“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”
John Lennon, ‘Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)’, Double Fantasy, 1980.

Phew! This has got to be the most protracted house move in history! I’ve been in the flat since the 21st of July, yet most of my furniture is still in Sheffield. Most of my more prized possessions are here, as well as 90% of my clothes, but there’s still a shedload (a houseload?) back in Sheffield – not to mention a load of stuff, including my TV, at my mum’s house. Arrrgh!

Anyhow, I hope to rectify this situation this weekend. Will hire a Transit van and get some of the big items down here. If you know me, and are in Sheffield on Saturday (or Reading on Sunday) and can spare an hour or two to lug stuff about then please let me know!

I also decided when I moved that I’d pick up some cheap sofas, as I was going to leave the old ones in Sheffield for a tenant to use (basically because I hate the damn things!) – I figured Argos or IKEA would have something, but before I even managed to look a mis-price came up on the Tesco Direct website, which offered you a £1000 leather sofa on a buy-one-get-one-free basis, plus you’d get 50% off – making it £500. Except, this 50% discount was being applied twice, so the sofas came to £250. I hurriedly ordered a pair and put the order through, fully expecting an email from Tescos a day or so later telling me that it’d all been some big mistake. Not so. They were delivered last Saturday, which was great – except I’d planned to spend the weekend with Aimee at my Mum’s house. Tesco did at least get some revenge on me – they made me wait in until 3pm before they bloody turned up, so I only got half a weekend with Aimee, which was very annoying indeed.

We made the best of it though – and the good weather meant we got the paddling pool out for Aimee to splash and swim in. She had a great time, and I enjoyed a few precious hours being a dad again, something I absolutely cherish.

Other than the lack of furniture – and, by association, the lack of storage – I’m settling in quite well into my little bachelor pad. It is very quiet, the pub’s just round the corner and the train station is 5 minutes walk. Got my shiny new ADSL2+ installed the other day – no real complaints, only that my Cisco 877 only syncs at 14Mb down, whereas I’m led to believe the O2-provided box o’shit (some re-branded Alcatel box, I think) will do closer to 20Mb. This is apparantly down to some interleaving settings that the ISP could tweak (and indeed, O2′s network provider – Be Unlimited allow users to set themselves) but O2 aren’t interested – I can’t really complain for £4.89 a month, can I?

Reading I find strange. The town that is. It’s a fairly large town, trying desperately hard to be a city. It certainly has the traffic of a city – it’s miles and miles and miles worse than Sheffield ever has been. Someone at work told me that they actively make driving around the town difficult in order to promote public transport and I can well believe it. It isn’t right that a town of Reading’s size should struggle so much with traffic – come 5pm on a weekday, and it really can take 45minutes to an hour to drive the 5 miles from the centre to Twyford. I’m trying to not drive to work wherever possible, and am taking the train – but – sometimes you just get up that little bit too late, and instinctively go for the car keys as you figure it’ll be quicker…

Friends are trying to get me to cycle into work – despite the fact I don’t own a bicycle, and that I’d likely arrive at work hours late, sweating like Gary Glitter at a girl scout meeting and in need of an oxygen mask. Though, I do admit I think I’d enjoy it eventually, and it would of course improve my health no end. We’ll see.

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) 35th President of the United States

I know, I know. It’s been ages. I’ve broken promises and resolutions, hearts and heads, but the blog is back again. For a while, at least. Maybe. Fuck it – who knows? The last… puhhhh…. year has been, well.. – an absolute, total and unrelenting disaster for me, on several levels, and – to be brutally honest – the idea of actually writing down and chronicling my misery at the time was just a bridge too far for me.

So. Change. Things have changed. Irrevocably. Things(tm), as they say, are unquestionably better. They are – by no means – perfect, though, this will come in time.

In August last year, as those of you who know me personally will already know, my marriage broke down. I think, on reflection, it was probably coming sooner or later anyhow, and it just took one of us to have enough guts to actually do something about it. We remain cordial and friendly, and not just for the sake of our beautiful daughter, and are both quite happy being apart.

However, the split meant big changes financially (for both of us), and with the IT industry shrinking following the economic collapse last year, I was finding it very difficult to get work in the North. The house dropped into negative equity, and I spent rather a long time feeling very, very down indeed. Something had to change, and soon.

The only long-term work I could find was in the South – and being as the alternative (not working, not paying the bills) would lead rapidly to bankruptcy – I had to make the decision. So here I am, working slap-bang in the middle of the M4 ‘silicon corridor’, in Reading.

Clearly, a Sheffield to Reading commute isn’t possible, so I am going to move to a ‘penthouse apartment’ (estate agent speak for ’2nd floor flat’) down there, and am going to let out the house in Sheffield until such time as the house becomes viable to sell again.

Of course, this is all exciting and new, and a big change – however it will mean that I’m no longer on Aimee’s doorstep anymore, and this is something which is going to be very, very difficult for me to deal with. I keep telling myself that this arrangement isn’t going to be forever, and that regular families deal well with fathers being away for extended periods (armed forces personnel, oil rig workers, etc), but it does worry me a lot. Though I’m sure this is better than being a penniless bankrupt father living in my mum’s spare room.

To try and help alleviate this, Aimee and I have been using Skype to video chat with each other, but nothing beats a good hug and a toddler-slobber kiss! We’ll see how it works out, I guess.

However – all of this change is currently making my life incredibly busy! Flitting between Reading, Sheffield and Corby, sorting stuff out, moving stuff around, bagging up rubbish, going to the tip, packing, packing, packing! Trying to spend time with Aimee. Spending time with my family. Having the occasional malt and hop-based beverage.

I get the keys to my flat next week, and have got the big job of moving my stuff in ASAP. I’m hoping by this time next month, I’ll be all settled in and – maybe – there’ll be a tenant lined up for the Sheffield place. That’d be good. That’d make me twice as happy as I am now – which would be at least 10 times happier than I was in May.

So – with all this going on, I’m resuming writing – because, clearly, I have enough time to do this as well as everything else!

Oh – and what do you think of the new blog? I migrated it all from Drupal to WordPress, and fiddled around with themes and plugins until I had it how I liked it. What do you think?