Drove home from Liverpool last night. The motorways were fine, and the major London roads were OK, bar the usual sociopathic bus drivers - who were still pulling out without looking or any kind of warning when there's ice on the ground. Cocks.

However, the minor road off Kennington lane to our road was ungritted, and had a thick layer of snow over sheet ice. I got very sideways at about 15mph with almost no throttle, trying to get down it. Almost slid into a merc, but luckily didn't instinctively go for the brakes and managed to steer out of it.

Trying to get onto the drive was equally interesting, it must have all of a 5º slope, but I was spinning the wheels trying to get traction, eventully managed to get up it, only slightly diagonally.

There's essentially no trains running today, and the tube line that goes that way is out, so working from home.

Went to Floridita last night for Kate's going-to-america bash. Was a good night out, drinks not too expensive and we didn't have to pay on the door. Some tables have a £1000 spend minimum, which is a little rough.

Normal cocktails are £8 each – if you ask for expensive ingredients then it gets steep, but at the beginning of the night they were pretty well made, though when it started getting really buys, around 10-11 they quality went down a bit, and by midnight they were a bit crap. I was too drunk by then to care.

There's a cigar shop next door with a walk in humidor, and way too much selection, you're allowed to smoke in the shop, which is... interesting. Some loophole I guess. They close at midnight though.

Band were good, show was OK.

I visited So'ton on the weekend and my choice of car attracted some attention - a little while ago I chopped in my (now massively devalued) 325ci sport for a (also massively devallued) 911.

The reaction from my friends in London was either "well, obviously, what else would you buy" or "huh, why would you buy anything other than a slightly battered 3 year old hatchback" depending on the quantity of petrol in the veins.

The combination of fuel price rises and the lack of bonuses given to city boys this year caused a huge slump in the price of GT cars, and as London is stuffed with 911's prices took a big hit.

We're not talking bargain here, but I fancied a new (to me) car, and made this mistake of testdriving a 911. After that there was no other choice. I could have got a new, top-spec Ford Focus for less, but really - who cares about comfort, convienience, quietness, luggage space, running costs, being able to carry 4 people, ease of use or any of that other stuff when you can have a worryingly lively car based on a 40 year old design with it's engine in the wrong place?

Also, Jeremy Clarkson hates 911s, which automatically makes them good.

It's is truely amazing to drive, I mean, obviously it's fast, but it also does all that sports car stuff where you can tell what kind of road surface you're driving on and feel the levels of grip when cornering, blah, blah.

But, ontop of that, it's actually pretty easy to live with - it's got a fairly exotic oily bits, but they put loads of effort into making it not anoying: you only have to service it every 12k miles, you dont have to let it idle for a while after parking and so on. Plus, you can actually drive in town without it overheating, stalling, stinking of burnt clutch and nearly crashing into things all the time, unlike certain Italian makes I could mention. You can also drive at 30 and 40 mph without modulating the throttle or using the brake, which is a bonus.

Fuel consumtion is an issue, I get about 21 mpg, and it runs on 97+RON but it's not really that big a deal compared to the other running costs of something like that. Tyres work out at something like 10p/mile for example. Servicing is fairly expensive, but no more than a fast Merc/BMW, way less than Ferrari/Lambo/Aston etc.

As gnommi pointed out the speedo is a bit of a joke, it goes from 0 to 175-and-a-bit (the car does 177, so the speedo goes to 177, very german), with marks every 25 mph in about 120º, but there's a digital speedo below the tachometer. At 75 a spoiler comes up from the engine cover to stick the back of the car to the road (you can hear and feel it rise, which is a little disconcerting the first time it happens) and there's loads of aerodynamic stuff in the nose to keep the front on the road at speed.

I find that I get let in and out of junctions much more often than I did in my drug dealer special BMW, and even get thumbs up from van drivers and the like, which is odd given how common 911s are here.

I've not posted anything for a while (been extra busy), so a quick catchup.

Kitchen was finished a month or so ago, really happy with it now but it was a pain while it was being done.
The last things to be done were installing the worksurface (it had to be specially machined) cf. background of M6 picture, and replacing a duff bearing in a pullout cupboard thing.

Replaced the lounge flooring. In a moment of enthusiasm Lucy and I decided to do it ourselves. Took two trips to the the wood-shop, filling the boot of my car with beech planks (probably shortening the life of my suspension) and two very unpleasant days to lay, but its done now. Looks good.

That's all the major work for now - still need to get a small shed for the back "garden" to keep bikes and garden stuff in. At some point we want to replace the upstairs bathroom too - but that can wait.

Still not sure what to do about the garden small patch of weeds out back. I have absolutely no interest in it, but concreting over it would be unwise given how much a bit of foliage adds to property value here. OTOH it seems a bit excessive to hire a gardener to look after 30-odd m² of dirt.

On Saturday went to see the Tour de France in Hyde Park, which was impressive. Hard to get any photos cos we were so close to the riders, and they were blasting past at 30 odd miles an hour a meter or so away.

Today went to Vauxhall Art Car Boot Art Fair, a load of established and up and coming artists who sell stuff off cheap. Saw some cool stuff, but didn't buy anything. After it had been open an hour or so, starting filling up with Nathans, so we left. Good though.

Been really busy recently, so not written anything here.

Kitchen is currently being installed. Builders managed to remove the old kitchen and install 4 or 5 cabinets in the first day, which is pretty impressive.

John Lewis have been great with sourcing all the tradespeople, and delivering the right parts at the right time. They delivered all the cabinets in one go, then couriered over the appliances as there was somewhere to put them. All apart from the fridge, which was delivered weeks ago, for some unknown reason. The designer and project manager are both really good, and have been very accommodating. I'm reserving final judgment until it's finished ofcourse, there was a number of subtle things that irritated me about the old kitchen, which I relayed to the designer and I'm waiting to see if they're fixed.

However the building work means that we have no lounge (used to store new kitchen bits), and no garden (used to store old kitchen bits, skips are veboten in these parts) and the bedroom, studio/spare room and corridors are mostly used to store the contents of the kitchen. Consequently we've been eating out a lot.

On Monday Lucy and I went to the opening of the "Photographing Britain" exhibition that the Tate Britain, it's really good. There was a tour by the curator (who was really engaging), then we wandered round for a bit. Definitely recommend the show. They had some early Fox-Talbot's that were pretty impressive, and a good variety of stuff. We got the tickets in a competition in the Observer, but they printed the URL wrong, which must have increased our odds. A bit of poking in their CMS about made it obvious what the URL should have been. On the way back from the Tate we went to our favorite Mexican takeaway place, but to eat in. The food was really good, nothing fancy, but amazingly well cooked and spiced. I think it's the best Mexican food I've had. It's only small and tucked down a side street off Vauxhall Bridge Road, so in the words of Jerome K. Jerome, "I'm not going to be fool enough to advertise it here" :) Major downside was that there was a woman in a group at the next table, with the loudest, and most annoying laugh I've ever heard. A bad combination. Hard to believe that noise came form a human being.

Last night we ate at a Neopolitan place in Soho, then went to see Sue Perkins to some standup, that was really good too.

On a work front, the release of Data Patrol Advanced (the companies first commercial product) was put back to this week, as it just wasn't finished. Whats running at the moment though looks really good, and there are some impressive usability improvements.

I absolutely do not like the new website design, but it checks out well with our core consumers, and I'm not one of them, so I'm just going to suck it up and stop whining. I did quite like the old one, but it was a bit too "dry and formal" apparently. There were several learning experiences with construction of the new website, but I'm not going to go into them here.

Went to Kennington Fair yesterday, sort of a village fair, but held in a small (but very pleasant) Georgian square. It's held to raise money for the Kennington Christmas lights or somesuch. I don't usually associate village fairs with oysters, raffles for bottles of premier cru champaign, tai-chi lessons and cooking by topflight chefs. I would hope that by next year this seems completely normal, and not some weird city reproduction of an alien event :)

I've noticed that Sky are using Imogen Heap's “Hide and Seek” to promote Lost. I gave up on Lost during the first series, and that's not likely to encourage me to go back to it, but it is a good track. It's jarring though to hear something so familiar on TV, kinda like when MTV used a 10 second snatch of an obscure 90s Front 242 track in one of their links for a few years. The first few dozen times I heard that link my hindbrain thought ‘uh, good music’ before I realised it was just that bloody link.

Went to Camden on Sat. morning, then saw Eat London in the afternoon. it was pretty cool, but we didn't see that much of it. It had mostly been eaten by the time we got there.

On Sunday did practical stuff, most of the studio/office/spare room is together now.

Finished the last of the painting on the weekend, we now have about 80% of a bedroom again, just needs the curtain rails putting up and we can move back in.

Went out with Al and Nick L. on Friday night, did tourist stuff - London eye, looked at buildings etc. Was good to see Al again. Finally took some photos of London, though taking photos from the eye is not that easy, lots of reflections from the curved glass. Aroused suspicion from security people at Tower 42 by peering through the window of a bank call centre trying to figure out what the numbers on a plasma screen meant. He seemed satisfied by Nick's explanation that we were “just wandering around”.

On Sunday we walked to Covent Garden for lunch, saw a bit of the marathon on the way. Watching tired looking people run by looses its appeal quite quickly. Ate at Chez Gerard, upstairs in the market. Was good and not too pricey for that part of town.

Massacred the scrubby patch of grass out back with the slightly excessive strimmer. It chucked sliced up bit of grass all over the place, but at least now you can walk across it without fear of mantraps, small bears etc. Want to get a (very small) shed to keep bikes + strimmer in. Too domesticated.

Moving in is well underway. We finished painting the spare room today, then went to Borough Market and got some ingredients, for cooking, with fire and stuff. Market was pretty neat, but very crowded and a bit poncey.
Had a large amount of unskinned rabbits hanging up at one stall though, which was pretty neat in a "that's real food" way. Not as good as winchester farmers market, other than for its wine and beer, but much nearer.

Going to see the Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the Natural History Museum tomorrow, then doing a bit of house shopping (one of the coffee machines didn't survive the move).

Being able to go into work every day has been good, I feel much more intouch with the day-to-day running. If I catch one of the fast trains (2 an hour) it's only a 15 min journey, but I've missed a lot and ended up getting the slow which is more like 20-25 mins.

The joy of living this centrally hasn't worn off yet, but did pale a bit last Sunday when I ended up having to pay some crazy amount for a loaf of bread, 'cos the only food shop in the area still open only sells stuff that's been ethically hand-baked my monks, or something like that. Also nearly bought a pair of jeans for £250, but luckily looked at the price before taking them to the counter - a deviation from my normal absent minded ambling.

That inoffensively sized TV you saw in the cavernous, glitzy showroom might actually turn out to be bloody huge when it arrives at your not-very-big house.

Got it for just under the asking price after a bit of negotiation. Needs a new kitchen, and we'll redo the flooring before we move in. It's mostly carpeted at the moment, yuk.

Need to find a local surveyor and solicitor, and all that crap now :( Also not sure whether to change the mortgage to a fixed rate, or port my current one.

Assuming we don't get gazumped, and there's nothing horribly wrong with it, our new address will be:

REDACTED
London
SE11 REDACTED

A la multimap and google maps or pages 77 & 155 of the medium size Allocated Zones.

Phew!

It's a modern terrace house in Vauxhall. It's bland, and it's on the south edge of an ex-council low-rise development, but it's a good size, well laid out, got great transport links, inside the congestion area and it doesn't need too much work. Just to the south there's Kennington (a few decent restaurants and stuff) and further south there's Brixton, should you feel the need.

Planning to put in an offer on Monday.

There was another candidate, a flat in a converted house in Kensington (just off the western end of the high street), but it's just that little bit too small and it needs a lot of work. It's also not a good commute for Lucy, the link to the city is not that good. District Line, yuk.

Someone else offered the asking price, and we don't think it's worth that, so the hunt goes on.

About 10 mins from Vauxhall, top floor of a Victorian end-of-terrace house. It's a bit smaller than we were looking for, but the previous owners had planning permission to do a big roof conversion, and the asking price is over 100 grand under our budget. Will be putting in an offer on Monday, fingers crossed.

The kitchen, bathroom, lounge, and master bedroom are all good sizes for London, but the 2nd bedroom is very small. There's a fair-sized roof terrace too, but I don't really see the point in them.

The kitchen and bathroom are OK, recent, they work, but not well designed, and not up to the standard for the area. At a very, very rough guess I reckon it will cost 15 grand each to replace the kitchen and bathroom. The loft conversion would be expensive, but there's no hurry to do that.

Spend all of yesterday looking at property in London. Decided Kennington is where we're going to live. Battersea and Clapham are relatively expensive and not that convenient for the city centre, Brixton is cheap, but not really convenient for the city centre or work and is still a bit of a dump, but Kennington is a nice compromise.

I'd never knowingly been there before (it's where the Oval and the Imperial War Museum are), but it's alright. There's not that much in the way of trendy bars and restaurants, but it's a 10 minute walk to Vauxhall or a 20 minute walk over the bridge to Westminster, so who cares. Kennington tube is only on the Northern Line, so it's better to be near Vauxhall. Kennington is the bit of land that's sort of south west of Elephant and Castle and North of Vauxhall station, along the Thames. It used to have a bad reputation but it's been throughly gentrified now, though it's still unfashionable. Great!

For zone 1, and inside the congestion area the prices are very good. There's quite a lot of large ex-council 2-3 bed flats that need work, which are going cheap. Tempting, but I'm not sure if I want the hassle. There's been plenty of really great places sold in our budget, now it's just a case of getting one before someone else does. During the new-year property rush in January that's going to be hard work.

Living inside the congestion area is great, you get a 90% discount on the yearly fees, which means you just pay 250 quid a year and you get easy parking. Plus, you can drive in the congestion area if you need to. Bargain.

This afternoon Lucy was offered a job managing the London branch of a smallish mortgage company, which is very cool. We can now start looking for somewhere that's roughly travel-equidistant between Euston and Richmond, not too expensive, and not too nasty. Hum.

<rant>This would be much easier the the TFL journey calculator software wasn't so shite. It assumes that you're unwilling to walk any significant distance, and tries to route you everywhere via buses, which is useless. You can tell it you don't want to use buses at all, and that you're willing to walk further, and faster than the defaults, but that's not ideal either, and you can't make it remember your choices as far as I can tell. Also I think it's routefinding algorithm is crap. Either that or it's data is poor.</rant>