Ondine

we keep guinea pigs and get loads of visits from hopeful foxes, who shit everywhere. And one of my neighbours was traumatised by seeing her screaming rabbit being dragged over the fence from a fox. So I suspect it's no fun. But have you checked out the eglu = claims to be fox proof

that's progress. Southwark suggested that to them back at the time of the big pipe burst mentioned above, and at that time they refused on the grounds that their website was purely for corporate PR. Good to see their thinking is moving.

yep, especially evil colds around at the moment. We're all just getting over it chez moi, and my poor daughter missed her first ever overnight school journey - unbelievable bad luck. Can recommend the latest version of Lemsip Max - I had a really painful sore throat and it sorted me out.

I was at the Camberwell sorting office yesterday and they were overwhelmed with angry people from Herne Hill, where the sorting office closed some months ago. As far as I could make out, there is an arrangement that you can arrange for your redelivery to go to the local Costcutter, but this sounds to have gone horribly wrong, and there were lots of complaints. One woman had been told by Costcutter that they email Royal Mail trying to trace items but Royal Mail are too busy to read emails, so people are shuttling back and forth, ever more angry. As others have said, the Royal Mail staff were doing their best but the whole arangement just looked impossible.

is it feasible on public transport?

great thread I wanted to contribute a Pogues album cover with the pope and JFK, but I googled Rum, Sodomy and the Lash and it wasn't that so I thunk on and googled Red Roses For Me and it wasn't that either. I don't think I've made this up. My uncle was a parish priest in West Cork and he would drive me around the back roads and we would see the pope and JFK over people's fireplaces and I used to think about the Pogues. So can anyone source my memory?

Has everyone tried this word game on freerice.com? Please do and please please let me know if you can hit level 50. I can get to 49 with a lot of effort but 50 is elusive.

yeah I'm sure they're still coming. There were some amazing blogs from Iraq. But if you watched the programme about Wilfred Owen tonight, they made the point that his work didn't take off till the 60s - is 50ish years after his death.

My kids got lost. Went trick or treating with grandad who doesn't live too near and doesn't know the neighbours too well. They left the house together and kids (7 and 9) went left and grandad lagged to lock up and then turned right. I was at work. Comedy of errors then as kids and grandad came back to the house and missed each other. Kids ended up crying at neighbour's house. Neighbour's 12 yr old sorted them out with a swift dose of chocolate buttons. Two mums came by with pack of kids and decided to sort it out, so one of them took my kids and stood on the corner and the other went round the block and found grandad, who was more distressed than the kids by this stage. No harm done and all speaks very well for the area. Scary bit was when I was talking it through with my big one, she said there was a short period when they were on our doorstep crying and if a stranger had come by and offered to help she reckoned they were upset enough they might have got into a car if a stranger had offered to take them to mummy's work....shiver down the spine.

I had a summer working a bar in a bowling club in Hove. Full of blazered gents who all drank whisky and had their preferences we were expected to memorise. George always drinks Famous Grouse and Charlie is a Teachers man, etc. They were all very pickled and when we ran out of a whisky we would refill the bottle from whatever we had in stock. Lordy it was a long summer.

I may be that fit redhead or possibly Brendan's boss. Lots of proactive stakeholders in my world too

oh good I was starting to worry about the swearing lolliepop lady's prospects. Roll on reopening.

poor brian paddick on questiontime trying to be very lib dem and defend Blair at the same time. It's not easy!

you work in my office don't you?

Missing (gave me lifelong devotion to Sissy Spacek), ET (the bit where ET seems to die gets me every time, had it at a sleepover and one of the kids cried so much I thought I'd have to send her home, Silkwood, Paris Texas

Shame about the attack on the Villa. It's a 0-7 nursery and school. The nursery is the majority of the operation and is a competitor in the market with Sainsburys, Mother Goose and all those other private providers - nothing posh about it at all. The school costs about ?6K pa and has approx 40 kids across the 3 years it covers, so hardly sucking significant demographics out of the other local primary schools. Glad to hear Goose Green is wonderful now but it certainly wasn't 6 years ago when I was looking for a place for my daughter so it was the Villa for us. Yes it's whiter than the community primary school my kids are at now, but that "whiter than white" comment is unwarranted and frankly ignorant.

I want to know which other tories have been planting trees - can't imagine Toby and Kim somehow. Lewis maybe?

So why did Gordon wimp out? Is it cos Tony Benn was going to stand for parliament? Or did the Tessa of North London thread freak him?

She was very hardline leftie at university. Oh how we age.....

I love Tenerife. North side much greener and quieter. We had a lovely holiday in Porta de la Cruz at easter - nice little town with beautiful black beach.

I had a smacked out, scarred, coughing woman begging for cash to buy baby milk a couple of weeks ago. Baby nowhere to be seen but she insisted he was home with her granddad. My kids were with me and they were upset about saying no, so I offered to walk into a shop with her and pay for a tin of formula. She didn't want to know.....

But me no buts. Life goes on. Deal with it. etc. Sits back with nice glass of red.

I can heartily recommend the free theatre in the Scoop. Took my kids to the Jungle Book tonight and it was excellent and heaving with people and generally the cool side of London. The adult production is Helen of Troy, which I reckon would be good too. We saw the same company doing Cyclops last year and they make very clever use of puppets/masks and minimal scenery.

anyone read The Mole People, about the homeless folk who live in abandoned tunnels in the NY subway. Amazing.

moi aussi (born west cork raised London) but camberwell now.