The big move

The news was gently broken to friends and family that I would soon be leaving and was met with a very unemotional response. No one I knew believed I would do it until they saw my bags packed and I was at the door.

The plan was to move in to a flat in Shepherd’s Bush with the dizzy blonde. As you may know, nothing ever goes to plan. The dizzy blonde had let her rich friend convince her to let her move in with us. The decision was made and I had little choice but to accept it.

The first week of life in London was hectic. A new job was started where there was no hand over from the previous team. Everything I needed had to be found and finding consisted of looking through every document, every file and every box that had been used in the past two years. The firm I had joined sold itself as young and funky but in reality there were very few young people there and I missed the social interaction that that brought with it.

The flat we were moving in to wasn’t ready so I into a hotel for the short term. My stay would not have been the same without my drunken neighbours coming in at 4.00am on Tuesday and loudly debating about who would win the latest series of ‘I'm going to be a celebrity’!! To end the conversation, I did try shouting at them that they were both wrong and it would surely be Carol Thatcher who would win - well she deserves something after the nation watched her have a pee! But no, they continued to debate the matter until about 5.30am at which point I must have fallen back to sleep. Luckily for me I came into work the next day, big black bags under my eyes, and was happily told that they needed to take my picture to go on an email to the entire company introducing me as the new face of marketing for the firm!! Hopefully, no one will ever recognise me from that picture. I deleted the email as soon as it hit my inbox and have since deleted the picture from all existing files.

The next night there was a fire alarm (oh joy!!) which as you can imagine was another enthralling event in the hotel's itinerary!! Luckily I wasn't in my PJ's nor naked (I was fully clothed, lying on my bed watching TV) and didn’t actually run outside but, waited until it stopped!!!

On Thursday night I had the pleasure of going along to the central services work Christmas parties (no partners to make polite conversation with thankfully!). As I knew no one apart from my director and manager who got quite pissed and proceeded to dance like fools, I decided to people watch! I have judged everyone at work, there is an ex-lap dancer working with us (who nearly gave the maintenance guy a heart attack, I think he thought all his Christmases had come at once!!), a crazy lady who could well be a murderer (she had that mental look in her eyes) and loads of drunks!!! Not much different from any law firm then!!

I was told drunkenly at that party 'The biggest risk lies in never taking one' and although at the time I simply nodded and humoured the drunk who told me, that's the motto that I have since tried to live by.

The escape from the home country

A long, long time ago I decided to do something different, to escape the small town I came from (where everyone knows everyone as well as knowing everyone else's business). The decision to go was made a long time before the opportunity to leave actually arose. Please don't get me wrong, I love home but at few years ago as each day turned into Groundhog day, all my friends began to settle and the only men left on the scene were not worth the effort. I recall hysterically crying to a certain ex who had left to go travelling and returned but with no intention of staying and begging him to take me with him the next time he went. Of course random ex agreed to this only for me to find out a few weeks later from this obnoxious group of mates, that he had left for Thailand without me. I was devastated, not to lose him (trust me, he was not worth any tears and none were shed) but to lose the chance to get away from home.

I got over it pretty quickly and resigned myself to a life in Wales. I began looking at the cost of property and the realisation dawned that I had been priced out of the market. The small town I had been brought up in had had the largest price increase in property in the UK and the chances of me buying a place on my own were slim to nil. I was working over 50 hours a week in a poorly paid, but well respected job and living with my parents. The future looked bleak unless I pulled myself out of this nightmare.

With that I decided to make some changes. I made the utmost effort to go out every Friday with the girls from work, extending my social life beyond the borders of Barry and entering into the slightly bigger scene in Cardiff. My Saturday nights remained the same; drinks at my oldest friend's house with the girls, followed by a short taxi ride to Eze bar and then another short taxi ride to 2Eze. Shots of Sambuca were used to drown out the dullness of the night and we watched as the same people did the same things. In short my home town is not a nice place, fights would start, girls would cry, people would cheat as well as the same girl arguing with the same guy, same old, same old. I didn't realise then just how comforting this unchangeable routine would later become.

In the summer of 2005 on one of my night's in Cardiff, the dizzy blonde receptionist I worked with told me for the millionth time she was going to move to London at Christmas. I had been working with the dizzy blonde for nearly 2 years now, and since we had met she had told me she was moving to London every six months. Her boyfriend lived there and she would take the long journey to see him every weekend. The boyfriend would never make the effort to come to Wales to see her and would not, despite the fact they had been together for six years, entertain the idea that it might be a good idea for them to move in together. I looked at the dizzy blonde with pity, we both knew unless she found someone to go with her she, like me, would remain in Wales.

As time drudged on I began to feel discontent with my job. I loved my job, marketing for a top 100 law firm, was fast paced and busy but I was being paid very little, was getting no direction from my manager and saw no chance of career progression. The dizzy blonde started talking to me about her London dream again and suddenly the bright lights of London started to draw me in. I quickly suggested that if dizzy blonde wanted to move to London then I would go with her and with that a weekend of job and flat hunting was booked. The life outside Wales was about to start.