Planning permission is granted for the redevelopment of the Millennium Dome and the land around it in south east London.

The school run changed forever after Andrew Eames unearthed a gripping, wartime 'bomb book'

For the past six years we have been walking our children to their Chiswick school through half a mile of Edwardian terraces. In that time, we've got to know the houses along the route pretty well, principally on account of the people who live in them. Particular milestones are the lair of the anorexic jogger, the front garden with the mysterious fleet of cars all wrapped up in black polythene, the house with the excessively rouged grande dame who is never seen without a hat, and the home of the svelte housewife who scraps her kitchen every couple of years, presumably because she's bored with the colour.

And then there are a few oddball buildings - the properties which simply don't fit in with the prevalent vintage. Until recently, I've referred to these odd-ones-out with a glib “Oh, that must be where a bomb fell”. So much so that these days, whenever my eight-year-old daughter spots a particularly brutal piece of architecture, she assumes that it's the fault of the Germans.

It was her homework project for last term, however - researching an article for the school's centenary magazine - which put her father's all-too-convenient bomb damage theory to the test. As it turned out, most of the time I had been misguided, but we did discover that a magnesium bomb fell on our Woolies, a neighbour's garden shed was blown to kingdom come, and London's first-ever V2 flying bomb landed right at the end of our street.

The source of these crucial nuggets of information was the so-called “bomb book”, a war-damage report compiled by Air Raid Precautions (ARP) held by the local studies department of borough libraries. Different boroughs archive their reports in different ways, but most have a day-by-day account of exactly what fell, where and to what effect. (For an overview of the whole of London, the Metropolitan Archive has a set of bomb damage maps, street by street, with damage indicated by colours ranging from light green, orange and yellow through to dark red, purple and black, indicating complete destruction.)

For us, the couple of hours we spent leafing through the pages of Chiswick's bomb book was gripping, even for two small researchers for whom a trip to the reference library sounded suspiciously like homework.

Airshow spectators are told to keep off the mudflats at Southend.

A CHANCE for residents to put forward their own ideas for the improvement of the borough's parks and open spaces is being offered by Richmond upon Thames Council during a major, four-month consultation exercise.

March sees the launch of the consultation on the borough's Open Spaces Strategy, which aims to help the council develop its improvement plan for local parks, open spaces and the riverside.

To ensure that the council captures the ideas of the community, a series of nine drop-in sessions have been organised across the borough to invite suggestions from the public.

The first consultation event will be for the  Mortlake area. This will include presenting an audit of the towpath from Kew Bridge to Beverley Brook, which has recently been completed by volunteers co-ordinated by the Tow Path Group of the Environment Trust, in addition to consideration of the parks and open spaces in this area.

The council is responsible for maintaining more than 100 parks, open spaces, commons and woodlands which attract around five million visitors a year.

In addition, it manages 35 playgrounds, more than 70 sports pitches, six cemeteries and looks after 16,000 trees.

Richmond council's cabinet member for environment and planning, Cllr David  Marlow, said: “This borough is the greenest in London with splendid parks and open spaces and superb riverside areas. We are committed to maintaining them for current and future generations to enjoy, and so it is vital we hear the views of local residents on this important borough-wide strategy.

“Informal drop-in sessions will be held at which the council will show residents its plans, invite comment and ask people to put forward ideas of their own.

“We want as many residents as possible to take part in this consultation exercise which will help us shape our future plans and policy.”

Cllr Bill Treble, Liberal Democrat spokesperson on libraries, art and sport, said: “It is gratifying that the present administration is learning from the previous administration and actually planning to consult residents. Perhaps residents of Whitton and Heathfield wards will ask when they will be rebuilding the Murray Park pavilion, for which money, given by the RFU, was set aside for that purpose before May 2002.”

He also expressed the hope that Carlisle Park would be given a new park keeper “before it gets beyond redemption”.

Cllr Treble concluded: “I'm sure that many residents of Richmond upon Thames will take advantage of this opportunity to have their say.”

The Mortlake drop-in will set the consultation ball rolling on Saturday, March 6. It will be held at the Powerstation Youth Club in Mortlake High Street between noon and 4pm. Wheelchair access is provided. Everyone is welcome and a kids' corner and refreshments will be available.

For more details log onto the council's website at www.richmond.gov.uk and link to the Open Spaces Strategy. If you are unable to attend the drop-in session in your area, ring 020 8831 6115 or send your comments to parks@richmond.gov.uk

A ferocious, carnivorous South American piranha has been fished out of London's River Thames, environmental officials said Thursday.

Asimo goes on show in London's  Science Museum, showcasing Honda's prowess in humanoid robotics.

IT seemed an ignoble end for a plane which could travel at twice the speed of sound and took its passengers to the edge of space. - News politics

A century-and-a-half ago prison ships, or hulks, were moored on the Thames. CLARE CRAWFORD reports …

The Thames at Woolwich has a bleak atmosphere. The river is dirty, wide and slow. Its shore is lined with the decaying remnants of past years' industry.

It seems a fitting place to have housed prison hulks until 150 years ago.

There is only one known photograph of the hulks at Woolwich, taken from Bell Water Gate now the road between the Waterfront Leisure Centre and its car park.

It shows the last hulk, the Defence and part of the hospital ship, the Unite, in eerie sepia, shortly before they were destroyed by a fire in 1857.

The ships are unmasted and no convicts can be seen on board, giving them a Marie Celeste atmosphere.
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Even on a sunny day, standing next to the boarded-up Crown and Cushion pub, it is not hard to imagine the boats are still out there, beyond the car park.

Most people outside Woolwich who have heard of the hulks have done so through  reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. This includes a wonderfully macabre description of the hulks: “By the light of the torches we saw the black hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah's ark.

“Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains, the prison ship seemed in my eyes to be ironed like the prisoners.”

Pip's foray across the gloomy marshland would have been easier to envisage at Woolwich 150 years ago.

On the opposite bank to where the hulks were moored, where 1960s' tower blocks now stand, there would have lain the Essex Marshes.

A little further down river, where you can see the bend containing the Thamesmead development, was Plumstead Marshes, an empty, scrubby place where you could catch Plumstead Ague a form of malaria.

Here, it is said, many convicts were buried in unconsecrated ground, red dead nettle growing on the newly-turned earth of their graves. Ironically, Belmarsh prison now stands on the site.

Life on board was horrific, leading to an inquiry in 1847 into the unsanitary conditions.

This, combined with the hard physical work the convicts had to do every day, must have made escape tempting.

WT Stead's Records of the Woolwich District notes a fascinating case: “1832: November. On Saturday, as a gang of 24 convicts employed in the Arsenal were going to work, 12 of their number escaped by jumping over a very high hedge, which divides the marshes from the high road.

“The sentinel immediately fired, bringing back eight of their number, the other four continuing their flight toward Plumstead Common.

“The artillery on duty at the Arsenal, accompanied by a number of villagers, went in pursuit and found two of the fugitives concealed in a hedge in a secluded spot behind the mill on Plumstead Common.

“The other two were found behind a haystack between Wickham and Welling.”

Original English-language news coverage of Taiwan.