the corner office

We were kept up last night by the inconsiderate neighbours who were still making a racket at 1 in the morning, with a karaoke machine singing Little Mermaid songs. I don't know any Little Mermaid songs, I took Ronwen's word for it.

I've been diligent with the cycling this week... these days I cycle the full distance into work in the morning, and then cycle across London to Charing Cross to catch the train home in the evening. That takes me through Hyde Park and Green Park, which are really pretty this time of year.

Today, though, I decided to take things to the next level. In addition to 17.4 miles into work this morning, I decided to do the full distance home as well. To add a bit of zing to the experience, I decided to take a different route home - instead of a northwards arc via Lewisham, I'd try a southwards arc via Tooting and Streatham. That would ostensibly reduce the journey to closer to 16 miles, and I'd covered a large part of the route en route to and from a family gathering on the weekend. What could go wrong, I thought?

Ah yes, what could go wrong? A good old 'spot the stiff' line if ever there was one.

The first thing that went wrong is I'd gotten a bit mixed up based on the weekend journey, chose the wrong main road which I rather pig-headedly kept going along (that war memorial where I turn has to be coming up any minute now dammit) and ended up doing a not inconsiderably greater number of miles than I'd planned.

I must accept that without my co-pilot (no, not Jesus), I'm rather stuffed when it comes to navigation. It's not many a man who'll admit to that, but this one will.

The second thing which went wrong is that I was reminded yet again that when you're in a car you don't register just how steep hills actually are. The Streatham area has some monsters. The southern arc is a hard core route, even I wasn't dragging it out with detours.

Still, I made it and I'm rather proud of myself. I might be crawling around the house tomorrow, but tonight, I'm conquering and almighty.