So, recently I gra­dua­ted, spent some time at home over the dis­mally wet sum­mer and loo­ked for a job. The job hun­ting aspect pretty much domi­na­ted my time. It star­ted out with two or three pho­nes calls a day from rec­ruit­ment agen­cies with a num­ber of roles they thought I might be inte­res­ted in, inc­lu­ding throughout my holi­day to Ply­mouth — everything from Con­trol sys­tems sales to supply chain mana­ge­ment — I selec­ted the roles that inte­res­ted me most to pur­sue — this trans­for­med into a mul­ti­tude of inter­views and tests. I tra­ve­lled to Lon­don, Surrey, Hert­fordshire, Lei­ces­tershire, Glou­ces­tershire and more, com­ple­ting no more than 9 sepa­rate inter­views. These inter­views inc­lu­ded apti­tude tests, inte­lli­gence tests, rea­so­ning abi­li­ties, pro­blem sol­ving tasks, data analy­sis tasks, group exer­ci­ses and other such nas­ties. For the sake of pros­pe­rity, these were with such com­pa­nies as Uni­le­ver, Data Con­ne­xion, GE Sen­sing (they do not refund tra­vel expen­ses), Smiths Aeros­pace and Ocado. Both Ocado and Smiths offe­red me a job, and I opted for the more inte­res­ting and supe­rior offer from Ocado, based in Hatfield. 

Whilst not loo­king for jobs or hou­ses I tur­ned on the TV, lin­ked it to an AV out­put from the PC and watched some X-files or Twin Peaks to fill me up on my mystery-weirdness fix for the year. I am about half way through sea­son 2 of Twin Peaks now. Agent Coo­per is my hero. Any­way, moving onwards. With a job con­fir­med and a start date of Sep­tem­ber 10th I had 3 weeks to arrange vie­wings, par­take in vie­wings, make a deci­sion and sort out all the fine print, on a sin­gle soli­tary resi­dence. I arran­ged six vie­wings, two in Welwyn Gar­den City, two in Hat­field and two in St Albans for the bank holi­day wee­kend in August. 

I can’t be bothe­red to find pic­tu­res of all of them, and to be honest, I want to for­get a few of them, they were that awful. In fact the last one we saw nee­ded a light on in every room in order to see anything… this being at 2 pm on a cloud­less day with the sun high in the sky. It was also dis­gus­ting with a shoddy door, the whole thing was tac­ked onto the back of a house — they wan­ted £625 a month for it! 

Here is the second best can­di­date — a one bedroom ‘mini’ house. This was in wal­king dis­tance from where I work and was a strong con­ten­der at £650 a month. Although in the end we deci­ded the nearby ame­ni­ties weren’t great and living in Hat­field wasn’t the nicest of options. 

My third arran­ged vie­wing for a stu­dio flat in Hat­field fell through, and in that spare hour we roa­med the streets of St Albans, pop­ping in every estate agents we came across on Lon­don Road. Even­tually one such agent had two apart­ments we could look at straight away, one just (the day before) coming back onto the mar­ket after a pre­vious deal had fallen through. The first of these was an atro­cious annex in Lon­don Col­ney, it was damp, sme­lled of wet and was pretty much a shed. We left (the family and Sam) as fast as we pos­sibly could. The second was a one bedroom flat for £725. This was like a breath of fresh air. It was clean, spa­cious, light, secure, well-appointed and very close to both rail sta­tions, the town cen­tre, a super­mar­ket and retail park, a large park with golf course et al. and a bus route to get into work. It was per­fect except for the price. We con­ti­nued loo­king at our other appoint­ments — except for one can­ce­lled two-bedroom vie­wing which nas­tily clashed with a much nee­ded toi­let stop on my part. The flat was always on our minds and at 3pm we deci­ded that I should go for it — and can­ce­lled any further vie­wings, the extra price was deci­ded rea­so­na­ble for the dis­tin­guished impro­ve­ments that it offered. 

Having sett­led that mat­ter we spent the after­noon drin­king in a nearby pub, watching the foot­ball results (which were also ami­ca­ble). I remem­ber having a lovely large glass of New­castle Brown Ale, before moving on to Wethers­poons to have Steak for din­ner. It was a nice eve­ning all around. We were there for the wee­kend, so on Sun­day we had a pic­nic in Veru­la­mium Park — right next to my new flat. Crispy fresh baguette, pasta and salad selec­tions and a Mars bar to cap it off. Acti­vi­ties also inc­lu­ded “pla­ying catch in the park”, buying expen­sive chi­lli cho­co­late, a tour of the lake, exci­te­ment over the kid­dies water park fea­ture, remote con­trol boats and Ye Olde Figh­ting Cocks pub. Then we hea­ded back to Bris­tol, with Sam going north. I would move in on Sep­tem­ber 3rd, the next Monday. 

In the week follo­wing I spent some time lear­ning Java, mana­ging my web­si­tes and fran­ti­cally sor­ting out the huge depo­sit and one month’s ren­tal pay­ment (£1800) to be made avai­la­ble in only four wor­king days (bank holi­day issues) in clea­red funds! That was a laugh. On the Fri­day I watched Knoc­ked Up at the cinema with Mum and Stu, post scrump­tious Chi­quito Lazy Boi star­ter. I also watched the Bris­tol Rovers vs. West Ham game on Sky as well as a num­ber of the England vs. India ODI’s, inc­lu­ding the stun­ning 8th wic­ket part­nership of 99 runs to seal a win, which we cele­bra­ted whilst eating chips on the way back from visi­ting my Aunt (avec gra­dua­tion photos). 

With only one car the pac­king nee­ded to be ruth­less and pre­cise. Fit­ting a com­pu­ter, tv, all the clothes I will need for a num­ber of months, croc­kery, coo­king pans and uten­sils, duvet and sheets and any addi­tio­nal enter­tain­ment I deci­ded to bring was akin to those crazy Christ­mas toys that involve arran­ging sha­pes into a cube. 

* Cho­co­late Muf­fin Break *

Mum and I arri­ved in good time via M4 and M25, sig­ned the con­tracts, pic­ked up the keys and moved in, with Sam quickly behind us with her odds and ends and a much nee­ded set of dra­wers. Then we set about with the ickle things — arran­ging inter­net and phone ins­ta­lla­tion, sor­ting out water, gas and elec­tri­city, tele­vi­sion license, fin­ding myself a com­pu­ter desk, filling my cup­boards with food (Sainsbury’s is very expen­sive!), unpac­king and making myself feel at home. Mum left the next day, to return to work, it was a sad goodbye, and I had that melancholy fee­ling all day. 

I think that is enough of the tale, I have now been here ten days and obviously the inter­net has been ins­ta­lled (20mbit, woo!) and once again I have spent too long wri­ting this, it is late and I must go to bed to get up for work tomo­rrow. All I have left to say is thank you so much to Mum, Sam and Stu — your help was inva­lua­ble, I couldn’t have done it all without your help.