Charlton's fly tipping is going up market!

I'm sure that there's some ancient tradition or charter that says that a London street must have a mattress dumped somewhere along it. Charlton's following on with it's take on Parisian pavement culture with a similar move to take the street rubbish up market too.

A sofa has appeared dumped on Floyd Road.

There's a bit more to this... At some point over the last week a load of carpet appeared there, I presume that someone's having some fitted. The binmen appear to have refused to take it, which is pretty understandable in my opinion. The sofa is now parked on top of the carpet.

I've got no idea if the same selfish idiots that dumped the carpet on the street are responsible for the sofa or if someone is trying to make someone else look guilty.

I have been proactive about this and contacted Cleansweep, the Council service that deals with this sort of thing. Fingers crossed it'll be dealt with soon, I really would like to be able to say something nice about the council after quite a few negative posts about them.

I do wonder what state it's going to be in in the morning...

Update on the King Tut Tickets

I've heard from Pat who's emailed the address given in the email from Greenwich Council.

There's been no reply, so what's Pat to do? Turn up and hope that he's within the first 500 that emailed and potentially waste a lunch hour?

If anyone has had any sort of response I'd really appreciate it if they can let me know...

Half price Tutankhamun tickets

Greenwich Council return with another cracking offer for Greenwich Card holders (cough).

GreenwichCard has teamed up with The O2 to offer GreenwichCard holders an exclusive opportunity to buy half price tickets for the opening week.

The first 500 cardholders to email tutrsvp@aegworldwide.co.uk will receive half price tickets when they bring their card to The O2 box office on Wednesday 12 September at 1pm. You must arrive no later than 1.30pm in order to purchase your half price tickets.

Full price adult tickets cost £15 and entry for children is £7.50.

Restrictions apply:
1) offer only good for opening week tickets for valid GCH carriers
2) offer cannot be combined with any other offer
3) only cardholders that have RSVP'd for the offer and arrive in person on 12 September between 1pm and 1.30pm are eligible.

For more information visit http://www.visitlondon.com/tut

OK so you've got two days notice to hit a half hour window at the O2.

Who exactly is this offer aimed at? Surely I'm not alone in thinking that you've got to jump through some real hoops to get this deal. I'm sure that many people won't be able to get to the O2 to claim it.

The exhibition doesn't open until November, you'd have thought that either some more notice or a bigger time slot could have been arranged.

Anyhow if you can jump those hoops that the Council have put up then get down to the O2 and get some of those cheap tickets.

Well Hall Pleasaunce

As I've already said I tried to go to Eltham Palace yesterday. Well to be precise I did go to Eltham Palace, it just wasn't open.

So I made a plan B and got back on the road. Plan B required the locating and purchasing of some food, so we stopped on the way from Eltham to the A2 when we saw a Co-Op.

Over the road was a little park that looked interesting, it was Well Hall Pleasaunce and it was very interesting.

There used to be a manor house there that was home to the daughter of Thomas Moore amongst others. Later still E. Nesbit, the author of the Railway Children amongst others, lived in a house built on the site of the manor house.

That later house has now been demolished as well. What's left however is a rather interesting moat and next to is a barn that dates back to the 16th Century. The barn is now apparently a pub and while we were there a Wedding was going on. The park around the barn and moat all seemed rather attractive and pleasant to be in while we had our lunch.

We only had time for a brief stop as Plan B needed seeing to but I think we'll go back with a proper picnic and explore the place properly.

The park apparently has an active group of supporters, they have a web site here that has some more information about the park and what they do.

My camera decided that it's batteries were flat but I did manage to get a couple of photos out of it.

All things told a very pleasant surprise.

The gardens where we had our lunch.
The 16th Century Barn.

Eltham Palace...

...is closed on Saturdays.

I know that now. I didn't know it when I went there today.

The opening hours are:

1 Apr-31 Oct
10am-5pm Mon, Tue, Wed, & Sun.

1 Nov-23 Dec
11am-4pm Mon, Tue, Wed, & Sun.

Closed 24 Dec-2 Feb

3 Feb-20 Mar
11am-4pm Mon, Tue, Wed, & Sun.

However I did find a nice surprise not too far away, more on that later.

The Council are now selling tickets to see Prince...

I think that most people know that the Council spent about £95,000 on having a corporate box at the O2 for one year.

About a month ago the council ran a competition to win tickets in the box to see a Prince concert. Only Greenwich Card holders could enter and I mused at the time they were trying to get more people to buy a card to offset the extravagance of the box.

Well they've taken another step now, they're actually selling tickets for the corporate box.

This is the announcement:

GreenwichCard is offering you an exclusive chance to see Prince perform at his sold-out concert on 16 September.

Fifteen tickets for prime seats in the Council's box are available for £31.20 per ticket. There will be a maximum of two tickets per person.

For your chance to snap up your tickets, simply email greenwichcard@greenwich.gov.uk indicating how many you would like to buy and your GreenwichCard number before noon on Monday 10 September. The lucky winners will be contacted by 5pm that day.

Find out more about GreenwichCard offers by following the link below:

http://www.greenwich.gov.uk/Greenwich/LeisureCulture/GreenwichCard/NewPromotions/O2TicketsWithGreenwichCard.htm

On the one hand surely it's a good thing that they're making some money out of the box that they spent so much of our council tax on.

On the other is it legal? Remember that the Council has already got and paid for these seats.

I also can't help but wonder what happened to the tickets for all the other nights...

You'll also note that the offer is more than a bit weird. There's 15 tickets on offer and you can apply for a maximum of 2 tickets. So are they expecting someone to go on their own? On the web page they refer to the "lucky seven people", 7*2 = 14, doesn't it?

Does anyone out there know how many seats the box has? I wonder who's going to be in the other ones.

If anyone does get tickets and go please let me know who was in there with you.

Taking a step into the Daily Mail Zone...

...which is a bit like the Twilight Zone, only far scarier.

It seems all quiet in Charlton at the moment. I've had a bit of a break and not a lot seems to be happening right now. So, as happens at times like this, my mind turns to bigger things.

I was talking recently with some friends who are teachers within Greenwich. It turns out they've had a training course and in it were advised to refer to Britain and not Great Britain when talking about our country.

Uh?

Great Britain is the name of our country, it says so on our passports, so it must be true. They're going to be misleading and misinforming a whole generation of Greenwich children. What are they going to think when they see a passport or "team GB" at some sporting event?

Great doesn't imply anything to do with us claiming that we're fab or anything, even the French call us "Grande-Bretagne". It's got a lot more to do with our size as the largest part of the British Isles and Brittany in France, England's rulers became French speaking after 1066 and needed to differentiate between the two bits on either side of the channel.

To take my final step into the Daily Mail Zone, it's "political correctness gone mad"!

I'm hoping something more Charlton related will pop up soon.....