Rubbish entry

It's been ages since I posted, and the longer you leave it, the harder it gets - ooer!

I keep coming up with ideas for posts and then not writing them, or playing around with them in my mind until the fancy has gone. So I'm not promising any great shakes with this post. It's just to get me back into the habit.

One of the reasons I haven't posted for so long is that we finally moved house just before Christmas. We've swapped Hackney for Colchester and a two-bed flat for a three to five bed Victorian semi with garden. I'm just coming to the realisation that a house this size is almost like having another child in terms of the demands it places on your time. Never mind keeping it clean - we haven't even got it clean yet after the state the previous owners left it in - everywhere I look I see a job to be done. Painting, decorating, shelving, carpeting, gardening... the list just goes on an on. Now I know what people mean by a project.

Although we've only been here a month, it does seem like home already. This despite the fact that the house is absolutely freezing and holds heat like a sieve does water. The kids love it and as well as having their own bizarrely decorated rooms, they have a play room for all their toys and lots of other rooms to spread their toys about in. They don't understand compartmentalisation.

It's nice though. We can see lots of possibilities here for the future and the neighbours seem nice, if a little less exotic than our Hackney neighbours. We miss our London friends, but they're just down the line, and in the next week or so we will have a guest room for their - hopefully frequent - visits. Just remember to bring long johns.

Oh, and Happy New Year.

More autumn fun

Is there anything more fun for a young boy at this time of year than kicking rustling piles of leaves? Well, yes, there probably are, and it depends on the youth of the boy where he gets his kicks, but it has to be in the top five. Especially when dad sanctions throwing armfuls of them in the air too.

Ready, steady...

Wheeee!

How sad am I?

It's been a tough week. HackneyBaby is not sleeping very well so we've been up at all hours through the night. To make matter worse, just as his big brother is discovering the joy of a lie in, he has taken over the 6am - or earlier - shift.

I've been feeling a bit low recently. I've only just managed to shake off a cough that has been lingering for weeks. It didn't really develop into a full blown cold or flu, but just left me feeling a bit crap. Combined with my sore foot and the lack of sleep, I haven't been the happiest of bunnies.

This week has been especially wearing as we've been trying to get HB to stay in his cot when he kicks off. Up until now we've been walking him about, taking him downstairs to stop him waking his brother. Anyway, we've decided to stop that because:
a) it doesn't really work, and
b) he's getting too heavy to cart around in the middle of the night, and possibly...
c) because his brother scared the bejeezus out of me the other night by appearing silently by my side in the darkened front room and loudly asking "What are you doing?"

So this week we've been trying to keep him in our room and his cot. On one hand this has been easier for me as my wife has been dealing with him when he wakes up. However the unspoken quid pro quo has been that I've been getting up with him in the morning. We used to take it in turns to do this, so by the end of this week I was shattered.

My wife is not an unfeeling woman and she offered to take the kids out today and let me have some down time. (They went to the St Joseph's hospice Christmas bazaar, where Barbara Windsor was there to open things up and was, by all accounts a real sweetheart.)

This left me free to do whatever my heart desired - go back to bed, go to the cinema, head for the pub... whatever I fancied. In the event I found it really hard to think of anything to do. I eventually went for a walk and found myself looking at all the weekend dads out with their kids on bikes, playing and having fun. Although I was only divorced from mine for a couple of hours I felt an irrational envy, almost a separation anxiety, as I wondered what my two lads were doing.

It's crazy. I see them every day and for a lot longer than many fathers do. As much as I sometimes think that they have completely taken over my life, it is obvious that they now are my life.

And yes, I realise how icky that sounds.

Autumn gold

It's been a downpour today, but it was glorious yesterday. Even mucky old Hackney looks quite nice in the sunshine, especially when we're having such a glorious autumn for leaf colours.
Back in the day, before we had kids, we'd be heading out to Suffolk at about this time of year for an autumn break in the lovely seaside town of Southwold. Invariably we'd drive through beautiful golds, reds and yellows which would make me wonder why New England in the Fall is such a big deal when we have such wonderful scenes in our own country. 
Plus, I doubt you can get real ale like Adnams in New England. Nor find a boozer like the Lord Nelson.
These pictures aren't great, but I just wanted to capture how lovely the leaves look at the minute in case there are no more sunny days before they all drop.

 

Clay man

He sits... and waits... for a 38 bus

Not a great picture I know, but I had to climb on to somebody's wall and lean out to get this shot of the mysterious clay man. As he is looking away from me it is impossible to tell what look he has, or if he has any features at all. I'm thinking that he is perhaps Hackney's answer to Anthony Gormley's Event Horizon statues.

More bus stop top art

Following on from the under the radar success of the space potatoes and the wooden clacker things, the guerrilla artists of Hackney are at it again. Last night I noticed a small clay figure on top of the bus stop at the top of Graham Road. From my vantage point on the top deck of the 277, through the rain and condensation smeared windows, I could just about make him out. He seems to be sitting on an armchair as if watching an invisible TV.

It reminded me that I'd spotted another miniature figure on Kingsland Road a few weeks back. He also seemed to be made from unpainted clay, like his chair bound brother. However he was standing atop a wall with a life belt round his midriff. Poignant it was!

Unfortunately lifebelt man he has now gone as I tried to find him later to get a picture. But I wonder where the next clay man or woman might crop up and what they'll be doing.

This hurts

I have just discovered I've got a bunion. I don't know if this is good news or bad as I thought I'd broken my foot somehow or maybe developed gout. Which is worst?

All I know is that it bloody hurts at  the moment - throb, throb, throb. I am currently self-medicating with Kronenbourg, which I don't think conflicts with the anti-inflammatories I'm on. For now though I'm a hobbling, limping fool and I don't like it. This really makes me feel like the old dad I am. I can't descend the stairs with any ease. I can't actually walk very far at the moment. It's a real pisser.

Our two boys are so physically demanding that I feel like a bit of a spare part at the moment. I'm only marginally more mobile than the six month old, who is already hauling himself up on things and standing gummily grinning at us: "Look what I've done."

CRUNCH!

Advanced Police driving course - failed

We were sitting in the house yesterday when there was an almighty crash on what sounded like Graham Road. Being, like most people, nosey by nature, I halted what I was doing at the time - dressing down J over something or other - and rushed out to see what was going on.

A crowd of other rubber neckers had gathered on the corner of Graham Road and Navarino Road, where a couple of rather embarrassed PCs were surveying the scene. By all accounts they'd tried to undertake a car that was already turning into the side road, completely misjudged and kerrunch!

Although this tableau provided no little amusement, particularly for the guys who frequent the nearby bookies, it was extremely fortunate there was nobody on the pavement at the time as the results would have been terrible. Perhaps the police drivers wouldn't have been so foolhardy if there had been pedestrians, but this was the spot where Arina Romanova was knocked from her bike and killed a couple of months ago. Navarino Road is heavily used by parents and kids going to and from London Fields. On a lovely sunny, Saturday afternoon, it could have been much worse.

They knead the bread

I yield to no one in my love of a nice spelt sourdough, but it's getting so you can't move around here for artisan bakers. Maybe they are the new plumbers. A couple of years back there was the idea that the middle classes were chucking their jobs in the City, accountancy and law to make their millions fitting U-bends and Armitage Shanks three pieces. Given the price of the average pain de campagne, perhaps dough is going that way.

The latest addition is the E5 Bakehouse, which is located in a railway arch just off London Fields. We stumbled upon it this morning, after stumbling upon it on Facebook. We bought some rather rich, but fantastically yummy muffins for £1.50-1.75 each, which although pricey is still cheaper than Violet. The USP seems to be the organic nature of the goods on sale. They are to be very into the provenance of the flour and such like. But ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the eating and the chocolate and cherry, and carrot cake muffins we tried were fantastic.

(Not E5's yummy muffins. These cakes are for display purposes only)

Bread is their big thing though and there was a baker hard at it on Sunday. Apparently they will be making bread every day, which opens up the fantastic opportunity of strolling up there of a morning and picking up a still steaming round of bread. Or going for a run and dropping in for a baguette on the way back. Jeez, I love Hackney!

They are also running baking classes, which sound like fun. For £65 you undergo a full day course which will show you how to make the perfect sourdough. As a bit of an amateur baker, this sounds very interesting. I kept a sourdough starter for four or five years, but recently gave up on it as I was making bread with it so infrequently. Partly this was due to the fact that I have so little time for indulgences like baking what with the kids' demands. But another was the fact that I could never get the same taste that I would buy on Broadway Market from Degustibus, whose Californian sourdough is the Holy Grail. Maybe I can perfect my crumb and crust with some tuition.

I worked in an industrial bakery when I was younger - summer holiday job. Oddly it never left me with a desire to make, or even eat bread. Probably because the process was so deskilled. You basically did one small part of the process - classic assembly line stuff - so you couldn't really feel much ownership of the final product, which wasn't much to write home about anyway.

Getting your hands into the dough is a completely different matter.

The 6.30 Club

In which Dad tries to do some surreptitious blogging while keeping an ear out for the almost crawling baby behind him.

Baby A is what you would call an early riser - 6.30 is a bit of a lie in. My wife and I tend to take it in turns to do the early shift with him. By rights I should probably get up with him every morning as she feeds him in the night, which is usually a drawn out affair. However, for the past week or so I've been getting up with him as well. He's been sleeping so badly that it's almost like a return to the baby boot camp of the early weeks. It seems as if he's been waking up every hour, although in my sleep deprived state I can't be sure of anything. Yesterday I mentioned to Mrs Holiday that he seemed to have slept well only to be met with a withering rebuke that I'd slept through the worst of it.

Not that it's usually possible to sleep through and most nights I end up pacing the living room with him. At the moment he's still in our room as we've only got a two-bed flat until we move to our Essex mansion. So, when he wakes, if he won't go back to sleep quickly we take him downstairs so he doesn't disturb his brother.

It's a funny thing. Even when he's bawling his eyes out, he is often asleep in my arms by the time we get down the stairs and into this room. Maybe he finds the peculiar odour relaxing. Here I will walk him or rock him, which can be for anything between 10 minutes (hooray!) and an hour (lots of inward swearing at this point). He seems to be thriving on it though - he's a happy little chap when he wakes up. For us, it's sleep deprivation torture and leaves us zombified for the rest of the day.

For now, we're waiting for the day when we can put him in his own room and not hear his every whimper, which is probably part of the problem at the minute. His brother was similarly restless, although in a different way. We used to have to lie beside his cot and hold his hand, but at least you got a rest. With Baby A it's a full body work out in the small hours with no warm up.

Reinforcements have now arrived in the shape of big brother who is currently keeping A occupied by distributing various toys to him. One thing to be thankful for is the fact that they generally get on well at the moment. I hope that remains the same as little brother's crawling progresses. J already finds it annoying when he wrecks his carefully constructed train layouts. Will I be an early morning peacekeeper in the months ahead?

Anxious times

As we get closer to moving to Essex, I'm getting steadily more nervous. Not just because of the usual worries about leaving the little corner of East London that has been home for the past 11 years.

I'm starting to worry about everything really. The buildings report on the house we are buying came in today. Overall there's not a lot to worry about - it's not going to fall down the week after we move in. However, seeing in black and white what you are buying, and seeing all of its little blemishes highlighted is quite sobering - we're buying THIS! Mind you, I'd hate to see the report on our current property.

A bigger concern is the school catchment we are in. We specifically bid on the new place, and dropped another property because of the school we thought it was nearest to. I consulted with the local education authority about this as finding out catchment areas is like trying to uncover the recipe for Coca-Cola - there are a lot of pretenders out there, but you're never sure what's the real deal. Surely the council would know.

Apparently not. In my original conversations with the LEA, I was talked through a map of where the boundaries were by a lady in the schools team - "Up this road, down that one...." It all seemed very thorough so we went ahead and put in our bid on the house which, fro her information was in the catchment of the school we wanted.

Weeks later, by which time we were up to our ears in costs of moving, the surveyor, of all people, mentioned that we might not be in the catchment we thought we were in. I checked again. This time the process seemed a little more robust. The guy I spoke to said he had to access a computer programme to get the definitive answer. Except it wasn't initially definitive. Firstly he said that we were in catchment - cue huge relief and air punching - then he added "Unless you are in Road X". Since this was our prospective road and the basis of our entire conversation to this  point, I felt a little like the beauty queen who was announced as winner only to have the crown pinched from her head seconds later due to the announcer giving the wrong name.

We've missed out by one street, which is rather galling. One of the reasons that we are moving is that some schools in Hackney are not great (although not the one that J would probably have gone to had we stayed - Gayhurst gets decent reviews). We're now in the odd position of escaping from inner city London, with all its perceived problems, to leafy Colchester, where it's possible our son will go to a worse school than he would have had we stayed here. As my wife pointed out, we are possibly the most crap, pointy elbowed parents.

We did think briefly about pulling the whole deal, but we're so far down the line that it was a bit too scary to more than contemplate. Maybe the sink school will have pulled its socks up in a couple of years time.

Another worry is work. Specifically will there be any? It's still very quiet in my line these days and I'll be at the end of a very long line should I need to get back into the Smoke. I haven't yet identified the media quarter of our new home. Surely there is one!

So really I've got to keep accentuating the positives: bigger house; garden; closer to the seaside; near to family; nice town... Phew, it's good to know there are still reasons to cheerful.

Easy rider

I finally got round to testing the Boris bikes today. The nearest ones to Hackney aren't actually that near so it meant a trip down Kingsland Road to the Geffrye Museum where there is a rack in nearby Falkirk Street.

First impressions were favourable. There were plenty of bikes to choose from and they all seemed to be in good condition. Rightly or wrongly I'd expected that they would already be showing the signs of unwanted attention from vandals and drunkards, but the docking station itself was well kept and the bikes looked very impressive in their serried ranks. These ones hadn't been stickered either.

The process of obtaining one was pretty straightforward too. You just insert your key into the docking station, wait for a green light and you're away. The bikes are pretty robust but not uncomfortable. The seat is easy to adjust to the required height, the chain is enclosed so your trousers won't get caught in it, and the seat is padded and sufficiently wide to accommodate most bottoms. They also have built in lights which flash funkily as you ride along, drum brakes which were efficient without throwing you over the handlebars, and a 'basket' at the front for strapping in a bag or coat. They also have a stand.

There are three gears which ranged from the hilariously frenzied - ideal for getting off at lights - to a decent third which made me feel I could actually get the beast moving at a decent pace. I was actually able to overtake a few people on their own bikes. They were probably in a more leisurely frame of mind than me as I raced to the next docking station to ensure I stayed within the 30 minute free window. It's actually remarkably easy to do as the stations are thick on the ground in central London. There were also plenty of bikes at all stations apart from Clerkenwell Road where only two were left. Maybe this is due to the difficulty of hiring the bikes. Unless you have a key (not that difficult to apply for and they only cost £3) you still can't use the bikes. I'm sure the casual use scheme will be up and running by summer and by then I can't imagine it will be so easy to get hold of a bike, on a sunny Sunday afternoon for example.

I did go a bit bananas on the first leg with the result that when I descended the bike my legs were as jellyish as Simon Pegg's character in Run Fat Boy Run (filmed partly in Dalston actually) after his first spinning class. I took it easier after that and cycled from Kingsland Road to Borough Market, then on to the Royal Festival Hall for lunch before heading back through the West End, Bloomsbury, Old Street and back to Falkirk Street.

The overriding sensation was how being on a bike really shrinks the city. It was Saturday so traffic was probably lighter, but I was getting around much quicker than I would have done on any other mode of transport. Also, although the bike is hardly a design classic, I didn't feel as much of a plonker as I thought I would, and saw lots of other people on Boris bikes.

Overall, I can't think of much negative to say, apart from the fact that they don't extend very far into East London. If Boris really does intend to be a mayor of the whole city and not just the West part, I hope that this changes very quickly. There should already be a stream of them leading up to the Olympic site to get people used to the idea of visiting what is for many a strange part of town. Let's be 'aving 'em!

The Spurstowe in a former life

I came across this ad today, which I remember being shot at the Spurstowe on Wilton Way about five or six years ago. At the time it was still an old man's boozer, complete with the stripey wallpaper that you can just about make out in the picture.



Now, it's on its second incarnation as a trendy gastropub/cool hangout. So cool in fact that it doesn't even have a name. The current owners took down the name when they were redecorating and said that they were looking to rename it. I suggested they have a competition, but it looks as if nothing came of it.

My own suggestion is the Hotchip and Mumford, in celebration of the major sartorial influences for the drinkers... and the fact that they serve chips.

It is amazing how the fame of the this particular area has spread. First with Grazia dubbing London Fields the coolest park in London. Then the New York Times alighted on Wilton Way to number its charms. I did wonder if the backpacker parked outside our door yesterday had cabbed it straight from Heathrow to soak up the Wilton vibe.

But of course, what goes up, must inevitably come down, and it seems the backlash has already started. It has to be said that although there are a lot of dickheads about, they are mostly polite middle class youths who do add a certain vibrancy to the area and some comic appeal. There was a decidedly Nathan Barley-ish picnic going on outside the Lido on Saturday, complete with a DJ working a sound system from the back of a shopping trolley.

Sweet.

Bankers

It's not an original observation, but they really are a bunch of bankers aren't they?

I'm currently looking for a new mortgage as we're moving house so I've been surfing finance sites for longer than is healthy. My current mortgage is with Gnat West (the Frank Bank - Unemployed? No money? Then f--- off! Thank you Viz) and they recently sent me a reminder that my current deal is nearly over. I've just been rereading their kind offer and see that the two year fixed deal they have offered me - a customer of 10 years plus - is more than 2% higher than an offer open to any old Joe, on their website.

They can't even claim that the web offer is new as I spoke to one of their call centre staff yesterday and he said it had been around since the time that my reminder was sent. And my muggins offer comes with a £199 arrangement fee, compared with no fee for the one on the website.

The sad and bad thing is that there will be people out there who have taken them up on this and be overpaying by hundreds of pounds a month. Customer loyalty really does only cut one way it seems.

Advice for Dave

I was recently interviewed for an article on the BBC website about being a dad to tie in with the birth of David and Samantha Cameron's latest child. It came a bit earlier than expected, but luckily they managed to get it up in time.

As a journalist myself, I can't complain about being misquoted. I did pretty much say all of that stuff, but because of the brief, I didn't get much of a chance to talk about the joy of being a dad. And there are lots of joyous aspects to it.

However, it's fair to say that I found our second child tougher than our first. Partly this was because of the mismatch between expectation and reality. Despite being told by enough people that two or more kids were a lot tougher than one, it went in one ear and out the other. I thought that by the time number two was on the way, we had this parenting lark down pat. More fool me. Like lots of aspects of parenthood, you really have to experience things yourself and find your own way through.

I particularly struggled with drawing a boundary between family and work time. Because I work from home mainly, it was all too easy to be dragged into domestic crises - children crying, wife crying, poomageddon etc. Combined with the inevitable lack of sleep (well, not inevitable I suppose. Our second has proved not to be the placid balance to his energetic brother, but more of the same), the first few months turned out to be a not very productive time for me work wise. It was just as well that we were in a freelance recession!

I can't imagine what it will be like for the PM to try and stay on top of his workload while being a thoroughly modern dad at the same time. Of course he's already had three children, including one disabled child, so he's probably more disciplined than I'll ever be. With Samantha laid up after her section, there will be plenty for him to - and not just making tea and toast as he joked yesterday. It's lucky for him that he has Nick Clegg to hold the fort while he holds the baby.

It's going to be tough for them though with Sam having given up her job and the freezing of child benefit - thanks George! Family friendly government? We'll see.

Oh and the joyous bits. Well, the early days don't last for ever, do they?

To do list

After a few weeks of frantic searching, we have found a house in Essex which, if everything goes according to plan, we should move into in a couple of months. Which means that our Hackney holiday may become a permanent vacation.

Now that the move is imminent, I'm mentally listing things that we'll have to try and do before we leave here. Some of them are things that I've always meant to do but haven't got round to. Others are favourite activities that we'll miss when we move home. In no particular order:

* a meal at Buen Ayre on Broadway Market for a proper Argentinian steak. Window table please, as frequented by David Byrne a couple of months back.
* an afternoon at the Museum of Childhood with the kids. It's been my home from home for the past couple of years and the saviour of many rainy days.
* a morning swim at London Fields Lido - apparently the US swim team are eyeing it up for the 'Lympics.
* a few cheeky pints at the Wenlock Tavern, one of the few spit and spit pubs that haven't been gastro-ed up. They do blinding doorstop sandwiches to soak up the ale.
* go for a run along the canal past Victoria Park.
* complete a few more legs of the London Loop. Kids have put a stop on our efforts as most of the legs are a fair few miles and not particularly buggy friendly. It's a great walk though.
* late night bagels from Brick Lane. Preferably eaten slightly squiffy on a nightbus home to Hackney.
* cycle across London for free on the Boris Bikes. Although I've registered I still haven't tried them.
* ask to busk alongside Mikey at Dalston shopping centre.
* visit the Horniman museum. (I'm putting this down mainly because there's a good chance that we'll do it this weekend.)
* go to a ukulele night, such as the one in Stoke Newington's Lion pub.
* take a trip along the Thames on a boat.

There are plenty of other things, but that's a good start.

Poltergeists

In some cultures it's thought that when you die you are presented with all the things you have lost 'on the other side'. That's a lifetime of single socks, dropped coins, mislaid keys and mobile phones collected in the great lost property office in the sky.

I'm expecting that moving house is somewhat similar and that we will start to unearth lost treasures from behind furniture and the foot of drawers that have been unopened for years. Since having children, the rate at which things go missing has increased exponentially. It's not just the obvious stuff like kids socks, although they do seem to have a life of their own, or hats and dummies (ditto). Stuff just seems to disappear into thin air to the extent that you begin to suspect a malevolent presence.

Toys are another candidate for missing in action status. This particularly infuriates me as I have something of the quartermaster about me - a place for everything and everything in its place. It drives me nuts when I can't find the last piece of a jigsaw, the final action figure for a particular toy, or the piece of track that completes the railway line. Where are they?

I suspect that some of them ended up posted in the bin when J was younger. Other items might possibly have been left at his nursery or tossed from his buggy. It's not even that this stuff is valuable. It's the not knowing where it is that annoys me.

At times of greatest exasperation my wife nods sagely and says, "I'm sure it will turn up." This drives me even more bonkers. Does she know where it is? Is it some kind of elaborate game that she has devised with the kids - "Let's watch daddy lose it, shall we. Hide his phone in the freezer." Mainly however it's because I suspect her of being the architect of many of our losses. She is very scatty, with a slack attitude to her own possessions which she is passing on to our offspring.*

The latest loss is a whole bucket full of toy dinosaurs. One or two of their number going missing is just about excusable, but the extinction of the whole pack (hmm, collective noun for dinosaurs?) is mind boggling. It's right up there with the mystery of the mini guitar amp. This isn't a particularly small item and we don't live in a particularly large flat, so where the flip can it be?

I'm beginning to think that there is only one solution to the problem - throw away half of everything you own. At least that way if something turns up later you will feel blessed.

* Sorry darling, but it's true!

Why the long face?

The overriding memory I have of my mum when I was growing up is that she always seemed grumpy, usually with me. Our house was a whole world of 'no'.

Now, of course, the boot is on the other foot, and I can see that what I took for her unfair crabbiness was probably just plain exhaustion at bringing up two kids on her own. This combined with the ongoing repetition of house rules and regulations designed to prevent your offspring killing or maiming themselves or each other.

This is particularly brought home to me now we have two children. To a certain extent it was easy to be fun-loving, easy going dad when we just had Number One Son. Now with his four-month old brother in tow, I frequently find myself in the role of bad cop, relaying all the many ways he is letting us down with his inconsiderate behaviour.

He is two years old. I am 43.

I think he can see it coming now. His face creases up into a mask of misery and he implores me: "Don't be annoyed with me."

It is a mask of course. He's well sneaky and knows that I find it hard to be hard on him. Unless like last night I'd been up all night, due to brother's sniffles, including a 2am trip to Tesco for Calpol which he only succeeded in dribbling down his front anyway. When his elder brother started complaining that he couldn't sleep in his bed due to wasps, it really was the final straw!

"Get in that bed NOW, and go to sleep. If I hear one more word from you I'll... " (tries unsuccessfully to think of a suitable sanction for a two year old. I had started to remove his favourite toys when he misbehaved, but when he said, "What shall we take away next?" it was apparent that my punishment regime had been turned into a game by him. You can't win.)

Eventually he did go to sleep, although not before complaining of more wasps and telling me where I should sleep (on the landing, outside his door). It's suffice to say that none of us are fresh as a daisy today - well, he is, but his parents are looking more haggard than usual.

Meanwhile, my dear old mum has turned into a doting and fun grandma. Enjoy your rest mum. You've earned it.

Househunting

The shiny-suited ones have done us proud and managed to sell our humble abode for an anything but humble price. I'm almost ashamed at what we're getting for it (subject to contract) - almost but not quite.

It was all over relatively quickly - about five weeks to sell, during which time we were absent for many of the showings. This wasn't on purpose - we simply have the kind of fun-packed social lives that require us to vacate the Capital at weekends. I'm glad we weren't around though. If there is one thing more dispiriting than having someone do the tour of your house in about two minutes flat (that's a no then!), it's half-hearing the muted discussions as they tear apart what's still standing of your little castle.

Now the shoe is on the other foot, and it's us who are the moneyed interlopers, traipsing through people's lives, guffawing at their taste in decor, and rubbishing their houses.  Actually, I'm not that rude. Not even about the one really horrible house we've seen recently. (A big clue should have been the requirement to remove shoes at the door). Even here I oohed and aahed and commented favourably on the room sizes - sometimes it's the only thing you have left in your armoury of compliments.

I haven't househunted for more than 11 years, and then it took me months and I probably saw about 30-40 properties before falling in love with the ample proportions of my current des res. Then it was a backwater street in a backwater part of town. Now it's a newly hip quarter of an Olympic borough, which is probably why it has done so well on the market. From a two-bed flat in Hackney, we're now looking at four-bed detatcheds in Essex. How does that work?

Not that our new-found paper wealth is making the process any easier. After sifting through properties on-line for ages, we had a shortlist of about ten properties, and surprise, surprise, none of them is quite right. Nice location but bedrooms are too small, loads of rooms but the garden is tiny, fantastic space, but it's in the middle of nowhere, amazing space, but it's right next to a car park... and so on. Then there's the different tastes and priorities of me and the missus.

I can't deny that househunting is great for the nosey though. It's a great insight into how other people live, and estate agents are such gossips. I love the way that they let slip with enough of the backstory to pull you in - "they've split up - such a shame. I think they'd take an offer!"

Hopefully everyone is open to an offer at the moment, as our initial plan of cutting our outgoings seems to be going to pot as we have exhausted the cheaper properties in our range and are now looking towards, and maybe beyond out notional maximum budget. Then again, this may be a once in a lifetime to get ourselves a pukka Essex mansion.

Sweet!

On my bike

I have just registered for the new London bike hire scheme, which launches today. I was spurred on as I noticed several docking points while driving (whoops! Not very green) through Islington yesterday. There seemed to be a mass last minute exercise going on to 'bike up' all the docking points with the rather clunky looking machines that we will soon be able to ride.

Style should be the least of your worries when riding a bike, however of late it has become an activity that you need to be seen doing round these parts, preferably on a modish single speed bike or retro granny model. No need for bicycle clips either as trousers as worn drainpipe tight this year.

I doubt the  Barclays machines will go down particularly well with the London Fields massive as you will look as cool as a Tory on a bike. However, I was excited enough to register at about 11 last night, and am now waiting anxiously for my access key to arrive.

The scheme works by allowing you to pick up one of thousands of bikes from docking stations around the capital. You pay £3 for the key, rather like your Oyster card and then pay as you go. The first 30 minutes are free, so it may be possible to cross London by planning your route carefully and swapping bikes as you go. However the scheme is cheap enough at £1 per day, although there is higher rate if you don't have credit in your account. A full year's membership costs £45, which you'd struggle to buy a bike for anywhere - even in the thief's market of Brick Lane.

It is as yet unclear where all of the docking stations are. The website promises to locate them on a map, but they weren't there last night when I looked - not even the ones I spotted off Pentonville Road and next to Islington Sainsbury's. It will be something of an own goal if we don't have them in the Olympic boroughs as part of the bid has been about a green transport policy for visitors - as long as you are not a member of the IOC, which seems intent on traffic free carriage to the Lea Valley in special lanes.

For me, it will be an opportunity to get back on two wheels. I haven't had a bike for ages as there is not really room to store it in the flat. The only problem is that I doubt they come with kids seats. Maybe some enterprising sort will develop a quick release version that can used with hire bikes.

These sorts of schemes have been in action for a while in many European cities, such as Paris and Frankfurt. The key to their success, according to my sources, is speedy reallocation of bikes so they don't simply disappear from high traffic sites, such as railway stations to the periphery of the scheme. That, and removal and repair of any duff machines. I suspect there will be plenty of need in the early days as cycling novices, such as me, and local vandals put them through their paces. Overall though, what's not to like?

In depth report coming soon.