Josh's Blog

I went to the beach with the family yesterday! This was a fantastic idea, lots of dramatic weather, very very windy and surfy, leading to us seeing lots and lots of windsurfers. I’ll proceed to liberally scatter photos of same through the rest of this post…

I spent the morning playing with my new TomTom 520, a handy eBuyer misprice (which has now been corrected), so pretty cheap. I’m pleased with it – by fully updating it and using the latest maps guarantee to get the v8.10 map, it now has the IQ routes and advanced lane guidance, features that are the main selling point of the newer 530, which cost a lot more. I got a special business version, which includes a year’s speed camera updates for free, and another free map update over and above the latest maps guarantee. Doesn’t sound like much, but they usually charge £50 for a map update, so definitely a good thing to have! </geek>

The TomTom took us a great route down to West Wittering – we couldn’t be bothered with the A3, so recalculated the route and went via Petworth. There were all these pretty little villages and things to see – you could have spent a day on it, getting out to look at everything interesting, and I think my dad fully intends to do that!

I showed a few more people around this house in my hunt for a replacement tenant – and there have been lots of people interested. I think the landlord is now settled on one, so with any luck I’ll get my deposit and last 9 days rent back – should help with furniture buying! I’m also quite pleased because a tax rebate from last year that I applied for finally came through – I’d totally forgotten about it, and had the same pleasant sensation of finding £10 in a pocket that I didn’t know I had, but it was £850. Winner!

I’m now just counting down the days until the move… bought a fridge and booked the van this morning, it’s all really happening! This time next week I’ll be waking up in my own house! How very, very exciting. I’ll book in the housewarming with you all as soon as I know which weekends I’m working at Metro.

Right then, I think that’s all for now – I’m going to get back to my sorting and packing, you all have a great Sunday!

Erm. Oops. It may have been 3 months since I updated here… not sure how that happened. So, my life since then, in one paragraph:

I bought a car (her name’s Delilah) and drove her to the Dordoigne for an amazing weeks holiday with lots and lots of my friends. I got back, and found a house in Guildford (mid July.) I’m sharing with 4 randoms, who are all perfectly harmless and the house is nice enough, it’s got a big garden which has been a good venue for a couple of BBQs, including my birthday party last week! I’ve started going out with Jennie (again, mid July) which is ace and we’ve had several fantastic weekends, but the 300 miles between us has been a bit of a pain in the arse. So, I asked Zoë (my Store Manager) whether there was any chance of a transfer up north, which has just recently been confirmed – I’m starting at the Metrocentre store in Gateshead (near Newcastle) on the 13th of October!

OK! On to the present… I’ve been on holiday for the past week, which was fabulous – started well with a party in Guildford, and a day in London with Jennie, and then we drove up North on Tuesday. Since then, she’s been working in preparation for the start of her PGCE on Monday, and I’ve been looking for houses in the sunny North East.

I saw 9 places in total, all over the area between Durham and Gateshead. Some were nice shiny new developments, both houses and apartments; they were all a bit fake and small and expensive, though nice enough. Some of the houses I saw were just a bit old and sorry for themselves, though there were 2 or 3 good ones, but when I saw this one in Langley Park (a nice big village about 10 mins drive west of Durham) I was pretty certain about it. Jen came with me for a second look on Friday, and we both thought that it was just right – modern inside, but not too big and not too small, a nice terrace in a a pretty lively looking village. I went and signed the papers that afternoon, and I’m moving in on the 11th of October!

The house is unfurnished, so I’m on the hunt for an entire house worth of furniture now… if you know anyone with sofas, chairs, shelves, fridges/freezers, etc going spare, please let me know! Apart from that I’m just working freecycle and ebay as hard as I can…

I’m on my way back to Guildford now, to round things off at the store there and get ready for the transfer oop North. I stopped at K&L’s in Uttoxeter last night, which was good fun, and I’ll do the rest of the journey today. Was also proud of myself for doing the 180 miles from the metrocentre to here with 12.5l of fuel, a good solid 65mpg, which is ace! That’s the best I’ve managed so far, 12.5l is a quarter of my tank: I normally get ~110-130 miles for that (40-47mpg), so it’s a huge saving driving at 60 rather than 70. I wasn’t really slipstreaming lorries much, so that’s the next test! (Such a geek…)

I’ll try to do better next time, and actually update, ooh, more than once a month, even!

Well, since everyone else seems to be doing it, I thought I’d join in the fun! I’m looking for a house or rather, a houseshare, because even though my salary is sufficient to get at least a 1 bed studio (or even a 2 bed house in some places) anywhere else in the country (even London, because I’d get a £3k weighting), I have to live in Guildford. Stupid expensive commuter town. Yes it’s pretty enough, and nice in some ways to be so close to London, but it’s still ridiculous money.

Anyway, the plan was to live at home until my training year is finished (at which point I’ll be escaping back up north quicker than you can say “woohoo, pay rise!”), and so gather a handy housing deposit sized savings account. However, it got to the middle of May, and I realised that I’ve almost lived at home for a year… which is fine really, but it’s a bit of a psychological upper limit for me. There’s living at home for a while to find your feet, and then there’s mooching off your parents for years and years. I’m not the kind of person who falls easily into the latter category, even when there’s £15,000 in it for me. Anyway, I think I’ve found my feet now, living at home gave me the chance to jobhunt (much as I hated it) rather than temp, and I don’t think I’d have applied for what I’m doing now if I’d been temping. I applied on one of my weekly “lets mix it up a bit and apply for random jobs” days, which I doubt I’d have given myself if I was paying rent.

So, I’ll have been here a year in 3 weeks time. I’m not going to say I’ll move out before France, because frankly, that could be a bit silly – the most important thing here is to live with the right people, then the right place, then the right money… and while I’ve got the time to look without a contract running out or anything like that, I’d quite like to make the most of it and get it all right.

I went to see a place last night… a bit of a flat within a flat, if you will. It’s the loft of an upper floor flat, so all sloping ceilings and the like (which I had last year and love, even if it’s not the most practical). It had a really nice en suite, a little study space thing, and quite a big main room, but was £540/month, with no parking – not even residents permits, and sharing with a young mum (which I have nothing against in particular, but might be a bit of a lifestyle clash.) So not perfect, and at that money I won’t be taking anything that isn’t.

Next on the list is a houseshare with 4 others for £400 inc bills, but 3 of the current 4 are moving out over the next few months. Makes it hard to judge what people will be like, but also means I’d have more of a say in which tenants are taken on. I’ll obviously have to make sure I’m not signing up to a joint and several contract where I’d be responsible for covering the rent of empty rooms.

One more thing. Most of you know this, but it needs to be written – Vickie and I broke up a little while ago. We’d been together for a great two years, and it was difficult to do – there are a few reasons for it, and I’m not going to write about them, it wouldn’t be appropriate, so don’t ask in a comment .