Close call

Colindale, London, England // 2.19 pm // Mostly sunny 18ºc / 64ºf

So week #1 in the new job has come to an end, and to be honest I feel really good about it. There are still a few things I have to improve, as is the case with any change of circumstances and environment. But I feel quite happy that I've made the right choice, and that I'll be able to deal with the new tasks ahead.

However, as a result of the new job I almost lost half of my weekend, as it was decided that we would need to be staffed over the weekend, rather than just the usual on-call setup (and my first weekend on-call isn't until the end of November). So the plans that Elle and I had for Saturday afternoon and evening were almost scrapped until my manager called on Saturday morning to say that we wouldn't need as many staff after all. So the weekend was back on.

I obviously had a lot of sleep to catch up on as I didn't wake until around 2pm. Later that afternoon Elle and I drove to Reading for the first time since we moved away. That was via the local chippy round the corner. The reason for the visit to Reading was to see our friends Tim and Lucy, who have just had their first baby earlier in the week. It was great to see the three of them, and it is still sad that we don't get to spend as much time with them since we moved.

We stayed there for an hour and a half before heading back to London and getting ready to go out in town. In the end, we didn't leave the flat until just before midnight and somehow managed to get very last tube trains to run down to Farringdon. The plan was to go to club Fabric where our friend Jenn was celebrating her birthday. However, when we got there we were faced with a monsterous queue. After speaking to some of the others in the queue and a security guy we acertained that the queue was at least an hour long. Meaning we wouldn't get in till at least 2am. We waited for a while but the queue wasn't moving. After weighing up the options, we decided to bail out, send our apologies and get a taxi up to Camden.

This was much more successful, and we ended up going to the Purple Turtle, which was free to get in, with no queue, drinks at decent prices and pretty good music. The PT is one of a chain of two pubs, the second of which is in Reading and where Elle worked as soon as we moved to Reading in May 2004. The one in Camden is very diferent though, not least the music policy. In Reading, it's usually indie and other kinds of rock upstairs and drum and bass downstairs. In Camden, we walked in to some electro house followed by the theme tune to the movie Ghostbusters!

We stayed there for a little while, and then got the night bus home.

Good day for my football clubs too. Celtic managed a last gasp win against Aberdeen at home, 3-2 which puts us top of the league. But I'm watching the Hibs v Rangers game now, and Rangers have just scored, so they may be top again by the end of the afternoon. And Ebbsfleet United beat Barrow away 3-0, putting us 5th in the Blue Square Premier, which has to be one of the best positions the club has ever been in.

Today, no real plans. We might go out for a meal later. We are definitely making more of our weekends together as we hardly get to spend time with each other through the week now, with the new job. But I also have to be prepare to lose those weekends every now and then too.

Video blog: Flat tour

Colindale, London, England // 10.41 am // Mostly sunny 16ºc / 61ºf

It appears that my laptop is absolutely hopeless at recording quick capture video on Youtube. Thus, the last half of the blog update has been cut off (but you see the whole flat before that happens) and audio-video sync was lost after approximately the first frame. But enjoy nonetheless.

All change please

Colindale, London, England // 12.24 pm // Light rain 15ºc / 59ºf

Never before has there been so many massive changes since the last blog post. Last time I was writing about Elle and I starting the hunt for a new flat in London.

Two months or so on, and we found, moved and settled into our new 1 bedroom flat in Colindale, North West London. Not only that, but I have since started a new job - pretty much a promotion - at my current company.

Back to the flat. One day in July Elle and I travelled to Colindale, near Hendon in the London Borough of Barnet, to look at flats. Through the course of the day we looked at 7 flats. Well actually, 6. One of them that we went to in Wembley looked ok from the outside, but no one was there to meet us so we could have a look inside. The flat that we went for in the end was the 3rd property we looked at. As much as we wanted to take it straight away, as we absolutely loved it, we decided to still look at some others. Throughout that day I was petrified that the 3rd property would be taken away from us before we had the chance to make our offer. But the next morning, make our offer we did, and by the end of the week we had signed all the necessary papers and paid the deposit and fees.

Packing up our old house in Reading was a real chore, but we managed it in the end and moved on August 2nd. I booked a man with a van and after loading it up, we had to say goodbye to the place that we had called home for four years, and of course the first place that Elle and I lived together.

Our new flat is on the 2nd floor (3rd floor for you Americans), which also happens to be the top floor. Therefore, carrying all our property from the van into the flat was a real pain in the arse. Thankfully I had a few other pairs of hands to help us. Rather than start to unpack when we had fully unloaded the van, we spent the rest of the day in the pub with friends!

Over the next few weeks we tried to get the place in order. Being a partly furnished property, we had to make many trips to Ikea and Argos to buy furniture for the place. Only last week did we actually fully finally unpack and have all the main items of furniture that we needed. Even now we still need a few things, including a freezer.

One of the main personal reasons for the move to London, other than it being a lifetime dream for me, was to enable me to take the next step in my career. By pure chance, that opportunity came up just a few days after we moved! I applied for a new position, which is a step further up the ladder, and several weeks back I had the interview. Last Monday I was told I was successful and yesterday I started my new job. Last night's first shift went quite well, although it will take me a little while to get used to the very different working environment. Never before have I worked anywhere which such an intense atmosphere and high levels of stress, but I'm very sure I'll be able to adjust to it, and when fully trained be a fully competent member of the team. There are three main parts of the job, one of which has ultimate responsibility for the output of a live tv show. At the moment, I can't imagine what that will be like. But then, before last night I could never have imagined what it would be like to actually do what I did last night! Will training and guidance, I'm sure it'll all be fine.

Thankfully, my sleep hasn't been disrupted either, unlike the first time I started working for this company. Like I said before, that was mostly just through excitement at being in such a different organisation. But I feel quite at home now. I still had a couple of glasses of wine last night to take the edge off the evening, and will likely have a couple of beers tonight, but once I get settled into the new job and into the routine, I'm sure that'll be less and less necessary. I've also been making sure I don't get too much sleep, so that I have no trouble falling asleep when I try. If all else fails, I still have some sleeping tablets.

The move to London and the new job are huge changes. I've easily got used to the first change, and I'll get used to the latter in time. But I'm now at the stage where, at the moment, I have nothing else I want to achieve. I'll be happy to keep things as they are for the foreseeable future.

Elle is getting on well at her job too. For both of us, travelling to work has become much quicker, easier and cheaper. We've not had much of a chance to enjoy London too much yet, but our standard of living has definitely gone up.

Other things: my mum and John were down visiting over the last weekend. We had a good time with them, and shown them around London, did the tourist thing, took them for a tour around my work, went up to John's friend in Essex for the day and ate out a few times.

I need to finish this off shortly as I need to get lunch ready then get ready for work. Up to December at least I will be working Monday to Friday 3pm till 11pm, with weekends off. However, from November I will be on-call on every 7th weekend. Thus, I've had to give up my other radio show in Slough. It was also taking 4 hours out of my Sunday just travelling from Colindale to Slough, plus the three hours for the show itself. Now, having Sundays to do what I want is just bliss.