Just arrived back from France and we are pretty psyched about buying some land over there and building a small weekend nest. It’s amazing how close Calais is to London. One hour on the train and you’re there. Another hour and you’re at the area we are looking at. Very doable for a weekend away.

There’s a new Banksy gone up on Newman Street (just around the corner from our flat).

So, on Sunday I was lying on the couch reading when I heard this commotion from Oxford Street. I jumped up and went out onto the balcony - just in time to see the Olympic Flame go past! It was driven past on an open top bus, held upright by this girl in a track-suit.

I heard the sound of sirens, so went to our balcony to see what was happening. There were fire trucks and police and a bank of red buses queued up. It all seemed to be centered a couple of blocks from our apartment. Helen and I walked down the street and I snapped a couple of pictures.

Another day older today. Helen made me breakfast - sausages, bacon, mushrooms - which we ate on the balcony overlooking Oxford Street. I have been having a completely self-indugent day, watching DVDs and playing on my notebook. Almost too lazy to post a blog entry! I figure I’ll type something up to mark the day.

Tim and Anna and kids should be arriving from Tokyo, so the evening may be structured around bottles of champagne in their hotel room. Just a guess.

Helen has taken me to Yorkshire for an early birthday weekend. We are staying at a place called “The Devonshire Arms” near Bolton Abbey - a beautiful ruined abbey. The hotel is great! There are two heli-pads, and throughout the day choppers buzz down like giant metal gnats to drop off a fresh batch of gourmets for the restaurant. We wanted to get out of London to soak up some nature. I guess you can still call thousands of years of farmed land “nature”, can’t you?

We went for a long walk - over 20 kilometers over moors and farms, and I am now sunburnt as hell. The skeletal remains of ancient ruined buildings were languidly picked over by the weekend hikers as we ambled the day away.

OK, better late than never, I guess. I actually promised myself that I would be posting more often in 2007, but that resolution is lying still-born on the birthing room floor. Probably buried in amongst the champagne and party poppers.

I have stopped working this January in order to concentrate on studying mathematical methods. This has felt very, very weird. I feel far more stressed about taking time off than I would have in the past, I think for a few main reasons:

1. Things here are very expensive. Rent is expensive. Taking a month off feels like being in a big black tunnel and seeing a light at the other end, and half suspecting that it’s an oncoming train.
2. Maths is hard. You think you know something, then you encounter it in another form and all of a sudden it’s like a gremlin that just got coated in water - it’s got teeth, a mo-hawk and it wants to differentiate you to the bottom of the food chain. Having a maths exam as a deadline is just no fun at all!

As a consequence, I need to have a holiday from the whole non-working thing. Luckily Helen and I have booked a skiing/yoga retreat in Switzerland for the beginning of February. Maybe that actually IS daylight at the end of the tunnel!

Last night Helen and I heard some hullabaloo coming from Oxford Street. We went out onto our balcony to be greeted by the sight of a huge crowd of rowdy Santas milling on the corner of Oxford Street and Wardour Street.

My own pet theory is that they were a group of dyslexics devil worshippers (who had sold their souls to Santa). They were probably supposed to meet up at Oxdorf Street or something and sacrifice an elf.

Alternatively they could be the famous Santa A cappella band “Santana”.

Helen says that they all piled on a bus, so maybe there was a reindeer strike. I guess we’ll never know.

To kick off Helly’s birthday week, I took her to Coombe Abbey in Coventry. It was originally a 12th Century Cistercian Abbey, that has been restored and turned into a hotel. It was great arriving at the Abbey at night, and walking into the foyer of the hotel which looks like something out of “The Name of the Rose”. Our room, which was apparently one of the old rooms in the Abbey, had a view stretching out over the sculptured gardens. We spent many hours exploring the grounds - 500 acres of gardens, woodlands, lakes and marshes.

Today I mooched around the new flat. I took the morning off in order to let in some gas safety inspectors. The gas company rang around lunchtime to say the inspectors were outside the apartment and no-one seemed to be home. I informed them that I was in fact inside, but no-one was ringing the buzzer. Eventually I realized that they were standing outside my old flat in Covent Garden *sigh*