Of course, the most familiar image to us all is now the gutted Party Superstore – which Love Clapham has frequented for many a fancy dress party – ablaze.

Other shops were smashed, looted and destroyed in a disgusting abuse of our local area. Clapham High Street was largely unaffected, although Blockbuster near Clapham North has had its windows smashed, and property destroyed and stolen. Love Clapham witnessed a gang of 20 or so hooded youths lurking behind KFC at around 11pm – they may have been entirely innocent, but last night was not the night to be hanging around in gangs.

Riot police eventually turn up en masse captured in this resident’s video:

No one involved had any intentions of delivering a political of social message, they just wanted to enjoy themselves by destroying people’s livelihoods. It was disturbing to watch on television, and terrifying for some of our residents stuck in the thick of the violence. Personally, the worst image for me was that of the young girls in the attack laughing at their friends tearing a TV off the wall in Ladbrokes. Such a depressingly pathetic display of ignorance and stupidity.

But the local community has come together in a tear jerking response as residents supported those affected today with broom in hand to clean up. Something to be proud of. Take care Clappers.

Read more on the following websites:

• Clapham Junction riots: A timeline of the violence and looting, images, write up and videos [Metro]
• Clapham Junction riots in pictures [BBC]
• London riots: Clapham broom picture goes viral as Londoners defy looters [Metro]
• Boris Johnson being heckled in Clapham Junction [Guardian]
• Clapham Junction write up [Telegraph]
• Boris Johnson criticised on Clapham Junction visit [Mirror]
• Clapham riot clean-up brings 400 volunteers [BBC]

Like a big bad pink boyfriend, I have let you down Clapham. Love Clapham simply hasn’t been paying you enough attention recently. With spring in the air however, it’s time for me to bring out the flowers and make things better. Yes, I am going to virtually snog you with an update on the latest Clapham news. Read on dear and loyal Clappers, read on…

First, the good news – it’s not bloody winter any more! If you’re anything like Love Clapham you will have noticed the plants are growing, the psychotic squirrels are chasing birds around our gardens again and this giant ball of burning flame has appeared in the sky which you may – quite rightly – have forgotten is called The Sun. With the re-emergence of The Sun, Clapham seems to have sprung into life and activity.

Clapham is a buzz with local events at the moment with Venn Street Market now a regular on any discerning Clapper’s social schedule. There is also a Jazz Brunch (only in Clapham, eh Clappers?), an Easter Craft Fair and Street Hip Hop Dance Classes to keep you busy in the coming weeks.

There seems to have been some local shop activity too. Over on Love Clapham’s side of town, Clapham North (aka the best part of Clapham), a new clothes shop and hairdressers have opened under the recently renovated arches. Get this: they are both coffee shops too. Yes, a coffee shop in a clothes shop and a hairdresser. Proving that in Clapham we actually DO do things by halves, we just do two things by halves and stick them together.

Of course, with all that fun comes a serious side… WAIT right where you are. Serious is good too. Elections are looming and the local parties are becoming as hyper as the local squirrels, dropping off leaflets and trying to explain why Labour, the Conservatives or the Lib Dems are the best for our community. Labour have looked after Lambeth for some time now and have done an excellent job. Whether you want things to stay that way or you want to try something different is obviously your decision – we’d welcome your opinion though.

The only leisure you'll be getting out of this Leisure Centre for the time being is destruction

Which leads nicely onto the bad news, if bad news can ever be introduced nicely. Clapham no longer has a swimming pool, the leisure centre is in the process of being demolished (photos here), as is the massive old grey tower block on Clapham High Street. Also, we received an email from London Underground last week informing us the Northern Line is going to be closed early on some evenings in the week and over 1 in 3 weekends for the next 18 months or so. Ouch. Wasn’t it only a couple of years ago we went through this?

On the mega plus side, the reason for the pool / leisure centre smash up is because it will eventually be replaced by a spanking new leisure centre. Although we will have to wait until the end of 2011 for it to open. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so Love Clapham can deal with this time period (although some of our Twitter followers don’t want to).

The only other bad news from Love Clapham’s perspective is that Clapham High Street’s water pipe replacement by Thames Water is still on going, and that started at least 18 months ago. It’s been a right royal pain in the Clapham ass the entire time too.

Oh, and junk mail from local businesses is still an issue.

However, and it’s a big however, it looks like Clapham is continuing to be on the up. All of these improvements will result in eventual rewards to be reaped by Clapham residents. So, all will hopefully be well that ends well. Stay tooned Clappers, Love Clapham won’t be as lazy with the updates in future and I may even right them properly instead of the annoying way in which I’ve written this story.

(Thanks to @ishra for the photos!)

What a poor snowing we’ve had in Clapham. Promised 40cm we’ve woken to a maximum of 2cm and pavements covered in ice. On my way to work I thought we’d been overrun by zombies as people shuffled toward the tube station. I for one feel short changed… It does look pretty though, so please keep uploading your snow pics to our Clapham Network. I should take this opportunity to wish each and every Clapper a very happy New Year! 2009 was a fantastic start for Love Clapham and I’m so grateful for the support I’ve received. I’ve found it great fun keeping everyone informed of local issues and this year I plan to keep going with local news and info plus to start getting slightly political in the run up to the local elections to help all of us make the right decisions (usually I’ve got no idea who I should be voting for!) If there’s anything you think Love Clapham should be doing more of in 2010, please let me know

Back in April Love Clapham wrote about the utterly ridiculous amount of leaflets Clapham residents have to fight their way through to get out of the door in the morning. Now this site is getting thousands of visitors from Clapham a week we think it’s time to take action! This abuse of people’s houses must STOP.

Love Clapham HQ finds it all bloomin’ annoying beyond belief – the other day I had to literally dig my way through piles of takeaway leaflets which all went in an orange recycling bag unread. Not only is it a pain to pick up and throw away these leaflets every day, it’s a waste of paper, a waste of local business’ time and giving local businesses that do this a very bad name.

We asked some people on our Twitter feed what they thought and these were some of the responses:

@hypothesiseit’s out of control at my house! I filled an entire recycling sack with it the other day!

@tri5tanyeah, its shocking, even the “no junk mail” sticker doesn’t work all the time

@LianneWals We have a recycling bin by the door that all the leaflets go straight into

What Love Clapham is proposing is for Clapham residents to store up all of the trash that comes through letter boxes in an orange recycling bag, and then we can deliver it all back to the companies that distribute them in the first place. If they can violate our doors, we can post it back to them!

Following this admittedly drama queen style diva protest, we can ask them to stop or at least reduce the amount of junk coming through Clapham residents’ doors. These companies can also circulate ‘no junk mail’ stickers for all residents to use if they so wish.

If you think this is a good plan and want to take part, or think we should do something else, please leave a comment below.

Yes, you’re right. That is the most amazing picture you have ever seen in your life. As if a man in a wet suit breaking through the ice of a Clapham Common pond wasn’t brilliant enough, a goose decided to honk along and make the picture approximately 1 MILLION TIMES more amazing. Taken on Clapham Common in the winter, John Forbath who runs the Big Squid Dive Centre, donned his wetsuit, cracked open the ice and had a little paddle. Bonkers! This can definitely be filed under ‘don’t try this at home kids’ and ‘only for experts’. John Forbath is one of the nominees for our Clapper of the Year award in the Clapham Awards 2009. More photos in the rest of the post.

What a lovely day for a snorkel on Clapham Common!

Not only do you need to be fully equipped from head to toe, you have to be a professional to do this.

This week’s Clapper is going like the clappers. Believe it or not, these stunning photos are from Clapham Common at the Toast Festival 2009 polo competition, the festival’s main highlight. From the first day, you can see South Africa vs Great Britain in the above picture. Great Britain won 7:6. Thanks to Eddie Clarke, who runs the Clapham Omnibus blog, for sending these in, see a selection of photos including the Umhlathuzi welcome singers in the rest of this post.

Toast Festival 2009's Umhlathuzi singers

Toast Festival 2009 South Africa Player

Players giving it their all in the Great Britain vs South Africa polo match

The umpire trots across Clapham Common

Polo players compete in a heated match

Toast Festival safety zone - don't get trampled under hoof!

South Africa and Great Britain

The first of Clapham Common's festivals is a major success

Find out about the other 2009 festivals on Clapham Common by visiting our Clapham Festival 2009 Guide.

Now for something totally random! BBC journalist, Maggie Philbin, and her sister Nickie are organising June’s Twitter Tweet Cookoff. What the tweet is that you ask? Well, each month a challenge is set for Twitter users to bake and post their photos of a certain dessert. Entries are then judged by the previous winner and local Clapham celebrity chef, Adam Byatt of Trinity London. June’s dessert is a “summer tart” and entries have to be in by Midday tomorrow, so get cooking! Last month’s winner, chosen by Nickie and Adam, was local Clapper, Edward Clarke – can Clapham claim the crown twice in a row?! Read on for further details.

Last month’s winning entry by Edward can be seen below in all its glory. Edward set this month’s challenge and will be judging entries this weekend.

If you fancy having your cake win and eating it, all you have to do is get baking first thing tomorrow, take a snazzy photo, upload it to a photobucket account (“summertart”) by this Saturday noon. Then, bingo, you’ve entered! Cookoff tweets are hashtagged #summertart if you fancy finding out more and joining in the Twitter Tweet Cookoffs in future.

Local resident, Fred Calditz, tries to prove to the world he can fly with this hot pink picnic blanket this week on Clapham Common. We won’t comment on the colour of the blanket but we’ve all seen the kites on Clapham Common and Love Clapham has definitely seen someone being lifted off the ground by one – careful Fred, you don’t want to end up being blown into Cock Pond! Thanks again to Andy Pronger for this photo and if you have a pic of some Clapper antics going on, email them to us and get your friends up here on Love Clapham.

So there we were, outside the Windmill pub on Clapham Common relatively early in the evening of Saturday. The sun was blazing, people were sun bathing. Then we noticed the Windmill pub had extended part of its garden into an outdoor clubbing mecha! The above lady was getting her groove on quite seriously by herself in this new area. She and her ‘male friend’ then went on to cause a fair amount of mischief…

Awesome news for Clappers today as blonde bombshell Boris Johnson announced an influx of security in the form of a new police force in Clapham Junction. The nine person strong team will patrol the Clapham Junction area and its public transport. This is very welcome news for Love Clapham because not only are more Bobbies on the Beat a visible sign of reassurance, the size of the team means there’s some serious policing business to be had. Wrong doers begone! On a related note, the Clapham Town Safer Neighbourhoods Team has been in touch to say that “if anyone wants to speak to us in confidence regarding any criminal activities etc, just give us a call on the team number: 0208 721 2825.”

It’s a double Clapper this week that helps show why Clapham is so amazing. The sun comes out and everyone heads to Clapham Common to start sunning their ankles. While the lady with her feet in the air is making a good attempt at Clapper of the week, the real prize has to go to the lady in the background who we spotted performing a range of very controlled stretches bordering on acrobatics. From head stands to raising her body up on its side using only her hands, she proved that Clapham is all about fun in the sun.

Spring is well and truly upon us and the joggers are out in force to make the most of Clapham Common in the sun. This lady shot past at the speed of light. Gotta love that row of trees.

Obviously Clapham is full of trend setters. We know this. It still came as a surprise however, when Clapham Common was overrun with three wheeled bikes from the future racing past the Windmill pub. If this was you on sunny Saturday 20 April, please get in touch, we want a go!

We’ve suspected it for a while now, and this week it was proven that Clapham is one of the trendiest places in London to be. The other day we spotted this Clapper sporting an amazing pink mohawk. If this is you, please get in touch. Have you spotted any other amazingness around town?