Tube Strike

Posted on 2014/05/02 22:10:18 (May 2014).

[Tuesday 29th April 2014]
First day of a two day tube strike today - Chie walked all the way to work this morning (about four miles!). My morning commute was of course unaffected.

Despite the tube strike we ventured up to Kentish Town at lunchtime for another flat viewing - this time a new build flat, which was so new we had to don hard hats to go and look at it. I have to admit I rather liked the idea of owning something brand new like that, and the fixtures and fittings (which were being fixtured and fitted as we walked round) all looked quite appealing to me.

The estate agent was quite a nice chap (yes I know many of you will read that in disbelief) and we had quite a long chat about the area and the state of the market etc. This rather threw a spanner in the works, and highlighted how apparently naive I was when it came to the thoroughly horrid subject of school catchment areas. The closest primary school to this flat (and the other flat we'd looked at the other day) had a very good reputation, and I very naively thought that was all the due diligence on the matter that was required. The reality as it turned out is that that school was so oversubscribed that only families living basically next door to it have any hope of sending their kids there. When I then looked through the list of the other possible schools and their catchment areas, after removing some which only admitted on religious grounds, it actually looked like we wouldn't qualify for any school at all. I found that all rather frustrating and it made me very quickly become disenfranchised from the whole idea of buying property again.

I picked Erika up from nursery in the evening, as with the tube strike Chie wasn't sure how long it would take her to get home. We went straight back home and I attempted to throw something together for her dinner as quickly as possible - so she had pasta with the leftover bean stew I'd made at the weekend. Later on Chie and I also had pasta - a funny sort of bake with a cheese / pesto sauce.

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