Angel

Yes like our house too! Mind you when I moved to ED in 1998 all the places I looked at needed loads of work and on my street I was one of the few people under 70. It's changed a lot all young families now.

I'm reading this with interest as we moved out to Bromley last year after years in East Dulwich. At the end of the day the really high property prices and the need for more space led us to look at other areas. Once we'd seen a few houses we were decided as you could just get so much more house and garden for your money. We were also looking at schools and the playing fields and less pressure on places attracted us. Things may change but at the moment we can see which schools the kids will go to at both primary and secondary level and know that they'll be able to walk to them (my partner grew up in London and had two hours commuting each day to get to his church school and we wanted to avoid that for any of us). We also knew we would be state educating our kids all the way through and wanted to be as sure as we could that we wouldn't be wanting to move again in four years. That's not to say that the schools here are better than those in ED there are pros and cons with each as there are with living in each place. We balanced up the commute for both of us, the schools, facilities for the kids, house and size of mortgage (and spent a lot of weekends dragging around the suburbs of SE London). I think having kids is the thing that really connects you into any community unless you are active in other ways through your work, volunteering or church. I was definitely in the using ED for sleeping and the odd bit of socialising camp before I had a child and started working part time. I miss loads of things about ED but it is only down the road and I find myself going back less and less and I've met lots of lovely people here (through kids!).

I think the photographs are normal council procedures as I've noticed them doing this when they've picked stuff up from us in the past. I assumed they wanted to cover themselves in case it's alleged they took away something they weren't supposed to.

Congratulations Oakwood Midwives! We will pop in it would be lovely to catch up with you 2 and a half years on.

I looked into this extensively two years ago. No joy anywhere. There is a newsagents on Woodvale that delivers but not down the hill. You could reserve a paper at the post office on Forest Hill Road and the newsagent by the bus stop told me he'd think delivering if I could find 50 other people who also wanted a delivery. You can get the Independent delivered if you subscribe to it and apparently it's a really good service although I've not tried it myself. If you have any joy please let us know!

I've noticed that too but I wondered if that was a deliberate ploy by the property developers who've bought them. They don't really want the punters to know they are being charged a premium of ?200k for the "designer" kitchen, bathroom and magnolia paint job do they....