Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

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.