That Was The Weekend...

Friday - headed into town (London of course) for a meal with an old school chum of Ms who is visiting the UK with her husband.  Had a pretty good greek in St Martin's Lane and then had a wander around for a bit before having a couple of drinks in Theatre Land, complete with famous person (Kathy Burke).  Apparently last week M had been so impressed at seeing Stephen Hawking at London City Airport, she completely failed to realise she was blocking his way to the disabled toilet...

Saturday - slow start to the day before crawling around the North Circular to my mother's place where she cooked...  Mum has been a widow for 8 years and I left home almost 20 years ago, so she's not had to do a huge amount of cooking in that time.  That added to my father's very pedestrian tastes (Meat and Potatoes and a bland veg of your choice), and you have a recipie for a dull meal.  Fortunately lashings of wine, and a number of Irish coffees saved the evening.

Sunday - the Civic Service for Broxbourne Borough Council was on Sunday afternoon which my mother, as Mayor, had at our old parish church, on the site of my old primary school... well, technically, I attended 2, the later being St Joseph's which by the time I got there was in a new building about a half mile away.  My brother and sister had attended the school on site where I wallowed in nostalgia.  It was probably pushing 25 years since I was last there and almost 30 since I was a cub in the very hall where we had tea and cakes with the other local leaders and the MP.  All very odd and weird to see that this stuff happens and so many people go to these things.

M and I then crawled through the traffic back to NW10 where we watched TV including Funland a very very odd programme indeed. 

Anyway, up at 6.45 to drive back to Bath.  However, thanks to bad weather and half term it took me until 11.45.

Then my laptop crashed horribly.

Going to be one of those days I suspect.

 

Property Ladder

Baring strange things like moving to the US. We're still waiting to see what Ms bank say about New York. We'll almost certainly be moving back to London sometime early in the New Year.

My first thought was to rent, but I've been looking at property prices, our joint income and also my savings and realised that actually we could get back on the Property Ladder at this point in time.

Which was something of a surprise.

I've got so used to thinking in terms of renting, the idea of buying again really hadn't crossed my mind. Our current outgoings on property are costing us close to the equivalent of a £250K mortgage and I've actually managed to save and keep enough for a sensible deposit from the house in Preston. We could afford a huge amount if we went for an interest only mortgage but frankly I don't trust myself. I'd rather have a Flexible one.

We'll have to start to think seriously about this. Particularly where we'd need to start looking, which is probably West London with easy access to the M4/Paddington/M3 and easy routes for M into the City.