1049: Season Finale

It occurs to me that while I was spending the last month doing creativey things, a lot of things happened and, being dedicated to blogging 1,500-2,000 words per day of the narrative nature, I really didn’t have the time or energy to devote any blog space to these things that were happening. So let’s rectify that today.

The main thing that has happened is that Andie and I are moving (back, in my case) to Southampton very shortly. And yes, I mean very shortly — our new rental starts on December 10 (pending references) and to be honest I’m not convinced it’s quite sunk into my own mind yet. Hopefully writing this will convince me that yes, it is happening and yes, I need to do that thing with the boxes I hate so much. (Packing them, obviously, not sticking them up my arse.)

Those who have been paying attention and/or following me for a while will know the rough chronology of what happened to me over the last couple of years — my wife and I parted ways; I failed to find a new job; ran out of money; moved back in with my parents; gradually built back up to full-time freelance employment that earns enough to live on; met Andie; moved back out, to Wiltshire this time; witnessed the catastrophic collapse of the second website I’d been a regular contributor to (GamePro this time — the first was Kombo); secured my current gig and, well, here we are.

Both Andie and I had been becoming a little despondent at our relative isolation. Andie was a few minutes down the road from her job, which was convenient, but neither of us really had any friends in the area. We spent a day celebrating the Queen’s jubilee earlier this year in which we got to know our immediate neighbours a little bit, but I found the whole thing painfully awkward and certainly wouldn’t count them as “friends”.

My true friends were (well, are) still in Southampton, as it happened, meaning that any time I wanted to spend time with them there was a 1.5-2 hour drive involved. Andie’s friends, meanwhile, were scattered everywhere from Southampton to Australia, so we decided that looking to move back towards the South coast would be a good idea. (Australia’s a bit far.) Since I can work from anywhere, it was up to Andie to find a job in the area suitable for her talents, and she hates job hunting almost as much as I do. Possibly more. Thankfully, though, she successfully managed to score a position recently, and so our quest to find a new place to live began.

House hunting is rubbish, as everyone knows, but we happened to be down in the area anyway last weekend as I’d taken us away on a short break to celebrate Andie’s birthday. We made some appointments and called in at a few estate agents to make some enquiries, and decided that if we found a place that looked acceptable, we would just take it rather than faffing around for weeks. Largely because we didn’t have weeks.

The first place we saw was a reasonable (if rather small) house that was in shitty condition, and probably wouldn’t be ready in time for when we wanted to move in. Next we saw a decent (but, again, small) house with an abnormally narrow staircase that would have been all right were it not for its location, which suffers something of a dearth of parking spaces.

Then we saw The One. A flat in a good, conveniently-located area with awesome large rooms (including a massive kitchen) that looked to be in excellent condition. It costs a little more than we’re paying right now in Chippenham, but that was an expected part of the move, plus given the location I’m probably going to get rid of my car once we’re in place, which will save some money.

It was pretty apparent that The One was The One after we gave it a cursory once-over, but we still had a couple more to see, so we went and had a look just to make sure. One was a nice-quality flat in a great location, but the rooms were far too small. The other was another nice-quality flat in a not-so-great location, but again the rooms were a bit small and the layout was a bit weird.

So, The One it was. Assuming our references come back all in order shortly, we’ll be moving in mid-December, meaning we’ll hopefully be in place well before Christmas. Then, once 2013 starts, we can really feel like a new stage of our lives is starting.

You have no idea how much I am looking forward to this. It feels like things are finally starting to fall back into place. I realise that, of course, I’m probably cursing myself by uttering those words, but what the hell. I can’t wait to be back in that slightly crappy town that I still consider to be “home”; to be near my friends and to be able to actually socialise with people without having to make plans weeks in advance.

I’m extremely grateful to Andie for her major part in making all this happen. Without her, I wouldn’t be back on this path to “recovery”, for want of a better word, so I don’t know, everyone bake her a nice cake or something. Or just come to our inevitable housewarming party! We might have a Wii U for everyone to play with by then.

See you in December, Southampton.

Shit, that’s this month. ARGH