life with booyaa

saturday: despite having horrendous hangovers, boo and i managed to buy drill bits and the other necessary gubbins for doing a bit of diy. got hayfever prescription so hopefully my snivelling and coughing will ease soon and - saving best for last - bought some new bras :) oh and then a big tesco shop, so not quite best till last. made dinner, killed some orcs, went to bed early.

long weekend. woo hoo!

spent friday shopping in kingston. for clothes and bits for the house. it was really hot. probably a good thing i was inside john lewis, m&s and monsoon for most of the day.

saturday. slept in. yay! did lots of chores, including shopping list and meal plans for new stab at slimming world diet starting this week. ugh. anyway.

sunday. cleaned balcony. it was fairly gross. now reorganised with space for a couple of bar stools to enjoy the summer evenings.

monday. more general chores. painted loo walls. it's a bit bright (used leftover paint from bedroom in last flat) but at least it's clean and shiny.

went to wimbledon today, to check out the place and see if we could in fact live there. we'll be looking in earnest for somewhere new to live once we get back from our holidays at the end of september. we've done a fair bit of homework this time round, as we don't want to end up somewhere in a hurry that turns out to be not the right place for us. which is the case in the current flat.

wimbledon reduces our commutes from 1 hour 15 minutes to 45 minutes (approx for both of us, even though we travel in opposite directions) so that's the main factor. getting a whole hour of our day back for doing other things is really quite an exciting prospect.

the downside of course is that it's further in towards london and so rent is more expensive. it doesn't look nearly as posh as richmond (which is what i'd expected, to be honest) but it is considerably pricier for a two bedroom flat. we are looking to be in a quiet residential area that's only five minutes walk from the station, so we're pricing ourselves into the next bracket anyway.

so, what did we think of what we saw today? we got off the tube at wimbledon and walked through the high street (called the broadway) which is very busy and full of shops. there's a shopping centre with some essentials like marks and sparks, tesco express, boots etc, a cinema, woolies, the ubiquitous kebab shop and cheap phone call centre, a few bars and places to eat including a nice looking italian place and a gourmet burger kitchen so that's me and him sorted out respectively ;) it was not as swish as i'd expected. there was no monsoon or hobbs (that we could see, though perhaps in the other direction from the one we walked) and only one indian restaurant. the really chronically poor and not sure how we'll cope with it aspect is... there's no waitrose, dude. i've been worried about the lack of waitrose on-the-way-home situation all afternoon, but i've finally worked it out. get off the train at new malden, go to waitrose (it's quite a big shop, too, so that's cool) and get back on the train from there. there are six trains an hour from new malden to wimbledon, not like to twickenham, which is every 30 minutes. so, with that major hurdle cleared, i think we're settled. now it's just a question of finding somewhere at the right time, in the right area and within our budget.

the two areas we looked at today were interesting. we headed north of the broadway towards south park. i know about this area as the guys from nucleus all used to live there. they've since scattered to the four winds (well, not quite, they're mostly within saffa triangle) but i had heard this was a nice area, quiet and clean, but spitting distance from all the life of wimbledon centre. it is very nice. lovely smallish victorian semis and slightly older terraces. a few through roads but many quiet, leafy side roads. everywhere was well looked after, no grafitti or abandoned cars. talking of which, lots of nice cars. it's quite an expensive area, but i think that's where we'll aim for. then we headed towards merton. south wimbledon tube's immediate surroundings is off-putting to say the least. the local shops etc are depressing and there's a big swathe of council estates all along a busy A road. so we won't be moving there. the bit between the posh south park area and the big, busy road, nowever, is still very nice. not posh, but small cottagey terraced houses, lots of no-through-roads, felt neighbourly, lots of families.

the difference in traffic and plane noise was phenemonal. as soon as you turn off the high street it's quiet and some of the side roads you didn't see a single moving car. you could hear planes, but they're so much higher up by then, not just above, waiting to land, that they're hardly noticeable. oh and the local council recycles, too, so we won't have to cart our plastics all the way over to the recycling centre at tescos any more. upmystreet.com reckons there's a much lower crime rate, too. all in all, an improvement!

that was north east and south east of central wimbledon. next week we'll try to check out north west and south west and then have a walk over the common, while we're in the area.