Carrie

I guess it depends on the age of the babysitter and whether they are nannies or not - my 16 year old daughters charge ?5 per hour but tend to work quite locally so within walking distance of home.

You don't have a choice of polling stations benjaminty - you have to vote on the one shown on your polling card - you obviously made a lucky guess.

The lease of the other flat will almost certainly contain a clause requiring you as freeholder to carry out the works but not until you have received the contribution towards the cost from the owner of the other flat - so you should not end up out of pocket. Obviously there is always a chance that the other flat owner does not pay up and you have to get the work done anyway to prevent the property from falling into disrepair but you can then take court action to recover the money and recoup the money either via the mortgagees (if the owner of the other flat has a mortgage) or eventually by forfeiting the lease! If you are getting a flat with a freehold I would advise you to hold onto it rather than trying to sell it off - makes your flat easier to sell in the future and prevents you from getting shafted by one of the unscrupulous freehold companies that are around!

That is one advantage of the boundary changes - now that we have been siphoned off into Peckham and Camberwell constituency we are getting absolutely no leaflets at all as all the energy is being put into Dulwich and West Norwood!

I had a very pronounced lisp as a child for which I had speech therapy when I was 6 - still have a slight lisp but not many people notice it. I have 2 cousins who also had a pronounced lisp when they were younger (it is a family trait) who did not have speech therapy - and still have a pronounced lisp as adults - don't really think it has held them back in life though. I doubt very much could be achieved through speech therapy at your daughters age and it may well sort itself out as she gets older - I would have thought 5 or 6 would be the earliest anything could really be achieved through speech therapy in any event.

My aunt (aged 83) wants to go online but is understandably wary of getting out of her depth with technospeak. I have found a computer specifically designed for older people called SimplicITy -(have tried to add a link but my computer is not playing ball - the website is www.discount-age.co.uk/simplicity_computers/) which seems to offer all that she would need - e-mail/web browsing/documents in a very simple to use format but wondered whether anyone else had ever seen one in action and could advise whether it was any good.

Definitely Peckham - I am at the end of Oglander and put Peckham as my address

It is actually an offence to drive on the pavement - so if you adopt Peckham Rose's suggestion you could find yourself facing fines from Southwark.

It may well be due to a change in the level of the water table - if so a better route than tanking is to install a cavity membrane with a sump and pump - a friend of mine has just had this done by Assured Preservations but I would imagine all damp proofing companies would offer it - basically the water collects in the sump and then gets pumped out into the drainage system

With the proviso that my experience was some years ago now - but I would second the opinion that controlled crying does not work until they are over 8 months - I was referred to the sleep clinic when my twins were 6 months old and I had to return to work - despite getting no more than 45 minutes uninterrupted sleep at a time throughout the night. They told me then that they would not normally take on anyone whose baby was less than 9 months old but made an exception as my case was so bad!! Indeed the controlled crying technique did not work until they were nearly 9 months old when they first slept through the whole night( although I hasten to add that I did not leave them crying at night for 3 months!) I had made the mistake of feeding them to sleep (initially it was much easier to cope that way) - so when they woke up they did not know how to get themselves back to sleep. The first stage was to switch the night time feeds from breast to bottle - then over time diluting the feeds more and more so that eventually they were just getting water. That had a dramatic effect on the number of times they woke up and the number of hours of uninterrupted sleep I could get, so by the time I did try the controlled crying technique I was much stronger mentally (and physically) Do speak to your health visitor/gp and get a referral to the sleep clinic - it is a fantastic resource - and don't try controlled crying just yet - from what I have gathered your baby is just too young for it to work effectively and it will just shred your nerves even further when you are already at a low ebb from sleep deprivation. I know a lot of people regard controlled crying in a negative light- but I can truthfully say that I have two happy, bright, loving 16 year old daughters who do not appear to have suffered in any way from their experience of controlled crying - and sometimes it becomes the only option left!

The newsagent near Greetings (I think it is called something like V7) do helium balloons

My OH wrote to TJ about Melbourne Grove Health Centre and got a response back within about a week - all in all I don't think that is a bad service from a busy MP given the size of postbag she must have

W**F - I am a conveyancing solicitor at Glazer Delmar (one of the forum sponsors) - so have some (!) experience of estate agents - but this is the first time (in god knows how many years) that I have actually had a client successfully find a buyer through an online site and so just thought I would pass the name on to the OP as that was what he was looking for.

One of my clients has sold through www.housenetwork.co.uk - don't know anything about them but may be worth checking out

We have been very impressed with the art department at Charter - both my two are doing art GCSE there at the moment and one is going on to do art A-level there - the other is going to do photography.

The Bloomfield Learning Centre do assessments - up near London Bridge

The best bit of advice I ever got was don't feed them to sleep - otherwise they don't learn to go to sleep without feeding and so whenever they wake in the night they will want to feed to get back to sleep again - unfortunately I got the advice too late when I was being woken up every 45 minutes by one twin or the other and had to go to sleep training sessions in an effort to preserve my sanity.

Make sure you take some of that handwash gel and use it every time you touch the money - it really is filthy!

I saw a parked scooter knocked over this morning on Melbourne Grove - could not stop to see whether the driver left her details as I was late for an appointment but just in case she didn't I did make a note of the reg number of the car. If it was your scooter you can pm me.

You could go for a nice walk in the country which would bring "roses" to your cheeks - if no-one is likely to give you the real kind!

You could try Carlton Jefferson just opposite barclays bank on Rye Lane

Roald Dahl

I think the intention was to make Sternhall Lane a dead end and narrow the exit from Nigel Road so there could only be one lane of traffic exiting rather than 2 - which will only cause more traffic jams - when they did the consultation I suggested that a better idea would be to put a yellow box junction in front of Nigel Road so that the traffic queuing at the lights bat the Rye Lane/Heaton Road junction did not block the cars tryintg to turn right onto the lower part of Rye Lane. These road schemes can only be thought up by people who don't live in the locality - nice ideas on paper but an absolute nightmare in practice.

Horniman museum

"Dr Marigold and Mr Chops" - starring Simon Callow - is fantastic - at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith until the end of the month.