Our Fun Dog Show on Sunday (17th) was a very enjoyable and well-attended event, despite rain. Around 300 people came, and 112 dogs were entered for the classes, with most competing in more than 1 of the 10 classes. There was a great array of dogs of all shapes and sizes including male and female, puppies, veterans, rescue dogs, those with waggy tails, and excellent fancy dress and best tricks. There were also classes for junior handlers to let them demonstrate their skills.
We were glad to be joined by representatives of Streatham Hill Vets, the Parks Police, Wandsworth Council Animal Welfare Team, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, Strays of Greece, the Dogs of Tooting Common Facebook Group, and the Furzedown Community Network. We are grateful for their support and for their involvement in judging some of the classes. We were also very pleased to welcome the Mayor of Wandsworth, Juliana Annan, and grateful for her support.
Enable, who manage Tooting Common on behalf of Wandsworth Council, organise monthly volunteering sessions on the Common for Friends of Tooting Common and others.
Planned dates for forthcoming volunteering sessions are:
Tuesday 12 December
Tuesday 9 January 2024
Tuesday 6 February
Tuesday 12 March
Tuesday 5 December – Litter pick. Meet at the cafe at 11am
Sunday 10 December – Litter pick. Meet at the cafe at 11am
Tuesday 12 December – Enable volunteering session, 9.30am. Venue to be announced
Wednesday 20 December – Litter pick. Meet at the cafe at 11am
Friends of Tooting Common carries out fortnightly litter picks on the Common. The next pick will be on Tuesday 5 December, starting at 11am at the cafe on the Common. Please bring a pair of sturdy gloves.
Friends of Tooting Common run monthly bat walks during April to October. The bat walks have now finished for this year, while bats hibernate, but will re-start in April 2024.
Congratulations to Nick Le Neve Foster for this excellent winning photo in Friends of Tooting Common’s photo competition for Tooting Common for July to September!
We are now running a competition for the months of October to December 2023. Please send photos for this by Saturday 31 December, to fotcinformation@gmail.com, and entitle the email ‘FOTC photo competition’.
Entry to the competition is free, and open to everyone. The arrangements for our photo competitions are:
– The photo can be of any aspect of Tooting Common, particularly one which brings out its distinctive character
– It can include people, but for any close-up photos the permission of the people concerned should be obtained. Any photos including
children should be from a distance and not identify faces.
– Photo(s) submitted for the competition are then in the “public domain” and may be used publicly
– No-one can submit more than 5 photos for any competition
– The prize is a shopping/entertainment gift voucher for £30 (or cash equivalent) and a copy of a hand-drawn map of Tooting Common by a local artist.
A number of people post photos of the Common on the FoTC Facebook group, particularly of trees and plants.
We (FOTC) draw these together every few months and post them here. The most recent set of photos is here:
We hope these photos help celebrate the Common, particularly for people who aren’t often able to get out onto it.
Many thanks to all of the photographers, and particularly to Roy (Vickery) for his very informative posts, and for sharing his botanical expertise with us. Many thanks also to Eamonn (Richardson) for drawing these photos together.
Some photos for previous months are:
FOTC April/May 2020
We hope this will provide a longer-term record of how the Common looks at different times.
Alongside circulating these photos, we also run regular photo competitions for the Common. (See separate blog post on this.)
Friends of Tooting Common are concerned at the volume of litter on the Common. Litter collection by the Council’s contractor has improved in recent years, but litter remains a problem. We also arrange our own volunteer litter picks.
It is also very important that people take litter home with them, and certainly do not to leave it lying out on the Common. Littering the Common is selfish, and spoils the Common – which is a really excellent greenspace, available to everybody – for everyone else.
There has been very considerable wear and damage to a number of parts of the Common as a result of heavy usage, particularly during summer 2020. These problems have been exacerbated recently by waterlogging, resulting in a number of large muddy areas. FOTC have raised these issues of concern with Enable (who manage the Common on the Council’s behalf), while recognising that these and other problems on the Common may not have easy short-term solutions.
There have been some general concerns about dog and puppy thefts in London, and also some reports recently of people acting suspiciously in some other greenspaces in Wandsworth – eg asking dog owners about their dogs, and/or taking photos of the dogs. There have been no reported incidents of concern on Tooting Common, which is re-assuring. However dog owners using Tooting Common may want to be generally aware of these reports, and to be vigilant to eg anyone asking questions about their dog(s).
Also, if you know of any actual theft, or see someone acting suspiciously, please report it to the police on 101, so that any incidents can be logged and acted on.