Today is going to be a long day...

...and I'm not even sure if I'm going to choir yet. Today might not even be long in the sense of time, just irritating. And it's only 9.30.

Before the moan, though...

( Weekend )

The clocks going forward seems to have completely frelled with my body clock, for some reason. Maybe it's waking up in the mid-dark again or something, but I was exhausted yesterday and this morning I nearly didn't make it into work at all. I woke up with a headache and was falling asleep on the bus - even went so far as to buy mocha from Pret A Manger in a vain attempt to at least try and be human this morning. I need to get more hot chocolate so I can go back to making my own mocha...

My headache seems to have gone, and the caffeine has at least woken me up a little bit. I should ordinarily stay until 6.00 tonight for choir, but seeing as the majority of my work has now gone, and I have a cough that singing will most likely aggravate, I may not bother.

( Work moan )

Anyway. Enough whinging. Even though I'd much rather be busy than have no work, so this stuff is annoying, it's still infinitely better than working with the Bitch Queen from Hezmana, and at least every other entry of my LJ isn't a whinge about her. :) I read back on those whinges a few weeks ago, actually, and was amazed I'd stood for it as long as I did. Her behaviour, in retrospect, was utterly appalling, but I think I mostly too stunned by her petty childishness to do anything about it. It's just not the behaviour you expect of an adult in a professional workplace, and that's probably why she got away with it.

In other news, I am currently weighing in at 10st and 6/7lb or thereabouts. Still overweight for my height. However, on the plus side, I can tell that the swimming is good for my arms, as they look discernibly slimmer and I can just about see muscles now under the flab, which is progress.

I'm hoping to get my bike back in time for the warmer weather, and my plan is to attempt to do some cycling as soon as I get in from work, and at weekends, as there is a perfectly suitable park only a ten minute walk away for this purpose. I'll probably start with just the weekends, though, as whenever I haven't ridden my bike for a while I can't move afterwards. I remember trying to ride it to Uni a couple of times in my first year, but the majority of the time it lived in the bike shed...

It's a shame, becuase I used to really enjoy bike-riding when my dad and I went along the canals in Netherton. I never wanted to ride it around my mum's house because of the local chav kids and because the nearest place was up a large hill... I always intended to ride it in the summer, and it never happened. So I'm determined to change that.

And then, I will kill two birds with one stone and cycle to swimming. :D I will GET FIT and LOSE WEIGHT if it kills me.

And I shall now sign this off.

ETA: Well, as we're doing Hymn to St Cecilia and the Bruckner Motets, I may go to choir after all. It's too pretty to resist. I'll just have to block out the annoying people.

Stuff.

Well, feeling much less aggravated now.  I did go to choir, in the end, and managed to ignore the silly chattering people.  Honestly, you wouldn't think these girls are in their late 20s with all the silliness.  This is stuff I used to do in Chamber Choir when I was 17, for goodness' sake, and I grew out of it the moment I joined a proper choir at Uni, even when I'd joined with a friend.  (I admit my days in Chorus in my first year were mostly very silly, but I blame Angela for that.  Which reminds me, I must bite the bullet and see if her phone number is still right, or if I have her address.)

Anyway.  Hymn to St. Cecilia really is lovely, as are the Bruckner motets - yes, even the one with that horrifying top B... meh.  It's going to be a case of 'Aim and Hope', I think.

The other day, on the way home, I spotted a house for sale on the Moseley road.  Does anyone want to buy me a house?  Or have a spare £353K lying around?

There's no way we could get a mortgage that size.  Er, unless there are a couple of other people who want to share a house and earn about 20K each. ;)

Just look at the size of that main bedroom.  It's twice the size of our lounge!

Anyway, after that we did a quick search for houses under 100K (given that it's probably the very maximum we'd be able to get) there are a few dotted around, but they're mostly in shit areas or are horrible houses.

Actually, this was quite interesting.  It's one of those apparently 'up-market' apartments in the city centre in Broadway Plaza (where the AMC cinema is) and it's £67,500 for 50% ownership, which implies they sell for around £140K.  And... well, it's a bit shit.  The close-ups of the room photos show how poky they are.  If I'm paying £140K for a living space, I want more room than that.

I guess it's just proof that the housing market, especially in Birmingham, is utterly ridiculous.  The only way we'll be able to afford a halfway decent house is when the market crashes again - and honestly, it has to.  It can't keep growing like it is or nobody will be able to live anywhere, and nobody will get on the property market unless they're inner-city yuppies with more money than sense.  When my mum and I moved out of Bearwood we sold our house for £46,500, and bought the new one for £38,000.  We should've waited a couple of years, as by 2000 the terraces in Bearwood were selling for a minimum of £100K.

It doesn't help that nobody seems to build HOUSES any more, only stupid 'luxury' apartments like those at Broadway Plaza, which are usually open-plan or just plan ugly and too expensive for sense.  And most of the houses that are built are only to fulfill a demand or fill in a gap in the landscape.  There are lots of beautiful buildings along, say, Hagley Road, which could be turned into flats, but most of them are lying dormat.  (Mostly because the Council decided they were going to widen the road but didn't think to ask the homeowners if they could chop bits off the end of their driveways, so the idea was abandoned, and the majority of the buildings left derelict.)

If the Council is apparently so short on housing, why don't they do something with all of those buildings?

Or perhaps I'm just being too obvious...

Anyway.  Houses are expensive, and we are poor.  And that's that.