Sydney Carton

Spotted at the weekend: I thought I knew most of the notables of Dulwich but this was a new one on me https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/durrell-gerald-1925-1995/

Eh?

If I pay £12.50 Ulez I am allowed to use my old car. If I am rich then I am able to use it seven days a week. If I am poor I cannot. If I pay the charge does that make my car non polluting? It does not. Therefore it is a tax

Did you actually read what I wrote? The mileage I was doing was comparatively nothing at all. Most cars do 15,000 or more a year. There is no discretion in the London ULEZ charging. In Paris their equivalent ULEZ exempts thirty year-old cars but in London it has to be forty for no particular reason. These old cars are modern classics and as a result will vanish from London. But of course the anti car squad want ALL cars off the streets. Well judging from the jams I see traffic levels have never been higher.

I'll tell you what he's done for me; he's forced me to take my much loved old car off the road. It's thirty two years old; I've had it for fifteen years and it's done about 1,000 miles a year. It passes emission tests without fail so by no stretch of the imagination could it be regarded as a polluter, certainly not in the league of some of the crappy vans that smoke past my house. If I thought Ulez was forcing traffic off the road and making the air cleaner I'd be less upset but Lordship Lane is choking with fumes from dawn to dusk. Furthermore, if I were to pay the £12 to use my car, would it then make it a non polluter? Of course it wouldn't. It's a tax pure and simple. I could hire zip cars but that does somewhat eliminate the spontaneity of a trip to the coast or a morning in Greenwich (have you tried to get to Greenwich from Dulwich on public transport?). Meanwhile Khan swans around London in a bulletproof Range Rover (with bodyguards) purportedly because of death threats.

Dave Courtney is dead, aged 64 by his own hand apparently. I remember Dave, sometimes known as ‘Rocky’ Dave, from the Forester’s Arms (Bishop) forty years ago. He was on the dustcarts and like most of the dustmen back then they’d finished work by 11 o’clock in the morning and were in the pub by twelve, a couple of pints before they went on to their other jobs painting and decorating or car mechanics. Dave’s other job was flogging recreational. He was a funny boy though – hilarious actually - and would do anything to make us laugh. One Saturday lunchtime he came into the pub wearing a nappy, no trousers or shirt, just a nappy. One night after the pub he popped round to our flat in Matham Grove and about five of us sat sharing a spliff and some tins listening to him cracking jokes and bullshitting. I remember laughing my socks off for about three hours. One thing I’m sure of is that he was no gangster. He was more Jack the Lad than Jack the Hat. He just liked to pretend he was a gangster, to dress up and tell tall tales, and thought a villainous reputation would help him get some TV work and mentions in the papers. I’m sure he did some dodgy stuff but I don’t think he was ever a psycho killer. RIP Dave an old Dulwich face.

After many years of blissful silence our plumbing has started making low moaning and whining sounds sometimes like a low flying helicopter other times like a spin dryer. The toilet, the shower, everything, with the taps on or off. Thames Water seem to be all over Dulwich just at the moment. Have they caused it? Anyone else experiencing this strange phenomenon?

Surely the owner of the prefab deserves some kind of civic award for his beautiful garden

Motorbikes. It went on for about an hour

Hundreds of bikes going down the South Circular. Anything known?

Thanks but which of the current shops was it?

Can someone remind me which current shop at the Plough used to (and hopefully still has) all the old tiles. It was an old butcher's shop, maybe a Kennedys? It briefly became a butcher shop again in 2012/13 Ta

A mate of mine was at an ATM in FH and a bloke leaned across saying 'the machine's out of order,' and punched a few buttons, then made off with his card, having presumably noted the number. My pal says it was an incredibly slick sleight of hand and he didn't spot a thing. Within minutes he had a call from his bank asking if he had just withdrawn £500

Meanwhile Putin wants to burn the world down. Dulwich eh?

I saw this guy today in Court Lane. He was circling around on (his) bike with an aluminium telescopic pole. He's been to our door before trying the window cleaner routine and then swearing when I said no thanks. Beware. Box of frogs.

But nothing to say since March 9th

Actually forget it

Unimpressed eh? I bet you din't know that Stalin used to rent out the pedalos in Dulwich duck pond

and environs The Dulwich Society website has an extensive and fascinating list of notable past residents some of whose names are familiar: PG Wodehouse, Shackleton, Bessemer, Anne Shelton and the A-Z lady but who knew Lord George Brown lived in Court Lane, the inventor of Eno?s liver salts in College Road, Lord Haw Haw lived in Allison Grove and later Farquhar Road, and held hugely popular fascist meetings in Dulwich library? Maxim, who built the lethal machine gun blamed for facilitating British imperial expansion but handy for fighting the Germans, also built a vast merry go round in his garden and lived at Ryecotes Meade. William Penney, father of the British bomb who when not building weapons of mass destruction was found on Sydenham Hill golf course and then there's Ronnie Reed MI5 master spy.

Can they be trusted to bring it in on time and budget? Probably not so at the end of the project they'll be scrabbling around looking for cash and that's when the 50/50 will suddenly become 60/40 or worse. And if they sniff a profit, well...

Southwark says half the development will be social housing, presumably the bottom half, the lower floors with no park views. So the upper parts will be very desirable apartments, which will go for top dollar. Might the council at some later stage revise the 50 per cent social housing downward? They might well and employ the 'to help offset costs' argument. Knowing Southwark it's probably already factored in Are you therefore in favour of Southwark being a private property developer using council land and money to build luxury flats?

https://www.tfljamcams.net/

It won't take long for crafty motorists to figure out camera free routes within the zone