Welcome to KitchenWatch. Our builders Ryszard and Jacek started work on our kitchen today. Progress will be documented here:

before:	day 1: arrivederci tiles and units!

To open up the back end of the kitchen, the interior wall where the water tank used to be has been demolished. The plan is to have the fridge-freezer on the right and some cupboard space on the left and above.

before:	after:

This weekend marked one year since M and I bought our flat, two years since we came to Ealing, and more-or-less four years since we first moved in together. Our parents and my brother and sister came up to visit, and we went to the French market (some photos here) and picnicked in the park. We ate crepes, bread, cheese, potatoes with sausage cooked in cider and lard, and churros:


Later on, in a much-appreciated act of parental/fraternal devotion, Mum and Dad stayed at ours and watched the cricket while AJ drove us to Edmonton IKEA to exchange cooker hoods. The work on the kitchen starts today (Monday), so Sunday was spent scraping the walls and emptying the cupboards. Oh, and dealing with the crappy plumbing's swan song: not one but two foul-smelling cascades of water belching out of the pipes as the washing machine tried to drain.

Dad and I went to a late prom last night - polychoral 17th century stuff, Gabrieli, Monteverdi, sagbuts and cornetts - which was wonderful apart from the odd insensitively timed audience cough and not getting home until 1 on a school night.

And there is Major Progress to report on the kitchen and other building work. On Saturday all the IKEA stuff was delivered, on Monday we went to B&Q to choose the floor tiles, on Tuesday Marc scoped out another tile place for the wall, today the new shower and taps for the bathroom arrived from Screwfix and the washing machine's being delivered too. The - yay! - dishwasher comes on Tuesday. We've engaged a team of Polish builders/carpenters/plumbers/sparks who come with glowing references from BBC staff. I even went to look at a place they were working on on my way to work earlier this week, and it was all very impressive. They start ripping out the old kitchen on Monday. Touch wood, it's all going very well so far.

This weekend I went out to Oxford to visit friends and escape from the heat and humidity of London, and the large pile of admin and work Marc had to plough through. I met Penny for lunch at Carluccio's just as the heavens opened, and all afternoon we ducked around town getting soaked. Later on I took a bus out to Eynsham to spend the evening and night with James, Ruth and Sophie, which was very chilled and pleasant. Here they all are (note Jim's echt brummie Bostin t-shirt, thanks for the tip Adrian Chiles!)

A delightful photo and blurb about me and my work colleagues has been added to the BBC News Editors blog. This is because we've agreed to supply them with a newsworthy pronunciation du jour. Once I can figure out how, I'll sort out some kind of clever RSS feed thingy to link this blog to that one. When it's cooler.
Edit: the RSS Feed is here.

A quiet sort of week. On Saturday we went out to Kelvedon, Essex, for a barbecue at Edge and Steve's. Gorgeous weather, fab garden and a lovely lazy afternoon. Good to catch up with Merton people like Cath, Karen and Andy, and to see others too - it's odd how many of Edge and Steve's friends now live in Ealing. Sunday was more of a domestic day, sorting stuff out - the main achievement was booking flights out to Bergerac for September.

Coming up this week, M, Rob, David and all five Sangsters are going to see Così Fan Tutte at the Proms. Should be good, although the weather forecast is for a scorching day, so the Albert Hall may be a bit of an oven.

This weekend we tried to make a load of social plans for the summer, which involved a good deal of phoning people up. Happily we got hold of Robert, and met up with him and Olivia for a Turkish meal and a bottle of wine in Covent Garden that evening.

On Sunday I left M to get on with some writing and went to visit my parents. Dad's latest violin is making good progress.

Hopping around today, I found the blog of good old federalist Jon Worth, whom I knew at Merton. He wrote:

To make it clear what a blogger's ideology is, I think there are 2 tests every blogger should take: the Myers Briggs personality test, and Political Compass.

I don't necessarily agree, but hey, who can resist a bit of Friday lunchtime self-analysis. Also, I remember doing the Political Compass many years ago, so I wondered if I'd mellowed...

My Political Compass results were (to the nearest whole number) -6 and -7. The first number is a left-right axis, and the other one a authoritarian-libertarian axis. Big surprise, I'm a liberal soft-lefty.

The Myers-Briggs came out as INTJ - reading some analysis I have to say a lot of it sounds awfully familiar... I'll have to ask my nearest and dearest if they agree. (Those who post sarky comments must also post their own result - it's only fair.) I do remain a bit sceptical, but it does seem more accurate than the 1:16 ratio that total irrelevance would suggest. A lot more so than, say, horoscopes.

Some doubters have suggested that our kitchen may not need the full-scale ripping-out that I've suggested. For those people, here's a photo of the kitchen. Behold the brown sink, tiling from hell, honey pine cupboard horror. There's also a huge hulking eye-level oven, just out of shot, which makes the room feel even narrower than it really is. Truly, Everything Must Go. We're not relishing the whole dealing with plumbers and builders thing, but it's got to be done...