PinkyB

I have just bought a flat in Penge, the top end near Crystal Palace Park and the Bridge House. I feel very, very lucky, that I just bought it in the nick of time. It took me the best part of two years to buy, for various reasons (problems selling my late father's house, more problems when a flat I was buying last February fell through). I looked at over 40 places in total - I was a first time buyer, with less than ?200k to spend, and I was looking to buy in various areas that I didn't know very well. I looked at one-bed flats in Forest Hill, Sydenham, Crofton Park, Crystal Palace, Gipsy Hill, Beckenham, Kent House, Anerley, and Penge. During those two years, I was priced out of first Forest Hill, then Sydenham, and now if you look on the property websites, I have been pretty much priced out of Penge as well. There is now (Feb 2014) very little on the market for under ?200k, and the flats that are usually have something wrong with them, need work done that you can't afford, are on the tenth floor, above a shop on a main road, auction properties with their own issues, etc. One year ago I could have bought one of several nice one bed Victorian flats near Penge East station (Mosslea Road) for ?185,000. Instead I decided to go for a 2 bed in a 1930s block for the same price, 15 minutes further away from the station. By the time that chain collapsed, not even 2 months later, those nice 1 bed Victorian flats near Penge East station were pushing ?200k. I was told at a viewing for one of them that if I didn't make an offer right then and there, I would not stand a chance, because they would get lots of offers at the asking price and over. By the time I had my offer accepted on the flat I eventually bought, in September, I had to offer nearly ?6,000 over the asking price, and they had six over-asking price offers. I had to borrow more money from the bank to be able to afford anything at all. The flat I bought is in the same block, and the exact same size and condition, as the flat that fell through. I had to pay ?25,000 more, just seven months on. I was terrified the whole time that the purchase would fall through again and I wouldn't be able to afford anywhere in the area, and would have to start the whole process again somewhere else. In the New Year, another flat came onto the market in the same block - 2 beds, exact same layout as mine, not quite as good condition. It was on at ?300k. Now, that was Foxtons (who know nothing of Penge) chancing their arm/ taking the piss, but the way things are going, I don't think it will be long. There's now almost nothing on the market for less than ?200k in either Penge or Anerley. A lot of 1-beds are now pushing ?250k. Some are already on over ?300k. It's nuts. This is Penge. *Penge.* The papers might be full of hand-wringing about foreign investors pushing up prices in Notting Hill and Kensington and Chelsea, but I have to explain where Penge is to my work colleagues who live in other parts of London. It's a far-flung suburb right on the edge of London. It's, to put it politely, "up and coming". How do first-time buyers get on the property ladder when they get priced out of places like Penge? How the hell do families afford to buy whole houses? It can't be long before there are no affordable areas left in London at all, but nobody can afford to move out and commute in either. It can't possibly be sustainable.

I have a wooden garden bench which needs repair, but posts on both Mybuilder and Ratedpeople elicited a grand total of zero responses. Does anyone know of a good carpenter or joiner locally who will undertake furniture repairs? It's not an antique, just a much-loved piece of furniture I'd like to be able to use again. Photos and further details can be provided.

No, just sold off by them.

On the promise of a large cash handout if they demutualised, and giving plenty of time for carpetbaggers to set up accounts purely in order to make a fast buck. Basically taking a short-term personal gain over the long-term benefit of the company and the members as a whole. And didn't they do well? Not a single one of those privatised companies is still going, at leastr, without being propped up by the state.

Wingnuts and chancers, mostly!

I know, I didn't realise there were no results til Sunday either. I usually stay up to watch results come in, but on a Sunday evening I'm usually tucked up in bed not long after Countryfile. Bah. Has anyone seen any local campaigning going on at all? The first I've seen was tonight, coming out of Honor Oak station, a man handing out leaflets and just saying "European Elections!" No party badge, signs, any other paraphernalia, just one anonymous well-dressed bloke handing out leaflets. Anyway, I took one, and it wasn't until I was halfway down the road that I realised it was for the Tories. If I hadn't been loaded down with shopping I might have gone and given it back to him: "Thanks for the leaflet, but I'm old enough to remember the total effing mess you lot made of the country last time, how you took us into two wars, two recessions, how you sold off council houses, decimated manufacturing and heavy industry, and oh yeah, let's not forget how you privatised a load of building societies that had been built up for over a century on the hard-earned money of ordinary people, and let them be driven into the ground by money-grubbing public school bastards. Labour may have royally pissed on the hopes of everyone who voted for them in 1997 actually believing that "things can only get better", but hell will freeze over before I can ever bring myself to vote Conservative." I have to say, thank Christ this wasn't a general election, because the question of who we DO actually vote for now is a nearly impossible one to answer.

Cheers Louisiana, I shall jump on the P4 tonight and give it a go! (just for me though, might be chancing my arm a bit to ask if I can vote for my flatmate at the same time)

Tht's actually really useful to hear because I moved house in April and can't find my voting card. So basically I can just turn up without any proof of who I am and they'll let me do my democratic duty? Presumably I could also have voted on behalf of a lazy flatmate of the same sex who I knew wasn't going to bother?

You mean authentic Indian cookery doesn't use sultanas? Damn it, I've been chucking in a handful of raisins to all my homemade curries for years! Next you'll be telling me the onion bhaji comes from Colchester. Can you still get Vesta curry? I could just eat one right now, yum.

I've seen Timothy Spall coming out of an off-licence in Honor Oak, does that count?

Excellent thread, really interesting. Me: born and brought up in Sussex, went to college in Leicester, left with rubbish degree in useless subject, spent 9 months back in Brighton on the dole and living with my dad, that was a joy. He was on long-term sick benefit at the time, so it was a house of misery all round, really. I had ?5 a fortnight spending money after paying for food, rent, travel, stamps and paper for job application forms, etc, which I used to spend on buying as many second hand novels as I could. I thought of it as sanity money. You can't join the job scheme until you've been unemployed for six months, at which point they paid for my travel, I had access to a free typewriter to write letters, free stamps and envelopes. Subsequently sent 200 spec letters to companies I might vaguely be qualified to work for. From the 200 letters I got 2 job interviews and from that, 1 job offer. Starting 2 days later, in London. It might just as easily have been in Norfolk or Birmingham, since I'd applied to companies all over the country. Anyway, moved up here for the job, living in Tooting originally because I had family there, then all over the place: Willesden, Bethnal Green, Hackney, Forest Gate, Holloway, Seven Sisters, Honor Oak, East Dulwich and Honor Oak again. Wouldn't live anywhere else now. Although I keep planning to leave London, pretty much every year since I arrived (12 years ago), there are so many advantages to living here that they outweigh the disadvantages by a long margin. I can get anywhere else in the country easily, if I don't fancy the West End I can go to Islington or the King's Road, or the South Bank, or Hampstead Heath, or Kew Gardens, there are a million places to go so you need never be bored. There are cinemas showing films I want to see and not just the latest blockbuster, there are fantastic parks and museums and galleries, and rather more prosaically, there are jobs. Which is probably the reason quite a large proportion of people live here and not, say, Wiltshire.

Just bumping this up so it's near the top for tomorrow morning. Basically... YES YOU SHOULD!

Probably whilst rolling about on a giant pile of US public speaking tour money, like a really sick version of that scene from Indecent Proposal.

Gosh, that sounds utterly revolting. Mind you, my granddad used to eat dripping on toast every morning for breakfast, so there are obviously degrees of revolting.

Somewhere Tony Blair is laughing and laughing and laughing.