Asset

Exactly!

Look I'm sorry to be a pedant but I'm getting annoyed by the frequency of this. The last straw was when Mockney did it. It's Hear Hear.

Well, they would do that route if there was no other option. I think most cyclists will happily go a longer route to have a quieter and safer ride so maybe you should push for the existing paths to be adapted rather than a new path built. It happened a few years ago in Kensington Gardens which never had cycle paths but then a couple of the major paths were adapted for cycles to share (after a lot of pushing by the LCC) and it works fine. I agree there are a lot of twits on bikes who show no regard for their surroundings but then that can be extrapolated to society in general can't it.

Where is Ultraconsultancy when we need him?

would it be a new path built or would existing paths be altered to accomodate? There is no map but it sounds like it is going to be along an edge rather that across the middle. Can't be too disruptive along the edge.

In my experience of shared cycle lanes/pavements, pedestrians constantly wander over the designated cycle path making cyclists move onto pavement areas to avoid a collision, so its not just about "cyclists acting as though they own the strip". Any new cycle lanes are a good thing in my view.

yes, and it has to be a five-lever mortice.

I grew up with spitfires which have the advantage of a hard top for the winter and a soft one for the summer. It was great as a kid driving around with the roof down (obviously not me driving). You see a lot more of the surroundings and don't feel so caged.

Bendy buses are okay in, say Manhattan where the streets are all straight up and down or across and the buses hardly ever have to make a turn. In London with its narrow streets and higgledy piggledy layout they are not really practical. I suspect as it is cheaper to cram more people onto longer buses they will continue to be used. I would be interested to see if Bumbling Boris got the mayor job he would be able to carry out his pledge to get rid of them and commission a modern version of the routemaster.

bendy buses only been around in London for the last three or four years, where did you use them before? apparently they have twice as many collisions as other buses and that is a statistic from TFL itself!

How was Boothby Graffo Sean? I have to say whenever I heard his show on the R4 comedy slot I thought he was awful. Maybe he's better live but the radio show was cringingly bad.

I know, it's horrible. Especially when there are people around giving you looks like you are a bad mother if your child makes a noise. Sadly it is a very British condition.

Can you generalise like that? Not all 'black churches' are too loud and some 'white churches' are loud. So maybe it is not a race based issue at all, it is just an issue about one church that is being loud. Do they leave the doors open? Perhaps a polite request that doors are closed would help. Is there amplified music? That would be an issue for the council noise abatement bunch. Wouldn't mind a bit of Gregorian chanting of a Sunday myself.

my youngest is 3. It is very difficult to reason with a 3 year old. I don't for one moment think that my children are well behaved all the time and god, how boring they would turn out if they were! Children will never learn how to behave in social situations if they are not put in them, and personally I advocate taking children to restaurants etc. I don't however advocate bad behaviour. But bad behaviour is subjective. Some people might consider a child that is talking a little loudly to be badly behaved, but do you remember being a child and trying to make a point in a conversation, only to have the adults at the table ignore you? Again, children will never learn how to moderate their behaviour in social situations without practice.

OK, how about this, your two utterly delightful children go with you to a pub for Sunday lunch. They are sitting fairly nicely at the table etc etc. Then, a family comes in with a couple of kids of around the same age who proceed to run around and be noisy. Your children see this and naturally want to join in. How can you tell your kids to sit still and eat nicely when there are other kids running riot? Believe me, I've been in this situation. When and if you are a parent you will encounter this.

2 & 3 looks like Brook Drive in E&C. (Also the location of a Dexy's Midnight Runners video). The church looks really familiar to me too.

or as LuvPeckham suggests, tube from E&C, still a pain. Actually I've got to do it in a few weeks so this is a handy discussion! I will prob do Herne Hill - Victoria - Heathrow.

getting from here to West London anywhere is a bloody hassle. What train would you get from East Croydon to Heathrow? It still involves going to Victoria to pick up the tube. So you might as well get the bus to Victoria as Sean suggests or pop to Herne Hill and get the train from there to Victoria. Or get the train from ED to London Bridge, then the tube to Paddington then the Heathrow Express, phew - get a cab.

We can imagine though

can I just say that my expletive was pretty mild.

Let him out have you?

seems alright now, gremlins about.

OMG, syntax errors and unexpected stuff messages, no sections when I try to jump. is there a bug in the system?

Have you just done something Admin?

I think this is a picture of a House Spider Tegenaria domestica. Mr Asset and I have been having an argument about spiders now for about half an hour. I've been looking at my Observer's book of insects and spiders.