House Hunting Again

Last week turned out to be action packed on the home front. I decided that I’d look for my own place as the whole living with newly-weds thing isn’t turning out to be a barrel of laughs. But mostly because Mum and Dad are visiting over the summer and I want to have somewhere they can comfortably stay. The “bathroom sink sms” incident only served to accelerate things (I won’t go into it but anyone who has lived in a share house can probably imagine only too well).

I started looking around with the idea of getting a feel for a few locations I hadn’t checked out before but not really committing to anything for a few weeks. But the problem with that approach is that anything good gets snapped up instantly. I was completely put off the Docklands by the first dive I saw there and decided to look further south.

The South East is way cheaper than west as there’s no tube down that way and it’s a bit patchier, but the area around Dulwich is really nice so I started looking there. One of the agents I got in contact with showed me around three places one evening and they were all much nicer for the price than anything I’d seen in other parts of London. I had a look at a few other flats but had fallen in love with the first one she showed me which was further out but HUGE and totally newly refurbished, on the third floor of a Victorian house overlooking a big green park. A lovely neutral, airy bare canvass of a flat. And it has really cool details like original fireplaces and stained glass windows. I’m not sure what the commute to work will be like but I think it will be okay if I’m organised and get the faster trains. I went to have second look and just couldn’t go past it so I put in an offer. If all goes smoothly I’ll move in a couple of weeks.

With all that excitement, I was a bit distracted on Friday afternoon. As I headed from Putney to Stanstead for my flight to Berlin (a good 2 hour + trek) I realised around Vauxhall I had left my passport at home. After the few near misses at Easter I thought I was leaving so much time spare and my stomach lurched when I realised my mistake. Thinking there was a good chance I could still make it, I backtracked home, grabbed my passport and headed off again. Although I made it to Stanstead half an hour before the flight, Ryanair weren’t having a bar of such tardiness and it was a no go. A few others who missed it as well and I tried to get on a later flight with another airline, waited around for a couple of hours hoping people would no show for it. Which they did and we were told we could go – yay! And then one minute later they turned around and said no, sorry, too late! Boo!

While waiting for them to make their minds up I had been chatting to another girl (literally - she was only 17) who had missed her connection from a different flight and had been travelling all day. So we ended up booking on the 6:30am flight the next morning and going to the airport hotel for the night. A bit of an adventure I could have done without – but I made it to Berlin in time to wake up the crew for brekky so didn’t lose too much of the weekend in the end.