The London Diaries

In my new flat and online

2007-11-05T22:22:00.000Z

Since my last post I have spent the majority of my spare time dealing with incompetents and liars (conveyance lawyers, estate agents, sales people and technical support people). However, it has now all come together and I am now sitting in my new flat with a working Internet connection and it has only taken four months!

There have been some classics in this time:

the technical support person who did not know why he was asking me to delete all of my cookies
the lawyer who did nothing and ignored all phone calls and emails untill I uttered the magic words of "British Law Society"
the salesman who did not realise untill half an hour before being due to turn up that his company does not deliver to London

Ya gott’a love the Elephant

2007-07-19T22:49:00.000+01:00

Currently there are two police officers in the living room getting a statement from one of my housemates, who has just been shot in a drive by!

Although I wouldn't class an air gun pellet to the arse as life threatening, it was a drive-by none the less.

What a charming place this is to live ;)

I may very well have the worst timing ever

2007-05-09T19:37:00.000+01:00

I've just bought flat #2!
- its in zone 2 (great)
- its very very cheap given the above (great)
- its a "super" studio (super!)
- its in a deprived area so there's no stamp duty (great)
- it needs a lot of work done to it (doh!)
- it's two minutes walk from Narni's flat ([insert your own personal opinion here])

But, given that interest rates will probably go up tomorrow:
--> cost of borrowing up
--> affordability of housing down
--> house prices down?

In the long run it will all work out..... I hope!

Yet another reason dislike W

2007-05-01T23:03:00.000+01:00

Reason 512: Government donations to charity as a percentage of GDP....Big up to the Swedes though!

Gumball 3000

2007-04-29T15:59:00.000+01:00

The Gumball 3000 starts today..... I wish I had a spare £28,000 lying around so that I could enter!

I got really excited yesterday when I saw a Bugatti Veron followed by a Ferrari Enzo stuck in traffic on Old Kent Road. Much to my surprise I had difficulty taking my eyes off the Enzo, even though I think the Veron is by far the better car.

My housemates all think that I'm a hopeless petrol head for getting excited about seeing a car.

The Easter Egg Run

2007-04-12T21:38:00.000+01:00

I went up to sunny Newcastle on Easter weekend for my Mum's birthday and a bit of a blast on the bike.

At one point on the trip I miss-read my speedo. I initially thought it read 145 mph, but after I saw a police car in the distance I checked again and it said 70. Its always good to double check ;)

This was my first proper trip in my new gimp outfit. Leathers offer good protection if you fall off, but you can feel your balls freeze when the temperature drops bellow 15c and you "boil in the bag" when its above 20c. I think I'll patent an air conditioning unit you can wear on a belt!

Life is like a game of Frogger

2007-01-10T19:53:00.000Z

Sometimes a minor event can sum up a place so well. Yesterday on my commute to work, there were two grown men fighting in the street in the style of 5 year olds (a lot of pushing and shouting, but nothing that looked painful). A few things struck me about this, but the one which summed up London so perfectly, was the fact that nobody cared!

To a true Londoner, life must be like a game of Frogger. Some obstacles move and some are stationary. But as long as you get by all of them, without getting hurt in the shortest possible time, you would consider it to be a good day!

OK, I know that sounds really harsh but being like that is, to some extent, needed in a big city. Plus, if it was a proper fight, rather than two grown up kids having a tantrum, I'm sure that people (including myself) would have broken stride to help out in some way or another.

London baby yeah!

2007-01-07T11:41:00.000Z

I've done it... I'm now officially a Londoner!

Yesterday I moved into a shared house near Elephant and Castle (south of the river, but only a few miles from the city). The housemates, all of whom come from a different country, are really nice and the place itself is not too bad. This all feels very much like being a student again though!

The end of a year and the beginning of a new life!

2006-12-31T15:51:00.000Z

Today is my last full day as a resident of the north east, as tomorrow lunch time I head off to become a Londoner (read soft southern pansy if you are a northern monkey).

My last day up here has already been a bit of a landmark, as I've just signed a tenancy agreement making me the landlord for the first time *evil grin*. There is only the faintest sniff of profit margin on my old flat at the moment but, with all the money being pumped into Gateshead at the moment, I'm hoping that it will be a great investment in the long-term. In the meantime, at least I'm keeping my vow to never sell property.

The lads moving into the flat seem really nice so, whilst crossing my fingers and hoping not to tempt fate, feel quite optimistic about it all!

Have a good New Year, ya'all.

Down south

2006-12-05T23:49:00.000Z

I handed in my notice on my current job on Monday last week and am due to start a new job / life down in London village on January second. With four weeks remaining, I've got to let out my flat in Newcastle, find somewhere to live in London and move my life 280 miles southward... well, I do like a challenge :)

To be honest though, it only really hit me today that this is all actually happening, rather than just being some elaborate mental experiment / role play I’ve been indulging myself with. Whilst looking at a gig guide for Newcastle and pondering if I should get Block Party tickets, it suddenly dawned on me, by then I'll no longer live "up north"!

The National Motorbike Show

2006-11-03T20:52:00.000Z

Me and my Dad took Friday off work and headed down to the NEC for the National Motorbike Show. Going on the Friday was a good call as, although still busy, we managed to get in some test rides, watch a show, do a bit of shopping and get a good look at all of the exhibitions.

My main aim for the day was to ride a V-Rod so, as soon as the doors opened, we ran over to the registration stand to ensure we got a place. However, despite being third in the queue, my hopes were dashed when I learnt they were only offering rides to people who have had their license for longer than a year :(

Plan B: test-ride the most powerful Honda I can get my hands on. This plan went quite well and I bagged a ride on a VFR800, which has a wonderful sounding V-4 and bags of torque… hummm torque! Don’t get me wrong, I do love the manic mechanical scream and rev’y power offered by my CBR’s in-line 4, but the more relaxed experience offered by the VFR means I may very well get one for my next bike :)

Doh!

2006-10-31T18:53:00.000Z

I've been walking to and from work for a month or so now and, despite being caught in the rain a few times, it defiantly beats taking the Metro. However, it didn't initially occur to me that my route, which involves crossing the Millennium Bridge, has one minor drawback:

Off-Roading 101

2006-10-23T22:35:00.000+01:00

The company I work for occasionally has activity afternoons and this time round we had a mix-and-match of off-road experiences :)

We started out in 4x4 doing a precision driving circuit whist blindfolded and directed by coworkers and then moved onto driving round a 4x4 course. Real off-road 4x4s are crazy! They lean more than my bike and can descend near vertical slopes sideways with ease.... but don’t expect them to be comfortable whilst all that is going on!

The next experience was quad racing and trekking. They were only 125s but you do not need all that much power to have fun on mud and wet grass. It's been a few years since I last had a blast on quads and I though that this time round, with my new found two wheel skills, it would be a breeze.... but I was wrong. Quads are ridiculously uncouth, but an absolute riot to ride and because of this, and the two wheels are more fun than four philosophy, I hereby formally add ridding an off-road bike to my "things to do before I'm 30" list.

The day concluded with a quick blast in mud buggies (think off-road go-kart with a roll cage). As we each only had a few minutes behind the wheel it was hard to tell what they are capable of, but power sliding rules!

The 21st century finally arrived at planet Neil

2006-10-15T20:13:00.000+01:00

Text is OK, but pictures are great. With that in mind I have started up a web album.

I plugged in an old scanner I had lying around with the idea of scanning and uploading all of my old hard-copy photos, but after two hours of faff’ing around with drivers from the dark ages I gave up. Maybe someday ;)

Shiny smiley teeth

2006-09-27T21:41:00.000+01:00

I went to the dentist this morning for the usual check-up and 'passed' with only a slight telling off for brushing too hard!

I have one question though, why do dentists ask open ended questions whilst poking around in your mouth?.... Surely they must have realised at sometime during their many years of training that a persons ability to respond is somewhat hindered by having numerous utensils stuck in their mouth. Or maybe he just assumed that I always talk out of my arse ;)

Anyway, whilst all this fun was going on, some cheeky monkey stole a bar-end from my bike. Even though you need a screwdriver to remove a bar-end, when in the parts shop buying a replacement, the the salesman said it is quite common!

Moving to Linux

2006-09-24T12:05:00.000+01:00

I have just installed openSUSE on my home laptop... I now feel like a proper geek!

First impressions:

GNOME desktop is quite nice
An overwhelming number of applications are installed by default
Everything runs slightly slower than in Windows, which is the opposite to what I was expecting
It took a few hours to get my wireless connection to work :(
You have to type in the root password a lot, which makes having an insecure one a tempting proposition
Installing things always requires reading verbose README files. often involves manually editing config files and in one case editing source code!

I know this must sound very negative, but I am actually really enjoying it!

The Reading Festival

2006-08-28T22:29:00.000+01:00

The Reading Festival was great and I now have a pleasantly long list of bands I must hear more music from! The Kaiser Chiefs, Artic Monkeys, The Streets and Muse all did fantastic sets but, despite having already seen them live once this year, my favorite was Franz Ferdinand. Being unable to get full weekend camping tickets, we ended up staying in a hotel in the city center, which meant that we had the great community feel of a festival during the day with the added bonus of being able to go back to a hotel with a clean bed, shower and toilet when the music stopped!

The trip to Reading and back was surprisingly enjoyable. The only real problem came on the M1 and took the form of taunting signs telling me to take the next exit for the Leeds Festival. For the uninitiated, the Leeds and Reading festivals have the same acts as each other but, when traveling from Newcastle, Leeds is significantly closer! In the end it was a 640 mile ride into which I incorporated at visit to the old house in Woodley. Although it has changed rather lot in the twenty or so years since we moved, being there brought back tons of memories.

This weekend was also the last chance for me and Glyn to see James before he heads off on a six month Long Way Round style lap of Australia. Wakeup, ride a bike a few hundred miles, explore a bit, party and sleep, then rinse and repeat for six months. Very cool!

The first day owning a bike sucked

2006-08-13T11:45:00.000+01:00

The financial burden of owning a sportsbike hurts!

Buying the bike itself is relatively pain-free as a few k will buy you a glimpse of mechanical perfection which is ready, willing and capable of propelling you forward at speeds which utterly trounce most Ferraris and Lamborghinis. The pain instead comes from more covert sources, the biggest and most distasteful of which being ridiculous insurance premiums.

Although I could have afforded to run both a car and a bike, given that I technically I did no need either and that in the first month of owning a bike I did not use the car once, the car had to go.

Until now I have not given a second thought to that decision, but today it was raining all day and the forecast is for rain all week. I am determined not to be a fair weather biker, but riding in the wet is not fun and if riding the bike is not fun I might as well just have a car instead.

1100 miles, 24 gallons of petrol and an aching back

2006-08-04T22:32:00.000+01:00

I have just got back from doing Newcastle to Land's End and back again on my bike. I did the trip with my Dad over three days with pit-stops at his brother's in Cornwall. Despite the journey starting in the pouring rain and at an un-godly hour, a few hundred miles in the weather turned and remained good for the rest of the time.

Land's End itself was not exactly what I was expecting.

Hypothesis: Land's end will be rocky, there will be a plaque or sign containing a combination of trivia and history and there will be a few dozen OAPs and tourists milling around.

Reality: It is an amusement park! Ya gota love capitalism ;)

It was great to see a bit more of the county and doing it on the bike was a real rush... Providing that I do not receive enough points on my license to get banned (or put in jail!) in the next few weeks, the next objective is John'o Groats.