There is not much of interest in Sydenham (I’ve looked!), though it has some great greenery around it, including the lovely, ancient Sydenham Hill Wood, which has this interesting folly. Syndenham High Street has six charity shops (all of which are closed on Sundays).

From the top there’s a lively St Christopher’s Hospice, with a wide range of bric-a-brac and a Kids’ Zone, and downstairs, excitingly, a whole room of music and books. ALDLIFE is like a smelly jumble sale. Out back there’s a room with lots of kid’s stuff, books, records, CDs and DVDs. RSPCA is small but nice. Sue Ryder is quite big with decent stock and has a nice vibe to it. Next is a small, average Cancer Research. Then finally a small Scope, mainly clothes, with a small book section and some records.

Records. I still look for them but I don’t know why. The ratio of looking though stacks of records to actually buying one I want must now be something like 1000:1. It seems the days are gone when I used to pick up something like this for 92p.