Move Number 2

We at last moved house over the weekend and happily said good bye to our one-month flat. 

Unfortunately, swine flu has created havoc in my body for the duration of the weekend’s move.  I am fine so long as I sit upright, am warm and don’t move.  If I move at all, am cold or lie down I bark like a seal.  These barking spells can go on for some time, and usually cause my entire body to convulse, somewhat like the zombies in 28 Days Later.  Unfortunately, given it is a typical British summer, it’s not warm and moving house doesn’t give one a great many opportunities to sit upright and not move.  I rather suspect, therefore, that our new neighbours think we have smuggled a pet seal into the flat. 

We did not employ Vinnie again to help with the move, and thankfully had two removalists neither of whom were scared of heavy lifting.  Along with G, they got a fair bit of exercise and earned their fee.  I was therefore able to avoid the heavy lifting this time, and instead did the cleaning/packing/unpacking jobs while the boys did the hard work.

By the end of the Saturday we had all of our belongings in the new flat. 

The English property system is different to that in Australia in so many ways.  None of these ways is good. Importantly, the principle that the seller sells the property along with its fixtures does not seem to apply here.  We discovered that the shelves that had been affixed to the walls had been removed, as had coat-hooks and, most importantly, curtain rods and the curtains.  Nonetheless, we did not let any of this affect us, and managed to cobble together some makeshift blinds for the bedroom using old packing boxes.  By that point, the neighbours probably thought that in addition to smuggling a seal into the flat, we were subletting one room to some hobos. 

Moving from living in fully furnished rental properties into our own empty flat has meant that we have had rather quickly to acquire some furniture.  We bought the seller’s bed and wardrobe.  They are ugly, but perfectly serviceable and, most importantly, meant we had a bed for the Saturday night.

Exhausted after the move, we went to bed early on the Saturday night. At about midnight, G woke with a start, waking me.  There was an overwhelming smell of cigarettes throughout the flat.  G told me that immediately on waking, and for a few groggy seconds thereafter, he thought someone had broken into the flat and was smoking in the sitting room. He quickly realised this was an odd thing for a burglar to choose to do, and so decided that this was probably not the source of the smell.  G then wandered around, looking in the flat and sniffing every air vent to try and work out where the smell came from.  I was far too tired to get out of bed at that point, and went back to sleep.  I gather Geoff went back to sleep too.  At 4 am, however, I woke startled, again smelling the cigarette smell throughout the flat, and this time found I it too overwhelming to ignore.  I of course woke G, and we turned the lights on and crept about the flat, again sniffing under and outside the front door, and every air vent.  Given we have no curtains, I suspect any chavs awake and living in the housing block across the way would have been entertained for some time by the spectacle of two semi-naked adults creeping about the place, sniffing things while one of them barked uncontrollably.

Despite our best efforts at sniffing out the source of the smell, G and I could not tell where the smell was coming from.  I decided it must be a smoking ghost haunting our new flat.  G thought there must be some scientific explanation for it, but could not determine what that explanation could be.

I should mention, at this point, that G and I possibly hate the act of cigarette smoking more than anyone else on this planet. I remember when I was a teenager, and there was a brief period when cigarette smoking was seen as cool and rebellious, trying cigarettes a few times when offered them by friends.  I couldn’t see the appeal, but my loud criticisms to my friends that the idea of lighting something smelly and inhaling its fumes seemed altogether rather ridiculous was met with outcries that I was betraying the cause of teen rebellion.  It was therefore with some delight that I discovered the history of moral bankruptcy of cigarette companies, and was able to sanctimoniously tell friends that by smoking they were “feeding the man” and that it was, in fact, they who were betraying the cause of teen rebellion.  To be frank, as many of my smoking friends know, this self-righteous and sanctimonious speech of mine still rears its head, usually when I’ve had a few too many glasses of wine.  It is combined now with tales of just how long it takes cigarette butts to decompose.  It is, perhaps, not surprising that I don’t have too many friends who smoke anymore.  

In the context of this cigarette hatred that both G and I feel, having a flat that inexplicably smelt of cigarette smoke at odd hours of the evening was perhaps the most terrible thing that could happen.   However, the next day there was a further turn of events that managed to distract us, temporarily, from this catastrophe.

The delivery men arrived with our brand new sofa. A lovely, three-seater, chocolate brown linen-covered sofa from Dwell. A bargain, bought at a half price sale.  After the hectic move and sleepless night, we were both very excited at the prospect of spending a few hours collapsed on it watching episodes of The West Wing.  Without this sofa, there was only the hard wooden floor on which to sit to watch TV.  Unfortunately, the sofa did not fit through the narrow stairway to our flat.  My shouts of “just kick it through, push it why don’t you” to the delivery men did not help matters as they explained to me that, quite simply, the sofa was bigger than the space in the stairway and there was no possible way, according to the laws of physics, that the sofa would make it through.  We waved goodbye to our sofa, and sat on our hard wooden floor.

The upside of sitting on the floor was that we suddenly realised where the cigarette smell was coming from, as a gust of foul cigarette-smelling air came though our chimney.  It seems that my ghost theories were, in fact, not correct and that what has been happening is that our neighbours' cigarette smoke is wafting into their chimney, through ours and into our flat.

We promptly blocked off the chimney with some tape and cardboard and have solved one problem.  Now the hunt is on to find a sofa. Preferably one that can be delivered straight away. In the meantime, I will be writing this blog as I sit on my cold, hard wooden floor.

Swine flu

It’s official. I have swine flu. 

Of course, I wasn’t diagnosed by a GP or, for that matter, by any person.  Thanks to a series of tube posters and TV ads, I am well-aware that anyone with “flu-like symptoms” in England is not to attend their GP.  On a recent trip to my GP surgery (for an entirely unrelated matter) I even noticed that my GP surgery  has a big sign on the door entitled “polite notice” which goes on to read: “if you are displaying any cold or flu like symptoms whatsoever, do not enter this room.  Telephone the NHS flu pandemic hotline or contact the NHS flu pandemic website.”

After being unwell since Thursday, with a dreadful cough, fever and headaches, this morning it finally twigged that given these were “flu-like symptoms”, perhaps I should make use of the NHS website.  This involved an online quiz to assess my health. Various questions were asked, including:

• are you/is the patient limp?
  
• are you/ is the patient unable to move?
  
• are you/is the patient having a fit?
  
• are your/are the patient’s lips blue and do you/they have trouble breathing?
  
• are you/is the patient not breathing, seemingly asleep and unresponsive?
  

Thankfully I answered no to all of the above.  Even with my limited medical knowledge, I’m quite sure that answering "yes" to that final question would mean that even the NHS website could not help me any more.

I did, however, answer “yes” to questions including “do you have a fever”; “do you have a cough”; and “do you have aches and pains”.  The system then promptly spat out a diagnosis that I more likely than not had swine flu and gave me a prescription for tamiflu.  I have decided not to take the latter – I have confidence that my exercise-DVD toned body will fight this off in no time.  In the meantime, however, I am stuck at home in my one-month flat.

Being unwell is no fun.  Especially when one is unwell in a one-month flat which must itself be harbouring bacteria and germs in quantities to rival those currently attacking my body. 

I am firmly of the belief that if I am sick, I must ensure that everyone else in the world is fully aware of my symptoms at any and every given point in time.  Accordingly, G has been privileged to receive updates every five minutes or so, over the weekend and the course of today.  Mostly the updates have simply been to repeat “I’m still feeling really sick and need a lot of sympathy.  Still no better than five minutes ago”

As G has pointed out, although he loves hearing my regular updates on my health, it may just be the case that not everyone feels the same way.  I’m sure he cannot be right in that assessment.  However, on this one occasion, given my present infirmity, I’m going to defer to his judgment and avoid updating my blog until I’m better, to resist the temptation of filling this space with regular health updates.

But before I go, I should say – I’m still feeling really sick and need a lot of sympathy. 

RIP dishwasher

G and I are now the proud owners of a flat. Or, more accurately, G and I are the proud owners of a contract entitling us to purchase a flat on 27 August 2009.

Getting to this stage has not been without its difficulties. On top of the delays, there have been minor disasters. Perhaps the greatest disaster was the death of the flat’s dishwasher. By that, I mean the mechanical apparatus, rather than the seller of the flat, who (judging by the flat’s present state of cleanliness) has never washed anything in his life.

On the day we were due to exchange contracts, we received an email from our solicitor along the lines of “I’ve just been told, by the way, that the dishwasher in the flat broke some weeks ago and cannot be repaired. So you’re buying a flat without a dishwasher now.”

Losing a dishwasher may not sound like such a calamitous event, but to understand just how it affected us to hear those shocking words, one perhaps needs to know a little of our history of dishwashers and the central role they have played in our lives.

This requires going back to the days when I was 20 and G was 21 and we were living together for the first time in a house on Weld Street in Perth, Australia. Weld Street (as we called the house) rivalled the one-month flat as the worst home in which we have ever lived. It was a tiny two-bedroom worker’s cottage, built in the 50s. The floors were laid with floorboards with large gaps between them, through which weeds, cockroaches and spiders would frequently visit. The hot cockroach-filled summers in Perth meant there was a nightly ritual of me standing on top of the sofa screaming while G ran around the house mounting a counter-insurgency on the cockroaches with a can of bug spray.

The loo at Weld Street was outside the main house, in the laundry. While there was a covered veranda connecting the laundry to the rest of the house, the weeds grew so thickly between the gaps in the boards on the veranda that we properly regarded that area as “outdoors”.

The house was not equipped with a dishwasher. Indeed, in the tiny kitchen, there was barely room for two people, let alone a dishwasher. It was therefore with some excitement that, on a late-night walk around the neighbourhood, G and I discovered an abandoned dishwasher on a neighbour’s lawn. Dishwashers with plumbing were invented around 1920. I suspect this dishwasher was one of the prototypes. It was a mustard colour, with enamel inside and wood veneer stuck on the outside of it. It had a sign placed on top of it: “still working, please take me”. That was all the encouragement we needed.

G somehow managed to convince his father, at that late hour, to come around with his enormous car and help us to get the thing back to our house. G’s father, ever the gentleman, did nothing more than raise an eyebrow at this odd adventure.

Not having enough room in the kitchen, we “installed” our new dishwasher in the laundry, next to the loo. It worked beautifully, with only one minor problem. The first time I turned it on, I felt an incredible thump up my arm. Not knowing what caused this bizarre feeling, I of course immediately touched the dishwasher again, only to discover that once more I felt a thump up my arm. After several such tests gave the same result, and one nearly thew me across the room, I realised that this thump was, in fact, an electric shock. G and I puzzled over what we should do about this latest turn of events. Neither of us ever contemplated that we would not use the dishwasher. Instead, we used our rudimentary knowledge of science to come to the conclusion that, since rubber does not conduct electricity, whenever we were using the dishwasher we would wear rubber gloves and boots. And that is how we loaded and unloaded the dishwasher for the next few months, until we finally had the good sense to move to a slightly more luxurious student pad. This method still resulted in the occasional electric shock being felt, but we were quite confident that our scientific method would prevent us coming to any real harm.

Notwithstanding its difficulties and limitations, G and I loved that dishwasher. The taste of life without handwashing dishes was such that we could never go back. And we haven’t. It has always been a golden rule of rentals or purchases that they simply must have a dishwasher. It was therefore with some pain that we learnt we were losing the dishwasher at the new flat. We negotiated a small discount in the price to compensate for the loss, but have already resigned ourselves to the fact that, even if we have to pay for it entirely on our credit cards, the first purchase in our new flat will be a shiny new dishwasher.

Crazy people and buses

Again I am writing on buses.

Sadly, at the one-month flat, we are miles away from a Tube station, and I find myself forced to catch the 29 bus to work every morning. This is a bus that even has its own Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Buses_route_29 As you will see from that site, the 29 bus in London is noted for its high crime rate and is London's third most dangerous bus route. I didn't know this until today, but it doesn't surprise me. A large number of the commuters on the bus get on outside a large industrial-looking building with the words "adult social housing" over its door. Other commuters get on from outside the similarly industrial-looking building with the words "adult health care" over its door. The rest seem to come from the pub doorways, where it appears they've slept during the night. Then there's those of us commuting into the city for work.

The thing I love about London, and the buses in particular, is the inviolable rule that thou shall not acknowledge any other commuter on any bus at any time. This is a rule that is never broken by the (relatively sane) English commuters. Even on the 29 bus.

Yesterday morning, I got on my bus as per usual. I maneuvered around the man who smelt like vomit (a 29 morning regular) and past the old man wearing nothing but a suit-jacket and boxers (another regular) and sat on a seat next to a man reading the morning paper. Even with my iPod headphones in, and Ryan Adams screaming in my ears, I heard a strange sound. This time, it was a male voice with an American accent, coming from the seats behind me. On closer scrutiny, I could hear blasts of cockney coming through the accent, and realised the accent sounded somewhat incredible, and seemed to be a cross between Jamaican, English and American. After turning down Ryan Adams and puzzling over the accent for some time, I came to the conclusions, first, that this man was crazy and, secondly, that he was most likely English. Given that I didn't brave asking the man his name, I am going to call him Crazy Man (or CM for short).

I am bad at imitating accents in speech, and suspect I will be even worse at attempting to do so in print, but will try nonetheless. the conversation went something like this:

CM: eye is da muvaf*cking soldya man. Ya, like, EYE IS DA MUVAF*CKING SOLDYA. But eye is not da muvaf*cking soldya of Britain. No man. Eye is da muvaf*cking soldya of da rastafairan Kingdom. Or'ight?

silence for a few seconds (I assume he was on the phone - that or speaking to himself!)

CM: no man, I says to dem, eye ain't your muvaf*cking British soldya. Or'ight? I ain't gonna fight your muvaf*cking muvaf*ckers. Or'ight?

silence for a few more seconds

CM: No, not dem muvaf*cking soldyas

At this point, I started to suspect the conversation was not going to move to a stage that I would find even vaguely interesting, so I turned Ryan back up and settled in for the journey. All the while, of course, looking straight ahead and not giving any indication that I had, in fact, been listening to CM. The bus journey continued, with the occasional blast of CM saying motherf*cker behind me.

During all of this, no one reacted. Like me, all commuters stood looking straight ahead (or stayed semi-passed out in the corner, depending on their state of inebriation).

CM then rose from his seat and moved to the middle of the bus. There he started performing a rap accompanied by an unusual rap dance, involving a lot of movement of the arms across his chest and movements with his chin that made him look somewhat like a chicken. From what I could understand of it, the rap went something like this:

CM: Eye is da Mambo. Eye is da devil. You call 666 you get me. I ain't your mambo. No, eye is your devil, on your shoulder.

The rap went on for some time in this vein, although with a few more profanities thrown in for good measure. The unusual dance also continued. In total, this all went on for perhaps five minutes. During this time, no one raised an eyebrow. Not even at their fellow sane commuters. Not one person turned to look, or responded to CM, even when he started walking up to individual commuters and thrusting his face in front of theirs to make eye contact. There wasn't a word said. Even after CM got off at his stop, not one person on the bus looked at the person next to them and smirked, or rolled their eyes. There was absolutely nothing. If you stepped on to the bus as CM stepped off, you would have had no idea that anything out of the ordinary had happened during the preceding five minutes.

But then again, perhaps I simply haven't been riding the 29 bus for long enough, and perhaps this is perfectly ordinary.

I really hope our flat purchase goes through soon!

The double-decker

We all know that the population is ever increasing, not only in number but also (at least in the Western world) in girth. Indeed, like me I suspect you have been reading and watching politicians ponder, with some regularity, the question of how to reduce the size of the population’s girth. Journalists too seem to delight in the topic, with one Spectator journalist recently starting a debate about whether we should return to the days of teasing overweight people by calling them “Fatties” (all for their own good of course).

Personally, I don’t think that teasing grossly overweight people is the way to solve the problem. I’m also not sure that Britain’s latest solution (of hiring a Strictly Come Dancing “star” as the head of campaign to get Britain to dance off its fat) is going to yield results. However, it might be a very pleasant surprise for British teens to learn that Tango is a dance, and not just a saccharine orange flavoured soft-drink.

At the same time as the government is trying to deal with these issues of demographic diameter, I find myself on a daily basis grappling with how these grossly overweight people fit within our complex rules of etiquette. These are rules that have been devised over many years, during a time when a much slimmer population was the norm.

This difficult issue of how one treats a grossly overweight person (or double-decker) in accordance with these rules of etiquette has been particularly troubling me in relation to public transport, following an incident on the bus coming home on Friday.

I regularly catch the double-decker bus home from work. Sadly, so do many other City workers, and as a result the bus is usually packed. On this day, I mounted the bus and noted that the seats right at its rear were vacant. This is a rare find. I trotted to the back of the bus and sat down, turned on my iPod and picked up the London Lite that someone had left on the seat next me. Even with the distractions of Kings of Leon shouting about sex and fire in my ears and salacious gossip about Jordan and Pete in the paper, I could hear a loud groan from a woman who then said, very loudly, “well, since no one is going to stand up to offer me their seat, I guess I’ll have to sit at the back of the bus”. She was American, of course. All the British and Australians understand that when in a bus, one pretends one is the only person in that bus, and does not acknowledge the strangers in the bus, let alone talk to them.

I was therefore startled to hear this woman addressing the whole bus. I looked up to see a double-decker woman hobbling up the isle. She eased her bulk down next to me with a sigh of relief. It was difficult to tell the age of this woman – at a guess I would say no more than 55. She was grossly overweight; so much so that as she sat down next to me, part of her thigh oozed onto my seat, meaning I could feel the heat of her enormous thigh pressing against mine for the entire journey. It was far less pleasant than when the only thing on that seat had been the London Lite.

A much slimmer friend of the double-decker sat opposite her. The double-decker then proceeded loudly to complain to her friend that it was very rude that none of those at the front of the bus had stood up to offer her their seats. She said words to the effect that, because of her size, it was very difficult for her to walk all the way to the back of the bus, and surely everyone could see that. I assume, from that comment, that her only “disability”, so to speak, was her size.

I know that some grossly overweight people are not responsible for their misfortune; they may have glandular problems or illnesses that lead to their enormous girth. This, however, did not appear to be one of those people. She loudly bored her friend and everyone else on the bus with a long and loud monologue about how unpleasant the heat was, and that she was trying to lose weight but simply couldn’t possibly lose any weight because in this humidity she simply had to eat hundreds of “sweets” during the day just to cope. She also described those “sweets”, such as the ice cream, chocolate cake and lollies.

I then wondered: if her “disability” is her weight, and that weight is caused by her diet, is that a disability entitling her to expect others to relinquish their seats on the bus? Or, is it more akin to, say, a woman choosing to wear ridiculous stilettos, making it difficult for her to walk, and expecting someone to relinquish their seat for her?

I am a great believer that one must give up one’s seat to people with physical disabilities, injuries, the elderly, frail and pregnant. However, now that our population is growing in girth, is a new category of disability being a double-decker?

Barcelona!

We are back from Barcelona!

As seems par for the course with anything we do, the trip was not entirely without incident. First, there was the matter of actually getting on the aeroplane. Somehow, notwithstanding our best efforts at planning the journey to Heathrow, we arrived at the airport with only 45 minutes to spare. We still thought, rather smugly, that we had heaps of time, as we had diligently printed off our boarding passes and had only to drop off our one check-in bag and pass through security. However, the fellow behind the bag drop counter informed us we had best not dawdle as he thought the boarding gate for our flight might have already closed. Apparently it was closing early for some reason (typical BA!). A quick sprint to the boarding gate followed, and we managed to get onto the plane just in time.

Unfortunately, given the last minute dash, I did not have time to purchase a book at the bookstore at the airport, as I had planned. I tried reading G's book over his shoulder on the flight, but that was met only with irritated looks, and with G moving the book further and further from my view. The man sitting to my left was reading a tome entitled "the existentialists' journal". He was on the chapter "an existentialist's look at sexuality". I thought that might be a bit much for my holiday reading. I also wasn't keen to get into a debate with an existentialist regarding the acceptability of looking over a stranger's shoulder to read his book. Therefore, it was a rather boring flight.

At last we arrived in Barcelona. We got off the plane, went through what passes for security in Barcelona (a teenager half-heartedly looking at our passports and waiving us through) and went to collect our luggage. Hurrah, we thought, our holiday has begun! And then we waited. And waited. And waited. We saw numerous suitcases of all different sizes and colours on the luggage carousel, but sadly didn't see our little bag. Eventually the carousel stopped, and we found ourselves standing there, along with two other passengers, with terrified looks on our faces. Off we stomped to the lost luggage counter where we were told that our luggage was still in Heathrow. The other two passengers told us they had this happen to them previously when flying with BA, and so had packed all their travel essentials in their day packs. Being the trusting and optimistic travellers we are, we had done no such thing. The situation was particularly unpleasant for G, as I had extra clothes in my day pack. G did not. And, given London's rather cool and wet summer, G's clothing was not suited to the Barcelona heat. We were, however, determined not to let this little hiccup ruin our holiday. After all, the helpful lady at the lost luggage counter had assured us the luggage would be put on the first light out of London to Barcelona and would be with us by the morning …

The next morning we waited at the hotel expectantly for the luggage. When it became apparent that morning was turning into lunch time, the hotel called the airport for us and were told our luggage was still in Heathrow, but should get to us in the next day or two. A frantic trip to H&M followed, with G buying the cheapest summer outfit and board shorts he could find. We then reclined by the hotel pool, hoping our luggage would turn up in time so that G did not have to spend the entire holiday wearing his new hot pink and white stripped shorts, misshapen grey t-shirt and free hotel slippers.

Eventually, late on Saturday night, our luggage arrived. The trip then improved significantly, as G no longer had to venture out looking like one of the local drunks, and I no longer had to venture out looking like I was married to one of the local drunks.

The rest of the trip was wonderful. Beautiful weather, lovely hotel, great food. But let's face it, you don't want to hear me gloat about my holiday. Particularly when, in all likelihood, you are reading this from your computer at work. Therefore, I will simply say that we ate and drank far more than two relatively slim people should and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Lessons learnt - move number 1

G and I have finally made the move to the one-month flat. We have come to an important realisation through the process of moving; namely, when out of desperation you find a house, removalist and carpet/curtain cleaner all on the one night and all from Gumtree.com, you should not relax and (as I admit I did) congratulate yourself on your organisational abilities. It seems that there was a reason the flat, removalist and cleaner were available at the last minute and had not been hired by anyone else.

It turns out that Vinnie, our removalist (£25 per hour, £10 of that, he said, as he would do all the "heavy lifting") has an aversion to heavy lifting. Indeed, it dawned on us quite quickly that Vinnie was remarkably good at disappearing and that, in fact, the only people doing the heavy lifting were us. I got rather sick of trying to track down Vinnie and eventually gave up when, after one of his rather long absences, I found him hiding behind his van eating some takeaway food from the shop up the road. His only response to my incredulous looks and hand gestures was to offer me a chip.

G and I ended up carting all of our very heavy boxes of belongings up a seemingly endless flight of stairs to the one-month flat. By the end we were exhausted, covered in sweat and panting. Vinnie was out the front, with not a bead of sweat on him, relaxing and having a cigarette.

We then discovered that our carpet/curtain cleaner, despite assuring me he could clean all the carpets and curtains, in fact did not clean curtains. Ever. The residents of Camden were therefore entertained by the spectacle of me carrying in my arms an enormous pile of curtains, the pile towering over me, as I ran up the road to the dry cleaners on the high street. I rather suspect that from the front, it would have looked like a bundle of curtains had sprouted legs and was going for a jog up the high street.

During the move, and as we heaved all the boxes up the stairs into the one-month flat, I confess we didn't look too closely at the flat. We were preoccupied with trying to get all of our boxes in there (and with trying to find Vinnie). It was only after the move that it dawned on us just how bad our one-month flat is. G described it as looking like a "junkie den". For example, we were greeted with two "presents" left in the toilet, that simply would not go away for 48 hours, despite us flushing the toilet numerous times. I am also going to have to avoid any client meetings for the next month, as we have discovered the shower is almost worse than useless, and living out of boxes means that in the morning my choice of clothing is a lucky dip, as I dig into the depths of my clothing box and wear whatever comes out. I suspect that, as I wear through my clean clothing, my work colleagues are going to be witness to some rather unusual outfits.

After an exhausting move, and after spending the weekend in a disgusting flat, we made a desperate telephone call to our solicitor, asking what the hold up was on exchanging contracts and settling on our new flat. We were told that he was only waiting on a document from the local authority. In response to my question "how long until you get that?" he answered "how long is a piece of string". I was not altogether reassured by that response. So, we are waiting, anxiously, and hoping the new purchase settles sooner rather than later, in order that we can escape our junkie's den. As we wait, we are embroiled in a dispute with the ex-landlord, who is inventing items he says we broke/lost in order that he may claim part of our bond.

So, as you can see, we are really living it up in London. At least if and when we move into our new flat, we will really appreciate it!

We today decided that, in an effort to have proper showers and avoid nervous breakdowns, we need a holiday and have booked a last minute trip to Barcelona for the weekend. Hopefully, the next time you hear from me I'll be feeling tanned, relaxed and well watered with Sangria!