Anyone who says with certainty that this is down to pure criminality is talking out of their arse. Likewise anyone who says this is due to disaffection from society, or poverty, or anger with the police, or racial hatred, or any of the multitude of other reasons I’ve heard tonight. Nobody knows for sure why this has happened. I’d imagine the real reason is a combination of any or all of the above, depending on which of the participants you ask.

One thing we can probably say with some certainty is that this doesn’t happen for no reason, and it doesn’t spring from nowhere. But we don’t have any context for it, just supposition and opinion.

There’s no excuse for some of the behaviour we’ve seen; smashing in or setting fire to small, locally owned businesses, and looting the houses of the people who flee out of fear. You can’t excuse that. You shouldn’t even try.

If things have become so bad for people that they feel that rioting is the only option open to them now, I can sympathise with that. But using violence to take something because you’ll personally gain from it is loathsome behaviour, and deserves punishment.

I don’t want to score cheap political points now (there’ll be enough of that in the next few days) but the lack of presence from our elected leaders has been notable. Where was Mayor Johnson? Prime Minister Cameron? We’re hosting the Olympic Games next year, shouldn’t they have spent some time to at least pay lip service to addressing the problem? And while they have the excuse that they were out of the country, where was Deputy Prime Minister Clegg in their absence?

I don’t know what’s going on. I’m bewildered and confused and sad, and not looking forward to all the finger-pointing, politics and punditry that’s destined to follow this.

One final note: over the next few weeks, please don’t buy anything that you suspect to be stolen. Don’t reward this. Help local shopkeepers instead.

How would you visually represent SE5? One of the students at the College of Arts has had a go.

As reported in comments on the previous post, part of Lucas Gardens has been saved from being sold off to developers, as the College is said to have bought South House. I went to a Halloween party in East House on Saturday night; apologies to the neighbours.

Here’s something topical: Camberwell post office (“grungey and dispiriting”) used as an illustration of why bonuses are not always deserved.

Also topical: the murderer of a man who was stabbed to death near his home, on Coldharbour Lane, was sentenced to a minimum 30 years in prison last week. He sounds like a proper nasty bastard, so: good.

Has everyone taken a look at NickW’s proposal to split traffic around Camberwell Green and pedestrianise the end of Church Street? There doesn’t seem to be much there to argue about, IMHO, and it’s good enough to at least serve as the start of a conversation.

Finally, I have a special offer for everyone; my first ever, I believe. The Grand Union are set to open in the former Grove this week, and are having a launch party on Thursday 5th (there will be some free drinks, I believe).

They’re keen to get the hyper-critical readers of this blog on their side, so have offered me the following deal: anyone who presents a print-out of this blog post to the manager gets 2-for-1 on main meals — and this deal is valid for the whole of November. That’s pretty good, right? I’m sure there should be some terms and conditions to this deal, but there don’t seem to be, so knock yourselves out.

I wish they’d kept the Grove name, though; a pub’s name is its heritage.

Second, the neutral news: I’ve installed a new comments system; it needs tweaking but should be working properly. Let me know how you get on with it.

Third, the good news: It’s party time! The Camberwell Arts Festival kicks off on Saturday with The Big Event in Myatt’s Fields Park, and continues through the week until the Sunday after. I’ve contrived to be away for launch weekend (every damned year; I swear I don’t plan it that way) but I’ll hopefully have somebody reporting on it for me soon.

You can download all the details here (PDF, 530KB).

Also this weekend, the Marlborough pub (67–69 Sedgmoor Place) are hosting Marlborough Fest, a three day festival of music. They have a “large beer garden with two sheds, benches, flora & fauna, bbq, the occasional squirrel”.

Enjoy yourselves

We were on our way back from il Giardino in Peckham, a place which should be recession-proof because its staff are so bloody nice that you’d never consider not going. One place which isn’t recession proof (segue!) is The Dark Horse, which as everyone must know by now has closed down. And on the subject of closures, we now have photographic evidence that Somerfield in Butterfly Walk will close on April 29th. I honestly can’t wait to see a Co-op in there; I was in Co-op today and it’s miles better.

Further good news about Burgess Park; as well as the £6m already pledged, apparently there is a further £1m to spend on the Chumleigh Gardens area. Looks like we’re on course to have a radical transformation; I’ll be first in the queue when the zoo opens.

I tried Amaryllis on Coldharbour Lane for the first time on Tuesday, as the wife wanted to watch Volver in the S&D and I wanted to watch Arsenal beat Hull in the FA Cup. It’s nicely decorated inside, and they serve decent Chinese food at reasonable prices — £3.50 for a plate of chicken in black bean sauce and egg-fried rice (I had rice instead of noodels).

Finally: Prince William was in Camberwell last week; our very own Eyechild has the report.

Enjoy the weekend, everyone.

News I have not much, as I passed Christmas in isolation from news of the outside world; whether I was here in London, with family in Bristol, or on a brief sojourn to Brussels.

What I do know is that The Bear and The Dark Horse, feeling the nip of the global recession, are to close on Mondays for the forseeable future; and a pensioner has been murdered in her home at Kenbury Gardens. Neither piece of news gives great succor (although they are obviously of drastically different import).

I know not why I have written this post in this irritating tone, but I must away to seek articles of genuine interest.

Update: Almost forgot; I’ve added more links to the links page, but feel free to suggest more.

I had a pretty strong feeling this would happen, as soon as they began the ‘public consultation’ — a sop to regulators when a decision has already been made. Network Rail accepts that the proposals contain “significant passenger disbenefits”, but doesn’t care.

Second bit of bad news: A report on the radio says that a woman has been stabbed to death in County Grove. Can’t find any details, or indeed any confirmation, of that yet, so know idea what’s involved. It’s far too early to draw any conclusions yet, or to make any connections with any other crimes in the area, but at the very least it’s an unneccessary loss of life, and more ammunition for those who’d like to paint the area as a crime-ridden slum.

Update: Some more detail about this incident; seems to have been a domestic rather than street crime. Exactly why I was cautious about jumping to conclusions.

Anyway, do enjoy the rest of your day.

Latest casualty in our shopping mecca seems to be Duraty electronics. I noticed the last time I went in there that it had changed hands, and on the two occasions I’ve passed it since then, it’s been closed up. On the bright side, that frees up space for another pound shop to open. Update: Apparently still open. One less thing to be cynical about.

Sunday saw the Olympics come to Camberwell Green, only I can’t find any coverage of it bar this brief reportage from our own Dagmar on the SE5Forum forum. I was away, as usual. Update: Here’s a brief report; is that our very own Drew Mishmash in the first photo?

I saw the ‘million moron march’ walking along Peckham Road yesterday afternoon, with their police escort, apparently walking to Notting Hill for a rumble. Spare us from bored, aggressive, baby gangsters.

I’m still looking for guest contributors; anyone feel they have anything to offer?

First a bit of a Burgess Park mini-special. Somewhat late, I watched the final episode of BBC series Ashes to Ashes. The location of the explosive key scenes looked familiar to me, and this photograph confirmed that it was, in fact, our very own Park that played host to the scenes of the car bomb. As I passed through the park recently I noticed that the old William the Fourth pub has been transformed, by the use of some meshing, into a work of art (low quality photograph here); also, the area around Chumleigh Gardens is to be landscaped, and there will be a public consultation this Saturday (19th) if you want to get involved.

I haven’t written anything about the informal meet-up a few weekends ago. I have to confess that my poor organisational skills and freakishly nice weather led to it being under-attended compared to previous meetings. So poor, in fact, were my skills, that I forgot to leave an identifier for the members of the Flickr group, which resulted in two disparate groups of people wondering where the others were! Still, thanks to everyone who made the effort, it’s always nice to meet new faces. If you still want to meet your fellow residents, there’s a proposal for a picnic in Burgess Park this Sunday (weather permitting). I may or may not make this one; waiting to hear about something else. There’s also an SE5Forum board meeting on Wednesday, but I’m not sure if that’s public or not.

My contacts at the Cadeleigh told me everything about the raid on the illegal DVD factory; apparently a rival gang phoned police and told them someone in the flat was armed, hence the heavy police presence. Shenley Road and arround was cordoned off for two hours or more. I was at the London Aquarium with my sister’s family, and missed it all. I did get to stroke a ray, however. Oh, the Cadeleigh lot also confirmed the location of the porn studio on McNeil Road. Louie, how did you know all this? Are you a local there too, along with D-MAN and myself?

Lots of new & refurbed bars and cafes in the area now, as is traditional every spring. How many of them will last until next year? On the subject of development, Councillor Peter John has an update on the Camberwell Grove bridge changes.

I’m feeling a little flu-ey today, so forgive me if I wrap up for now.

This is just an interim post; more tomorrow.

Update: The Goldfrapp video filmed in Addington Square is available to watch now. Quite funny to see that bus stop, telephone box, and fruit & veg stall there. Thanks to Matt for finding this.

Dropped into the Funky Munky last weekend for a pint and some chips; well, that was the idea, anyway, but the rather harassed barmaid told me they stop serving food at 5pm. Weird. Had just the pint, then, and tried to ignore the group of noisy Aussies at the bar.

Afterwards we went to the Castle for a couple. They had table service there; after ordering and bringing our change, the waiter returned and semi-mock-complained that we hadn’t left a tip; I had to explain to him that I’d ordered 10 minutes ago and he hadn’t actually brought my drink to me yet.

The Post Office at the foot of my street (on Peckham Road) faces closure. Not sure what that means for the owners; they’ve only recently taken it on, and had forked out to extend it through the back of the shop. I’ve rarely had cause to use it myself, but Post Offices are valuable resources to a lot of people.

Finally, did you know Camberwell hosts six of Southwark’s 38 Conservation Areas? Addington Square, Camberwell Green, Camberwell Grove, Camberwell New Road, Grosvenor Park (never been there) and Sceaux Gardens are all protected. That just makes it even more of a shame that the area around the Green is being allowed to fester.