Welcome home! It seems that the hard work has been done and we are now in our flat. It feels great to be able to unpack the suitcases and get organized and settled.

Our flat is part of a larger house with three other flats in it. The house in West Hampstead in the North West of London. Everyone here tells us that it is a good neighbourhood. Not chosen, just ended up here by luck.

As is often said, location is everything. We appear to have lucked out where that is concerned. The Tube is a 3 minute walk from our door. The main road (or High Street in the vernacular of the locals) has restaurants, cafes, wine bars, bakeries, delis, a used bookshop and a bookie. Everything that we need. There is even a Yamaha dealer, should the need arise.

The main road is West End Lane which, if you carry on south from us, turns into Abbey Road. At number 3, the Beatles recorded the album of the same name. We walked down to look at that piece of musical history, but there isn't much to see. We also managed to resist the temptation to recreate the album cover, which was photographed right outside the studio.

I have taken to calling our little place our pied a terre. As you can see on the left, we have a little patio. You would be free to sit on the bench at your own peril because it's as rotten as an Italian football match. As we found it, there was on old movie poster on one of the walls that featured either James Cagney or Sean Connery. It had been out there a while and it was hard to tell.

The garden retreat had not suffered from the heavy hand of anyone's maintenance for some time. Until now. We have been gleefully hacking and slashing back the growth so you can at least get to the door without feeling like Indiana Jones. It gets sun for most of the day and is a little brighter now that it is less overgrown.

Once inside, I think that the most charitable description is an economical use of space. This is not a big apartment, but then we had expected this is what we would find. The overall size seems to be about 400 sq.ft. according to my lazer measuring vision. The ceilings are high though. They are high enough that I get the sense that we live in a tube. We might almost have more room if we could lay the flat on it's side.

Despite being small, it is clean and furnished. Furniture! Included for free! O.K. not the best furniture. Or the most furniture. But everything is serviceable and the little love seat is somewhat better now that it has been shored up with bits of cardboard and styrofoam that we found.

The kitchen is a galley style but it has everything that one would need including what they call a fan oven. The fan oven is hotter than the fires of hades. It has to be set 30° lower than a regular oven. The kitchen even has a washing machine. Not bad at all.

If I do say so myself, we have gotten ourselves set up quite well here in England. Nice quiet neighbourhood and the police even patrol on horseback. (Seriously - I'll try to get a pic.) Satisfactory flat with everything we need. It's good to be home again!