Home sweet home - London

And then it was over - admittedly over 6 weeks ago now, but just allow me to slide into a retrospective frame of mind for a bit and tie up the loose ends of our totally excellent adventure.

We flew into Heathrow on the 29th August to be greeted by sunshine, some warmth and the tube which, I thought was great, until we couldn't buy the tickets on our credit cards, find which District line train to change to for Paddington or find a seat that was not next to a smelly fat person. Geez louise. It got better soon, though as we met Steve at Paddington (he nicked off from work at about 1pm - nice one!) and then went onwards to his new flat in Maida Vale where we were staying until we could find our own place.

From there we headed off to the Waterway pub in Little Venice and drank heaps of beers while regaling the bar with stories of our daring and adventurous travel. At some point Kirsty joined us and I think we may have eaten some nice food too. The next day was a Saturday and we had some tickets to go and see the Chemical Brothers at Kensington Olympia so we had a nice sleep in and a walk around Maida Vale before heading out to see the band - wicked Audio Visual show - and have another great night out.

That more or less set the tone for the next couple of weeks as we sorted ourselves out administratively. We would go to the pub, whilst also finding a nice flat in a convenient if not fantastic part of town and Shell getting a job at Great Ormond Street Hospital. I was being a bit picky with the kinds of jobs I was putting myself forward for which was probably a bit dumb as the 2nd week we were here Lehman Brothers investment bank failed, setting off the stock market crash that engulfed the worlds finances and my prospects for getting a sweet contract.

Ahh well. I have actually managed to get a job with AOL Broadband and get to join Shell in the ranks of the employed, although she is now the breadwinner as she earns more than I do! I took a little longer than anticipated but it looks good for now.

So now we live, according to whom you ask, in either Maida Vale (the Real Estate Agent), Maida Hill (the closest post office), West Kilburn (the A-Z), Queens Park (the local council amenities) or even just good ol' London (the post code checking system on the Royal Mail website). We are sort of in a promontory of nice places in an ocean of crappy council housing. Allow my map to demonstrate the area. The green bits are nice houses with normal people walking along the streets, the yellow bits (which our house is in) are areas that are ok with the occasional dodgy off license or crappy pub but generally nice places. The orange areas are low rise council flat areas but still relatively normal streets but a higher incidence of dodgy off licenses and frequently large groups of people standing around not really doing anything except talking loudly.




The red areas are dyed in the wool council housing a la Atherton Gardens on Brunswick St in Fitzroy or the Lennox Street / Elizabeth Street complex in Richmond, putting even Melbourne's best attempt at horrible state housing to shame. I actually quite like our area excepting Harrow Road which is a crappy way to start the day. It's like Smith St in Collingwood without the charm.

Anyway our house is about a 10 minute walk from either Queens Park tube or Westbourne Park tube which is quite handy for getting around town. It is a 1 bedroom flat in a long row of terraces that has been recently renovated and furnished with a bit of style. We've got a nice kitchen, a big living room and a big enough bedroom AND there's also a rooftop terrace / decking thing on top of our bedroom so we also have an outside area which is really cool. You have to climb an extension ladder to get up there but it is a small sacrifice! We also have a very comfy sofa bed......

The only real problem we've had so far with the house was the small matter of the oven. As most readers would know, we love a good roast and Shell is a dead set genius in the kitchen so our oven generally gets a bit of a work out in normal day to day operations of the house. So we cooked a few roasts and cakes and stuff and we noticed that if we left the oven for over, say, an our or so, the house would gradually fill with smoke until the place smelt like a campsite. The first time we thought it may have been the baking paper that sort of caught on fire when it touched the grill element so we didn't think too much about it, until we had Matt and Eva over for dinner and managed to smoke out the house again.

Finally thinking something might be up I gave the oven a good clean out, in case it was some stray food causing the smoke and gave it another test but, nope, still more smoke. I began systematically dismantling the bit around the oven but not finding anything obvious and since it was neither my house nor my oven I decided to call the landlord. She organised a workman to come over and have a look, so Kevin came around and had a quick look as I explained the problem. He looked at the same things I looked at and couldn't see anything so he pulled the oven out, which actually turned out to be quite easy to do. We got the oven out and lo and behold pretty much the whole shelf was burnt to a crisp! There was a big hole burnt about 15 cm in diameter and it had started to burn through the next shelf down as well. This was not to do with the baking paper.

It turns out the oven was seriously faulty and hadn't been fused correctly when it was installed, so it was basically just waiting for the unsuspecting tenant to nick out to the shop for 15 minutes whilst cooking something for a couple of hours and burning the joint to the ground. Not the sort of excitement we need but the landlady was very good about it and had the oven replaced, by Kevin, on the same day.

Our days are now spent meeting up with friends, going shopping on the high street, drinking Pimms in the sun and generally enjoying life with practically no responsibilities! It's great, although we miss our families, our dogs, our friends and the Australian service industry (so far superior in every respect to the British standard that it is actually shocking) but I guess there is always a trade off to enjoying yourself.

Well until the next lazy Saturday morning when I feel like sharing my thought with the world, au revouir and Cole - can you throw the ball for Lily and give Burns a pat on the head and tell him he's a good boy!