Recycle your Christmas Tree!

Thanks to Lewisham council for the picture above. Out of curiosity - how many people do you know who have such a vehicle?!

The council will kindly pick up Christmas trees and recycle from a number of parks on the borough. I'd love to know how you get them there. I created a blanket of green moving my tree from the living room to the front door. If you think it is going in my car, you are very much mistaken.

Explains why we found a dead Christmas tree abandoned behind the shed when we moved in in April.

Knit one, pearl one.

This makes me smile every time I pass.

The adult learning centre on Brockley Rise is showing some of the fruits of its students labours - learning, art and knitting all in one.

Tree hugging in Lewisham takes on new meaning?

To Tip or to Fly Tip? Undoubtedly a question....

Having just moved into a new home, one of the first Council amenities I need to use is the tip. As with all the other London boroughs, Lewisham now has a "recycling centre" - whatever!

A quick review of the council website and I found the address, though not the opening hours. So, last Saturday saw me off to the back of beyond in search of the tip. Given my sense of direction round these parts of London and the abysmal sign posting, this turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected. Nearby to Milwall's ground, it's also not the best place to be on a Saturday lunchtime as the traffic is horrendous.

Having eventually located the road, I end up in the TFL East London Line extension site. Wrong, surely. Turns out the lack of signs meant I had driven straight past. How could this be? Well the tip, sorry 'recycling centre' is shut on Saturday afternoons - quite sensible given the location, though pretty useless for most residents of the borough.

So Sunday saw a retry. Easy to get to and at 11am in the morning, a cheerful man told me there was a 30 minute queue - which as I had a date with a friend, meant - no can do.

So this week I made it. What a misery of a service. It is tiny - though I have to say every effort is made to recycle. But it just isn't big enough for the borough. No wonder the streets and all the bins are overflowing.

Score card: Must try harder

P.S. Wandsworth has a very good tip. And if you leave early, you might beat the traffic on the South Circular....