heath

Thanks for all of the support. In answer to the questions about how they got in; to be honest we aren't sure. Either we left the back door unlocked and the thief or thieves kindly locked it before they left (unlikely) or they managed to jimmy open both the front outer door and our flat door without breaking them - after talking to the police they think this is more likely. Looking at the locks it does look like it would be possible to jimmy them open fairly easily. Stupidly we have deadbolts on both doors but neither were locked at the time. My wife was only out for a few hours and they struck in those few hours. Even though we have no damage to our doors we're getting our locks changed in case the thief took some spare keys (we have several sets lying about and can't be sure we can account for all of them). And we're now making sure to ALWAYS use the deadbolts of course. The upstairs flat door was kicked in breaking the door and ripping the lock itself from the door. I don't actually know if he has a london/birminham bar but it wouldn't have mattered because the door itself was the weak point. We have a bar on our inner door but not on the outer door.

There are thieves about in East Dulwich. Our flat on Oakhurst Grove and the flat above us were burgled this afternoon between 2pm and 5pm. We had two laptops and two cameras stolen but thankfully not much else that we have been able to tell just yet. If anyone knows of anyone trying to offload an Asus EEE 701 laptop + power supply, an Asus Aspire One laptop + power suplly, a Cannon EOS350D digital SLR camera in a generic bag with a cleaning kit and multiple memory cards or a Sony DCR-SR32 digital video camera without any peripherals then please tell the police about it. All our stuff was marked with the magic water stuff the police have been giving out but unless they actually catch the dirtbags responsible they can't do much. Worse than losing some items or even having some scrote in our flat is that my older daughter uses the laptops to video chat with her grandparents in Australia and the video camera has recent video of my 4 month old daughter that we hadn't taken copies of yet. The scum whole stole them had to pick through children's things to get to them so I doubt their conscience will be nagging them much though. P.S. the police did take about 5 hours to show up afterwards but when they did they were extremely helpful and very polite.

I ate at the Locale on the pre-opening day, the day the fire alarm went off in the kitchen and my 1/yo danced to it like it was music (note to self: must not derile young people music as car alarms any more because of family connection). Food: good. Service: excellent. Price: great, considering it was 1/2 price for the pilot day. Portions: mediocre, sorry. The very best and most authentic italian resteraunt I have been to in london was the La Figa resteraunt in e14 (a few years ago, no idea how good now), in the Mosaic building (a block of flats despite the name). BIG portions, BASIC (but delicious) food, great service, very itialian. Locale management; Go there. Eat. Watch. Learn. ED had been crying out for an Italian resteraunt for a while and while Locale seems ok so far I really wanted better. ED have one REALLY good reasteraunt of a few different styles but for now has one italian. Not one great italian. As almost every single one of my teachers told me growing up; "can do better"

Canary Wharf. So near yet so far by public transport. Is is just me or are the public transport links between here and e14 (or anywhere really) the very worst in london? Today I took two hours to get home. It would have been 25 minutes by any road based transport except bus (meandering all over the place!).

We use a local childminder with a dedicated home setup for a good half dozen or more kids (not sure if she would want me posting here details here so I won't) and that's been great for us. Mrs H is full time looking after #1 and puts her in for childminding one day a week to get a modicum of rest. Many others have their little uns in for various times from 1 to 5 days per week with the same lady. East dulwich is a very kid friendly area so while there are many many parents and kids around there are also a lot of services. Look outside the obvious places, ask people and get recomendations and I'm sure you'll find something. Now school places... That is a whole different issue.

We had the police come around today and tell us there a lot of burglaries going on near us (around oakhurst grove/the gardens). Things are so bad that there are a lot of plain clothes police out and about right now and some uniformed officers are going around door to door warning people, offering advice and giving out "smart water" tagging kits. The smart water stuff is a rather cool invisible micro-tagged gel that flureses under UV light and when looked at under a microscope shows a unique serial number that had been assigned by the police to your house. You wipe some on your valuables and if they turn up getting hocked they can very likely be IDed as yours. Very CSI. My points here are 1) take care and keep and eye out. It sounds like there are some pretty organised theives around our area 2) thanks to the local police for a really positive pro-active step in protecting us from them This has to be the most positive policing initiative I've seen in my 8 years in london. I am totally chuffed by how it's been handled.

Pedestrianising LSL: would be nice but in practical terms it's unworkable for reasons covered by others above. Blocking traffic on northcross on saturdays and expanding the market: Brilliant idea! Where's the petition for me to sign?

The Wife and I refer to the Pecham Multiplex as "Stinkyplex". There is always an unpleasant smell there like it's not sufficiently cleaned or they use some foul smelling cleaner. But you get used to that pretty quickly (and it's not as bad as it used to be I think) and the seats are comfy, the screens large enough and the sound is always perfectly clear. All things considerred ?3 is a steal and it's just a short walk away.

I've found panther cars to be totally unreliable, nothing as bad as your experience though. I now use East Dulwich Cars exclusively, never had a problem with them. Panther cars final straw for me was them failing to turn up for over 40 minutes on a trip that was booked a week in advance to take 10 people from a wedding ceremony to the reception. They were constantly "2 minutes away". Eventually called another firm (can't remember which) who turned up in 5 minutes.