Brockley in the Telegraph

The Brockley Christmas fair and a certain local ukelele group get a mention in the Telegraph's gardening section this week (14 January), with Matthew Appleby writing:

'I ran a pop-up garden shop in up-and-coming London suburb Brockley recently. We sold the dream ticket of secondhand books, local photo cards of Brockley in the snow, cupcakes, and slug and weedkillers. Only the chemicals failed to shift. This retail offering may sound like a health and safety nightmare, and indeed one child complained about tinfoil in their fairy cake, but the event had a lovely community feel, with a ukulele band, Santa and mulled wine on offer. We used a cute baby as bait (my idea) and gave the proceeds to charity (not my idea).

However, no-one bought any garden products. Maybe it was the time of year. Maybe the trendy Brockley-ites want to do it for free. Maybe the seeds and grow-your-own thing is now so embedded that no-one thinks they need garden chemicals any more. Maybe they are all organic and self-sufficient. But I doubt it'.

Local allotment holders might also be interested in the item in this same column on a new company setting up private allotments to compete with the 'socialist system' of council-run allotments - apparently 'Allotments used to be for pensioners and the poor. Now they are for the middle classes'. Discuss.

Incidentally, has anyone else noticed the over-use of the term 'pop-up' everywhere for anything vaguely temporary? Someone sticks a few pictures on a cafe wall and now it's a pop-up gallery; or in the example above, a stall in a Christmas market is rebranded as a pop-up shop.