PhilPhilPhil

Selfridges used to stock H&G stuff but it looks like they've been replaced by a similarly overpriced retro sweet company, Sweets In The City... https://www.sweetsinthecity.co.uk/products.html

I had it once in Porto and a couple of times at A Torre. I'm not a huge eater and I managed to eat them without collapsing but I did feel like I needed a lie down afterwards. It's quite hard on the arteries. There is also a relatively new place at Angel that specialises in the Francesinha but I haven't been there and it looks like they might be overthinking it a bit... http://www.frhappy.com/menu

The Portuguese restaurant in Crystal Palace (A Torre) do a fine Francesinha. Actually I haven't been there for about a year but they certainly used to.

I might be able to find out from the TFL site but was the E&C area supposed to be working properly under the new scheme today, or have we just entered another stage of the hellish and seemingly never-ending rebuilding? This morning the traffic down Walworth Road was the worst its been in ages and if anything the bit near E&C station looked further from completion than it did last week. Coupled with traffic tailback from Camberwell to Peckham (seemingly caused by something on the other side of Camberwell, heading towards Oval) the 12 bus from Dulwich to Piccadilly Circus took 2 hours this morning.

I have a friend who bought in Anerley a few years back, having decided he couldn't afford Crystal Palace, and he's very pleased with it. Value of his flat has risen dramatically and he says there has been a definite improvement in the quality of local shops, pubs etc since he's been there. It's easy to get to Crystal Palace from there and also Penge which, as other posters have said, is improving fast.

Bearing in mind that there are similar works going on at the same time at Oval, I do wonder how many of these things are vanity projects that Boris is pushing through while he's still in charge so that he can look back and say how much he changed the landscape of London. If nothing else the decision to do significant work on both Elephant and Oval at the same time really limits the options we have of getting from South to North by road / bus, and I'd have thought that TFL would advise against it if their main concern was keeping things moving.

I got off the bus just before Morrisons on Walworth Road and walked to Soho. I walked the 12 route all the way to Piccadilly and hardly any buses passed me at all, think they must have been turning them all round at Elephant or Lambeth North. As the problem has been there since yesterday morning I thought TFL might have had the foresight to run some buses just between Lambeth North and the West End, but apparently not.

I passed through E&C on the 12 around 7.45 this morning and it was relatively fine, about the same as last week, so I think any trouble later must have been due to the flooding rather than roadworks.

I was looking for more info on the roadworks (North - South Cycle Superhighway) yesterday and came across this timetable. Frustratingly vague in terms of area and time but it gives me some hope that work around Elephant / St George's Circus might be finished some time in August. Not much comfort to anyone needing to get to Blackfriars on a regular basis though... https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-projects/north-south-cycle-superhighway-travel-advice

I think they've reconfigured the roadworks at the Elephant this week. I'm trying not to be too optimistic just yet but the bus journey up Walworth Road has been a lot better since Monday. There is still a tailback for cars but that doesn't stretch as far as it was previously either. I've not approached Elephant using OKR during the week but maybe the latest stage of the roadworks has shifted the crapness over there from Walworth Road. Heading back south in the evening is really bad still and I've been walking to Walworth Road from the west end rather than sit on a bus that gets stuck in the bottleneck approach to St. George's Circus.

Thanks Laur. I would have been coming back that way so it's really helpful to know.

I do Barry Road to Piccadilly on the 12 each day and am leaving earlier than usual in the na?ve hope that I'll get through the Elephant quicker than I would at my normal time. If I get on a bus at 7.15 I'm generally through the Elephant congestion by 8 oclock. Today it was 8.30 so yeah, it was much worse than usual, am praying it's back to relative normality tomorrow. I'm assuming it must be a lot worse for motorists as they don't have the benefit of bus lanes. Coming home through the bottleneck that forms at South Bank University is getting worse as well. I've been trying to find out if there is any end in sight to the current phase of the works at Elephant as it's so inconvenient and I'm praying it isn't going to be like that until May of next year when the overall project is due to be finished. I've had no luck yet, there seems to be very little information online. Worst thing is that there never seems to be much actual work going on there, usually it'll be one person digging and a few other men watching him do it.

I get the 12 from Dulwich all the way to Piccadilly every day and it is especially bad at the moment. There seem to be a lot more roadworks cropping up everywhere and I wonder if its anything to do with the end of the financial year. I heard that if the relevant offices don't spend whatever they have left from their budget at the end of the financial year then they can't carry the money over so there is always a roadworks splurge around March. That could just be a myth, of course. I thought the Walworth Road works were a 4 week project and if so we're almost halfway through it now. Hopefully I didn't just make that up. This morning it wasn't helped by a dustbin van making regular stops in the bus lane in the run up to the lights. Obviously those bins need emptying but maybe not in the rush hour, eh.

I never tried Yee Wah but I was a big fan of Ghandi and I'm gutted that its not there anymore. Seemed weird that Ghandi changed to Eastern Nights not that long ago, then closed shortly after. Don't know if it was the same people or not as I didn't get a chance to go in there. As it was so sudden and other shops on that stretch have closed I wondered if perhaps they had all been bought out to make way for something bigger.

The 12 was a bit dodgy earlier in the week due to temporary traffic lights between Camberwell and Peckham but I think it was back to normal by yesterday evening. I get it home from the west end most nights and its usually pretty good though if there is a lot of traffic they can sometimes catch each other up, in which case you might not see one for ages towards the end of the route and then a bunch turn up in a convoy.

Virgin Broadband (and any of their other services) are great when they work but as soon as something goes wrong you enter a world of pain. I've not had a working landline for about 5 years now because I got tired of taking time off work for them to come round, then tell me that its such and such a problem and they need to send a different type of engineer for that (which of course is never the same day). My broadband has been increasingly patchy lately so I've had the feeling that I'm due for some significant downtime. And its probably a sign that their service for the area is oversubscribed again.

Anyone in the Barry Road area having problems with Virgin Broadband at the moment? I've had no service for the past two nights though I'm not at home at the moment so don't know if there's still a problem. No local problems at the moment according to their website.

Have only just seen the responses to yesterdays email but noticed this morning that the tag had been painted over. I've always wondered whether or not there was a plan to try and keep the street art clean so its really good that you're keeping an eye on it Ingrid, thanks for taking the trouble.

Sadly someone has now tagged the wall with the Phlegm painting just off Barry Road (Goodrich Road?). I don't think it actually makes contact with Phlegm's picture (which I really like) but its close enough to ruin it for me.

I assume that Thames Water (or Thames Digging, as I now think of them) are also passing any financial penalties for over-running roadworks onto the customers in the form of raised bills. Still I was pleased to see that things were back to normal at Peckham Rye this morning, I was expecting the disruption to last at least another week. Lets hope they can leave it alone for a few months now.

It can only be a matter of time before the temporary traffic lights there cease to qualify as temporary. That area has been dug up so many times now that it must be in danger of collapsing into the earth's core.

Hopefully things will calm down on the 12 next month when it turns back into a double decker and people can't use it as a free service. The ratio of seats to standing on bendy buses (something like 150 capacity but only 50 seats) really isnt suitable for long journeys and busy routes.

I only got their superhub a few months back. It's the first time I've had any trouble since then though so hopefully things will be back to normal when I get home.

Anyone in the Barry Road area having trouble with Virgin TV and or Broadband last night / today? Signal on both was bad last night and worse this morning before I left for work, TV was unwatchable and I may not have had broadband at all. No mention of local problems on the website but that might mean it's been sorted out now.

I've lived on Barry Road for 13 (I think) years now. Traffic noise is usually minimal and I think that's helped by a lot of the houses having been built quite a way back from the road. The 12 bus makes my house vibrate a little but it should be fine when it's replaced by a double decker in November. Like a lot of people in the area I've had subsidence so perhaps it's worth trying to find a property that has already been underpinned. It's a nice place to live and I've never regretted moving there. Well maybe a little bit when my subsidence happened and I could suddenly see daylight through a crack in the bedroom wall, but apart from that its been lovely!