One Day Down
My phone erupted into life at 6am, and was met by an incredibly badly coordinated hand. After a few minutes of watching the seconds tick by and thinking about nothing in particular in true Mickey Flagan “f*ck all” style, I dragged myself out of bed and headed towards the shower.
En-route to the bathroom, I switched the children's bedroom lights on, and began the great experiment of getting them up early. I wasn't around long enough to see the aftermath, but accounts from the battlefield suggest that our eldest did get up, and discovered that the extra hour allowed her time for long rumoured things such as “breakfast”, and “television before school” The younger children didn't wake upwe suspect some kind of improvised explosive device might be needed to get them out of bed.
The train journey into London was entirely uneventful. I read my book, and listened to podcasts while the sun rose over London, painting the city yellow. I tried to take a photo, but first the longest train in the universe got in the way (I suspect on purpose), and then several thousand multi-storey buildings appeared out of nowhere, followed by Paddington Station. Idiots.
Throughout the remained of the journey towards Victoria I watched the clockwondering if I was going to be late or not. As it happened I arrived at my destination exactly on time. I have a sort of mania about not being lateI guess it's somehow wired up to “if you give nobody any ammunition, they will leave you alone”.
I'm going to completely skip over the working day, because I would inevitably give away where I'm working, or who I'm working with through some route or other. Suffice to say it was a typical “first day”, filled with induction courses, filling out forms, talking to people, and getting my photo taken. Hopefully over the coming days I will get more chance to go for a walk at lunchtime and really explore the area a bit more.
The journey home was a bit more eventful. I needed to leave early enough to get across London in time to catch a particular train. If I missed it, it meant an extra hour on my arrival at home. It would also mean the chances of my arriving home in time to fetch our daughter from dance classes on Thursday nights would be impossible until March at the earliest. My life is filled with this sort of complication. I made italthough I'm not quite sure how so many people managed to squash onto such a small train at Paddington. It was completely and utterly ridiculous; if you had fainted, nobody would have noticed because you wouldn't have fallen over.
So one day down, two more to go this week. Another day of it next week, followed by a trip to the other end of the country, then back down here for the weekend, then back to the other end of the country, then back in London for a couple of weeks, then back to the other end of the country for a week, then back in London for another couple of weeks I'm sure at some point I'm going to bump into myself going in the other direction.