Brockley Life

In many areas around Brockley there are roads with a 20 mph speed limit in place. Lewisham Council have spent a lot of money putting up signs, road painting and radar displays. The sad thing is that this speed limit is not enforced.

On Hilly Fields Crescent there are often kids playing on the adjacent park and elderly people wanting to cross the road. Yet, this road seems to attract the boy racers. Using a stop watch and measured timings I quickly established that most people travel that stretch of road at an average of 35 mph, even though there is a 20 mph limit in force. 

Will it take a road traffic fatality to occur before the police come out of their central castle in Lewisham and actually enforce these 20 mph speed limits?

Walking along the path from the South East corner of Hillyfields up towards the play area I was passed by a young child on his bike. He was pedaling quite fast as he went by. He had no safety helmet. His mum walking down the hill called out to remind the lad to stop before he reached the road. I guess the lad was about 4-5 years old. Isn't it nice to see a parent who whilst caring was not over protective and unafraid to let her son have some fun whilst taking minor risks. The lad stopped ok in a safe place. Don't mention this to the "Social Workers" though or else they will be around with Child Protection Orders and will have a team of private detectives scanning Hillyfields.

It reminded me that there are few places left in Brockley where our children can have fun away from the family. The scout huts have been pretty much sold off to developers and the like. There used to be a large scout hut with grounds behind the houses in St Margaret's Rd and Adelaide Av. Now it is just blocks of flats. Until recently there was a scout hut at the bottom end of Vesta Road, that has now been replaced by what looks like an anonymous council social department Hostel.

What is it that turns on the Selfish Gene for London commuters? It is so selfish when people put their bags on the seat next to them on the train? Is it that they hope that the commuters will go and sit somewhere else? Perhaps they think the seats in the train are their own personal property.

A pleasant walk over Hillyfields this morning. Spring is definitely in full swing with the Horse Chestnut trees just beginning to unfurl their flowers. On the less mown edges of the park Cow Parsley is shooting up. The trees are filled with bird song. I was able to watch two Jays protecting their nest area from both a marauding Magpie and a crow. Speaking of which the kids are back at school including the black crow legs of the Prendergast girls.

The contractors are out on Hillyfields digging up along the pathway between the tennis courts and Vicars Hill. I understand that the surface is being relaid to allow a cycle path. It seems a bit futile really as the tarmac surface on the underlying clay will stretch and crack again within a few years. The council should study the road building techniques of the Romans and then enrol local offenders on community service to build the pathways properly. Build it right, build it once.

Going down Vicars Hill it is obvious that the speed humps are missing on the newly laid road surface. Motorists drive as fast as they can up and down the steep hill in the narrow gaps between the parked cars, seemingly oblivious to the 20 mph speed limit. The council should actually enforce this speed limit and install Average Speed Camaera's (SPEC's) on the worst race tracks around Brockley.

I was out at 9am today walking the dogs up on Hillyfields. There was a slight mist around and it was still quite quiet with just a few runners and dog walkers around.  It was cool with a light mist from the overnight cool.

It was good to spot a large patch of Violets close by the path and just away from the trail worn bare by the thundering feet of the hope to be fit runners.  The policy of keeping some areas only lightly mown seems to be working out.

Transport for London and Mayor Livingstone have tried to sell the idea of Bendy Buses as the solution to the congestion problem. TFL have also introduced many bus lanes and "yellow boxes" at junctions as a further way of reducing congestion. There is a veritable army of Clerks involved in scanning video footage and sending out penalty notices to anyone who may linger in the yellow box.
There appears however no similar rule for the Bendy Buses. They seem to block the yellow box between Haberdasher's School and the Sainsbury's site with total impunity. Three times this week I've been held up by Bendy Buses blocking the junction.
Seems like the TFL officialdom have one rule for the punters and no rules for their buses.

Lewisham Council are building new cycle paths on Hillyfields Park. Last saturday I had to move out of the way of a large lorry delivering construction materials. Instead of taking the obvious route, via the gated entrance near the tennis courts, the contractors (Conway) drove along the footpath from the corner of Tressillian Road and Hillyfields Crescent. It was a large lorry and those paths are not designed for such heavy loads. There must have been more damage to the substructure.

Some person in Lewisham Council must have been responsible for arranging this contractor's work. Why didn't they properly supervise the deliveries? A lot of kids were on the park at the time playing football and could have been at risk had they been close to the deliveries. The lorry twice made reverse turns unguided close to the tennis courts.