Silvershed Blog » London

EPiC fail

mim — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:56:53 +0000

This is getting beyond a joke now. After weeks of not hearing anything from my estate agent, I went and had a look at my house on Rightmove to see if our new pictures had been put up as promised.

(Hey, we’d not heard anything but what’s new? It was worth a go)

So I nearly fell over when I saw that they’ve suspended all viewings while they sort out the EPC. The EPC which they saw right back at the beginning. What on earth are they playing at? And more importantly, why haven’t they decided this is worth mentioning to us?

I appreciate it’s hard out there, very hard, but TALK TO US.

The house has been on the market since December 2007 and I’m getting very very bored. I want to move on. We’ve identified the vague area we want to move to down here, we know what our budget is likely to be. Everything’s set except the small matter of the NorthHouse.

Brrrrrrrrrm!

mim — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 16:41:00 +0000

I got a bike!

OK, it’s not a very big bike, and it isn’t exactly flash (a made in India budget special), but it’s bike enough for me. I’ve bought the new Honda CBF125 because it’s new, extraordinarily economical (about 350 miles to a £9 tank!) and cheap. The reviews are making nice noises about it, and I liked the colour when I saw one at a bike show. What more can a girl ask for?

We picked it up yesterday and Stuart drove it to a big carpark for me. I did my clutch and gears CBT about 8 or 9 years ago so I wasn’t convinced I’d remember the single day’s training. But you’ve got to wonder about the quality of everyone else on the road – for some reason loads of drivers chose to exit via our furthest most remote corner, some of them even managing to mount the kerbs of the planter beds. Yes. In an empty car park.

After variously mixing up the clutch, accelerator, rear brake, front brake and gear lever, I decided I’d had enough. I could remember how to go in a straight line in first (and stop again) and that was enough for me.

This morning I decided that the only way to get up to speed was to get out there, so we got the radios up and running and Stuart gave me a mini lesson. My brain was full of the mechanics of the bike, so I wasn’t really driving properly. Thank goodness for the big guy in the BRIGHT YELLOW jacket hanging behind me. It was like being a driving school duckling all over again. By the end of the 18 miles into London and back, I wasn’t stalling nearly as much, and when I did I was able to recover from it without too much fuss. At this rate, I’ll be thinking about the journey rather than the mechanics in no time.

I know it sounds silly, but doing this has helped me feel a lot more London. Partly because it’s a pain in the arse to get anywhere in a car, so I’ve started to combat that, but more because I now feel like it’s going to be possible to just pop over to visit friends – and that I have friends I actually have friends I want to pop over to go and see.

But right now, I’m sitting at home drinking tea and aching from using new muscles. Ace.

Skate Update

stuart — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 10:24:00 +0000

We had a very odd post on our comments telling us that the Friday Night Skate site that we were linking to in an earlier post was actually to an imposter who is causing problems for the ‘proper’ operators of the Friday Night Skate.

Now, we don’t know what has been going on but I can only assume that a) someone is taking the piss and is trying to get sponsorship for an event they are not involved in or b) there has been some sort of falling out.

Whatever it is it looks like the correct site for the London Friday Night Skate is http://www.lfns.co.uk. This is run as a not for profit organisation by the marshals who run the skate. The original site we linked to (http://www.thefns.com actually calls itself the Urban Rites Friday Night Skate so we have taken it that the info in the blog post is correct and updated our links.

As far as the skating goes we are both getting better, although we do need to find more places to skate than our own street. I am starting to get more confidence (and am now waiting for the fall) as is Mim who is taking it sensibly slowly. From not being able to skate at all she is now able to go up and down the street comfortably, stop (slowly), just about negotiate kerbs and has a general air of not about to fall over.

Tasks for this week are to get out on the skates more and to some places/parks/other spaces where we can get out and see some different scenery to build experience and confidence.

Midlife crisis?

mim — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:26:00 +0000

Edit – The Friday Night Skate link looks to be incorrect, see comments for the reasons, the correct link should be http://www.lfns.co.uk.

Stuart used to have rollerskating lessons when he was little, and actually got quite good (as I found out when we went ice skating together. I was nervous I’d make a fool of myself, but let myself be talked round when Stuart promised we could be rubbish together. I wasn’t impressed at all when he started skating in front of me, backwards, going “Go on, just follow me, it’s easy”)

We’ve been saying for ages that we want to start skating. We’d toyed with the idea of going to Miami and learning at South Beach, but it never quite happened. Then Stuart found out about the Friday Night Skate in London, and got newly enthusiastic about getting out and just doing something.

So we found ourselves at our local skate shop (ukskate.com in Longsight) chatting to the lovely staff who tried not to giggle at us floundering around, and helpfully pointed out that we weren’t too old to go out skating because lots of old people do – they still go out, after all, and some of them are as old as 21!!!

So, we’re now two pairs of salomon skates up, and Stuart’s been whizzing up and down our street while it all comes back to him. I’m less confident – my one and only attempt outside involved me using our wheely bin as a zimmer. I’m not too bad on the carpet, but I have visions of my mother coming and shouting at me for skating inside. Even though it’s my house.

Even if I don’t get down to the Friday Night Skate straight away (you have to be good to do it), I’m hoping that the Easy Peasy skate they run will be doable sometime this summer. Either way, I just want to get good enough to show off in the sun this summer.