Sucked in

Reading

As of Wednesday I will be blogging (ha! the Royal Mail is more reliable than my blogging) from Shepherd's Bush in west London. Last Friday I went to look at a flat, which involves a 90 minute cycle/train/tube/walk journey from Reading. I arrived at the flat at the appointed time, only to be told that the room had just been let. The landlady suggested I come back into town the next day to look at a different room. "Great," I thought. "I could have found that out on gumtree without wasting a whole afternoon." Nevertheless, and because I have a lot of free time, I went back in on Saturday and saw the room. It's really nice. Several other people were there at the same time, with about 20 more coming later on to see the one room, and Lori, the landlady, said that the first person to give her £250 as a 'security deposit' would get the room. Where's the nearest cash machine!?

I'll be glad to move into London, not least because commuting sucks. How do people do it all year round? Mine isn't even too bad, at between 65 and 85 minutes each way, and usually a nice walk through the park. Cutting that down from £92 a week to £0 and 80 minutes to 25 minutes will be a result. I have three days a week of lectures from 9-6 or so, studying five transporty topics: engineering, economics, statistics, modelling and policy. I know nothing about any of them so it'll be a busy term.

My church-crawl ended before it began as I agreed to join the student team at All Souls after one midweek meeting and one Sunday. Pretending to be an Anglican might be a little tricky but it's very low-Anglican and a lot sounder than some nonconformist churches I could think of...