Cam123

Try Oak Academy for loads of teaching videos, all nicely ordered and structured and i think its free. Or, OutSchool has loads of weird and wonderful live lessons as well as the standard english and maths stuff - it also has oddities such as the history of toilets and the costs of keeping a pony! The downside is it's american so the timings can be a bit late in the day and it costs around $14 per lesson i think.

A very Happy Birthday to Elvis! My children always say that they hope to see him when we're on our way to Nunhead station! Always puts a smile on our faces

also sent a message

I think you probably need an informal chat with an architect as a starting point. They'll be able to do your plans for the builder to work to and will know some trusted local builders for you to meet with. If needed they'll be able to take a lot of the strain off your plate. Personally, I have learned to take builder/tradesmen recommendations from this forum with a pinch of salt.

I gave the stables a go for a couple of refresher lessons. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it - I'd rather get the train out of town a little way in order to have some decent hacking. Dulwich park is too small and too busy to really have any freedom and I'd say the horses come across as bored in the indoor school, which isn't that surprising when they have no real turn out. That said, I'd happily have my children go when they're a bit older to get to grabs with the basics.

I came on this forum just under a year ago with a similar worry with my daughter. She basically said mama, and BA! over and over until she was 27 months. I was getting so worried (and I think overanalysing certain behaviours) but then it all totally changed - she's caught up with her peers and overtaken others in the space of 6 or 7 months. She also got a sibling when very young - she was 16 months when I had my son. Most wouldn't advocate tv as an aid to learning to talk I know, and I didn't really allow my daughter kiddy tv, but I did get her a dvd of children singing rhymes (I broke after a few months of life with two tiny children) and funnily enough that seemed to really help. It was as if the desire to sing was greater than to speak and it really got her started (and no, my singing all the time didn't work in the same way).

Definitely not overloading it, no. The pilling is so bad that I think it has to be more than just how I am using the washer. Yesterday I washed a brand new soft cotton vest top of my daughter's on delicates with about two t-spoons of liquid and the result is something which I would genuinely be embarrassed to give to the charity shop. I've even started thinking that maybe if it had somehow got sand into it, then that could be pushed into the drum when it washes. Miele don't look inside the machine though, they just plug a laptop into it, so I don't know if something like this would be picked up on.

Thank you all for your suggestions and comments. I do usually use bio liquid, but also non-bio for baby things. Never used a water softener but not sure that would help?

JessM - I don't suppose you have the W5740 honeycomb do you? Trouble is though that even on a test wash with half the amount of liquid, it still does it. I'm going to try another test with no detergent at all. I also thought that the water efficiency was a good candidate for the cause but I still think that if everyone's machine did this, everyone would be complaining and therefore it must be specific to this machine. I can only use water plus on the harsher cycles, which I daren't use other than with towels. I suppose I could pour water in through the drawer?!

I only use liquid. When I first got the machine I was using powder and Miele managed to convince me that that was the problem. To be honest though, if powder or certain liquids created this amount of damage, no one would ever buy them.

Thanks, I've given Steve a call and he's coming round on Monday. Hopefully he can get to the bottom of this but his first thought also seems to be too much detergent. Does anyone else use the recommended amount of detergent (i.e. one capful) in a very water efficient machine?

Hi All, I am at the end of my tether with my washing machine and wonder if anyone can offer any help. Basically, it's a Miele, so should be fantastic but actually it creates pilling on everything it washes (mainly cotton kids clothes). I've had two engineers out from Miele now and they disregard the piles of clothes that are ruined and keep repeating "it's not the machine" over and over. Miele management are standing by the opinion of their engineers, despite my sending pictures of clothes. There's nothing wrong with the drum, I don't use powder, turn the spin down to 600/800. Never use the cotton wash. Wash towels and jeans separately... And yet I have cotton items go round once and they look like they're old! Somebody please help! I daren't put the new clothes I've bought for summer into the stupid thing and I don't think I'm going to get any further with Miele. Aghhh!

I'm assuming that you own your flat leasehold and that Southwark is you freeholder? In which case though, why would you expect to be paying for any works? Or do you own a share of the freehold? If you are a leaseholder, i'd look at the wording of the lease, but I wouldn't be holding my breath over them funding repairs unless the pointing is so bad that the brickwork is being damaged. Plenty of their properties come onto the market which have been left far beyond needing a bit of new pointing. Good luck!

To balance the negativity a bit, there was a studio flat that needed renovating up for auction on that road 4 or 5 months back; it was guided at 110 and went for 195 if I remember rightly. This is after a similar sized one set back off goose green went for 115 18 months ago. Therefore I wouldn't underestimate how much prices have pushed on in the last few months and I don't blame them for having a punt at a fairly strong level.

As far as loss of light goes, it's worth considering how these houses' shadows are cast. In virtually all single-fronted Victorian terraces, the side-returns are surrounded by two or three stories of brickwork and it is this that often makes the side-returns dark (depending on the orientation of the houses). If however the houses are orientated so that the house does not cast a shadow over the side return area, then obviously a side return extension wouldn't either.

Sorry to pull this back to topic, but I got a ticket there last year along with several other cars as there was some sort of kids' sports day going on. I contested my ticket and got a cheque through the post to refund my fine - which was interesting because I hadn't paid it.

Just asking..........

Yes, you're right - despite being told to not send certified copies, you have to send a certified copy. Bizarre.

I'm starting to think that we are somehow missing a birth certificate. From the registrar we received the short original and paid for 3 of the certified copies which have more detail. Does everyone else also have an original long one that doesn't have "certified copy" written at the top? We are due to travel very soon and if I need to order a new birth certificate before even applying for a passport then it's going to be a push to get it done in time. Any advice would be much appreciated!

Yes ours is the same with the honeycomb drum thing. Thanks everyone, that all helps - i've clearly got a dud machine afterall and need to get Miele to sort it out.

Can anyone offer advice on the following please - I'm applying for my daughter's first passport and had sent the application off in the post with her original birth certificate (website says no certified copies) and today I have received a letter saying that I enclosed the wrong birth certificate and it doesn't have enough detail on it. I'm utterly confused because in the pack of documents from the registrar, we only have the one we sent and certified copies...?

Congratulations to you! At your point in my pregnancy I was utterly baffled by all the different options and I basically stayed that way until I was about 32 weeks when I was forced to admit that it was the stress of any hospital situation which was putting me off thinking about any of it. When I focused on how I deal with pain (like to be left alone and in familiar surroundings)I decided to look more into the home birth option, which I had thought was really only an option for those who had already had a child, and never looked back from there. We used the East Team from Kings and they were fabulous. I had an entirely natural labour at home, which I honestly believe would never have happened had I been in hospital. The whole thing was such a positive experience which I had never dared to hope for whilst I was pregnant. If having a home birth is even a slight possibility in your head right now I would really recommend checking out more about it. There's a session once a month at Midwife House in Camberwell where they invite along a couple who have recently had a homebirth and you can get a really good idea as to if it might be for you from that. If you'd like to know more feel free to PM