Muttley

This little train is one of the most important links in my journeys to and from the centre, I'll be signing the petition. Until about ten years ago, incidentally, this was also surely the cheapest train journey into central London. For years when singles from East Dulwich cost ?1.80 or so, you could travel single from Denmark Hill to Victoria for just ?1. Sadly they spotted that loophole and the prices rocketed.

Reggie - are you referring to the tree on Melbourne that is opposite Colwell Road? If so, that tree produced no leaves this year and so is surely dead. A lot of horse chestnuts have been suffering from (a) 2006 drought and (b) a disease. But the chestnuts of Melbourne Grove are a local treasure, and I hope the rest survive, or that they plant some new ones. The other trees that are getting to the end of their shelf life are the damson trees - on Colwell and also Worlingham I think. Was never so keen on those because of their dark red leaves.

Generally I've found Keen Group and all the predecessors reliable (with a couple of notable exceptions). They used to have drivers who would honk from the street rather than bothering to knock on the door, but thankfully that antisocial practice seems to have largely disappeared. My main concern at them no longer being an East Dulwich centred firm is that the drivers are likely to be less familiar with the rat runs around here, eg avoiding the schools in rush hour, avoiding Camberwell Green etc.

Maybe the picture of TJ in Stratford was just pasted in after the event, that seems to be the done thing with sport and culture ministers these days.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/7018729.stm

mockney piers Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It's genuine. > Well, at the very least it's from her office, > can't guarantee authorship though. A bit like the > Osbournes thread there I guess. Hmm, been doing some detective work. At 6.11pm, "TJMP" posts on the EDF. At 7.15pm, she is on a panel in Stratford (just saw it on the news) talking about the Olympics bid. So are we to believe that the last thing she did before leaving the office was tap in her message, then pack her briefcase, leap into a cab and say "get me to Stratford quick!". Or maybe she had her laptop backstage and thought "ooh I have a few spare minutes, why don't I log on to EDF". Do I smell a rat?

Another candidate for EDF Thread Of The Year.

Health & Safety put paid to that little game. Now it's safety goggles all round apparently.

First there was Carol Cars, everyone's favourite East Dulwich minicab service of the 1990s, based at the bottom of Barry Road. They were then taken over by Dulwich Cars, who renamed themselves APT [thanks Bigstew], then they became "Carriages" (what a pretentious name). Now they are called "The Keen Group". It's still the same phone number it always was, 8299 4000, but it turns out that the Keen Group are actually a Clapham minicab company. So is this how all the Claphamites are getting here? Does what used to be "Carol Cars" still employ any people in East Dulwich, or has this business entirely gone West? I think we should be told.

Hey, I can't believe that nobody has commented on the fact that at 6.11pm this evening there was a post on this thread from TJMP (who registered today). Lot's of people register under 'famous' pseudonymns on EDF, Mr Nesbitt for example, but is this one genuine? The content seems bona fide.

Wonderful. If there was a Hall of Fame for the best ED Forum threads of the year, this one would defin*tely get my vote. In fact...

On the elderly theme... Wilfred is a new arrival at the residential home. On his first evening he's in the lounge and starts talking to Mabel. "How old do you think I am?" he asks her. Without any warning, Mabel plunges her hand down his pyjama trousers, rummages around his private parts, and confidently says "Eighty-one". Wilfred is stunned. "How do you know that?". "I heard you telling matron this morning" says Mabel.

> Lower your carbon footprint and ditch the motor > and you can lower car crime at the same time. > Viola. Viola? Music to my ears.

Has anyone seen that the Landells Road Grand-Design house is for sale again, at ?850k. Actually, it's not clear, is this: (a) The 'spare' house that Talisman built that has been on the market since July (b) Ditto, but being sold on by whoever bought it after just a few weeks ownership © Talisman's house itself. So, what's the story?

Sad news to report, looks like Foxtons USA is about to go bankrupt. There will be a lot of second hand mini coopers on the market in New York. I wonder if the company has overstretched itself anywhere else? :)) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/09/28/cnfox128.xml

Oh Phuket.

Before it became Le Chardon, that restaurant was called "Thistells". It was somebody trying to be arty with the word thistles - or maybe they just couldn't spell. The place became increasingly eccentric. Towards the end, we went for a meal and asked for tea after the dessert. The young lad acting as waiter brought us the teapot, and after a couple of minutes we poured our tea only to find that it was incredibly weak. The manager (the lad's mum I think) came and the two of them peered inside the teapot. They'd forgotten to put a teabag in. The Thistells name lives on because "Chardon" means thistle, of course. Back in the 1980s there was another French restaurant called Le Careme, I believe. It was somewhere around the bottom of LL, but don't know if it was on the Chardon site.

Mark is right, it could well be a case of the sign going up before the information is out there. But I still don't like.

Foxtons are like the cuckoo in the nest. Or the Trojan horse ("timeo Foxtonians, et balloonas ferentes"). I looked at the screens in their windows today. Every property I saw advertised was SW something. They don't even have the courtesy to invade SE22 and advertise local properties. They are outsiders. Strangely, a house on my road has got the Foxton sign up, but there's no sign of it on their website, and nothing about it in their window, nor on rightmove or other sites. So it seems that the only way that you'd know it was for sale was if you happened to go past and spot the sign on the street, and the only way to find out any more is presumably to go and register at the Foxton office. A bit like those insidious timeshare schemes where they lure you in with goodies, then give you the hard sell. I don't like.

Well done. There's only one CPR in Britain according to Streetmap. The larger than life Mr M(alcolm) Allison was manager of Crystal Palace at that time, which is presumably the reason behind the name (as Ted Max suggested, simultaneously).

No, not as far as I know. It's actually an explicit SE22 reference.

What is the connection between East Dulwich and Morecambe & Wise's most famous sketch, "The Stripper" ?

We're sending ours to Heber starting in Jan, so will experience Yr 1 next year. Were really impressed by the head, and the general feel of the school - liked it more than Dulwich Infants, in fact. Teachers come and go, so what was great two years ago can suddenly get much worse, and vice versa. But a key factor with Heber and other local schools is the changing demographics. Heber used to be a 'sink' school and locals avoided it where they could. Now, helped by the SE22 baby boom, it is in demand, and it is attracting parents who have a much stronger interest in the running of the school. And the vibe of the school(especially the head) means it will tend to attract better teachers, too. I gather there were one or two very poor teachers who left, or were eased out, in the last couple of years. I'm excited at the prospect of being involved with a smallish school that is 'on the up' rather than one that is trading off a past reputation.

A quick look at Rightmove suggests that perhaps 30 "properties" (god I hate that word) are coming onto the market each week at present in SE22. Foxtons say they are looking for 200 properties for their 0% offer, and they've probably hooked a fair portion of these already. So, you can expect that a large number of Foxton properties will hit the market on launch day. Prepare for a sudden flood of properties on the market, with Foxton signs everywhere. I wonder if this might mean that local prices DROP for a while because of oversupply, the opposite of Foxtons' (supposed) normal impact on local markets. Of all the local agents, I expect Haart to be the ones who will be competing most savagely with Foxtons.

The cabby actually lives in one of the houses further down, not boarded up. As he told it to me (maybe two months ago)a couple of the houses had already succumbed and sold up, but he was holding out because he had a great carp pond in his garden, and where was he ever going to be able to find a place in East Dulwich where he could put a carp pond. I may be wrong about the carp by the way, but it was some sort of fish.

Spotted lots of things on my 176 journey from Denmark Hill today. First, I noted that the frame is now up for the triangular shaped designer house on the corner plot at the top of Dog Kennel Hill. A new Grand Design? Meanwhile, the top house on the ED side of DKH remains boarded up. A cabbie told me some time back he owns one of those houses, and the developers of DKH want to buy him out so they can build another one, but he's not having it (unless they pay him a lot more). Anyone know any more about this? At the bottom of DKH, I notice that the shop opposite the station (at GV15) now has a Let sign. Will it be Starbucks? We'll soon find out. Sweeping up LL, I see that the little Foxtons shop signs are now attached, so there's no turning back now. And then, if that's not enough excitement for one day, I notice they're digging up the pavement outside Jerk Rock. The redevelopment of Midtown is underway. Phew, I think I need to lie down.