November 1

Swiss Cottage, our local tube station. Brendan's daily work journey starts here, exiting at Piccadilly Circus. I asked Brendan if he gets a little thrill each day as he passes one of London's most iconic sites. He said that he merely gets annoyed at the flocks of tourists dawdling in his path.

I caught the tube too today, to attend a training course near Oxford Circus. It was on developing successful negotiating and influencing skills which I was soon (somewhat disappointed) to learn is not all about figuring out how to always get your own way.

1 November being a Wednesday meant that I had my evening printmaking course at the Mary Ward Centre, in Bloomsbury. The Transport for London website has this great feature where you can key in where you want to go from and to, and as well as giving you public transport options can provide a walking or cycling route. I love these maps because they are clearly created for people who are not that great with reading maps. The maps have a little line showing the roads you'll be taking and at the bottom spell out in order all the turns and how many meters you'll be walking up each particular road, making it almost impossible to get lost. One of the best things about walking is you get to see how all the bits of London fit together, something you completely miss being underground.

Coming home I was greeted at the front door by a guy who has a flat here who we like to think of as the house mascot. He's a friendly guy who always seems to be around and always seems to know what's going on with all the other residents. Tonight's exciting news was that our boiler had blown up and now we didn't have any running water.

Water was clearly evident however on our carpeted toilet floor. A pipe had also burst and water had been gushing out until someone found the mains. B relayed how he had to empty out rapidly filling buckets while running upstairs and downstairs to assist the other residents who had also been affected. It sounded completely chaotic and all I could think was 'whew, glad I missed that!' Our landlady commended B's performance during the crisis and I noticed that he had also managed to do a huge load of dishes before the water was lost - my hero!