I’ve not had many visitors to my London flat. I thought that it was because of:

• Deptford’s undeserved bad reputation
• the fridge that only gets cleaned every six months
• guests having to feed themselves because of said fridge
• my refusal to stock any coffee because of the expense
• refusing to talk about anything other than accounting rules and convention

Then I realised that it was because no-one knows how to get here.

177 Bus
The bus to get when running late for church (i.e. every week). It is based on the latest conceptual Swedish design of “tillbaka-tillbaka”, which means that the front of the bus looks like the back, and the back is the back.

The alternative translation of “tillbaka” in the original Hebrew means: lazy-arsed photographer who couldn’t be bothered to cross the road.

453 Bus

Introducing the Mercedes-designed Bendy Bus. Lewis Hamilton would prefer to drive this at the Grand Prix – except he doesn’t have a bus licence.

Could a double-decker version be made of the bendy bus? That would be cool.

53 Bus

Winner of the “Least Objectionable Bus of the Year Award 1973″. Features the latest in anti-finger trap technology on the bell.

The 53 bus has played an important role in the history of English literature. The same red is used on the cover of the GCSE poetry anthology. It was also where Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra had the inspiration, wrote, published and produced the audiobook for Don Quixote. The original bookstore and recording studio can still be found at the back of the bus.

DLR (Docklands-Liechtenstein Railway)

This driver-less train is powered by the latest Lithuanian technology. It’s built from the finest glass from Luton and steel from Luxembourg’s gold mines.

Unfortunately, these driver-less trains cannot be used on the London Underground because it entirely eliminates the gap between the train and the platform.

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Easter was the first real break that I had since the new year. It’s annoying that there is a four month gap without any public holidays. I spent a restful time at home and drove over 100 miles to see family and friends in the area.

The sequel to "Sleep Challenge" was born over the weekend: Sleep Challenge II: The Hundred Mile Challenge. My friend, Graham, and I have started jogging training. The first person to jog 100 miles wins £50. As ever, refer to the link for our progress.

Man-pride and money is at stake, so I expect this challenge to be hard fought. It’ll be useful training for the half-marathon and the day when expense cutbacks mean that we will have to run to the clients instead of using the train.

Not a moment too soon!

For the record, I woke up within 30 seconds of the alarm 27 out of 34 times. It was pretty exhausting at the start but it got easier towards the end. Some days I woke up before the alarm. My body clock adjusted to expect 8 (ish) hours of sleep a night.

Evolution of the Sleep Challenge Spreadsheet:
Written by Andrew

Week 1 – Wanting a way to easily streamline the updating and cross-monitoring, we set up this online shared spreadsheet system.
Week 2 – To streamline efforts and increase success chance, we ended up making our new habits identical. Same goals and targets.
Week 3 – To increase motivation, we implemented a scoring system against each other. Winner gets food/money/clean-clothes.
Week 4 – We combined the scoring system to a joint scoring system. We only get a joint point if we BOTH wake up within thirty seconds, but no points at all if either one of us fails to wake up in time. Thus we will put more importance on encouraging the other person to wake up, and also increased motivation from not wanting to make the team fail.

Some pointers

• Nothing like public shame as a motivation.
• Andrew and I changed from a competitive to a co-operative scoring system halfway though. However, this was less of a motivation. Also, there was an incentive to be dishonest so that the other side wasn’t let down.
• Ultimately, we would only deceive ourselves if we cheated on the sleep challenge.
• I immediately went back to the pattern of snoozing when the challenge ended.

Where now?

Some other challenge ideas:

• 3 MITs – complete the three "most important tasks" everyday.
• Zero information diet
• Zero fat diet
• The Batman Challenge – one act of vigilante justice everyday
• 100 Mile Challenge – 100 miles of running a month
• Punctuality Challenge – Don’t be late, ever.