monyvibescu

Surely Enid Blyton would take the place of the Queen's head on any East Dulwich banknote. And if you want a heavy rock star on the reverse, wouldn't Bon Scott be more appropriate?

I don't think much of the meat sold at William Rose is marketed as organic anyway, is it? The reason they get queues is because of the high quality of the produce, not because of the supposed health benefits of organic farming.

About an hour if you avoid traffic jams/tunnel closures - I'd go via Rotherhithe tunnel, then left and left and left again into the Limehouse Link tunnel which takes you right to the bottom of the A12 (follow signs to Blackwall, weirdly) and then it's dual carriageway/motorway all the way. Worth checking before you set off whether any of the tunnels are closed - I've had a couple of trips turn into frantic panicky dashes because Rotherhithe was shut. If you're going for more than a week or so, it's worth considering a minicab - about ?45-?55 each way, compared to about ?50 for the long-term car park plus petrol costs if you drive, and it means you avoid the 45 minutes or so each way waiting for/on the shuttle bus.

Having said that, the one thing I will not tolerate is youths who say `innit' all the time. Don't they realise it just means we elderly folk can't understand what they mean? Slovenly, I call it.

Well, I saw this poster and thought it was very touching. A lot of kids work very hard getting through their exams (while facing a lot of peer pressure telling them it's not cool to be clever) and the only messages they ever get from the adult world are (i) a load of advertising/TV/music telling them to buy cruddy products and see themselves entirely in terms of personal appearance and (ii) officialdom/the papers/adults generally telling them they are a bunch of frightening yobs who ought to be swept off the streets. Maybe I'm being a bit sentimental about the average teen, but I'd have thought looking out of the window of a bus and seeing an advert saying "Good luck in your exams. We're proud of your hard work. Aim high!" might make you feel a bit better about yourself and more inclined to think it's worth putting effort into brainwork. Sorry to sound pious but well done to whoever at the council thought of it. I bet if it had been a picture of a hoodie carrying a knife and a warning to keep your phone hidden when you're walking the streets, no-one would have complained it was a waste of money...

According to the BBC, the school the siblings of the Alleyn's kids go to is Dolphin School in Battersea - two siblings there have tested positive.

I saw Tessa Jowell just before the last election standing outside Sainsbury's with a Dulwich Hamlet FC shirt on, which I thought was quite amusing. No doubt she's a regular at home matches...

Anterior Trading was a very good Eastern furniture & nick-nacks shop. The bloke who ran it used to import stuff from Bali and Thailand and thereabouts and always had interesting & individual things in - I've got a good portion of my birthday/christmas pressies from there for the last two or three years. Apparently (according to the bloke who ran it anyway) it was the first alternative/unusual/trendy/whatever shop to open on North Cross Road and he has watched the strip become boutique-land around him over the past 15 years or so. He said he was forced to shut up shop because of a massive rent hike which made it uneconomical to continue. Apparently, the same happened to the picture-framing shop a few doors up. I think it's a real loss to the area - every time I had a present to buy, I'd pop into ED & Grace&Favour & the other one on the corner to have a look, but always end up getting something better (and often cheaper) from Anterior.

It's not the slide on the (green) frame with the rigging that's gone, it's the main slide on the castle-style frame with the walkway in the middle of the playground. (Unless another one has been filched since I last visited a fortnight or so ago) Incidentally, on the subject of Goose Green playground, is there any way of persuading the powers-that-be to replace the pelican and bull rockers, or at least loosen them up a bit somehow so that they actually rock. You need the strength/weight of a Liquorish bouncer to shift them at all and my kids get cruelly frustrated trying to budge them.

The Cheese Block is one of ED's greatest assets - the range, the quality, the smell. I am slowly working my way through their stock and would like particularly to recommend the Caerphilly - meltingly smooth just under the rind, crumbly in the middle (but leave it out of the fridge a while before you partake). It may be a bit more expensive than supermarket cheese, but it's not the same product at all (Frankly, the opportunity to inhale the ripe and nutty odours while queuing for five minutes in CB more than makes up for any price differential anyway).

This isn't particularly an East Dulwich thing, but if you sign up for Auto Top-Up on Oyster, it automatically charges your card up with ?20 (or ?30 or ?40 or ?100 or whatever you like) from your credit card every time your Oyster is below a certain level (I have it set to a fiver, but you choose whatever is best for you). It does it whether you're on a bus or a Tube and it means you never have to think about whether it needs topping up again (though it also means there's a direct line from your credit card account into Ken Livingstone's pocket...) It's saved me a lot of frustration of the type described above. Not sure if it tops up weekly or monthly travel cards in the same way.