JS33

Late plug for Toddler World at Crystal Palace Leisure Centre, which will be open at least this Wednesday and Thursday from 10 to noon. I went today with my two year old, and there were only two other families there. Large open space with soft play toys, balls, and some gymnastic equipment (trampoline, two balance beams). We took the train but there were quite a few cars in the lot so it's driveable. I think it was 3 quid to get in, for an excellent hour of running around.

I very much second the advice to shovel early, if you're going to do it at all. I wish I'd done it right when it stopped falling, or while it was still coming down, even if it would have meant a second pass, because it's so much easier before the snow gets packed down. By yesterday afternoon it was already turning to ice, and I'd say it's pretty much an impossible job to shovel now (although there may be another chance if it thaws a bit). Is anyone interested in being part of a slightly more organised collective effort next time, for instance meeting up to shovel each other's roads or to clear major thoroughfares that no one necessarily lives on, like the Goose Green path? Although I'm happy to keep doing what I can on my own, I have to say that the most pleasant part of the experience was having a neighbour come out to help. Yes, believe it or not, that beat the many people who invited me over to shovel their own walks, which just made me feel like a complete idiot for bothering at all.

Thanks to an hour of help from a neighbour, we now have a narrow, crooked path down the length of Gowlett! No grit, though, as there isn't a grit bank nearby and I don't have either a wheelbarrow or a car to fetch/steal any from Lewisham or anywhere else. Jeremy, I hope you found a shovel (I borrowed one from the local pub), and I'm so glad to hear others are doing what they can as well. I'll do it again next time, and possibly also try to tackle one of the more heavily-used paths around, like the one through Goose Green, especially if I can find a proper snow shovel.

Disclaimer that I'm not an expert on snow/ice, but here are my thoughts. Salt is a very effective de-icer, but it has some drawbacks, because it's not great for the environment, metal or shoe leather. Growing up we would sometimes sprinkle a bit of kitty litter (sand) on the pavement after shoveling, which helps with traction, although it doesn't actually melt any snow. That said, I don't think sprinkling pavement-clearing-sized quantities of salt probably make much difference to the environment, vs. on miles of highway, kitty litter is also awful for leather shoes. I clearly need to just buy a pair of wellies!

Sorry for the long absence from the discussion -- I'm afraid we haven't had internet service for several days. Anyways, I hadn't read some of the earlier posts in this message carefully enough, and am thinking it sounds like the best idea would be for all of us volunteers to make our details available to Dulwich Helpline, which seems to have the resources to coordinate between volunteers and people in need, and also offer to post leaflets/flyers in the neighbourhood advising people to contact Dulwich Helpline if they need help in these conditions, even if they are usually self-sufficient?

In addition to being loads of fun to play in and quite pretty, the snow may make the neighbourhood quite dangerous if it ices over, especially for the elderly and others who are mobility impaired. See http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?5,580870,page=2. If you have time over the next few days, are physically able, and have or can borrow a shovel from a neighbour or nearby business, please think about clearing a bit of the pavement near where you live, which might prevent the neighbourhood from turning into the ice rink we had a few weeks ago. I've spent a couple hours today shoveling a (sadly, very narrow) path along Gowlett Road and will be back out in a bit to finish the street. If anyone nearby happens to own a proper snow shovel and would be willing to lend it out, please PM me -- the garden-variety makes for a much harder job!

I've been continuing to think about how best to organise this effort, although I'm afraid I'm not able to get on the computer every day. For the same reasons, I'm very far from being the perfect coordinator, by the standards computedshorty has suggested. Although meeting that rather high standard would be ideal, unless an ideal coordinator happens to want to identify him/hersel, I'm wondering whether we might be better off trying to figure out an approach that would require less work/centralisation. Here are some further thoughts. Alec, I took a look at StreetBank (and joined it),and love the idea, but not the fact that it doesn't show where people were. For instance, if 20 other neighbours also posted shovels, I wouldn't easily be able to figure out which one is closest to me. Instead, I'm wondering whether a coded wiki map would be the best way to store our information. I've created a sample on Google Maps with one data point (me) by way of example. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=111397185803866583447.0004972b3021d360c6595&ll=51.462869,-0.069898&spn=0.000638,0.002411&z=19. We could use different colours/symbols to show what people are offering, and this way once someone is a member they can update their own details. I've made this version public so you can all see it for the moment, but would suggest making it private if we go this route, so only people in the network can access it. Once it's private, we can include things like our email address and mobile number. With regard to creating a contact point, because I think we may have trouble finding anyone who has enough time to serve as a permanent coordinator, I've been thinking about easy ways to get the job done. Here are some options -- please let me know what you think. 1) Publicise this fledgling service now and make people find out who their local contact is ahead of time. With this option, we perhaps leaflet/post flyers now asking people to let us know if they might need help in the future so we can put them in touch with someone who lives nearby. Since this wouldn't be time-sensitive if done in advance, there's a chance that one person (maybe me) could do the matches. Obviously, it isn't such a great system for handling things once there's actually an emergency situation, because I can't guarantee I'll be able to respond in a timely manner. 2) Create a central contact number that we take turns manning. There are various companies that can set up virtual telephone numbers with voicemail, and that give you the ability to forward calls to that number easily. I have a number like that through SkypeIn -- I pay a yearly subscription for it, there is voicemail attached to the account, and I can forward any calls to that number to any other number by just logging into my account. For instance, it usually forwards to my landline, but if I'm traveling I set it to forward to my mobile. Skype is the only provider that I'm familiar with, but they all seem fairly similar with regard to how they're priced -- all of them charge an upfront payment to "rent" the number for some period of time, and then charge some usage-based amount depending on the volume of calls forwarded. If we had such a number and a pool of people willing to serve as temporary coordinators, we could take it in turns to take calls. If we went with the map, that would make it a bit easier for the coordinator to take a call and contact the two or three closest people to ask them whether they could help. That might be a more focused approach than the mass text/email I originally suggested, although I think that approach also has advantages. For instance, although some days I won't be free at all, on others I'll be willing to spend hours running errands/shoveling/whatever for people, even if they live nowhere near me. Anyways, I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on this. Zeban, thanks for starting the thread -- even if we don't manage to put together anything organised, I'm at least going to try and figure out which of my immediate neighbours could use some help.

I've just started a new thread for this discussion -- http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?5,585145 - -and am still thinking about the best way of organising. Can I suggest moving any further discussion to that thread, just to keep things tidy? Also, would love some help in organising the administrative side of things (and will also call the Helpline to see how well set up their infrastructure is, in terms of matching volunteers to people needing help, as it would be great to use something that already exists). Also, fyi, the Gowlett has agreed to lend me their shovel. I'm guessing other pubs/businesses would be happy to do the same (maybe in exchange for some sort of deposit, just to make sure they get their equipment back).

Last week's snow had a few of us thinking about ways to cope with the next round, ranging from helping out the elderly or mobility-impaired with errand-running when it's icy to rallying forces to shovel the neighborhood before it turns into an ice rink. http://www.eastdulwichforum.co.uk/forum/read.php?5,580870 Anyone have thoughts on the best way of organising either effort, or want to join in?

And, thinking about all this a bit more, it seems like the shoveling part is even easier. We don't actually need to know who is offering to clear what -- we just need to know how to get the shovels. If by some lucky chance someone else has cleared our "chosen" street, we'll just pick a different one. Perhaps walk-clearing for those in need of help could then be handled the same way I'd suggested for shopping services (for instance, if I saw a request for help somewhere near me, I'd get in touch with Zeban to arrange to pick up a shovel). And, on the shovel-storage front, I may just pop down to the Gowlett and see if they'd let me borrow their shovel, if they have one, or let me store one there. I would guess that lots of businesses might be happy to trade some storage space if it meant people could get to them more easily in bad weather!

Hello, these are all great ideas. Perhaps we should designate a few people as the central contact people, who would keep a spreadsheet of the info suggested by computedshorty? We could periodically circulate the list to everyone who's on it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who would prefer not to post my personal details online. I also agree that we should be careful not to make it too easy for someone dodgy to use this network as a way of taking advantage, and it might be a good safeguard for people offering personal services, like shopping, to have "registered" their details somewhere, as a minimal form of validation. Anyone else have thoughts about the most efficient way to organise all this? The shopping/errand part seemed like the bigger organisational challenge, and here's my best stab at a proposal. Perhaps people could be directed to contact one of the organisers, who could email/PM/text the volunteer group with the name/location/phone number of the person needing help, and hope that one of the volunteers gets in touch. (We could advise the person to get in touch again if no one responds, so we can send out a second round appeal, assuming that people might be willing to help someone a bit farther away if they knew no one else had volunteered.) A little cumbersome, but I can't think of a way of another way of doing it that wouldn't either involve all of us publishing our details to the world, or a bit too much research/time/effort from the coordinators. Anyways, I'm happy to volunteer as one of the info collectors. I can't be the only one, though, as I'm about to be out of the country for two weeks and would need to hand off to someone else for that time. Zeban, I live near Goose Green and would be happy to store a shovel at yours in exchange for agreeing to clear at least Gowlett Road! Perhaps we should start a new thread with a broader subject line? I'm guessing a lot more people in the neighborhood would be willing to sign up for something, if they know this was in the works.

Actually, I also had another thought, in part inspired by another thread on the forum, that I'd be interested in forming a neighborhood shoveling brigade. As someone who comes from a place where snow is a little more common, I found it amazing that a few centimetres of snow could become such a catastrophe. If I owned or had access to a shovel, I would have been happy to spend 20 minutes shoveling my entire street (granted, it's only 2 blocks long!) and then we wouldn't have had to deal with skating across a sheet of ice for the last week. I'm sure there are others in the area who would be similarly happy to put in the time, but who perhaps have the same problem I do, which is that I live in a small upper-storey flat with no room to store a shovel for the 360 days/year that I wouldn't actually be using it. Any takers for forming a network of collectively-owned shovels, with people designated to store them? Honestly, I'd be happy to buy a shovel and do the shoveling if someone who lived nearby was willing to house it for me.

This is a great idea, and I'd love to help, too. It seems like a neighborhood emergency help network could be really useful, especially for people who don't ordinarily need help but who could use a hand when conditions are severe. If one doesn't exist, I'd be happy to help put one together. Perhaps also contact the local churches to get the word out? I don't belong, but am guessing that a slightly higher percentage of older people might.

And belated thanks for the information! I ended up getting the same answer from a friend offline. Sounds like they are starting the regular term time schedule over the next week or so.

Hello, hope someone out there can help me. I was thinking about taking my daughter for a trial class on Friday and the recorded message said we should feel free to drop in but doesn't clarify which of the classes on the website are actually running at the moment. Someone else mentioned a while ago that only the 10 am class is running on Fridays but I'm wondering if anyone can confirm that that's still the case for this week? Thanks!

I just visited It's A Kid's Thing, near Earlfield station (about 20 minutes by car). Although I haven't been to Beckenham Spa in a while, I think it's roughly comparable in size, but has much better (and faster) food and the people who work there are lovely. I also love Toddlers World at the Arches Leisure Centre in Greenwich. It's the biggest/most-spread out soft play facility I've seen, but it's a ways away.

Perhaps identify the offenders, publish their addresses and use those doorsteps as designated repositories for any turds people should happen to find? (The day I stepped in a fresh one just outside my own (dogless) flat, I would have gladly hurled it at the door of the responsible party, if I had any idea who it was.)