rodneybewes

Lowlander Wrote: > > Agree on garlic bread but never come across > buttered garlic bread. > > North Italians do love their butter though. You are right, they do in some parts, it's not all oil, oil, oil... I thought bread with melted garlic butter rather than oil and garlic was de rigeur these days, despite being the devil's work. Pizza Express use some weird buttery muck.

Lowlander Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Butter better for you than oil. Olive oil is tastier though on garlic bread - and butter isn't very Italian. Mind you if I was minding my diet I might be skipping the whole shebang...

Il Giardino next to Peckham Rye station is superb. Best garlic bread I've tasted - oil, not butter.

Bovine Juice Wrote: > > I agree with all the points raised here but just a > minor correction - it's the Goldsmiths that has > opened, not the Cambridge (which is in CP). > Personally I'd say Penge is better for normal > household shops (eg Wilkinsons and Homebase) and > pubs, Beckenham is better for restaurants, > hairdressers and cafes. > > A lot of Clock House residents go on the Penge > Tourist Board facebook site for local Penge news, > as Penge has a good vibe at the moment. Quite right, it's the Goldsmiths, the new Antic pub, thanks for the correction That's a testament to some of the strong beers on offer.

Jeremy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I can see what Rodney means though, the feel of > the place is more like a "border town", e.g. > Bromley, Croydon, Enfield, Harrow, etc, albeit on > a smaller scale. That's it. Clock House is like that bit of the shore where the tide comes in and out - half land and half sea.

Yes, that's the historical (and current) posting address - Beckenham, Kent. However, what I mean is that the difference between the two areas is pretty big. Penge still feels like London. In Beckenham people dress up and go for a night out, it's much more townie in feel.

For the centre and the east I'd second Townleygreen - the Jolly Woodman is fantastic and El Molino, though a bit of a wallflower in location, is great tapas and good atmosphere. Towards the west side you've got Penge and the newly opened Cambridge for drinks, Friends of Flavours for Italian and the Bridge House towards Crystal Palace is a decent gastro-pub. Sunday roast there and then a walk around the dinosaur haunted park next door is not too shabby. Beckenham Curry Club in Elmer's End is a decent sit down and take away too. Late Knights brewery is going to be opening the Alaxandra opposite the nurseries soon as well. You're in a funny spot there. Walk a couple of hundred yards East and you're in Kent. A couple of hundred yards West and it feels like you're properly in London. It's like being one of those creatures that lives right on the shoreline.

If you want something less hectic than the massive hypermarkets then Franglais is pretty good. It's less than 10 mins out of Calais from the ferry, you can park right outside the front door and walk in to pick your stuff. It's sat by itself amongst some fields. I got a few crates of decent stuff from there and about 12 crates of cava that tastes like the ?8 stuff over here but in bulk it was about ?2.50. This was 2 years ago. http://www.wine-calais.co.uk/content/9-how-to-find-us As you drive along the motorway you can see it on your left - Franglais in 6 foot letters on the side of the building.

+1 for the Alexandra Nurseries. There aren't many places in London where you can buy a pint, burger and a bay tree at the same time.

Troll boy is back.

We could have a petition to ban pets in urban areas instead?

I do wear a helmet when I'm cycling. I know that statistically it's unlikely to save me from death but it makes me feel better and if I was to take things to their logical conclusion when it comes to safety I wouldn't cycle at all or leave the house in the morning. We all draw our lines somewhere. I shudder when I see kids on roads instead of pavements, and when they're in child seats on the back of bikes, but there you go. I understand why people don't and I understand why Boardman doesn't. Where it's been made law there's been an instant drop in cycling. Better to concentrate on making roads safer for cyclists, pedestrians and drivers. My uncle had a bit of a go at me about this last year, his point being that it will stop hundreds of cycling injuries a year, so surely it's a good thing. My point was that there are thousands of serious head injuries sustained in motor vehicles every year. Does that mean we should all have to wear helmets as well as seatbelts inside cars?

Have you been painting? The fumes can smell like paraffin when combined with the fumes from a flue-less hob.

My scouse mate Kenny had "Shankley" tattoed on his arm. Yup, with a E.

My dad had an anchor on his forearm lasered off. The laser did a good job of removing the ink from the tattoo and didn't scar his skin. But where they lasered it's a few shades lighter than the rest of his skin and doesn't tan in the same way so he now has a "ghost" anchor on his arm. It's not glaringly obvious but you can see it.

@wulfhound - this is true, although my point is more that there are places where pedestrians and cyclists share the same space with little or no issue. I'm much more in favour or segregated cycle space for mass transit at the expense of cars. Except in the case of kids - I don't think we should be putting them anywhere near roads and have no problem with them on pavements at all. @dulwichgirl82 - it's not really a question of blame - in my experience cyclists and car drivers are just as poor as each other. It's back to the stats though. Poor car/bus/lorry driving leads to thousands of deaths and injuries every year, you have to focus your attention there if you want to improve safety.

They're talking strict liability for insurance purposes. They've done this in other cities (Rome did it with motor scooters) and found that deaths and injuries were significantly reduced. You are basically saying if you are in a collision with a more vulnerable road user (whoever that might be - cyclist, pedestrian, horse...), it will affect your insurance. If you take cyclists out of the equation and just look at the amount of pedestrians who are killed and injured in the UK every year - especially children - where motor vehicles are to blame you really have a couple of choices. You either significantly increase the criminal penalties for the offences (meaning stiffer sentencing with all that means), or you give people a financial incentive to drive a lot more carefully. The latter approach has seemed to work. There are plenty of civil laws in the UK which are strict liability, these are matters of public policy and make sense. And I also agree that there are plenty of bad cyclists, I see them every day. And pedestrians for that matter. And car drivers. This is South London after all. When pedestrians make mistakes they tend to hurt themselves. When cyclist make mistakes they tend to hurt themselves, and, rarely, other cyclists and pedestrians. The last government stats for accidents by motor vehicles (2013) give the following figures - deaths 1,713, serious injuries 21,657 and casualties 186,370. Have a look at the last figure. If you are going to incentivise any group to act more carefully, it has to be motor vehicles, especially in London. By the way I tend to cycle into and out of work (around St Paul's to East Dulwich), walk plenty and drive some evenings for short journeys, and weekends. So I'm all three.

They have a few of those in the City - routes where cycles join in pedestrian areas to quickly cross roads which are on dangerous one-way systems. I was very sceptical when they first started out - I wasn't sure that pedestrians and commuter cyclists (as opposed to kids and tourist/barclays bikers) would commingle well. I've been surprised though. Cyclists slow right down to give way to pedestrians - I haven't seen one collision in a couple of years since they started, everyone in the same bit of space. I certainly haven't seen any accidents publicised in that time. There's a couple going from Southwark Bridge to Cheapside that I use every day.

Be careful now - they might put 6 of their best detectives right onto it.

He can be fairly uncompromising so I could see how the conversation went south quickly. I kind of like his quirky style of customer service which is a bit of an antidote to the usual bland, saccharine approach you often get. Normally I find he does an excellent job and is very good value but that doesn't negate the op's heel experience of course. He does well respected orthotics I've been told.

newboots Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > How anyone can argue with that op, I don't know. Trolling pure and simple. You can tell instantly by the tone.

They all have websites where you can fill in the details. You just tell them where you're coming from and going to and they do all the rest for you. Sometimes you need to give landlord datails where applicable. Southwark's is here: http://www.southwark.gov.uk/info/200028/council_tax/2530/change_of_circumstances

Why feed the obvious troll?

Any regular cyclist will tell you that their biggest enemy is anyone distracted and on a timetable. That's lorries, delivery vans, couriers, and of course the very worst of all..... the school-run.

Glad to hear it. Thanks for the clarification.