calculus

I was awoken and looked out of the window to see a huge street fight in progress. It was stopping traffic on LL. Saw some pretty shocking scenes. People hitting the deck all over the place. Police arrived about 5 mins later en mass, followed by I think 3 ambulances. One guy was flat on his back in the middle of the road, I saw him get punched and it was nasty. Police cordoned off the area. I've seen similar scenes numerous times in the last few years since the late night bars (Boho and Adventure) have been here spilling out drunks in the middle of the night. Animals.

Very glad to hear all that! It's possibly my favourite restaurant in London within the category "consistently great without being too budget busting" and their burgers are amongst the best I've ever had either side of the Atlantic which is quite something!

Have you heard good or bad things about the new management? We're going there on Saturday, as it has been one of our favourite local restaurants. I hope we're not in for some kind of unpleasant surprise! Where did you hear this?

The one on East Dulwich Grove is the worst from my experience. Cars regularly speed down there and ignore the zebra crossing. I'd say it happens about 40% of the time I cross there. Goose Green one isn't great either because of impatient drivers wanting to get round the roundabout.

Weird behaviour by the recycling folk today at my place. They emptied my large blue bin then put my additional recycling (small blue bin, extra bag full and extra box full) into my empty garden recycling bin and left it! What's that about?

It was bigger and better than ever this year - great job everybody involved! We took our kids and they had a great time with the bouncy castles, rides etc. However, we saw a couple annoying instances that could easily have been avoided IMHO. Face painting - the stall had a long queue as it was a popular activity, but I saw a couple of people queue for ages, to get to their turn to be told that their kids were not old enough to have their faces painted. You see it was for 3 yrs and over. I have no issue with the age restriction at all, but why not put a sign up telling people before they waste half an hour queueing with their little ones? It's so simple and avoids upset! Donkeys - again a very popular activity. Massive queue towards the end of the day and at about 4pm-ish, they just take the donkeys away leaving a queue of sobbing disappointed children. No pre-warning of "OK folks we only have time for x amount of rides before we have to pack up", they just up and left leaving parents trying to console their kids. Please take this as constructive criticism not moaning as WE actually had a GREAT TIME as did most people. This kind of detail just annoys me!

Yes James, I saw that 10-12am was an option in the online survey but there was no option for no CPZ. Can you explain this please? I stupidly selected that option as my 'preferred'one and now that will probably used to boost figures when I would actually have voted against the whole proposal if given the chance. Also you wrote "Yes, the consultation is asking people whether they agree with the proposal or not but if residents are clearly against I will be campaign to ensure it doesn't happen.". Why would you need to campaign against it going ahead if people were clearly against it? Is the default that it will go ahead regardless? I live on Matham Grove, a short walk to the station and an even shorter walk to the shops on LL. being just outside the proposed zone I feel let down that my views carry less weight than those living within the proposed zone as I will be directly affected by this.

This seems very sneaky of Southwark. If they wanted to stop commuters parking they only need to implement a control for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. This is clearly a blatant money making scheme, an ill thought out one at that, that they are trying to sneak in the back door. I live on Matham Grove which will become more of a nightmare with this proposal, and I will have only one direction to venture for spaces when my street has no spaces left, thus moving the problem to another area. I am also very surprised there has been no input from local councillors on this thread as they usually like to chime in on these issues... Pathetic... I for one will be contesting this.

I think the only way to get a true insight into where people stand this issue is to have a survey / consultation. And I don't mean on this forum as it would only represent a small section of our community. i.e. Ask the community to choose between a) a 1 hour CPZ during the middle of the day or b) keeping the area totally unrestricted as it is now. It would need to be specified clearly that the CPZ would only operate for a short window in the day as this is greatly different to a full CPZ imho. The consultation done 5 years ago is really not relevant as the area has changed quite a lot in the last 5 years. I also imagine (but I'm guessing here) that it was a choice between a CPZ (unspecified hours) or no CPZ, and that restricted hours was not an option.

So if permits were introduced, would there be a cap on how many cars you can get one for per household / business? What I'm really asking is whether all 14 of the Foxton's minis would be able to get permits or whether we could get a few of them crushed...?:)-D

With the greatest respect I can only deduce that (a) you only take your car out for a drive in the middle of the night, (b) have been phenomenally lucky, consistently over 7 years, or © are talking nonsense. How can you find it hard to understand why people don't want to drive around for half an hour to find a space in a street within the "vicinity" of their house? And by vicinity I mean within 3 or 4 streets of the house. This has nothing to do with parking "outside the front door". No one has suggested this expectation from what I have read on here. Based on what you say, I think I'll try parking on Melbourne Grove with all the spaces you say there are!

So if it works in Herne Hill with the 12-2pm restricted hours I assume it might work here as well yes? I would have thought the effect of this on local shops would be minimal. It doesn't even need to be 2 hours, it could be half an hour, as the end result, to stop people driving here and parking for the train would be the same. One thing I would be interested to know is whether a "zone" has to be a certain size. Could it be just a few streets or would it have to extend up to the library as someone suggested?

James - Are there any plans for resident permit parking on any of the streets in East Dulwich? I particularly refer to those streets near toward the station. I have found it increasing difficult to park (I live on Matham Grove) and it's not that I'm bothered about parking outside my house or even on my street for that matter, but I just spent 25 minutes driving around the surrounding area looking for a space and this is happening more and more. What I would like to see is controlled parking between the hours of 12 midday and 2pm on some streets to alleviate this by preventing the commuters from parking here all day for the train, whilst not making it impossible for visitors to the shops to pop into the area.

yep - I get this all the time. It's like they are against the clock or something. It's only Royal Mail who do this - UPS etc. seem happy to see if you are in before filling in their little notes.

I am a producer and have a studio in East Dulwich. It is predominantly a mixing studio but if you are just wanting to record voice and guitar and then layer on top I could help you do a quality demo. I don't have racks of outboard gear as I work digitally but the results I can produce will speak for themselves. PM me if you're still looking and are interested!

the very same andrewc - that's our man

We had "Steve" knock on our door in Matham Grove on Sunday morning - told me he cleaned the windows of most of the houses in the street already and that he wanted ?12 for the first clean then ?6 per month thereafter. Then he said that most people pay up front which immediately made me suspicious. I told him to come and see me when he was ready to actually clean the windows and as soon as he realised he wasn't getting any money out of me up front he left. I think that Steve and Tony could be one and the same - he's unlikely to use his real name afterall! Checked with my neighbours afterwards and they had never heard of him.