Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

So I've just visited Bangor, and now I feel rather sad. In the two
minutes I spent there (looking for Christmas crackers in Tesco while
Andy filled the car with fuel) I managed to bump into an ex-CSO. It's
that kind of cosiness I love about Bangor - you just don't bump into
people you know in London. And London doesn't have such lovely scenery.

But then most of my friends have left Bangor by now and pretty much
all of them will be gone in a couple of years, so it's probably time
to move on. Sigh.

Well, we've made it to Fishguard so we're about halfway. Actually well
over halfway distance-wise but with another eight hours to go; I
reckon we could go faster than this ferry in Knocknagow.

I'm very excited because we're planning to drop in on my old school so
I can show Andy. We wouldn't need to visit it in person only the whole
of Waterford is unavailable on Google Maps (probably some secret
military operation involving blaas). Sad but true.

Poor Andy is getting very upset because Stena are playing some cruel
game where they let us all move forward then let ALL the other cars
get on before us. We may have to upgrade to Stena Plus just to get a
seat. Seems particularly cruel when we can't take advantage of the
free alcohol that buys us as we're both driving. Cruel, cruel world.

I think there's only one other person who actually uses the bike store at work even though Borrys the Bike Man told me there were 90. Cos I only ever see the one man, every single time I use the bike store, and nobody else. Today I even saw him twice.

He obviously cycles in every single day, so I naturally assumed he did some kind of lightweight, less-than-four-miles commute (I reckon three to four miles is the point where you can justify wearing full cycling gear). Turns out he cycles eleven miles. Twice a day. Every. Single. Day.

Dear Mum and Tom (who are both complaining about my profile being out of date): it's only two months out of date, my age was wrong for nearly a year and nobody complained. Maybe I'll change it at Christmas, but I think I'll invent a job for myself cos civil servant doesn't sound all that exciting (although it definitely is exciting).

Speaking of which, did you all see that 22000 people applied for the Fast Stream this year? Up from 16000 last year. Everyone's starting to see the wisdom of public sector careers now, band-wagon-jumpers. Although it's no easy ride: I walked SIX MILES for work today. SIX MILES! Don't let anyone tell you civil servants don't work hard.

Dame Judi Dench likes Ikea meatballs and can occasionally be found
eating them in the Croydon branch.

First of all, I've just added my blog email address to my phone so I can blog on the move, because it has occurred to me that I have lots of thoughts on London. Like how it's way colder than Bangor, and how the tube is noticeably busier when it's cold so lots of other people must be chickening out of cycling too.

Let me begin with the news that I am allergic to something. Yesterday morning my whole face went very red and swelled up slightly after my shower, but it went away so I didn't think much of it. But now the bags under my eyes have turned red and swelled up. I think I'm either allergic to salt (it happened after using Ocean Salt face-wash and after crying at a sad film) or Kleenex Balsam (I've been using them a lot to blow my nose and specifically to dry my eyes when I cried).

Now, I'm just going to start with a small selection, mostly because (like a good little housewife) I've got to go do the washing-up and ironing whilst Andy watches Top Gear. Foh.



This is the view out of our living room window, looking vaguely east along the branch of the Wandle that passes us. I have a picture of the main bit coming in a moment.



This is the view out of our bedroom, looking vaguely north. Not quite as nice: KFC, Pizza Hut, power cables and Sainsbury's (aka the SavaCentre) in the background.



But back to the Wandle, the main bit this time, which runs in a northerly direction to the west of our flat complex. This is it passing Merton Abbey Mills with our local pub in the background.

Maybe I'll have some photos of Abbey Mills itself next time.

Sam's new/old blog now has an exciting feature where it ranks the blogs on his blog roll in order of last updated. Even though I updated relatively recently, I'm already about halfway down the list. So now I feel obliged to keep on top of things a bit more so that I don't end up right at the bottom. But I'm about to dash off to a Christmas party (why? Why hold these things at lunchtime? It is so hard to know what to wear to a lunchtime party) so I'll have to write more later (cunning little trick there to bump me back to the top of the list twice in one day) -- since it is very very sunny outside I've just taken some pictures of our beautiful market so I'll try put them up this evening.

I'm siiiick. For only the second time ever, I took a sick day. Well, not a full sick day, I still haven't done one of them. A sick half-day to be precise.

Anyway, I think I've got flu. Or a very bad cold. I find it's hard to tell the difference sometimes, but I have had a bit of a fever so maybe flu. When I got home I got into bed and slept for a couple of hours which helped a bit but I still feel rubbbish now I'm out of bed.

I'm blaming it on the cycling. It was terribly cold when I cycled to work on Wednesday, and terribly cold when I cycled home, and the shower was terribly cold when I got home so I think all in all the coldness made me sick. And maybe it was made worse by being banished to Coventry yesterday. I mean, no offence or anything Sam, but it's not a very pretty place. There's a lot of concrete. So I'm not sure how that ends up making me ill, unless my aesthetic sensibilities were so offended that they are ganging up on me.

So since Andy's off in the pub I'm sitting here attempting to Christmas shop on tinternet. I feel so uninspired this year but lengthy browsing has given me a few ideas. I can't deal with the crowds in town so I'm sticking with online shopping, which means I need to get my skates on if stuff is to arrive before Christmas.

I've got the first of my Christmas parties this Sunday. This is the all-years fast stream party. Next Friday is the first year fast stream party. Then the week after is my divisional party. Oh it's all so festive but right now I am feeling distinctly unexcited. I think I'm going to get a Christmas tree tomorrow which might help, and I think I could probably eat some mince pies if they were offered. And maybe a hot port if I could be bothered making one. Ohh I need Andy to come home and present me with all these things.

I've just been watching University Challenge, where my two friends from CTYI, Matt and Marty, soundly beat the other team (something like 345 to 125). I thought it was pretty impressive that three of the four people on their team were Irish, doesn't that make you feel proud?

Actually I was having a look at the UCAS website the other day and somehow ended up reading a paper on how they had worked out the UCAS equivalency of Leaving Cert CAO points. I was pretty impressed to learn that they reckon each Leaving Cert subject is worth two-thirds of an A-Level, considering we take twice as many LC subjects as A-levels, so taking eight LC subjects is like taking five-and-a-third A-levels. And, even more, a A-Level A grade is only worth a B in the Leaving Cert! I feel pretty proud of the Irish education system right now.

I cycled in and home again today, and my back hurts again. I did stretch so I feel frustrated that it's sore again, but maybe it's because it was so cold. The damn weather forecast promised me there were only going to be occasional showers in the north of London today, but it rained pretty solidly from about two minutes after I set off (ie just too late to change my mind about cycling) until about five minutes before I got to work. Liars.

Today I foraged. I think Andy and I are bucking the trend that people spend less and less of their income on food. After accommodation it is probably our biggest expense. Today we found an additional way to spend our money on food: Abbey Mills now has a full farmers market!

Mostly it's the chappy we already buy our meat and veg from, but he has spread out so he now has about four stalls: one for his delicious meat, butter etc, one for veg (which he has much more of now), one for bread (again, a much bigger range) and apple juice, and one for cheese. And he has been joined by an additional cheese stall, an olive oil stall and, most importantly, a fish stall! So we bought beef and cheese and bread and lots of veg and oodles of fish, it was just so exciting! We barely need to go to Sainsbury's at all now.

Then we went to Wimbledon to buy exciting things like spaghetti measurers, but the most wonderful thing was that we went for a wander around a department store and found the Ted Baker coat I've been wanting for a couple of months (harking back to the days when I had no money). But it was £200 so I wasn't sure if I could justify it. Until Andy spotted the sign saying 30% off. And then the shop lady came over and said there was a further 20% off just for this weekend! So I got the most wonderful coat half price! Don't you love pre-Christmas sales?



Now I'm sort of regretting not getting my Pashley Princess bike, don't you think the coat would have gone with it perfectly?

So I'm not really sure what to say -- I haven't done anything very exciting in ages. Work trundles along, and we get visited most weekend which is one of the plus points of living in London. This weekend, for a change, we don't have any visitors so Andy's going to do job applications and I'm going to clean the flat and buy some food and make lunches for the week and maybe drag Andy to Hawkin's Bazaar so he can buy Secret Santa presents for his colleagues.

It's due to snow in London on Sunday, so it felt a bit festive in work today, everyone excited about Christmas. I booked our work Christmas party today, too. We're going to a very trendy Brazilian place -- there's just so many places to choose from you have to narrow it down somehow, so we came up with some diverse options like Christmas pizza, plain Christmas and Brazilian Christmas. I was surprised there were still places available this late, but I suppose the unfortunate souls working in the City probably won't be having Christmas parties this year. I anticipate the Fast Stream rising to the top of the graduate jobs list next year -- public sector is the way to go.

Is anyone else really enjoying Heroes season 3? Oh it is SO exciting, I just can't wait until next week. And a new season of Big Bang Theory too! Isn't autumn/winter exciting?

Now that I have a semi-functional internet connection I suppose I should get back to writing here. Like Sam, I probably shouldn't talk about work except to say that it's pretty good. I'm particularly enjoying being challenged to achieve a lot -- expectations are high but they're very keen that you take every opportunity available (training, school visits, seminars etc) and I've been given lots of extra projects to do in addition to my everyday work which adds a bit of interest.

I'm settling into life in London now we're in our own flat. It really is a lovely flat; it's nice when people come to visit and are taken aback by it. It is a bit far from work but we have started cycling in a couple of days a week (our muscles aren't really up to doing it every day yet) which makes the commute so much nicer. It's hard to motivate yourself first thing in the morning, and there's quite a long hill approaching Tooting Common which makes me quite out of breath but I feel so much more awake and invigorated by the time I get to work. It is hurting our lower backs quite a bit though -- I hope it's just a case of strengthening our muscles a bit, then that back pain will stop.

It has taken a few weeks to feel settled and willing to do things in the evening after work -- initially I was just so tired I wanted to come home and sit on the couch all evening. But this week we've started to be much more sociable. On Wednesday Andy and I met up with his friend Lindsey to watch the fireworks on Clapham Common. There were about 100,000 people there, which meant it was a bit of a nightmare getting home on the tube afterwards. The fireworks were quite spectacular but they had attempted to set them to music and hadn't really succeeded.

We're off to see some more fireworks this evening at the Lord Mayor's show: we originally intended to go see the show/parade itself but it's a really wet day and we got up a bit too late to get a good viewing spot so we decided not to. The fireworks should be nice though; we're meeting up with Sam and Sav to watch them too.

On Friday I went to the DCSF choir for the first time. It was really good fun; the conductor is very energetic and musical, and he warmed us up thoroughly beforehand which was great since I haven't really sung for a long time and was going to go sit in the alto line as last time I had sung I had struggled to reach the high notes. But I was nabbed and told to go be a soprano, which was good as there are some quite good sopranos, and with the thorough warm-up the high notes were fine. We sang some lovely carols, most of which I hadn't come across before, including one written by the conductor's brother and sister especially for the choir!

Now just in case I don't get around to writing for a while and you need something else to read, go read Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. It was recommended to us by the permanent secretary during our induction, and it really is a good read. It's about encouraging people to do the right thing by designing processes to make the right thing easy to achieve instead of legislating or enforcing The Right Thing. It's sort of a mixture between economics and psychology and very well written. That should keep you busy for a few days.

I am seriously considering cycling to work most mornings. When you start to think about it, there are so few reasons why I shouldn't and so many reasons why I should:

1) I'll save time. Cycling to work will take approximately 50 minutes, the same as commuting by train, but I would normally spend two hours three times a week exercising in a gym. By cycling to work I will combine exercise and commute in one easy step.

2) I'll save money. Bikes cost somewhere between £300 and £500 probably. My monthly travel card costs £109. I'll very quickly save money, even if I do still do some journeys by tube (e.g. when it is lashing rain -- there's no point making myself miserable). I can't really imagine myself ever spending more than £50 maximum per month on tube journeys if I'm mostly cycling to work.

3) I'll feel healthy. Because cycling 16 miles a day just does that for you.

And everyone is conspiring to make that journey as easy as possible for me. There are showers and secure bike storage at work. There's secure bike storage at my apartment. There's a Cycle to Work tax incentive scheme. TFL have sent me free cycle route maps and signposted lots of cycle paths around London. There are even cycling training schemes to boost my confidence.

So I really can't think of any reason why I shouldn't cycle. It means all my evenings are free for all the other exciting things to do in London since I've already done the exercise part of my list of things to do.

And if all those reasons weren't good enough, here's one more:



Yes! I could be the proud owner of a Pashley Princess Classic!

Today I got my hair cut. I thought I'd try out a place in Merton Abbey Mills that looked rather nice. And it was. Very nice, in fact.

The lady who runs it only opened it about 3 months ago. She's only 30 and had worked as a hairdresser for nine years before taking a year off on maternity leave. When it came to going back to work she decided she'd rather open her own place, and I'm very glad she did. It's a small little place so you don't have to shout over other people having their hair dried and she was really friendly and chatty. She was very impressed with our choice of flat, and told me that a certain rather famous England footballer lives in our apartment block too. And also that a bakery and a Thai restaurant will be opening in the Mills in the next couple of weeks, so maybe I won't bother getting a breadmaker after all.

I also attempted to give blood in St George's Hospital in Tooting. They've got a full-time clinic there which is terribly convenient, but I hadn't realised just how important it is to book an appointment - I thought that was just an option if you were very short on time. But the receptionist wasn't very impressed with me just turning up, and icily ignored me for about ten minutes after I told her I didn't have an appointment. Then, oddly, she suddenly melted and was really warm and chatty. Maybe she felt I had completed my penance.

Anyway I couldn't give blood because my iron levels aren't high enough. It's not that they're particularly low, they just need to be quite high before you can give blood. And apparently I can't go back now for four months even though I didn't give any blood! So that's frustrating. I'm thinking of donating platelets too, and mayyybe even bone marrow but I hear that's very unpleasant. Then again, so is dying, and I think I could put up with some unpleasantness to stop someone dying.

Off to Salisbury for the weekend, it's due to be unseasonably warm. Lovely jubbly.

I've been had. On Monday I met up with my cousin Ed in Covent Garden. Whilst I was waiting for him opposite the tube station (initially under Oasis's awning to shelter from the rain until they rather cruelly retracted it) a chap with a clipboard approached me to ask if I'd help with some market research.

As I had about ten minutes to fill and as he was offering me a fiver I was happy enough to help him out. There were various other guys around doing the same and they had a film crew too, apparently for a programme to be broadcast on Sky.

So he got me to answer some questions about my internet usage and stuff and then he gave me my voucher and got me to put my name and phone number on a form so the head office could contact me to check I was happy with how the survey had been conducted. And actually it transpired that it wasn't just my name and phone number, they also wanted my address, so I gave them a rough approximation of it.

But reading thelondonpaper [sic] yesterday, I find that it was actually a survey designed to test how easy it is to get personal information from people in exchange for a £5 voucher. At least I'm not one of the '120 idiots' who actually told the survey person what their password was: there was a list of options such as mother's maiden name, dog's name, date of birth etc so I just ticked 'other' and when he tried to ask me what kind of password I did use I just told him it was a random word. Phew!

But what did startle me is that I gave him even some of my address AND my date of birth -- he asked for my date of birth at the start so by the time we got to the end of the survey and I had this extra slip to fill in almost as an afterthought, I had forgotten I'd already given out some sensitive information.

It was all very cunning. I think it was the fact that I had time to kill as normally I wouldn't even stop for someone wanting me to fill in a survey, and the chap was so nice and friendly, and the fact that they were trying to persuade me to speak to the camera about what they'd questionned me on and insisting it was for Sky (I'm glad I refused, presumably they'd have jumped out doing jazz hands and shouted 'SURPRISE! You're an idiot!') made it seem like it was a reputable sort of survey.

But I've learnt my lesson and I feel stupid. And it gives me a good reason to not give charities my contact details either when they try to con them out of me. I'm just so bad at lying to people and also no good at bluntly refusing.

This weekend Mum, Andy and I went on an exciting adventure to Bristol to bring my ickle brother Ian to university. It was exciting and nerve-wracking and lovely and terrifying and also quite sad. Because now both me and Ian have run off to the UK, which makes me feel quite homesick.

I was very impressed with UWE. People turn up their noses a bit when I say he's going there, not to Bristol University, which is stupid because UWE is one of the best places to study his course. I suppose I still get that from people when I say I went to Bangor. But everyone's wrong because Bangor's great and UWE may even be better. It's got a very modern campus, very green and homely with lots of 'hello and welcome' signs all over the place. Admittedly it probably looked especially nice in the blazing sunshine, but I did feel that Ian might just be happy in a place like that.

His bedroom is enormous. I was perfectly happy slumming it in Llys Tryfan when I were a lass but Ian's doing the halls experience in style. He's got an en-suite room which is bigger than any bedroom I've ever had (apart from that hovel I lived in in second year) with a very manageable six people per flat, most of whom we met yesterday when hanging around his halls trying to make his phone and internet work.

Bristol's quite a lovely city, although we felt like we'd arrived at the party five hours late when we went for a wander yesterday. There were young people draped all over the quays, sitting in the sun with lots of empty bottles of wine and beer. There was a live band in one courtyard and a sort of converted Landrover in another with a guy DJing from the roof, and a party boat went by with people hanging out the sides dancing and shouting. It was very bizarre and we couldn't finger out what was happening until we saw signs advertising the Rave On Avon. Some further research tells me that it was all part of the Bristol Festival, and not just a standard weekend of debauchery for Bristol.

Andy and I went to visit the SS Great Britain this morning while we waited for Ian to wake up. It was well worth the £5 we paid with our almost-expired student cards (probably the last time we'll be able to use them), especially since the ticket is valid for an entire year. It's a really good museum, with a fantastic dry dock section: the ship sort of looks like it's floating because it's surrounded by sheet glass with a thin layer of water on top of it, but you can go down into the dry dock and see what the hull looks like in its un-restored state. Very interesting stuff.

Ian seemed very relaxed and happy when we left him today. He'd had a sociable evening and a good night's sleep, and really just seemed very content. But I felt sad leaving him, and I think Mum was sad too. It's going to be quite odd for them at home having had Ian around for the last six months, and I don't know what the dogs are going to make of the whole situation. Good thing I'm going home again in a week, we can all mourn Ian's departure together.

Today I went to Wimbledon and Kingston to shop for a new coat. Not that I have any money to buy one if I found it, but at least I'd know it was there for when I do have some money. Actually, maybe I'd throw caution to the wind and buy it anyway if I found one good enough. Maybe that's the test I need to apply to these coats.

I didn't find one that was good enough. But I did go get my eyes tested. My long-distance vision has felt a bit blurry lately; I used to have exceptionally good eyesight so it annoys me not being able to see everything without squinting. So I went and got it checked.

Turns out I'm absolutely fine, I've still got 6/6 vision (did you know that European opticians tend to use 6/6 instead of 20/20 because the numbers refer to distance and we're all metric in Europe?), but my right eye has deteriorated very slightly so in the sub-category 'sph' in the distance category my right eye is -0.25 and my left eye is Plano. Yes, it means nothing to me either.

But apparently I don't need glasses and the blurriness is probably due to tiredness. Therefore (and I don't think I'm coming to hasty conclusions here) I need to stay in bed longer ever day. So that's what I'll just have to do. I've been very disciplined so far and have been getting up between 8am and 9am even though I have no appointment at such an hour, just because staying in bed is slovenly (or so my in-built Protestant work ethic inherited from my mum tells me). But, well, if I'm damaging my eyesight, I suppose I could sleep a little longer.

Gingerbread (in biscuit form) is one of my favourite types of biscuit. Even though it's mostly full of sugar and eggs and things, it feels like it's very healthy because it has ginger in it, and ginger is full of health-giving properties. And there's something about gingerbread that makes people want to cut it into shapes and decorate it with icing sugar and chocolate buttons. That doesn't happen with other types of biscuit.

Well I had two nice gingerbread experiences on Saturday. The first one was at the Feast on the Bridge. Just before getting onto the bridge proper there was a baking kitchen set up with loads of children all sitting around small tables on small chairs like you sometimes get in activity areas of museums, except they weren't colouring in pictures, they were making and decorating gingerbread men and gingerbread pumpkins, and the chef people were baking them for them in portable ovens. It was very lovely, I wished I was small enough to pass off as a child and bake gingerbread on the bridge in the sun.

Then we went to Selfridges on our crockery hunt and we got distracted by all the other exciting things in the Selfridges kitchenware department. And they had the best thing ever: moulds for making gingerbread houses! Isn't that great? When I am rich again I'm going to buy one and bake gingerbread houses and a gingerbread witch and a gingerbread oven and stick the gingerbread witch in the gingerbread oven in the gingerbread house.

Then there was today. The day didn't start all that well with an awful visit to HSBC in Wimbledon. We got there at 10.20 and were presented with a ticket saying there was a 38 to 52 minute wait. We asked if we could go away for a few minutes and come back and were assured that we could but advised to be back within half an hour just in case.

So we went and bought a few sandwiches and admired some crockery (one of our main occupations now we've finished flat-hunting) and got back at about 10.40 at the latest. And we waited and waited and after about half an hour I asked someone what was happening. Turns out they called for us whilst we were out (so within twenty minutes) and since we weren't there we'd been wiped from the list. So if I hadn't asked, we could have gone on waiting all day.

But did they bump us up to the top of the queue to make up for this? Nope. Right back to the start again. Eventually we got to see someone. She was very nice, but when I mentioned my paying-in book was out of date because my graduate one hadn't arrived yet she told me I still had a student account. So that visit to HSBC in Brighouse was a complete waste of time, she hadn't converted my account to a graduate account after all, apparently because I need to show them my graduation certificate (first I've heard of it).

So I feel fed up with HSBC and tempted to change my account, but the whole point of my visit was to open a joint account for convenience, so I just don't know what to do at all.

Well, then we went to a different sort of bank, the South Bank, for the Mayor's Thames Festival. It was really very lovely, there were performers and food stalls and the Co-operative Bank was there so I got a leaflet. If you've read about yesterday's walk you'll know my feet are blistered, and my back ached today too. So I didn't really want to walk very much at all, but everything was so exciting that I had to.

And we went to Southwark Bridge to the Feast on the Bridge which was absolutely wonderful, it reminded me of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party with its lovely golden chairs. There were two huge tables the length of the bridge with these seats all along each side, and everyone was eating the food they'd bought at the lovely food stalls beside the bridge. I had a falafel wrap, it was deelicious. And a woman was selling strawberries and cream but I was too full.

It was only one o'clock by this stage and the Great River Race wasn't due to pass until about four so we decided to go to Oxford Street to see what that was like. And to go to John Lewis to look at some crockery we'd seen on their website. So we did. It was very bustly and the John Lewis crockery wasn't all that nice but we found some very nice stuff in Selfridge's, quite pricey as you'd expect but ticked all the boxes so maybe we'll just splash out, and Andy got the iPod dock he's been going on about for ages.

Then we walked down Regent Street and went to Hamley's to look at the Lego and I found a bright red Mary Poppins coat which was very nice but quite expensive so maybe I'll wait til I get paid to buy that. But our poor little legs and feet were sore and tired so we gave in and went home. And I comPLETEly forgot about the Great River Race until we were all the way home which I was very disappointed about since I'd been looking forward to it for weeks. Oh well, these things happen.

Oh but I missed a bit: when we got to Wimbledon we walked around Centre Court (which is a shopping centre, not a tennis court) and guess what they've got? A Hawkin's Bazaar shop! Oh it's so exciting, it's like Christmas a million times over. What a lovely day.

What a fun couple of days! Yesterday I finally had my hearty walk along the Thames Path; on Thursday it was raining quite a lot and frankly I couldn't be bothered getting wet. So I waited, and yesterday I started from Waterloo at 10:45 and finished up at Hammersmith tube station around 2pm.

It was quite a jolly jaunt really. The sun was out, the sky was blue and I was pleased I had had the foresight to apply suncream despite the grey clouds when I left Wimbledon. I mostly stuck to the north bank, so I passed Westminster Palace, walked through Victoria Tower Gardens, passed a very grand but utterly unsignposted building which turned out to be MI5. Skirted along the edge of Pimlico (I want to live there when I grow up), passed the Tate Modern, gazed at Battersea Power Station. Passed MI6 (much more ostentatious than MI5), watched a ginormous marquee being erected in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea (at least that's where I think it was) and reached Albert Bridge, my original destination.

Albert Bridge is really very pretty, and it's pretty rare to see a bridge sign warning troops to break out of step when crossing (you might have to click on the picture to see that). My map tells me it is not deemed strong enough to withstand 'modern traffic'.



But I had started at Waterloo, not Tower Bridge (because I've already walked between Tower Bridge and Waterloo), so it really wasn't very far to Albert Bridge. So I had sort of decided before I started that I would go further than Albert Bridge. My handy A to Z informed me that Putney Bridge would be a good place to aim for since it had a tube station nearby. But I got there and the sun was blazing, there were informative shows on Radio 4 and there was a satisfying-looking stretch of path ahead on the southern shore.

So I headed for Hammersmith instead. I passed the London Wetlands Centre on my left, although I couldn't see it, and passed all the rowing clubs I'd seen at the end of my Beverly Brook walk too. And some precariously parked cars, whose owners obviously have a lot of faith in their handbrakes.



By the time I got to Hammersmith my feet ached and my legs ached and I was fed up with walking. So I headed back to Wimbledon, where I discovered three giant blisters: one on the inside of each of my heels, and a very sore whopper on the ball of my left foot. So I lay on the floor and read my book in the sun for a while, looking up at some lovely sunflowers and the roof and stuff.



And that was that. If you're interested, here's my route.

Today I'm bored and feeling a little bit unwell. I woke up with what may have been a temperature this morning, although it may also just be that some rooms in the house were drastically overheated and others quite cool, and now I have a big bad headache. So I'm still at home, I haven't ventured forth into the exciting world of London yet today.

Actually, I'm losing my enthusiasm for sightseeing. I'm finding it hard to motivate myself to get up and look at things all day on my own. Anticipating days like this, I visited the big tourist office in Piccadilly and picked up lots and lots of leaflets with lovely names like 'Your Guide to the Big Smoke', 'Be a free range Londoner', '101 Reasons to Love London' and, bizarrely, 'Quizzle', a novel concept combining sightseeing with puzzles.

So I've spent most of the day reading these exciting guides and looking up websites they mentioned, and I'm getting some of my enthusiasm back. For example, I hadn't visited the V&A because I thought it was going to be terribly arty-farty, like the Tate Modern. But now I've had a thorough look on their website and although some of it sounds dull there's also lots of interesting-looking bits.

Oh how exciting, my phone has just rung and it was Nick who has invited me to The Oval this afternoon to watch some cricket! Surrey v Hampshire, that promises to be a corker. I'd better read up on how it all works before going. Oh this will be lovely, I'm terribly excited!

Well I probably have time for another hour or so of attraction-researching. Tomorrow I've booked tickets for the BBC Television Centre tour, and on Thursday I'm considering doing the Thames Path from Albert Bridge to Tower Bridge. That's 6 miles on the south bank or 5.2 or something on the north bank. I'll probably weave between the two. I do fancy a bit of walking. All this rain has been such a nuisance, it makes you not want to sit in parks, and if you don't want to sit in parks you have to either keep walking all the time or pay people for the privilege of sitting in their building.

So there. This weekend is the Thames Festival and the Great River Race so there's still exciting things to look forward to.

Actually I started doing other things EVEN BEFORE I FOUND the flat, that's how daring I am. So let me tell you some tales of what I have done in London.

Last Thursday I started my exciting new hobby called Being A Tourist. And I kicked off, somewhat unconventionally, with a trip to the London Transport Museum. It was very good (if you like trains, which I do). I found out lots of interesting facts, such as that Mrs Beeton was probably the first female commuter on the Tube, and that the first tube trains were steam-powered with big condensing tanks on either side which did some of the cooling but they also needed big grates in the footpath (the first Tube lines were constructed using the cut and cover method, so are very close to the surface) to allow the leftover steam to go whooshing up someone's trouser legs. And they're planning to introduce some air-conditioned trains on the Jubilee line in 2009, which would definitely encourage me to take the slightly longer Colliers Wood - London Bridge - Westminster route (incorporating the Jubilee Line) instead of Colliers Wood - Stockwell - Victoria (using the Victoria line). Anyway, I might get shot for being foreign in Stockwell. Always a risk, always a risk.

On Friday I continued my adventures with a trip to meet my cousin Miranda. We had a rather delicious lunch at Wahaca, a Mexican restaurant in Covent Garden, followed by a spot of shopping, then we parted company (she had some big boxes to carry home) and I decided to pay a trip to Westminster to see where I'll be working. I must say, it is rather snazzy:



And it is also just around the corner from Westminster Abbey, so since I had some time to kill I decided to go to Choral Evensong. I want to tell you a little secret about Choral Evensong but you're not to think I'm cheap, okay? Well it normally costs about £10 to go into Westminster Abbey, but if you go to any of the services, they're free. That's only as an aside, it's not the only reason I went: I actually really like Choral Evensong, and I was rather hoping I'd get to hear the Westminster Choir, but I'd forgotten they were on holiday. So a crowd from Nottingham were singing instead. They were very good, but I'm going to have to go back now term has started so I can hear the real choir. It was an incredibly moving experience going to a choral service there, the acoustics are absolutely phenomenal and it was quite horrible having to leave the building and go out into the noisy traffic when it was all over.

So that was Friday. On Saturday, Andy and I met Mark-from-Bangor and went to Greenwich for the afternoon. We went to the National Maritime Museum but we weren't really paying enough attention so I'm going to go back in a few weeks I think -- I'm hoping that Nick will be there next time I visit. Oh and we had dinner in Covent Garden right opposite Westminster Quaker Meeting, which (it turns out) is in the City of Westminster, not Westminster itself.

Sunday was a rainy day, so we hid indoors until about 3pm, then we headed to Bayswater to meet Diarmuid and his girlfriend Connie. Quite a coinkydink, really: Diarmuid moved to London about five days before me to take up a job with BCG (whom Andy has also applied to work for) and his girlfriend is joining the Fast Stream with DIUS, so we shared stories of the tedious application process.

On Monday I was back to being on my own as Andy went back to work. Except I wasn't really alone because I met Tom and John for breakfast near Old Street -- I was very chuffed to receive a visit, especially since they had to get up at 5am to allow time for our breakfast meeting. I had done lots of research on the London Review of Breakfasts and found a place that looked very nice. Except it wasn't open, and wasn't intending to open until 12 (seems a little late to start serving breakfast), so we went to a cafe we'd passed on the way. It was fine except for the distinct lack of black or white pudding. White pudding I can understand but there's no excuse for leaving out black pudding. Speaking of which, the 'OpEgg' on LRB at the moment is completely wrong when it claims that people don't normally eat black pudding at home. I always have black pudding when I'm having a fry-up, it's the best part!

Tuesday spelled a return to sight-seeing. I headed into town (can one refer to London as 'town'?) and spent a few hours at the Tate Modern. I think I enjoyed it more last time I was there: this time quite a lot was either not open that day or only opening to paying visitors. And there was rather too much rubbish, like the big red painting with a white stripe down the side, or the piece of canvas with a slit in it, otherwise known as Lucio Fontana's Spacial Concept 'Waiting', of which I learnt that:

In 1959, Fontana began to cut the canvas, with dramatic perfection. These cuts (or tagli) were carefully pre-meditated but executed in an instant. Like the holes, they have the effect of drawing the viewer into space. In some, however, the punctures erupt from the surface carrying the force of the gesture towards the viewer in a way that is at once energetic and threatening. Although these actions have often been seen as violent, Fontana claimed ‘I have constructed, not destroyed.’

Er, yes. Or, almost worse, Barnett Newman's Eve, which is basically a red canvas with a stripe of darker red down the side. Apparently,

the vast expanse of unmodulated red paint in this work is both absorbing and disorienting. It is interrupted by a single, narrow band of purple running the length of the right-hand edge. This 'zip' generates a tension throughout the canvas between presence and blankness, solidity and fragility. Its verticality also echoes the position of the viewer, helping to fulfil Newman's concern that 'the onlooker in front of my painting knows that he's there'.

Well it's certainly a good thing he painted that stripe, otherwise I definitely wouldn't have known whether or not I was there.

By the way, I didn't memorise this, I've found the precise paintings and text on the Tate Modern's most excellent website, which allows you to explore the gallery online.

We didn't go to 8 out of 10 Cats in the end: we got there early but not early enough -- it was already full by the time we arrived, with a massive queue still outside. We weren't particularly upset though; we didn't want to see it enough to queue for several hours in advance. Damn groupies.

Wow this is getting to be a very long post, but I'm sure you're finding it gripping so you don't mind. On Wednesday I didn't see many sights -- I spent the afternoon with my cousin Phelie who was visiting on his way home from Australia. He was pretty tired from the flight, so we mostly went to the pub followed by a walk through Hyde Park followed by another pub. He's off to Brussels next to do exciting things with the EU.

Finally, yesterday I walked the Beverly Brook walk through Wimbledon Common, Richmond Park and Barnes Common to the Thames. Very pleasant it was, and we had a surprising amount of sunshine. I must explore the Thames Path in the coming weeks. Oh, and I went for dinner with some friends in Canteen Spitalfields. I had an extremely delicious chicken pie with big, tasty pieces of chicken, lovely gravy, perfect mash and fine hearty cabbage. I was very impressed to see their cheese board for the day featured St Tola -- I don't think I've ever seen St Tola outside Ireland before. I'd definitely recommend it -- plain-ish dishes (including macaroni cheese) served very well.

So there, now you know everything I've been doing. Today I'm going for lunch with Katy, then who knows where the day will take us. My only prediction is that it will be very wet.

I've got the flat! I swooped in there and stole it out from under another poor woman's nose. I felt a bit mean for doing that initially until I remembered I was supPOSEd to be top of the list, so she shouldn't even have been shown the property. They should have known from my grit and determination that I wasn't going to let anyone else have the flat. It's not my fault her hopes and dreams were dashed.

Anyway, here's the grand unveiling (these are off my phone camera as my other camera's broken so excuse the poor quality):

TA DA!



This is the living room/kitchen looking one direction. Note the large, airy windows and high-quality blinds. There are more big windows on the right the same size again.



This is the living room/kitchen looking the other direction. Note the modern units.



This is the bedroom. There's a very large wardrobe hidden away in one corner, and a chest of drawers identical to the set we already own -- I'm not sure whether they come with the flat or not.

So we're moving in on October 4th which is rather later than I had hoped, but it's still before I start work. It's going to be a hectic week though, moving in on the 4th (which includes driving to Yorkshire and back to get all our stuff) then starting work on the 6th. I'm due to go to a JYM committee meeting in Dublin on the 11th but I'm having second thoughts about that -- I really don't know if I can manage all that stuff in one week without falling over.

Let me just tell you some more about the joys of Colliers Wood/Merton Abbey Mills. The highlights include, obviously, Merton Abbey Mills, the ugliest building in London (quite a claim to fame!), the CAMRA Pub of the Year 2007 for South West London (as with Merton Abbey Mills' main site, please don't judge it on the poor quality of the website) which is absolutely teensy and only two minutes walk despite claiming to be in Merton, the Making Colliers Wood Happy community project (modelled on Make Slough Happy, although I don't think anyone has written poems about friendly bombs falling on Colliers Wood), the River Wandle (although the stretch running past our flat is apparently man-made) which some people like to explore in drains and it's all very near to Wimbledon which has a watersports centre which offers 'pay and play' sailing (ie pay £10 and go sailing for an hour).

So there. Worries over, now I can get on with enjoying myself.

I feel annoyed. Those lovely flats beside Merton Abbey Mills that we viewed? Well the corner one we were hoping for became available on Thursday, as did another one that Paul, our friendly estate agent, assured us was one of the nicest ones on their books. He claims we'll have difficulty choosing which one we want to live in.

Unfortunately, I spoke to Paul on Thursday evening, just before he left for his holidays, so he initially said we'd have to view them on Tuesday. I wasn't too keen on this as I felt the flats would be snatched from under our very noses by that point, so I got him to promise we'd be top of the list of potential viewers, and also to try to arrange an earlier viewing. So he promised he'd speak to everyone in the office to stake our claim on the flats, and that he would email me right away with details of when we could view the flats.

But he didn't email, so first thing on Friday morning I phoned the estate agents. The other lettings guy wasn't in yet, but I was assured that he'd be in in about 10 minutes and would ring me back straight away. I didn't get phoned back until lunchtime, and I missed the call because I was in a noisy restaurant. So I phoned back again, and was told he'd be back in about ten minutes and would ring back straight away. But he didn't.

So this morning Andy and I went to visit the estate agents in person, only to find that this chap (who seems to be a bit of a wally) had no idea who we were and has arranged for three other people to view those flats on Monday. And we can't view them today because the tenants need 24 hours notice. So we're viewing them on Monday evening, but there's a distinct possibility that they'll already have been snapped up.

Well, maybe it'll be okay. Not many people go to a viewing with chequebook and ID in hand, ready to sign a contract (fools!). But I'm still very worried and rather annoyed about how difficult they're making all this.

Whilst I'm on the topic of people promising to phone back, I phoned Endsleigh to change my insurance details Friday week ago at 9am. They didn't phone back until about 2:30, and I couldn't finish the conversation because we were just arriving in London. So I tried to phone again later but got tired of being on hold for about ten minutes. Same on Saturday. On Monday I managed to speak to someone in motor alterations which was pretty darn useless, so he said he'd get someone to ring me back. Which still hasn't happened. I'm not that bothered though: he tells me that as long as I've been promised a call-back, my stuff is still insured despite my details being incorrect, since it's not my fault the amendments haven't been made. So I'm just going to sit and wait for that call.

And HSBC. I went to the Kingston branch on Tuesday to try to get a letter proving they won't give me a refund for my Wrapit purchase. It took about 45 minutes to get across to the chap what I was trying to do (he hadn't heard of Wrapit despite it being a big HSBC issue), and eventually he told me he'd have to speak to someone else who wasn't available, and that they'd ring me back to let me know when I could come and pick up the letter. Guess what? They haven't phoned back.

So I've decided that I'm going to set up my own estate agents, bank and insurance company, and I'm going to make a fortune because I'll keep my promises, and people will be so astounded by the high quality of customer service this brings that they'll come in droves. I feel quite frustrated.

When I were a lass, I used to have a fast metabolism. This suited just fine, because I also have a penchant for dairy products. I could butter my bread thickly, eat lots of cheese and drink lots of milk. I went through a phase of buttering my chips (that was when I was about eight), and brought lots of cheese back to [boarding] school in my tuck box which I used to hang out my window in a net bag since I didn't have a fridge. In fact, I once escaped detention when caught red-handed by Matron in the middle of a midnight feast because we were eating crackers and cheese, not sweets, and we argued that this was good for our teeth. And I walked everywhere, which seems to have been enough to stay thin.

But then I spent two years sitting down at a desk, and I piled on two stone. I know this because I recently went to see a nurse, just to get my prescription renewed, but being a busybody she decided to weigh me too. When she put my weight into her magical computer programme (has anyone else noticed it seems to spend most of the time crashing?) she noticed that I was last weighed two years ago and since then I had gone from 9.5 stone to 11.5 stone.

She was measuring my blood pressure when she started nagging me about my weight. You'd have thought she'd stop when my blood pressure suddenly swooped upwards but no, she just decided to return to the blood pressure later to give me the chance to calm down. But she didn't let me calm down, she told me I was eating unhealthily and that I needed to eat 1600 calories per day and limit my portions and not eat cheese and all sorts of stuff like that. And that this was a forever thing, I will always have to watch what I eat forever and ever and ever because I'm old now and old people put on weight more easily. That's no way to calm a person down.

Thing is, I think she's stupid. As does the lady in the gym who I went to see after going to the nurse. Because I tried to tell her that I was exercising three times a week but she didn't take that into account at all. 1600 calories isn't enough if you're exercising, you will actually be unwell because each gym session uses up about another 400, and 1200 calories on gym days is simply not enough to get you through the day.

And also, I fully accept that I have grown outwards instead of upwards, but weighing me isn't a good way to judge whether I'm healthy or not. You need to measure body fat. And I've got three print outs, each four weeks apart, from the magical gym machine which tells me that while I've only lost about 3lbs in weight in two months of solid exercise, I've actually lost 13lbs (nearly a stone) in body fat in that time. Because muscle is heavier than fat.

What a stupid nurse. She actually upset me quite a lot, I felt very guilty for a few days and watched the calories in everything I ate. And I felt very unwell and got a nasty cold with one of the worst chesty coughs I've had for the past few years. So then I started ignoring that and going back to just exercising. Yes, I try to just eat enough instead of eating until I'm full, and I don't have wine every day, and yes, I am eating more fruit and vegetables but I like fruit and veg.

So there. I think I'm doing well, I've always weighed more than I look like I should weigh (heavy Goggin bones, you know), but I've been very disciplined the last few months and I wish she had encouraged me to keep up the good work instead of making me feel guilty, that's no way to encourage anyone.

The more I think about it the less I like the prospect of living in Woolwich. When I asked Nick what he thought he said:

"Don't live in Woolwich
Don't live in Woolwich
Don't live in Woolwich
Don't live in Woolwich
Don't live in Woolwich
Don't live in Woolwich
Don't live in Woolwich
Don't live in Woolwich
Don't live in Woolwich ..."

Pretty conclusive I thought. And Mark doesn't seem to think it's nice either. And the estate agent referred to Woolwich as 'the W word' ...

But I've found somewhere else I like! Look at this one in Colliers Wood (there are several other similar ones available). We stumbled across it quite by chance, we hadn't really thought of looking in Colliers Wood, but the closest supermarket to where we're staying (in Merton) is a huuuuge Sainsbury's hypermarket about a mile away. And just across the road is the lovely Merton Abbey Mills (don't judge them by the quality of their website), and right beside it (they almost share a car park) is this set of flats.

Here's what's good about the flats:

They're nicely furnished.
They're affordable.
They're beside Merton Abbey Mills (which has nice cafes and pubs).
They're across the road from a huge Sainbury's (for food) and M&S (for work clothes), with a Jessops (for fixing my camera-which-is-broken) and various other shops across the road in another direction.
They're next to Merton Park (or whatever it's called).
They've got a river and a mill stream on two sides.
There's a big gym just next door.
They're about 1/4 of a mile from Colliers Wood tube station, which is on the Northern Line.
Colliers Wood is the third-last stop on the Northern Line, so my theory is that I'll get a seat on my way to work in the morning.
They're in a reasonable area (well, it's not posh but I felt perfectly safe there).

Here's what's bad about these flats:

They might be a little bit small.

So I think it's a go-er. As long as there are flats available when I phone the estate agent in the morning. The website says there are but estate agents don't seem to be big into keeping their websites up to date. I think I might cry if there aren't any available, the pressures of flat-hunting are so great.

Two days after our rather exciting move to London, I estimate I have walked 10-15 miles around the city. I have blisters, my shoe has rubbed part of my foot raw and my calves ache. And I still haven't found anywhere to live.

Yesterday we viewed three properties. The first was the one I thought looked nicest on the interweb. But it was disappointing. It isn't really in Blackheath, it's in Lee, which is really nowhere near as nice. The flat is quite nice, the bedroom is large with lovely big built-in wardrobes, but the upstairs living area is much smaller than the photos suggest, and the kitchen has absolutely no storage space. Like, literally, some drawers and one cupboard. And although that side of the alley is nice, the opposite side isn't.

We also went to Woolwich to visit the Royal Arsenal. We saw some very very nice apartments, including this one:






See the bit that sticks out? The window on the side of that on the top floor is the apartment. That window gives you views over the Thames, which is just behind me when I was taking the photo. Charming, n'est-ce pas?

Well Woolwich isn't. It is run-down, crummy, dirty, horrible, everything a town shouldn't be. I don't think I would feel safe walking from the train station to the Royal Arsenal even though it's just 400 yards. What a dilemma. When we left after viewing the properties I really thought we might take that flat but all day I had this worried, niggling feeling about how horrible the area was. So I think I probably shouldn't. But I won't be able to afford an apartment as nice as this anywhere else. Comments?

Shelby's back from his holidays so he's been keeping me busy today, what with bathing him (he smells of talcum power now) and playing with him and, most recently, introducing him to the piano.

I think he found it rather frightening at first: he was sort of vaguely barking at me, not quite sure if it was a wise thing to do or not, perhaps worried the piano would jump at him if he taunted it too much. Then when I called him over he sort of crawled towards me, in case sudden movements startled the piano into doing something rash.

He's getting used to normal piano sounds now, he's still not walking close to it out of choice but it has't attacked yet so he's starting to feel comfortable around it. But I'm just lulling him into a false sense of security before I whip out my array of MIDI sounds tomorrow. He's not going to like the helicopter sounds or the sirens, and I don't quite know what he'll make of the MIDI dog.

Also, I think he likes me more than Andy. I think it's because he heard about Andy telling Leavy she's his favourite. You can't go saying that kind of thing to dogs, even if you say it in confidence it'll get back to the others. And Andy was insensitive enough to say it in front of Goldie and Pippa too. Harsh.

Which reminds me of one other thought about dogs: Andy's heroic rescue of Leavy. Leavy is a bit of a daredevil: she likes running along narrow ledges, balancing on wobbly things like inflatables and doing big jumps. As you can imagine, this meant lots of falling in the water during our holidays. Mostly she was close to the edge so was able to rescue herself, but when we were in Rossmore, Leavy somehow managed to fall off the long jetty about as far from shore as she could be whilst still being on land. And the jetty was quite high, so she couldn't just climb back out. She needed to swim for the slipway, but dogs are often a little thick so just shouting "SWIM FOR THE SLIPWAY" wasn't going to work.

So, like the true hero he is, Andy jumped ashore from our boat, sprinted along the jetty and dived in after Leavy, then accompanied her to the kayak I had paddled out to meet her and shoved her aboard. It really was worthy of a Marvel comic, and he was even wearing a black neoprene suit to do the rescuing (his wetsuit). All he's lacking is a mask and a cloak, then he could be DogMan, although I'd worry he'd only rescue his favourite dog and leave all the others to their fate. He's mean like that.

Actually, I don't think that last post truely expressed how sad I am that Ronnie Drew died. The Dubliners were my favourite band for years, and one of the best live music experiences I had was going to see them live, I think it was in the Gaiety? Also, when I turned 10 or 11 Dad had contacted them to ask if they had any live shows coming up that I could go to for my birthday. They didn't, so instead they sent me pictures of themselves, one autographed by every member, and a fantastic double CD best of. What nice chaps.

Today I went climbing. I feel quite proud of myself really, it was only my second time climbing ever but I managed to progress to a grade 5 climb. Still basic, I know, but rather satisfyingly referred to as a 'hard very severe' grade in the adjectival grade system. Don't get too excited, there's still ten grades above that.

[just a quick interlude, there's a man on TV having his penis bitten by a snake ... why???]

So now my arms hurt but I had a nice time. And on Tuesday we're off for a bit of a stroll in the Yorkshire Dales.

In other news, it's Mum and Dad's thirtieth wedding anniversary today. They have celebrated it in style, removing all the tiles and some plasterboard from the shower in a quest to find the source of a damp smell.

Those of you who keep up with this sort of thing will know that today is also the thirty-first anniversary of Elvis's death, and that the wonderful Ronnie Drew died today. A quick look on Wikipedia tells me that Robert Johnson (American blues singer and guitarist), Wanda Landowska (Polish harpsichordist, re-popularised the harpsichord in the 20th century), Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Pakistani musician), Pee Wee King (American country musician and songwriter), Vasser Clements (American musician), Vicky Moscholiou (Greek singer) and Max Roach (American percussionist, drummer and composer) also died on August 16th. See a pattern? You've been rumbled, Mum and Dad, we're on to you.

This week I was hit by the curse of WrapIt. More accurately, Sarah was hit by the curse of WrapIt. I had already quite happily given them some money, it's Sarah who has lost out since she hasn't received the present I bought her. And, sadly, I bought her present using a debit card so it's unlikely I'll get any money back.

But I thought I'd try nonetheless. If this Civil Service thing doesn't work out I think I'll go into the field of consumer rights, I do so enjoy getting what I'm entitled to.

So I wrote to KPMG, who have been appointed administrators of WrapIt, because the Guardian FAQs said there was no point writing to my card issuer because I had paid by debit card. KPMG wrote back and told me to speak to my card issuer. I think they're wrong, but I went in to HSBC today anyway to see what they could do. And there was a very helpful woman, and I'd brought all the pieces of paper I needed, so the transaction was on the whole very satisfactory. She has sent off a query to somewhere or other, and apparently they will contact me saying either yes, we will refund you or no, contact WrapIt, here's a letter proving we're not going to refund you. It's all a bit slow but at least I'm following the correct procedures.

Whilst I was there I converted my student account to a graduate account. As usual I confused them by graduating two years ago but still being a registered student until July 31st, but the woman very kindly put in my graduation date as 2008 instead of 2006 so I've got five more years of charge-free banking. My credit rating should have been boosted substantially by this since she took all the details of my new job, and apparently HSBC Graduate account holders qualify for preferential mortgage rates. Great. Actually all that means is you need a 5% deposit instead of 10%, but really who wants a 95% mortgage in the current economic climate? Not I.

Andy and I nearly went to Anglesey this weekend to do some watersports but we couldn't quite face the prospect of heading back to Wales so soon. Well, it wasn't really that, just that going away for the weekend would have made us feel very unsettled; we left Bangor on Sunday 3rd August, flew to Ireland on the Monday, stayed on the boat til the Saturday, spent two nights in Castleconnell, then flew back to Yorkshire at 6:40am (which meant a 4am start, it was disgusting). And we're off to London next weekend in the next leg of our mammoth journey. So we decided it would be nice to stay in one place for more than five days, just for a change.

Well I'd better go keep him company and maybe even cook some food. Salmon with some kind of delicious topping tonight, how healthy.

I don't know if everyone's going to like this new burnt orange colour. It's just a minimal blog template jazzed up a bit so it doesn't look too like Sam's old blog. Comments and suggestions on the back of a postcard please.

Right, well, two months since I last posted, I don't really know where to start. This week I have mostly been unpacking and repacking all my stuff. Frodo really enjoys unpacking and repacking, I know this because I tried to pack properly when we left Bangor but he made me do it again in Yorkshire, and after I'd repacked almost everything it transpired that he intended to go through everything AGAIN before moving to London, throwing away or putting into storage everything we didn't need.

Actually that's not true: Frodo doesn't enjoy doing it himself, he enjoys making me do it. So I refused, and made him go through my carefully assembled database of what's in each box to decide what needed to stay in Yorkshire. Sam laughed at me when I told him I had been creating a database. He said something about that being typical of people who have lost power, they try to reassert their power by forcing everything into categories and neat piles and stuff. I don't think that's true, I just think I miss organising Serendipity and my societies and stuff.

I think Tom was secretly very impressed with how much information I've been hoarding in my Access files when I handed them over to him, although perhaps Gwenan wouldn't like it so much since you're not supposed to store information you don't actually need. But I LIKE information, and I like storing it. Maybe I should be a librarian.

Isn't unemployment wonderful? I've utterly neglected my poor blog for several months, then just a fortnight into my unemployment I give the whole thing a facelift and set up email posting so I can blog quickly and easily from anywhere. And I've made the Flickr thing work (although it probably won't work for Dad since he doesn't like flash). And I'm even about to back up my computer. Not that that has anything to do with blogging.

I'm not going to get too carried away in this post since it's really testing my ability to post by email. I don't want to spend ages writing a fascinating post only for it all to go wrong. So that's it for now folks.

Darn, Flickr will only show my most recent 200 photos, and I have 400 photos to show you all! So go look at the ones that are up there, then I'll go upload the other 200 again so you can see them instead.

Lots of photos of Croatia are now on my Flickr page (see box on right) with descriptions below some of them -- should tell a bit of the story of Carolan's Trip to Croatia.

I've been holding off blogging about my trip because I have this sort of half-baked idea that I might do a blog specifically about my trip, with lots of photos and detail and stuff. But I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Just to point out, my photos of the Summer Ball are now on Flickr. Well, thumbnails are. Flickr won't give me enough space to upload them all full size.

Oh dear, I haven't posted for so long that I had to type in the full address of my blog, it didn't just pop up as a recently visited website.

Well, May hasn't been as relaxing as I thought it would be. In fact, it's been frightfully busy. I think it was mostly all those training sessions we run for committee members -- they take an awful lot of time you know. And everyone comes up with all sorts of questions just before the summer, and they always want you to deal with their problem straight-away-on-the-spot-right-now so they can get back to being examined/revising/going home/sitting in the sun.

But now it's June, and I'm feeling full of the joys of summer because tomorrow I'm going on holidays. To Croatia. For a week. The campsite's website tells me it is currently 25 degrees there. Oh, darn: 25 degrees with thunder and lightning. Anyway I'm sure a storm will be just the thing to clear the air in preparation for my holiday.

Just in case you miss me, here are some of the places I'll be:

The campsite, Paklenica National Park, the famous Sea Organ, and Plitvice Lakes National Park.

I love Sam: this morning we both received our latest LoveFilm films. This evening we excitedly opened our films and found? Enchanted! For both of us ...

What saps we are.

How annoying: I've just found out that JP Hall (the one proper performance space in the University, which has been closed all year for renovations) is now in the care of NIECI, not Central Reservations.

I'm not sure yet what impact this is going to have on the performing societies (worst case scenario is they can't book the hall anymore or will have to pay to use it, best case is they won't notice any difference); what really annoys me is that after three years of discussions with the University on various aspects of JP Hall (problems with bookings, storage space etc), nobody thought to either consult with or inform the Students' Union about this change.

It's really quite disheartening. I think we've done a lot of work to build a strong relationship with the University, but we still end up being ignored or (perhaps worse) forgotten about. I don't think we've been ignored, actually (did they really think we wouldn't notice and wouldn't get annoyed about this?), I think it just did not occur to the decision-makers that this might impact on us somehow. How upsetting!

I'm sorry I'm not being very good at writing. To make up for it, look at this lovely video Stephen showed me:



The guy at the start is my friend Jonah from CTYI.

I had my Civil Service assessment day on Monday. It was intense. As usual, I slept very badly the night before, waking up every twenty minutes worrying I'd overslept. Eventually I got up at 6am, put on my business-like blouse and skirt, tried to overcome the nerve-induced nausea and headed for Westminster.

On my walk from the tube station to Tufton St I met another person heading the same way (you could tell because he was using the map inside the booklet they sent us), so I had a nice chat with him. That calmed me down a bit because I'd have given him about two out of ten for social skills.

Unfortunately the rest of the people were much better. They'd mostly gone to Oxford, Cambridge or Durham, and the majority already had several years' work under their belts. Out of the five people in my group, there was only one that I didn't think would get through (although the sixth person simply hadn't turned up). They tested us pretty thoroughly over eight hours (some unfortunate souls who lived near London had ten hours), although the second thing that calmed me down was that the first exercise was to come up with as many ideas as possible for increasing voter turnout. Which is something I've thought about quite a lot in the past few months.

I was expecting to hear from Fast Stream today but actually I found out yesterday: I've been offered a place. So that's exciting, but also quite scary: now I have to wait to hear which department I'll be in, where I'll be located, when I'll be starting.

And knowing I have a job when I finish has made me quite impatient and annoyed with aspects of my current job, like nobody buying tickets for the Societies Awards despite it being the best one yet, and people not reading the schedules we presented to them at Council last night before voting. I think I need to go home and read a detective story in the sun, I'm in a bad mood.

Just a quick post to tell Mum that only Saturday Andy and I were admiring the fine quality of the towels in Bangor's new super-modern Debenhams. I'm sure we can fit some towel-shopping into our weekend somehow.

Today's lead story in North West Wales?

Country lane gratings are stolen costing literally TENS of pounds.

Odd, considering they didn't even mention this one.

BBC Bangor just don't have their finger on the pulse.

I've got my new internal hard drive now, and my new external one. But I have to confess: it was all my fault.

When I opened up my computer to pop in the new hard drive (it's so slim, isn't technology coming on in leaps and bounds) I found this ... thing ... on the bottom of the case. I think it might be a capacitor. Anyway, it has definitely fallen off the circuit board on the old hard drive.

Oops.

Looking on the bright side, I now have 2gb of my music back and am enjoying listening to it SO much. There's nothing like nearly losing everything to make you appreciate what you have.

I've been abandoned for the week so am having to fend for myself: foraging for food, cooking and cleaning up all alone. I haven't been allowed to cook for some time because I often burn my hands or cut myself or drop things when I cook, but I do really like food and I really like coming up with things to eat.

So this week, just because I can, I am not going to eat ANY lamb. I'm going to eat nice, nutritious, healthy things. Today I'm having trout with garlicky butter stuffed in it (I have to confess I bought it that way) with cous-cous. I'm going to stir fennel cooked in butter and lemon into the cous-cous when I'm ready to serve, and I've made a side-salad of red pepper, basil, feta and oven-warmed cherry tomatoes covered in deeeeelicious olive oil. I feel so Mediterranean.

Yesterday followed a similar theme: I didn't really have anything planned so I made pasta with a cream-and-pesto sauce into which I mixed some soft goats cheese and (again) oven-warmed cherry tomatoes (they're soooo tasty). I'm feeling so virtuous and healthy and best of all it tastes wonderful.

The other thing I'm working on this evening is defeating the Evil Sony, who won't allow me to transfer music from my mp3 player to my computer EVEN THOUGH I OWN THE MUSIC because it's not already on my computer (see: hard drive issues). I'm going to contact customer support tomorrow but I think I'll probably just have to use some of the many free .OMA to .MP3 converters out there. It's Sony's fault, driving me to hack their security like that.

I didn't want to stir up too much trouble in Seren, and I didn't want to discuss the affiliation/disaffiliation issue there because I'm still not entirely certain what I believe. And probably how I feel is different to how everyone else feels because it's a bit more personal for me.

The fact that the nutty hard-left hijacked the governance review so successfully has upset me. How on earth did they manage to persuade people that this was some kind of New Labour plot? Certainly the new constitution contains some big reforms, and yes those reforms are probably loosely connected with New Labour in that they have presided over national governance changes: British constitutional reform, the new Charities Act, that kind of thing. New Labour have forced a shift in culture because they are in government: yes, NUS could ignore the way the government operates, but it wouldn't get very far.

So if that's what they mean by the governance review being very New Labour then yes, it is. But if they mean that New Labour somehow had some actual say in the governance review and that it was designed to benefit NOLS, then that's not true at all.

I can't speak for other members of the review group, but I was solely driven by a desire to make NUS more accessible to normal students. I think Zone Conferences would be great for students who otherwise wouldn't make it to Annual Conference because it's too big and scary and deals with lots of topics that individual student might not be interested in. With Zone Conferences you can send along people who are actually interested in that zone, so people from our Welfare Committee could go to the Welfare Zone Conference. What's wrong with that idea? It would mean we'd actually get to discuss more than a couple of hours' worth of motions.

I also think a Board is a really good idea. NUS is filled with activists, and activists are just not good at or interested in finances, in staffing, in anything to do with legal obligations. It disgusts me how people throw around suggestions with absolutely no thought whatsoever about their implementation, their cost, the implications of their suggestions. That's why there needs to be a board separate from the political structures. And maybe I'm naive but I actually don't think that being on a board automatically makes people evil-doers hell-bent on the destruction of NUS and all that it stands for.

So I'm very disappointed the reforms didn't go through. Very disappointed because I gave up fighting against NUS affiliation because I was convinced that I should try to effect change from the inside, and I really really did try, and NUS really let me get involved.

But it didn't work. It didn't work because 1/3 of the people who turn up to Conference fundamentally disagree with what I think NUS should be like. That 1/3 can stop ANY major change, because you need a 2/3 majority for constitutional changes to be passed. I just can't really see a way out of that situation and I wonder whether we need two national unions: one for the hard-left fight-them-on-the-streets (that's an infamous Sofie Buckland quote) posse who are into students activism, not student politics. Then one for the 2/3rds who want NUS to campaign on stuff that affects students, perhaps encouraging students to engage with wider issues but not trying to lead on that because that's not their remit. That's the one I want to be part of.

But realistically, who's going to start that union? Cos I'm not. I'm leaving student politics in three months and I'm going to leave this problem to others. I don't really like student politics all that much: there's some things I feel quite passionately about but I'm not prepared to attack those who oppose me, I'm not prepared to just make passionate speeches and ignore the actual questions people have about what I'm proposing, and I'm not prepared to shout down anyone who disagrees with the accepted wisdom on topics such as abortion and the BNP.

So good luck to the new officers, both in Bangor and on the NEC. I hope we don't leave NUS, I hope NUS can improve, but I don't feel very confident that that's going to happen. Here's to being proven wrong.

I've been putting off writing about Conference because I didn't know where to start. But I've just found a place because I've written an article on Conference for the Seren News Editor. Here it is (cheesy headline and all):

UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL
New NUS Constitution falls at bitterly divided Annual Conference

It’s hard to put NUS Annual Conference into words. It’s chaotic, exhilarating, comical and divisive. It’s three days of impassioned debating on subjects ranging from tuition fees to military recruitment in schools, from accreditation for extra-curricular activities to ending child poverty.

It’s also full of nutters. There was the guy who claimed that One Water (charity bottled water whose profits go to building merry-go-round-powered water pumps in Africa) was a capitalist plot, the people who claimed all sabbaticals were right-wing fascists who sat around sipping Bollinger champagne (we get ours from Aldi ...) and the people who wrote to the Guardian before Conference claiming that NUS was linked to the CIA.

Somehow, in between all the bickering and tub-thumping, we did manage to discuss some pretty important issues. So now your national union believes, amongst other things, that we should oppose Special Branch attempts to spy on Muslim students in universities (something we’ve already opposed here in Bangor), that the Government should raise the education leaving age to 18 and that there should be an NUS Nursing Students’ Campaign to address widespread problems with nursing courses.

But the biggest issue was the ratification of NUS’s new constitution, a project I personally was heavily involved in as a member of the Governance Review Steering Group. To everyone’s surprise, the constitutional ratification did not get the majority it required, getting 692 votes in favour, just 25 votes short of two-thirds. This was quite a blow for Bangor and the other unions whose disaffiliation campaigns had been defeated on the promise of far-reaching reform.

In fairness to the newly elected National Executive Committee, they have bounced right back and are insisting that a new constitution can and will be passed within a year. But there is a fundamental split within NUS between the hard-left factions who want their national union to campaign on international issues, to “fight them on the streets”, and those who favour lobbying ministers and other key decision-makers directly, focusing solely on educational issues. This split has left the Union locked in a stalemate where a majority wants change but the minority is blocking it.

This year’s leadership have had all the right ideas, and it is a real shame that the positive initiatives they put forward have been hijacked by factions who have put a halt to the changes NUS needs so much without offering any real alternatives. Next year’s sabbatical officers will have to think long and hard about our involvement with NUS, whether we continue to fight for change or whether we cut our losses now and leave NUS to the factional in-fighting that dominates all NUS “democratic” events.