hellosailor

I bought the bee one but second hand on ebay, you can get them very cheaply on there and they are pristine cos of course the baby hasn't used them for very long!

Dulwich DIY have lots of colours

thanks everyone, that's great!

thank you

Does anyone knit, or know someone who knits, things like cardigans for babies? I would like to pay someone to knit a couple of cardigans, nothing too expensive or fancy, would just be nice to be able to pick the colours myself rather than have to go for pale pink or blue with shop bought ones! Please let me know if so! thanks

Hello there, My first baby is due on Feb 13th and would love to meet you if there is a meet happening on 11th, so will keep my eye on this thread! x

Thanks so much for your advice everyone :)

Can someone who knows the answer to this please tell me, thanks! We're having our first baby soon and have bought maxi cosi cabriofix and was intending to buy isofix to go with it. I now realise that isofix is compatible with only certain models and newer cars and although I haven't checked with the manafacturers yet, I'm guessing that our 12 year old golf is not going to be compatible. Assuming it turns out that it isn't, am I right in thinking that there is a way in which you can simply strap the maxi cosi car seat onto the back seat using the regular car seat belt? And that while this is not as super duper as the bang up to the minute safety stuff like isofix, as long as you do this properly, it is still safe? Otherwise, what do you do? buy a new car?? any advice appreciated!

Sue Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > And the florist at Goose Green has Christmas trees > outside already :X I know! If you bought your tree this early it would be brown and crispy by Christmas day! I think we bought ours 2 weeks or even 10 days before the 25th last year and even then I think we peaked too soon and it was pretty well past it by the day itself!

the train goes straight from peckham rye to blackheath and takes about 14 mins. I think that's the easiest way because if you get the train back after, even if it is crowded, you should be able to get on one even if you have to wait for the next one. Or the 484 goes from where you are to lewisham station. From Lewisham station you would walk up a road called Granville Park and find yourself on the heath. I hope you have fun!

we tried to find a shop that would deliver this end too but they all said that paper rounds were a thing of the past, apparently to do with child employment laws etc. But if the shop at the plough does it then it must still be something that happens, please let us know if you find a news agent that does deliver!

Thanks Fuschia, that's kind. I've been scouring those pages and I think it looks as if I should be too, which would be a great relief!

I feel like a real muppet not being able to work all this out for myself, but having trawled lots of sites I'm still pretty confused. I know it will be tricky to say for sure what I may or may not be entitled to just from this general post but my main question is... I'm 10 weeks pregnant with my first. I'm currently self-employed. BUT..I start a new job as a teacher at a school (so PAYE) at the beginning of September term. My pregnancy is a happy accident (!) so I will be starting my new job 17 weeks pregnant - so from my research it looks to me that, completely understandably, my new school will not be required to give me any maternity pay as I will not have worked there for long enough to qualify for it by the time I go on maternity leave. But as far as I can see even though they wouldn't be required to give me financial support, they would have to allow me to return to work with them if I wanted to after maternity leave, even though I will only have worked there for 4 months before having to go off on maternity leave? Second question! I'm confused about other types of maternity pay available to people who don't qualify for pay from their employers - is 'Maternity Allowance' something I would be entitled to from the sounds of my situation? Because from my research it looks as if that is abot ?124 a week which would make a huge difference to me. I'm finding the blurb about maternity allowance confusing though as it keeps referring to it as being a payment given to 'pregnant women' whereas I would have thought it was given to women who had actually had a baby?! (sorry if this is beyond a stupid question...) I know this should probably all be perfectly obvious to me having looked at various sites but having read through lots of stuff I'm still pretty confused. If there is a way to find out if I will qualify for some sort of maternity allowance then it would really put my mind at rest. Please could someone who is an old-hand with this stuff give some advice to a confused first timer? Thank you!

I like DMC and generally find them helpful and efficient, but I have also had a similar prob there. I once rushed to get there for an end of day appt and fearing I'd be late, I actually ran the last couple of roads so I got there, panting, with 2 minutes to spare. The receptionist informed me that I would not be seen as I was 1 minute late. I assured her that I was not as the clock on my phone is set (anal I admit) by the speaking clock to ensure I'm not late for appointments and trains etc! In the end I phoned the speaking clock to show her that it was (by now only about 20 seconds!) before my appointment, but she just kept nodding at the surgey clock and telling me I was 1 minute late. After a few minutes of us quibbling about this I asked for her to get a senior colleague and then she said 'well your appointment should have started 4 minutes ago so you're definitely too late now' as if it was my fault she had kept me arguing in reception! I was not best pleased. Having said that, I think the service there is generally good, but when being 'late' comes down to the difference between your watch and the receptionist's clock, (which was running 2 mins fast) there should perhaps be a better rule. Or the surgey clock needs to definitely be set to the speaking clock! :)

HAL that's true - maybe it'd actually be cheaper to ask all the club members if they wouldn't mind finding that money than possibly outlaying more on organising a fundraiser? Maybe that makes the best finanical sense, it can be costly setting up events that are meant to make money! Stew, if you do organise a fundraiser, car boot sale etc at the club to try and re-coup the loss, post the details on here and I'm sure people will pop along to support you. Good luck with it.

Sue, just for once, why don't you ask yourself the question 'is my comment making the world a slightly nicer place or a slightly meaner place' before you post.

Last Night I was sitting having a quiet drink with my other half and flatmate outside a pub on LL and the conversation turned to teenage gang culture and also to what my other half (a teacher at a london school) observed as a trickle down effect amongst his own pupils. It was not a loud or drunk discussion, just a quiet, sober chat, and my other half was talking with some sadness about the rivalry that has led to violence between, for instance, gangs of somali and west indian teenagers and the effect it has in school. We also chatted about how when we were teenagers, it felt like the worst that could happen if your mates got caught up in a fight was that someone would get their head kicked in, and how nowadays the surge in knife crime has really raised the stakes for teenagers, of all races, on the streets. From out of nowhere, and some time after this discussion had finished, a woman who was leaving the table next to us spat the words 'Racist c*nts' at us as she left. It was so weird that you could almost say it was funny, but I was really rattled by it. Are we living in such a politically correct bubble that even the discussion of issues that concern different races mean we are open to being shouted at for being racist? I kept turning our discussion over in my head to think if there had been any sentence she could have overheard and construed as racist or perjorative but I just can't think that there was. Our conversation was not only about 'black on black' violence, but about white and asian gangs in the area in which my boyfriend teaches, but it felt like by even daring to suggest that, for instance, gang culture is a negative thing, we were branded racists.

There's no question he is an absolute dyed in the wool freak. Leave before you end up under his floorboards..

seperated at birth

On the squatters thread which had a nostalgic nod at the colin the cat flap fitter thread at one point.. Cate Wrote: however if there were two Colins and one was good then the good one should not be slammed by the bad one's flap.

Though this week someone has started a thread in the wanted section asking for advice on buying a 'dong' which of course is dong 2 (d?ng, d ng). n. Vulgar Slang. A penis. [Origin unknown.] dong [dɒŋ] ... there may have been some confusion.

Brendan Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What is a dongle please? A dongle is 'a small piece of hardware that connects to a laptop or desktop computer.' (wikipedia definition)

I suspect the current inhabitees are more dongles and taste the difference buffalo mozarella than murals and incense

ImpetuousVrouw Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Simple solution, ban cars in cities. eh?

Zoo have explained it as 'a regrettable production error.' The error presumably being hiring someone in the first place who referred to extra terrestrials, in his recent last gasp of a vehicle 'Danny Dyer on UFOs,' as 'that cheeky mob in the sky.' He has started unwittingly pastiching himself.