Goodbye friend and foe, it's been a long journey

[Louisa]

Well, here we are in 2015, and the time has come for me to hang up my hat and hand in my P45. This forum has been a great local resource and I personally will be very sad to say goodbye, but I think the time is now about right. Admin felt I overstepped the mark yesterday, which may or may not have been the case I will let you all be the judge of that. I apologise to the folk I offended, maybe my style of posting has become a little too polarised in these recent years of online political correctness. Whenever I contribute to this forum I am fully aware my comments can sometimes come across as aggressive or controversial but please let me assure you all I am actually a pussycat in reality and like everyone else I get fire in my belly over certain topics of discussion.

To all the folk I've had banter with over the years, as well as disagreed with, I wish you all the very best. I hope you can forgive and forget if I've offended, it really wasn't meant to be spiteful or unfriendly.

Until we meet again.

Louisa.

[Otta]

Booo!!!

Unless posts have been deleted I can't see anything particularly bad from yesterday.

But the last month has been an end of a chapter here.

For what it's worth Lou I've always found you funny.

[red devil]

[aquarius moon]

I agree with Otta. It's not the same without the missing ones.

Couldn't you have spent your time in the lounge with the regulars Louisa? Only suggesting it because we all get your sense of humour and understand the meaning of your posts. Elsewhere on the forum, more likely they don't have a clue what you are talking about, take every comment far too seriously and get offended when there is no reason to.

Anyway, I hope you have second thoughts and decide to stay.

[TheCat]

That's a shame. who will carry on the 'banter' torch?

[Jeremy]

What did you say this time, Louisa? Did admin delete the posts? I can't see anything out of the ordinary.

Always found it hard to tell if you were being serious or not. You're either a complete grouch or a wind-up merchant extraordinaire - or quite possibly a mixture of the two - but never really offensive or aggressive IMO. Hope you reconsider, but if not, hope you find another outlet to let off all that steam!

[JohnL]

I'd have said it's much less controversial on here now than 5 years ago.

Get some well known MPs on to do a review of local pubs :)

[edcam]

If she wasn't so repetitively troll-like, it would have been fine but she did in the end take it too far. Sniping can be very offputting for some. I for one am glad the days of cliquey bitchiness on this forum have gone.

[Otta]

Until the next clique.

[Mick Mac]

You'll be back Louisa. Controversy is never dull.

[red devil]

So, Louisa, when you've finished lurking, any chance you can tell us when you actually plan to hit the delete button?

I'm sure some of us would like to mark the occasion in an appropriate fashion. Personally I'm going for defrosting an Iceland frozen Vol au Vents party pack and cracking open a cheap bottle of Lambrusco...

[Jeremy]

Yeah, I'll raise a cheeky advocaat and lemonade in her direction.

[Mick Mac]

And a leaving party at Le Moulin.

[Salsaboy]

She'll be back.......

[Jennys]

Hopefully not Salsaboy.

[Zebedee Tring]

If Louisa hadn't harped on endlessly about blow ins and class, then she might have been more acceptable. But her broken record technique became very tedious.

[hellosailor]

Agreed, it wasn't the aggression that bothered me, it was just the fact it was like listening to a very dull broken record, I've never know if she is a troll or serious but either way she was tedious.

[keekybreeks]

This forum will become a shrine, and punks and skins and rastas will all gather round and hold their hands in sorrow for their fallen leader.

And all the grown-ups will say: "But why are the kids crying?"

And the kids will say: "Haven't you heard? Louisa is dead! The People's Poet is dead!

[Jah Lush]

Rik from the Young Ones ^^^^^

[BigED]

Flippin' blow-ins.

What I'm not entirely sure about though is what constitutes a blow-in? I don't consider myself one, but how long do you have to have lived in ED? (And I'm assuming that we are enforcing a strict SE22 definition on ED - no SE5/SE15/SE23 wannabes). Do you need to have been born in ED? (In which case, tough luck if you were born in King's or Guy's or St Thomas's etc.) I would argue not - it's just an accident of birth, like class or inherited wealth. Do you need to have spent a minimum number of years here? (I would suggest 15 years to sort the wheat from the chaff and the chaff from the riff-raff and the riff-raff from the blow-ins). Or is it a proportion of your life? Minimum 50% (plus one day) maybe?

I fear that without Louisa, we may never get to the bottom of it. But at least that means that I am self-defined as not a blow-in.

It'll never be the same again.

[Jeremy]

Not sure why you're worrying about it BigED, it was just one person's obsession with a changing demographic.

[RosieH]

Oh no. I pretty much gave up posting ages ago (bar the odd giveaway or Hipster-off) but I lurk around, hoping to find out where to buy lunch, and hoping for some entertainment when I eat it. I mean this in the nicest possible way, but Louisa was pretty much always that.

I feel the soundtrack to the party at le Moulin should be Terry Jacks.

[DuncanW]

Really it should be Le Moribond by Jacques Brel as Terry Jacks was just a blow-in

[DulwichFox]

Louisa...

How dare you leave Foxy here all on his own..

Get back here at once.

Foxy

[Mike Dodd]

the clique win again well done admin sorry to see you go louisa