Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

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.