shoshntosh

i have tried to initiate a neighbourhood watch scheme several times on my street, with police never returning my calls, including safer neighbourhoods teams (passed me from peckham to east dulwich to nunhead back to east dulwich). i also tried to become a street warden for southwark... those requests also went unresponded to. i gave up in the end. am having an alarm system installed (for which we took out a second -- or is it third? -- mortgage). as for being mugged... yeah, well, i am hyper conscious when walking alone at night (and i do walk alone at night). i ALWAYS wear sensible shoes so i can run, kick, etc. no high heels for me! hardly ever carry a handbag, never talk on my mobile or wear my iPod, and i move fast. there's a lot you can do as an individual to prevent yourself becoming a target (though i accept some things are simply beyond our control), but i do wish that we were doing more as a community. we are inviting all our neighbours round soon for a little get together so we know eachother, know who might vulnerable (older people living alone) and can look out for each other a bit. it's a start. i have no idea whether the crime is getting worse around here, or it's just being mentioned more on this forum, etc. but i do know that crime tends to go up when the economy is bad.

tell my friends and colleagues where i live?? are you INSANE???

what wigglebear said on page two of this thread. and i thought the english weren't overly dramatic... you know, stiff upper lip and all that...

thanks very much for this, sounds great.

ratty Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > This is something that puzzles me. I know of no > one who would not hand in a purse or mobile phone > if found, and I have done so many times, so, why > is it that when my wife loses one or the other do > they never ever come back? i find that interesting too. i also don't know a single male who visits prostitutes, and yet... there seems to be plenty of business for them. i can only conclude that either i a) circulate amongst particularly nice and moral people and b) that things -- including people -- are not always what they seem. i don't feel smug (because all my friends are moral) nor do i feel that i lack faith in the goodness of humanity (because they are all just pretending to be moral). i just see things as they are: grey and complex.

i did once spot him reading mariella frostrup's column, which i feel crosses the line into my territory. and he does seem to know an awful lot about sarah harding. shall be taking me grazias to the loo with me from now forward.

"beef curtains"????? that's even WORSE than "gut stick" where do you learn these phrases, or do you make them up?

ok, i know grazia is fairly rubbish, even in it's category (a category i know well). but why is it that tosh thinks it's honorable to read the Business section of multiple newspapers and the Economist (and sometimes the New Statesman) every week BUT looks down on me disapprovingly every time I open a women's mag, a weekend magasine, or a show biz gossip mag? Why is spending hours reading about the economy considered fine whilst reading about people/pop culture isn't fine??? or is tosh just an elitist bully?

um... piers morgan? is that embarrassing (i'm not au fait enough with british culture to know)? but i'm pretty sure this one is embarrassing: peter hain because my friend who works in parliament had to breathe into a brown bag when i told her. p.s. hona, please... let's not mention "cigar, thigh and mistress" in the same sentence as it just reminds me of that whole bill/monica thing. p.p.s. BBW "gut stick"?? eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww p.p.p.s. dulwich mum, ray winstone????? honey, we need to meet for a latte.

and here i thought the deals were on only my street (being "practically peckham" and all). sh*ite. there goes one of my last remaining claims to exclusivity or legitimacy,depending on my mood...

what moos said.

sorry, i suppose a bit off [the apparently new] topic of this thread and back to the original one... i am so sorry for you that you had this experience. i have been threatened and followed by a group of youths in east dulwich (younger than those described) and it was quite intimidating. so i am really nervous of young-ish boys, especially those in hoodies. but just a couple of weeks ago i was walking with my two small children when we happened upon a group of lads much the same as the first (above) when one of them suddenly turned to me, as we passed them, and said "oh, sorry." i said "for what?" and he said "For using that bad language in front of your children". I laughed and said "I didn't hear what you said but doubt it's any worse than what they hear at home." So, yeah, like someone else said, groups of youths in hoodies are not all criminals. i'm not quite sure how to acheive that balance between being vigilant and treating people as innocent until proven guilty. does city life just make cynics of us all?

muchas gracias pablogrande!

hi i did a search and nothing popped up, so am just wondering whether anyone has had these installed and what they reckon? or advice on where to get them done?

hi i did a search and nothing popped up, so am just wondering whether anyone has had these installed and what they reckon? or advice on where to get them done?

i'm not going to get into all this because, well, i'm totally biased (one kid there and one starting next year) however i will say, because it's a fact rather than an opinion, that in my daughter's class out of 18 children only two do not live locally (one in clapham and one in beckenham). most of us live in east dulwich or dulwich village. do we really care about fireworks? seriously? wow.

i have it one virgin plus if you want. will happily trade for an expensive pair of specs which do little for my eyesight but make me appear a darn bit more clever than i am. quite apart from the having lost them part.

holding my mother's hand as she took her last breath.

i have mislaid my reading glasses. any thoughts on where they might be? last saw them approx 10 days ago tho can't be quite sure where (obviously)

quite agree with seanmac. and also, rudy guiliani "cleaned up" new york by starting with its appearance, citing that people are influenced by their environment. it does matter. if the place looks like a tip people are more likely to behave disrespectfully. i am wildly anti-littering.

dearest DM i was there this morning, caked in mud (and possibly in cockapoo poo) so tenacious that not even the rain would wash it away, trying my derndest to impress neil of the tight bum. i did plenty of sweating and groaning, i did. (etc etc) and my only question is: where the H were YOU?? xxxxx shosh

apparently six is no good for a dinner party. too small. so they say...

anyone know anything? was there for quite awhile

what the hoo-ha? i am completely lost on this thread, which is maybe a good thing. can tell you what, though, i will be taking tosh with me on ALL future trips to lordship lane. oh, but one thing i DO know: "it" can't be quids or sean mac because both are very good-looking and neither are LL shopkeepers nor "exotic". ;-)

p.s. anyone ever used smarthospitality tickets website? how does one know if these ticketing agents websites are a scam?