the easter hunt is on

not only one but two easter bunnies here look rather pleased with themselves after they found about two hundred chocolate eggs and other easter goodies (wasn't it to be the other way round?) and even a mars bar from last year's egg hunt. bets are taken already about how many sweets the gardener(s) will find over the next couple of months as nobody remembered exactly where things were and rike is convinced that at least one massive huge chocolate egg still waits for her in the bushes...happy easter!

and not so proud

a shooting in the neighborhood today early afternoon with apparently one guy shot in the arm and a bunch of kids arrested by police. two hours later when we walked by the traffic was still condoned off and officers were securing the area with at least ten police cars. funny it happened on the day when we came from ladbroke grove thinking how calm brockley was instead...wrong again! 

something to be proud of...

darren johnson knocked on the door today to say hello and left a card with the election results from 2006 - we'd seen this before but it was a nice reminder that the green party has a strong foothold in brockley (we are, after all, THE green part of lewisham, together with ladywell). with the greens taking 47%, labour 33% and the libdems 10%, there is not much space for conservative thinking in the neighborhood. which is just as well...   

(map from wikipedia, poster from mydavidcameron.com)

march bunnies

a very happy birthday to all our march bunnies who turned just that little bit older this month and who are by now so many (just like bunnies, erm...) that it would take up more or less all of our time to put in single blog entries. let's see if we get the order right at least but they should start off with conny on the 3rd, didi 4th, katrin 9th, conny 18th (?) and riklein 22nd - correct??

hope you all had as lovely a time as we had on rikes birthday with pressies galore and a cake to gallop away with and a lovely raclette-and-swim-party today which explains why we are all crushing out early tonight...

march bunnies: you're great!

numbers come and go

well, there are lies and ... statistics, and at one point i found out that the little visitor counter on this blog actually tells you quite happily about the latter, whether true or not, so i spent a few moments in the data world and here (and above) are a few findings:

• 
  
  we have as much visitors from germany as from the us
• 
  
  one person in island visits regularly (hi!)
• 
  
  if we would count our own visits, we would definitely be our best visitors
• 
  
  when you run the text on the blog through the automated translator it makes for a good laugh...

she's done good!

it is worrysome when people you have known for a long time start getting large flower bouquets and even more so when you hear about it in the papers. It means they are either very, very old or very, very famous or both and you wonder what happened to yourself in the meantime...

it is, however, dead scary when there are even speeches to follow and possibly medals handed out or oscars or bambis or whatnot and perhaps an orchestra sitting in the aisles playing a dramatic tusch or so

we don't know whether that was the case here but we do know that dear corinna seriously deserves to be praised as she really has done good and her important work at the KuRVE needs to be advertised (follow the link to see more of what she's up to). hopefully more to come soon!

extra bonus: check here for a short interview

serve and obey!

great news the other day that our darling daughter has been accepted at one of the best schools in the country, the formidable haberdashers' aske's hatcham college which is great as it is not only academically challenging (we hope) but close enough to home to leave time for lot's of other stuff (rike hopes).

says wikipedia: as of august 2009, aske's GCSE results were rated the 10th best in the country for all state schools and best in london, according to the guardian newspaper. founded by one of the original livery companies in the city of london, the worshipful company of haberdashers, who owned much of the land in new cross (then hatcham) and in 1875 had surplus money in robert aske's educational charity which was used for two grammar schools for boys and girls.

today aske's is probably best known for the near impossibility to get into (over 3000 applications for 260 places) and it's great music tuition, which means rike will be in good company according to the illustrious list of "old askeans": steve harley of steve harley & cockney rebel, the lead singer of doctor and the medics, clive jackson, melvyn gale of electric light orchestra, a clash member, and damian marley, son of reggae legend bob.

so with that looking all nice and dandy we are only a little concerned about the motto the school inherited from the haberdasher monks. serve and obey is probably not unknown to our dearest, just the direction has to be sorted: you serve me cookies now and please obey my 'do not enter' sign on the door while you're at it...