadband by linking into other servers in area. Staff are friendly and sometimes quite eccentric which is fun. No-one cares or hassles you if you stay the whole morning and just have 1 cup of coffee and read the free papers. Mon Peitit Chou - Lordship Lane - Great chilli, free papers, table layout abit awkward but nice and friendly. Blue Mountain - good food but alittle pricey. Some fun and friendly staff, great community noticeboard. Mad at peak times - easiest to come with baby at out of peak hours. Best to park the buggy outside or in the garden at the back. Tulip Cafe - Lordship Lane - FANTASTIC fry-ups, very affordable. Jack's - Pellat Road - lovely cafe, superb chocolate brownie warmed up with ice cream. Wish it was open on Sundays. Duliwch Park Cafe - the place to go with kiddies, playcorner, highchairs etc. Service and food variable however. Hornimann Museum Cafe - Great space - fantastic for families but mad with kids on Fridays and weekends. Food of variable quality but staff really nice. Uplands Cafe - Upland Road - Open early so great for breakfast before work or after dropping kids off at nursery. Lovely toast on crusty bread. Nice mix of people use cafe.

I like Jack's as well - great chocolate brownie with ice cream!! yum, yum! Really moist - not hard and crusty like some british brownies can be. The thing is, I go to a cafe of some description in this area at least once a day - if not twice (and going a third time isn't unknown)!! So I have to mix them up. This is because a) working at home can be boring and I sometimes get more done outside and b) if I didn't have the reward of a coffee to look forward to after an hour in the freezing cold at Goose Green playground motherhood wouldn't be worth living. So I find that different cafe's are great for different times of days/moods etc - and you can support the independents while also finding the Cafe Nero's useful and a good place to meet/work/feed babies/etc. I agree if an independent provider could provide the same thing as Cafe Nero, I would use it instead. But I do feel guilty if I go into an independent and just order a coffee on a busy Saturday - and as a struggling self-employed person, I can't really justify buying food at every cafe. That's why Nero is quite useful - I have no guilt about occupying a table at peak periods!

OK Hugo - point taken about the sentences! Cheers, Beth

p.s the cakes at Blue Mountain are primairly from Konditor and Cook - I recommend the Curly Wurly. But 'Let Them Eat Cake' at Bellenden Road is providing cakes for the owner of Blue Mountain's other venture in Fulham and hopefully, he'll use them at Blue Mountain soon. For yummy cakes from lovely Anna of Let Them Eat Cake, go to 157 Bellenden Road on Saturdays between 10 - 4pm or to put in an order email her at [email protected] She made the most divine cupcakes for my sprog's 2nd birthday.

The lovely Review in Bellenden road is great - Roz is really lovely and will always be pro-active. My partner went to Chener to by me a hardback book and was simply told by the staff person that they don't sell hardbacks so he then went to Waterstones in town. A friend went their for a particular book and was just told they don't have a section on that so she went to Dulwich books where they ordered it in for her. I've been in there when people have come in and been simply told no we don't have it. I do try to support it - I love their community notice board but the sign (and bucket in front of the door) coupled by the lack of customer service by some of the staff does sometimes make me feel like they don't really care if I buy a book there or not!

Totally right Dulwich Mum! What gets me, is that the new, revamped Sainbury's will be much more of a threat to Lordship Lane than Cafe Nero ever is really and none of the chattering classes seem to object to Sainbury's. Cafe Nero I think brought people into Lordship Lane. I don't have a car and rarely use Sainbury's now but before Cafe Nero, I was drawn there with the sprog by Starbucks - I was breastfeeding and there is nothing like a comfy sofa and hot coffee to bring in a b'feeding mum!! And I see the same thing with Cafe Nero, tired parents who need somewhere easy to go where they won't be tutted at, where they can b'feed in comfy chairs, where there is easy access to highchairs and where they can get buggies in and out with no fuss. My partner only takes the sprog to Cafe Nero when he is doing his childminding days - he feels (rightly or wrongly but it's how he feels) too self conscious in other venues where he feels like it is a big production to get in, to a table, get a highchair, fold up buggy etc. So he'll just return to Starbucks when it re-opens. Also, I wanted to say I also love Blue Mountain - some of the staff are just so lovely, particularly Louis who is fantastic with kids and really nice. Nice food (but ?1.70 for ONE slice of toast (I thought an order of toast meant two slices actually!), nice cake, nice space. But we only go there first thing with the sprog on weekends - it gets too crowded otherwise. And, as far as I can see, Cafe Nero didn't dent Blue Mountains business one dot!! So all this decision has done means that a coffee shop which admittly is part of a chain but where you can buy a coffee for just over ?1.50, which seems to attract a diverse range of local residents from the older gentleman who pitches up every morning to read the free papers to the tired b'feeding mum to the local teenagers who don't want to hang out on a street corner is going to be replaced by yet another retail outlet where there is little you can buy for under ?20. Great.

Personnally, I'm going to miss it. When I have the sprog, it's easily accessible with the pushchair - it has a clean loo and great babychanging area. I use alot of local cafe's as well - usually without the baby as when they are crowed, it's difficult to get all the baby stuff and highchair etc. And, as some of the posters to this website have expressed there is some antipathy towards parents with kids in other venues. It's an easy place to work in with the laptop as well - it pisses cafe owners off, people with laptops nursuing coffee forever but in Cafe Nero, it doesn't matter. The disability access is a good point - there are several regular users of cafe Nero who are disabled or have mobility problems and it's true that alot of the other independent shops have ignored the disabled access issue altogether. I think the popularity of this place points to a real need for a true coffee house that has the space for a range of people - buggies, people in wheelchairs, groups of teens looking for a hangout, older people wanting to read the paper, etc. etc. I don't want to feel like me and my baby are annoying people or taking up space by customers who would order more food than our coffees and juice! Personally, I think Cafe Nero drew people away from the Sainbury's where their is (or was) a Starbucks to the shopping area in Lordship Lane. What will happen when the new Sainbury's with new Starbucks is built is that people will have even more reason to not shop locally on Lordship Lane. If Cafe Nero was an independent, I'd much prefer it but I think there is a real need for the kind of service it provides.

Does anyone think the writers of the Archers are setting up a plot line that will come to a head in 20 years when Brian dies and Rory is left with the lion's share of his inheritance and owes the farm? Which put's annoying Adam's nose out of joint, and Alice is left surprised/resentful and upset that she had a brother she never knew about?

one last post from me - there have been plenty of solid academic research into the ways men and women use and experience public spaces different - I started googling the gender and use of space but too many references came up for me to trawl through them all and copy appropriate links for anyone who is interested (I'm supposed to be working really!) that I invite you do to the same. So it isn't surprising that men and women responding to this thread are reporting different experiences into use of the public space of the swimming pool. Also, sorry James if you felt I dismissed your experience as a single gay dad - I do know fathers who are just as much involved as mothers. But again, when we look at research into who does most of the child-care and domestic work what comes up again and again, is the majority of those who are spending more time with the kids and on the housework are women (Using a website recommended elsewhere on this by contributer to this thread (Monkey Piers) at www.Worldmapper.org I have a link which gives the stats to the hours the women worldwide spend in the home and the hours spent by men. Click on this link http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=137 for the hours spent by women and then go to next for the hours spent by men.) This of course has the cutting edge effect of meaning that men who do spend time with their kids experience discrimination in the workplace. However, longitudinal studies over the years do show men's involvement has increased significantly and flexible working patterns for both men and women are becoming more common. So let's all end on a hopefully note hey! Let's hear it for a utopian society here in East Dulwich sometime in the near future!

Unfortunately, gender inequality is still widespread - there is still pay gap for men and women for example and, as many survey into childcare/domestic work have shown, it still tends to be the woman who take primarily responsiblity for childcare. As I know points out her husband arranges things all the time, work do's and social things with the assumption that the default position is that she'll be home to look after the kids. Whereas when she plans a night out, she really has to plan it with him and he needs to put it in his diary. Likewise, another friend I know get's grief from her work because she needs to leave bang on 5 to pick up the kid from nursery and also takes time off when the kid is sick - whereas the bloke rarely takes time off and never picks up the kid from nursery. Alot of women don't think feminism is for them untill they have kids and realise how many gender assumptions there are around childcare and how discrimination - direct and indirect affect their lives. However, I am now breaking one of the golden rules and am going off message from this thread so I'll stop now before the heavy hand of the administrator slaps me down!

p.s personally, I'd like to campaign for the blokes to be the ones to be primarily (not just occasionally to give their female partners a break) responsible for feeding, bathing and putting to bed of the kids while the women enjoy a peak time swim or maybe even a drink after work? That'd be a worthwhile campaign to sign up to!

I'd like to refer anyone interested in finding out more about the need to provide services for women to http://www.whywomen.org.uk My views on the matter is that while many women are comfortable swimming in a mixed environment, many are not. There could be many reasons for this - religious reasons being just one. For example, some women have had negative experience of being jeered at by blokes which means they don't feel that great about swimming in a mixed environment - and would probably not go swimming in mixed or peak times. In town, there is a whole spa, the Santuary which is women-only and which is quite popular but rather expensive! In terms of the times, you also have to take into consideration that many women are often tied to child-caring responsiblities (I'll need another thread to rant on about the unequal gender division of child-care and domestic labour!). Which means that often, women looking after kids can't get out of the house untill the kids are fed, bathed and put to bed and their partner has returned home so they can then go out. That's probably the rationale behind the later times for the women only session.

Well, I guess they don't have the money that the private school kids do to buy the hard drugs! Seriously though, I've seen a mix of behaviour from the kids from various schools in East Dulwich - was on a bus listening to the most boorish, obnoxious little private school kids the other day talking about coke, getting pissed and being really nasty about some other kids that weren't in their little, exclusive clique. Again, teenagers the world over are a mixed bunch. Don't think you can judge how they are outside school on the school itself. I blame the parents myself!

I'm interested in people's thoughts when comparing the films Notes on a Scandal with Venus - both good films but interesting portrayl of sexuality in older people.

Keef - I wish I was taking commission from Anna but alas, I am just a loyal friend who loves her cake and really wants her cake making business to succeed. A suggestion about the layout of the stalls - I went last year and it was so crowded to get through the stalls - could they be laid out so that there is abit more space. Cheers, Beth

A stall with Anna's cakes (local cake maker) - yum, yum! Contact her at [email protected]