Hello again!
It’s been a while since we last posted… it seems real life has a tendancy to take over, no matter what the city. Realising this, we have a made a conscious decision to try at least one new thing each weekend, and to book in as many holidays as possible!
We thought we would give you an update in blog form on how life in London has turned out so far, and our plans for the next few months. As you know, our home is a basement apartment in Holland Park. Setup is still a WIP… notice we are still using cardboard boxes for furniture (stuffed with packing paper for extra durability). We like the place – it’s big, well located and gets good natural light. Lesley also makes frequent use of the bathtub in the ensuite… a key feature.
Tim snapped the photo below just as Lesley went to shut the gate to our place…it shows the old school white facade of the building. The actual entrance is down a set of stairs (below street level). You can see the top of our lounge room window through the fence on Lesley’s left.
Most days, we would start the walk to Holland Park station. The view would look something like the picture (on a good day!). This was taken a while ago… now the leaves have fallen off the trees, the scaffolding has come down and it can be quite cold indeed (under 0 degrees). Best to rug up and walk swiftly! 
On the way, we would pass our local pub, The Castle. This is a great little joint that serves Guinness on tap (Tim loves this) and good food (bangers and mash, burgers, etc). A good vibe, even if they do sometimes play the music too loud (how old are we?!).
Catching the London underground during peak times isn’t exactly pleasurable. The trains come every 3-5 minutes, but despite this, they are generally packed. People are conditioned here to require less personal space. Tim especially finds that shorter people like to jam their butt beneath his, so when he is standing he almost has a place to sit. Lesley on the other hand is at an unfortunate arm pit height, so it’s best that she finds a place to sit pronto. Tim took the picture below on a particularly bad day at Liverpool Street station. Crowds are just a part of life now.
Work has been ok for both of us. Lesley has been kept especially busy, with quite long hours. Tim has been empathising by organising holidays. So far, we have a week booked in February for Lesley’s bday (going to Chamonix in France to ski, and Geneva), and another week booked in May to go to Morocco (rocking the Kasbahs!). Tim’s contract comes to an end with Macquarie in early April, so it will be interesting to see what happens next.
Outside of work, we’ve managed to do a few interesting things. Of course, walks through Hyde Park are always nice when the sun is shining…
We also hit the Winter Wonderland there to do a bit of Christmas shopping and have our first taste of mulled wine. Tim was deeply skeptical about the mulled wine (how could you ruin red wine like that?)… but we both discovered it was to our liking (and have subsequently picked up a bottle to consume at home). Lesley and Ryan have also both been frequenting the Borough markets for all manner of delectable treats, including pork pies and amazing garnishes. The Portobello markets (pictured) were also interesting… truly a weird and wonderful assortment of stuff – some gems but most of it junk!
Lesley managed to get a good deal on gym membership through work, so that’s also been worked back into the routine. Tim got an email from Fitness First congratulating him on being in the top 15% of users. We’re pretty sure that says more about the locals than Tim’s usage! One day on the way to the shops from the gym Tim stumbled upon the batmobile (see picture)…needless to say this made his day. You can also see that he has rediscovered his love for track pants…talk about rekindling an old flame.
Recently the three of us went to the Apollo theatre in Hammersmith to see Ross Noble (a comedian) which was great. We loved that you could buy drinks at the bar in the venue and take them right in with you for the show. We will be seeing Bill Bailey this Tuesday, Tim’s favourite comic! Of course we also got out for the Guy Fawkes night fireworks. We ended up in a park with hundreds of other people. The atmosphere was great and the fireworks were very decent (we are probably spoilt with the Sydney NYE fireworks experience). It was definitely a box ticked for us.
For Christmas and New Years this year we are heading to Germany with Ryan. The plan is to visit Cologne, Baden-Baden (for Christmas), Munich, Nuremberg and finally Berlin (for NYE). We are all definitely pumped for a break! Of course we will keep you posted, and in the New Year you should have some nice pics to look at.
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Lots of love,
Tim and Lesley
timandlesley 