The Edge Of Madness

Someone's written a book called "The Edge of Madness". Comes out next month, by Michael Dobbs.

Bastard stole my name!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Edge-Madness-Michael-Dobbs/dp/1847372848

Seems he's actually a reasonably well known author as well.

Wikipedia Entry - Michael Dobbs

Mainly so I don't lose it.

Driving back on Saturday saw a huge queue of people outside a butchers.

So decided to check it out. Got 2 ribeye steaks. Man they were good.

http://www.williamrosebutchers.com/

126 Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, London, SE22 8HD

I've now done 5 training runs.

I still suck hard core.

Can't work out how to export meaninful data from my garmin forerunner to post here.

Lana's been chasing me down the street with a stick to keep me going.

All I'm doing is trying to keep my heartrate up around 140 bpm for about 30-40 minutes for the first month, until I boost my fitness a little.

I was also in Dusseldorf last week, which meant my diet went out the window. Food being expensed with a bunch of blokes also visiting does that to you.

But the highlights.

6/9 - 5.2 km in 57:18. Got my heartrate up to 164bpm.
7/9 - 3.0 km in 30:19. 153 bpm.
8/9 - 5.8 km in 55:55. 177 bpm.
11/9 - 2.6 km in 33:45. 132 bpm.
12/9 - 5.5 km in 1:10. 118 bpm. This was a little cruisey as my legs hurt. And we stopped at half a dozen antique stores checking them out on the way back.

My weight is the same, but Lana measured my gut when I started. 122cm. After a week I'm down to 120cm (and that was with Dusseldorf sausage and beer).

So now me and Lana have decided to suck it up in the UK for a while, we've decided to buy a house.

Today was our first day checking out properties to get a feel for what our money will get.

We're aiming at a suburb called Sydenham (SE26). About 6 miles SE of central London. Takes roughly an hour to drive there from Bayswater. Which is about right, as it took me 40 minutes on the bike the other day.

For roughly £270,000 we should be able to get a 3 bedroom semi-detached house with a garden and a garage. Nothing too big (around 65-80 square meters) seems about right. My ideal place is enough room in the garden to put a shed which I can convert into a home office. With a small garage for the bike, with space to put a car.

Checked out 4 places today.

Now £270k is the asking price for most of these places. But google is a wonderful thing. 2 of the places have been on the market for over 120 days, and started off at 310k befor dropping down. So I do expect we should be able to wiggle ourselves down to around 250k.

Now all these places I would have been almost happy to rent. But buying an putting down a quarter of million quid is a different story. I'm picky as fuck. And it's more a question of what I can and can't change than anything else.

Place one. Kirkdale.

Nice place, but garden was screwed. Too small for a shed, big slope which makes it damn hard to grow anything. Main road, so front bedroom noisy as feck. No shower.

Place two. Apartment.

Lana liked this one. Only 2 bedrooms, right near train line. No place for us to have an two seperate working areas. Kill.

Place three. Brosley Grove.

This place has a lot of potential, but also needs a hell of a lot of work. Someone had bought it trying to do a quick pump and dump. The problem is they sucked at renovation. For some stupid reason they took all the doors off....and haven't replaced them. Great location, huge garden, which again for some silly reason is all paved over, and overgrown with crap, meaning a lot of work. Shedload of work to get it going.

Garage falling apart, needs to be replaced. Bad painting job everywhere jamming up all sorts. Half done walls, crap painting on walls. Windows jammed. Bathroom crappy tiles. No shower. No stove. No drain in bathroom.

It was put on the market at £319k on the 25th of May. Down to 309k in 13th of June. 274k in 20th Aug. And they are also willing to pay 2% stamp duty. I'm almost tempted to go for it, but it needs a good 50-60k of work, which means more along the lines of an offer of £200k, which I doubt they would accept.

Place 4. Sunnydyne st.

Nice place. Too near a main road so too noisy. Also stairs were a little too steep for Lana's day to day activity. My fav place, but those two problems are a killer. Very nicely done garden.

Prob going to leave off looking for places until we can get a loan (which is November, can't get a loan until been in the country for 2 years). But I reckon we are going to go for a place in Sydenham.

Finally I've managed to nail a french onion soup recipe. Part of the problem was I was aiming at a "La Guillotine" style soup, which is a little lighter than most.

Scale as required, normally makes enough for 2.

2 onions.
25 g butter.
1 teaspoon of granulated white sugar.
Olive Oil.
1 clove garlic.
1 litre of diluted chicken stock.
100 mls of dry white wine.
Some splashes or Worcestershire sauce.
Some grated Gruyere Cheese.

Slice or dice onions depending on what you want. I prefer diced. Dice up garlic.

Heat up oil and butter in frying pan till it's damn hot. Add onions, garlic and sugar, toss and fry for about 5-6 minutes until the edges of the onions is going brown. Turn down hit to lowest setting, and leave for about half an hour until those suckers caramelise. That's when you've got he nice film on your pan, a nutty brown colour.

Bring up big pot. Put in stock, wine, some salt and pepper, and a few splashes of worcestshire sauce. Toss in the everything from the pan. Medium high heat until it's simmering, then turn down to lowest setting. Leave for an hour. No lid.

Serve in bowl. Sprinkle grated cheese in while hot (in bowl). Use baguette to soak up the cheese.