RoseK

Wanted: Female vocalist for a very commercial pop music recording project aimed at the over 40's/50's. Think Fleetwood Mac/Blondie driven not only by guitars but also Irish instruments. Please leave a PM or email Neil on: [email protected]

Venice is built on trees. Millions of them, upright, making pylons buried in the lagoon and surrounding swamps to support the buildings. But there are still plenty left - some 500 years old. (Here's a photograph of some huge trees in Venice - an entire avenue of them: http://www.worldofstock.com/closeups/TEI1510.php - type in trees, venice, or this ref: Image ID: TEI1510 ) A town without trees is a sad place indeed. Hot, airless, noisy, depressing. It is obvious that JRussell has a phobic fear of trees - and needs help. At the present rate of out of control population growth, people will destroy the planet - then how will all the billions of starving people exist? Trees will return, as they did in South and Central America.

Blame the council and react accordingly - some of us (not I!) voted them in. There are now so many halfway houses along East Dulwich Grove, filled with druggies and assorted riffraff, your hair would stand on end if you realised what's happening. Parts of East Dulwich are more than 'unsafe' - they're dangerous. Do you see police patrolling on foot, early or late? No. I no longer go anywhere on foot on my own after dark, as I used to. (And I've been told it dangerous in broad daylight as well.)

Wank-poo, wanky-poo - sounds like my resident wren. So sweet! Then there are blue tits and robins, both species are pretty unmelodic that early as well. Blackbirds sing beautifully. One perches on my roof ridge - I can see it out of the window at dawn. Worth waking up early just to listen! (And as someone said, soon it will be dark, and the dawn chorus will merge into traffic and plane noise. I know what I would rather have.)

If it were a police officer then he should have seen what was going on. It is - or was - part of their training to have 360 degree vision. In other words, to be aware of the full picture - and it's not as if Goose Green is very big. But biting dogs, elderly ladies and a crowd are Trouble with a capital T; and a traffic ticket is cash for the council (good boy) and targets met (very good boy).

A year or so ago I read in the news that Ruth Kelly (or was it Tessa Jowell? - it might have been Jowell, and then Kelly when she got the job) said they would be building new high density housing on the Dulwich Hospital site - no debate. What happened to that ill-thought out plan? It baffles me how the hospital was half pulled down, instead of being refurbished, which it could so easily have been done. It was a solidly built, historic local landmark.