Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

The No 11 bus is very smelly. I'm making the return leg of my journey
and on both occasions the (different) buses have smelled so bad I have
had to cover my nose. Is it the people on the bus? The cleanliness of
the bus? Or is it just that I inhaled clean sea air at the weekend and
have lost my immunity to London smells as a result?

I'm wallowing in the pleasant after-glow of a very good book. It's a bit like waking up from a lovely dream and wanting to hang on to it just a little longer. The book had a rather violent end but it all worked out perfectly in the epilogue, and I feel smugly satisfied that I anticipated a number of the plot twists before they became too obvious. There's a real nack to pulling that off in detective stories: you don't want to give too much away too soon, but allowing me to figure things out just slightly before you spell it out for me makes me very happy.

I think that's why I don't like Agatha Christie very much: she introduces too many wild cards so you just can't figure it out for yourself. There you are suspecting the parson when she tells you that the butler's alibi was entirely fictitious and he was famed for his skill at archery in his youth. It's just plain annoying -- there's no scope for stretching my intellect, unless I try to guess who the culprit is based on who it's most unlikely to be.

This was the first book I've read that was set in the Second World War without being too grim about it. It wasn't as though everything was rosy; in fact, several people were killed because of the dangers of the blackout, nobody could travel anywhere because of petrol shortages, several people's houses were destroyed by bombs and nobody had anything nice to eat (except Aunt Maud). But I felt I understood it a lot more as a result, I feel much closer to understanding what living with rations actually meant when you were trying to cook a meal. I'm not a big war-head (quelle surprise!) but I did find myself interested in the war for the first time in this book.

Just one criticism: dear old Rennie needs to move away from ending all his books in isolated country houses (with such-and-such baking bread and such-and-such-other off milking the cows) with the killer breaking in and John Madden fighting them off bare-handed. It made for a good read but it did seem a little familiar, and when you've only written three JM books that's a bad thing. But he's one of my favourite authors anyway, and the great thing is that unlike many of my other favourite detective story authors, he's actually alive so there's a good chance he might write more books for me.

I bought five other books last week in a little literary spree (how could I not? I visited John Sandoe and there's a new book stall in the market that sells very good second hand books for £2) so I'll report on those once I've read them all.

Today I did another exciting thing: I visited John Sandoe Books in my
lunch break. It was just like I imagined it would be: layers and
layers and layers of books and the people had read them all.

I went there to get the new Rennie Airth book. I felt I should buy it
from them rather than Amazon as I think it was them who recommended
Rennie Airth to me (via Dad) in the first place. It was a fun trip.

This morning two exciting things happened, one good, one bad. The first was that I saw a rat on my way to work. Andy wasn't there to mind me so I had to run away. Inconsiderately, he was on the tube so I had to leave him a hysterical voicemail (I don't hold with counting h's as vowels) instead of speaking to him hysterically. I googled fear of rats: turns out musophobia (as it is less commonly know) is one of the most common specific phobias, and is often a combination of the "reasonable concern about rats and mice contaminating food supplies, which has been universal to all times, places, and cultures where stored grain attracts rodents, which then consume or contaminate the human food supply" and the startle response. Sounds sensible.

So that was an unpleasant start to the day, but it was tempered by a lovely email from my boss when I got to work thanking me for all my work since Anfal left and praising me for not letting anything major slip despite doing two people's work. So she and my boss-boss have agreed to nominate me for a £150 instant reward, which is very nice indeed. Instant rewards are a nice thing the Department does as a way to recognise good work on a particular thing, like a sort of short-term bonus. So I feel pleased.

The rest of the day was quite dull in comparison.

I've just been to a headteachers meeting in a consortium I have links
with. It was a bit frustrating because very early in the meeting I was
asked a confrontational question about a potential policy change
should the government change which naturally I couldn't answer, but it
left everyone in the room a bit annoyed with me for not being frank.

Thing is, even if I wasn't bound by the civil service code, I don't
have a crystal ball. I don't know what the outcome of the next
election will be as opinion polls, like mortgage repayments, can go up
as well as down, and even if I did know for certain that the
government was going to change, I don't know what that would mean for
this particular policy. But to all intents and purposes my answer
looked like another civil servant dodge and did nothing to make the
people in the room feel happy I was there. So it wasn't quite as good
a meeting as I hoped it would be.

Andy's abandoning me on Thursday to head to Scotland for his annual
kayaking trip. I don't know what I'm going to do while he's away but
when he was in Sheffield I ended up over-filling my time so I didn't
have any time to myself at all. I'll try not to do that this time.

One thing I'd like to do is book a piano lesson with our new local
music school, Cherry Pie Music (they have a website, google them).
They're opening a branch in Abbey Mills which is super-convenient, and
they say they do all styles of music which is ideal. My idea of what I
want is one 'classical' piece on the go at all times, which would be a
demanding one that I'd be concentrating on perfecting and really
working on technique, a jazz tune I'd be playing from chord charts,
and a rock/pop piece I'd be reading from music but augmenting with
twiddly bits by ear. And it sounds like they'd do that. They open on
Saturday so I think I'll give it a try.

A big shout out to Dad for discovering my latest allergy: I really do not think I would have discovered that it was my tomato plant that was making my hands flare up on my own. But it is.

We returned to our flat to find disaster had struck: our Aerogarden had run out of water. So Andy and I had to do a lot of remedial work to prune dead leaves, prop up the stem and rewater. And then my hand flared up. But now I've taken an antihistamine and it has done much better than all the moisturiser I have been applying since my hand went crazy. What a weird allergy.

I'm on the train to Woking and it's very early. I'm off to visit my
Twin (I'm twinned with a consortium delivering Diplomas) and I'm
heading there extra early so I can sit in on their weekly planning
meeting to see what it's all about. It can be quite a disadvantage
never having taught so this kind of thing is a way to keep my ear to
the ground, finger on the pulse etc.

It's only the start of today's adventures though as I'll be heading
into work after this, then going out for a nice meal before getting
the train to Gatwick and flying home. Did you know the Gatwick Express
(£15) is only 6 minutes faster than a normal train to Gatwick (£6 if
you buy an advance ticket)?

My tube journeys have become much more exciting lately since I
downloaded the Classics application to my iPhone. I started by reading
Alice in Wonderland and have now moved on to Robinson Crusoe. I'm
really enjoying RC, I love how surprised he is that a savage can be
kind and how much he despises the Conquistadores. I'm slowly getting
through it in my 50 minutes on the tube each day but I can't bring
myself to read on my iPhone when I'm actually at home. I've also been
cycling more in the past few weeks. It's becoming noticeably easier
and faster which is nice.

Just a short walk from our flat and it felt like we were in the middle of the countryside. How refreshing to have trees and water and green space in the middle of London.


Although there was still an industrial estate to our right. This bakery smelled delicious, though, and had wind turbines generating some power.


You can't really see it properly but through these trees is our lovely City Farm which grows vegetables, has lots of farmyard animals and gives riding lessons.


This is Morden Hall Park. I expected it to be immaculately preened, but actually most of it is wetlands which was lovely.


In the wetlands the river splits into several different streams, this being the main one.


More wetlands.


You can just about see Morden Hall itself through the trees.


Does anyone know what these arches might be for? They're very pretty but I can't really see what their purpose might be as the stone is far too thin to be a bridge.


Once you pass Morden Hall the park does become much more managed, but it's still very pretty , with lots of white bridges as you can see in the background.


Out of Morden Hall Park and into the next park which might possibly be called Ravenscroft Park, I can't quite remember. It was full of mill streams ...


... and mill stones.


There were little people feeding ducks and swans and geese.



This lovely white wooden house had water on several sides. I'd like to live there.


Further along, the opposite side of the river became increasingly industrial and less beautiful.


But even when we'd left teh river, we could still see trees and fields and grass and other un-London-y things. We'll gradually complete the whole thing, watch this space.

On my way home now, another bus, another slow crawl through London. I
really liked Lindsey's friends, one of whom works for my department
but is on secondment to BERR. When she comes back I think we'll be
lunch buddies.

We had a good couple of hours eating and drinking chez Lindsey. Then
we went to Infernos which was less fun. The girls went straight to the
dancefloor but Andy, being the only boy, was less keen to dance. So I
stuck with him but it meant that we sat there for an hour and a half
on our ownio before deciding it wasn't really worth sitting there just
for moral support.

We didn't see anyone vomiting which was a disappointment, but whilst I
waited for Andy to collect our coats who should appear but Cousin Ed
with Zoe and Isobel who were in his year in Newtown! So that was a bit
of a coincidence. They too were leaving in horror.

So now I'm up to 7 people I have bumped into unexpectedly in London:
Matt and Andy, ex-presidents of Bangor SU (I met them separately),
Gary from my class in Bangor, Jim from NUS at an education lecture and
now Ed, Zoe and Isobel. And I also strongly suspect I have passed
Kevin-who-is-friends-with-Jimi-and-whom-I-went-to-primary-school-with
several times in Colliers Wood but I thought it was too unlikely it
was actually him to say hello. Turns out he has moved to London so it
might be him after all.

Ah, Infernos may have let me down but the night bus hasn't: the guy
opposite just vomited on the seat and the floor. Yum yum.

I'm on a Rail Replacement Bus Service crawling through Tooting on my
way to Lindsey's birthday party in Clapham. Normally I'd be delighted
to do anything in Clapham as it's only 15 minutes away by tube but the
Northern Line isn't running between Stockwell and Morden this weekend
so chaos reigns.

It's been beautifully warm and sunny today so Andy and I tackled part
of the Wandle Trail. It's really rather lovely as most of it is
through parks. We discovered a city farm really close to our house and
also visited Morden Hall for the first time. I think we'll take Ian
and Kristin there next weekend as there's a National Trust cafe - they
tend to be very good. I do have photos but I'm blogging from my phone
so will have to upload them tomorrow.

We went to a fancy bar by the Thames yesterday after work for one of
Andy's colleagues' leaving do. It was very nice with some delicious
cocktails but our wallets are considerably lighter today. They were
all really friendly though, which was nice. Shame they all live quite
far away so aren't very easy to socialise with.

Tonight is an 80s party so I'm pretending to be Debbie Harry with
frizzy hair, pink leggings and a Blondie top. I know, I know, it's
unlikely Debbie would wear a top with a picture of herself on it, but
I worried nobody would guess who I was without it. Andy's dressed as
Magnum PI and has a chest wig and stick-on moustache. We look great.
We're off to an infamous nightclub called Infernos which my boss and
other ex-Fast Streamers were exchanging tales
of exciting/awful nights out at when we went out for curry on Tuesday.
I felt so left out at the time but after tonight I too will have tales
of people vomiting on the dancefloor to regale dinner parties with.

Back to staring out the window. I hate this bus.