How will you go
Dec. 13th, 2006 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4We've been in Oxford for just over a month now, so it's probably time for an update...
Our four-bedroom flat is pretty good. We've unpacked a lot more than I thought we would have done by this time, and even the rooms which are still full of boxes are already in the shape that we want them to be in, with furniture in (more or less) the right places. And it looks like there's going to be room to have all our books out on the shelves! (Okay, when I say all our books, I'm not counting the thousands which are still lodging with our respective parents.) We don't yet have a wardrobe, and after one too many arguments over the unbearable crapness of IKEA I really can't face another journey through flatpack hell, so instead I'm going to try to buy one on eBay.
We're more or less getting used to being woken up at 6am every day by Iceland (the loading bay is just across the carpark from our bedroom window), but there are lots more positive sides to living in a shopping precinct: the Co-op is a minute's walk from the front door, the newsagent is underneath us (we haven't yet gone downstairs in dressing-gowns to get the Sunday papers, but I fear it's only a matter of time), there are lots of other useful local shops around, and about 8 different bus services go into town from the stop outside our front door.
It's about a 20-25 minute cycle into work, but that's in the dark & rain, and with a pulled muscle in my chest from all the coughing when I was ill; it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes in the summer. Parking the bike at home is something of a problem, though -- my front wheel got stomped while I had the bike chained to a drainpipe in the residents' carpark, so I'm now keeping the bike in the shared hallway, which would be okay except that it's jostling for space with the overspill from the newsagents (usually several large piles of newspapers to be returned, and loads of boxes of Maltesers), and I don't know how we're going to fit two bikes in there when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
addedentry starts cycling again, in the new year. Maybe we'll just have to take it in turns to play Russian Roulette with the bike-stomping bastards. Or set up a web-cam and motion-activated air-rifle on the back balcony.
My new job -- yes, the whole reason we moved here, my fault -- isn't going as well as I'd hoped. It's the first time I've been in a job where my line manager isn't doing roughly the same job as me and there's nobody to show me what to do; I should be just carving a niche for myself but it's hard to do when I don't feel anywhere near as involved in the business of the organisation as I did in university admin; and we're somewhat in limbo as we're preparing to move the website to a new server and into a new all-singing all-dancing CMS, which means I'm working on a website which is broken in various ways but which I'm not supposed to be developing because that would be a waste of time. All in all I'm finding it very hard to pick up the threads of what I'm supposed to be doing (and being off ill for a week really didn't help) and at the moment I'm mostly oscillating between "I don't know how to do this job" and "I don't know if I want to do this job," which occasionally tips over into "I will be quite relieved actually when at the end of my year's probation (if not before) they tell me that it was all a big mistake." Yes, I've tried talking to them. It's not them, it's me.
Fortunately, while I'm slowly slipping into a career coma,addedentry's going from strength to strength; he was snapped up by the National Trust for some interesting freelance cataloguing work, which neatly filled the gap between leaving Cambridge and starting the job which the Bodleian created especially for him. He's also been invited to write cryptic crosswords for Oxford Today, which won't bring in any extra cash, but will hopefully bring the sort of fame and fortune that means people buy him drinks.
It's been strange for me to go so suddenly from the packed schedule of orchestra rehearsals, choir rehearsals, volunteering, and socialising that I had in Cambridge to a life where I mostly don't do anything except go to work, come home, re-read some Chalet School books, and go to sleep. We have managed to meet up with a few friends, which has been great -- and of course we've got each other! -- but I do feel quite lost and directionless. I'm not sure if it makes it better or worse that I already know the city. On the plus side, I don't have to learn my way around a new place on top of all the other stress; but I feel as though the city, with all its dreams and memories, wants something more of me than just miserably slipping into tired middle-age. I feel as though I should be doing something, but I can't remember how, and I can't really see the point. (This is traditionally the moment when everybody says "Write a novel!" ... and then I have to kill them. I wrote a handful of poems when I was a teenager, and ever since then everybody I know has been hassling me to write books. I don't have anything to write. I don't have anything to say. Sorry.)
In other 'not doing things' news, I haven't kept most of my new year's resolutions from last year, I haven't sent any Christmas cards yet, I haven't bought the Christmas presents I wanted to buy for my family and friends, and I'm so behind with email that I just want to give up on the whole communication thing.
Do I miss Cambridge? I don't really miss it as a place, but I miss a lot of things about the life I'd built up there. I thought I'd be able to transplant most of them here, but it's harder than it looks; I know the grass may only be greener back there because it's had longer to grow, but I feel as though it's a big scratchy grey patch of land that I've acquired here and I currently don't have much confidence that the things I've planted will take root.
I guess we'll just have to see what the spring brings. Lilacs, maybe.
Our four-bedroom flat is pretty good. We've unpacked a lot more than I thought we would have done by this time, and even the rooms which are still full of boxes are already in the shape that we want them to be in, with furniture in (more or less) the right places. And it looks like there's going to be room to have all our books out on the shelves! (Okay, when I say all our books, I'm not counting the thousands which are still lodging with our respective parents.) We don't yet have a wardrobe, and after one too many arguments over the unbearable crapness of IKEA I really can't face another journey through flatpack hell, so instead I'm going to try to buy one on eBay.
We're more or less getting used to being woken up at 6am every day by Iceland (the loading bay is just across the carpark from our bedroom window), but there are lots more positive sides to living in a shopping precinct: the Co-op is a minute's walk from the front door, the newsagent is underneath us (we haven't yet gone downstairs in dressing-gowns to get the Sunday papers, but I fear it's only a matter of time), there are lots of other useful local shops around, and about 8 different bus services go into town from the stop outside our front door.
It's about a 20-25 minute cycle into work, but that's in the dark & rain, and with a pulled muscle in my chest from all the coughing when I was ill; it shouldn't take more than 15 minutes in the summer. Parking the bike at home is something of a problem, though -- my front wheel got stomped while I had the bike chained to a drainpipe in the residents' carpark, so I'm now keeping the bike in the shared hallway, which would be okay except that it's jostling for space with the overspill from the newsagents (usually several large piles of newspapers to be returned, and loads of boxes of Maltesers), and I don't know how we're going to fit two bikes in there when
addedentry starts cycling again, in the new year. Maybe we'll just have to take it in turns to play Russian Roulette with the bike-stomping bastards. Or set up a web-cam and motion-activated air-rifle on the back balcony.My new job -- yes, the whole reason we moved here, my fault -- isn't going as well as I'd hoped. It's the first time I've been in a job where my line manager isn't doing roughly the same job as me and there's nobody to show me what to do; I should be just carving a niche for myself but it's hard to do when I don't feel anywhere near as involved in the business of the organisation as I did in university admin; and we're somewhat in limbo as we're preparing to move the website to a new server and into a new all-singing all-dancing CMS, which means I'm working on a website which is broken in various ways but which I'm not supposed to be developing because that would be a waste of time. All in all I'm finding it very hard to pick up the threads of what I'm supposed to be doing (and being off ill for a week really didn't help) and at the moment I'm mostly oscillating between "I don't know how to do this job" and "I don't know if I want to do this job," which occasionally tips over into "I will be quite relieved actually when at the end of my year's probation (if not before) they tell me that it was all a big mistake." Yes, I've tried talking to them. It's not them, it's me.
Fortunately, while I'm slowly slipping into a career coma,
addedentry's going from strength to strength; he was snapped up by the National Trust for some interesting freelance cataloguing work, which neatly filled the gap between leaving Cambridge and starting the job which the Bodleian created especially for him. He's also been invited to write cryptic crosswords for Oxford Today, which won't bring in any extra cash, but will hopefully bring the sort of fame and fortune that means people buy him drinks. It's been strange for me to go so suddenly from the packed schedule of orchestra rehearsals, choir rehearsals, volunteering, and socialising that I had in Cambridge to a life where I mostly don't do anything except go to work, come home, re-read some Chalet School books, and go to sleep. We have managed to meet up with a few friends, which has been great -- and of course we've got each other! -- but I do feel quite lost and directionless. I'm not sure if it makes it better or worse that I already know the city. On the plus side, I don't have to learn my way around a new place on top of all the other stress; but I feel as though the city, with all its dreams and memories, wants something more of me than just miserably slipping into tired middle-age. I feel as though I should be doing something, but I can't remember how, and I can't really see the point. (This is traditionally the moment when everybody says "Write a novel!" ... and then I have to kill them. I wrote a handful of poems when I was a teenager, and ever since then everybody I know has been hassling me to write books. I don't have anything to write. I don't have anything to say. Sorry.)
In other 'not doing things' news, I haven't kept most of my new year's resolutions from last year, I haven't sent any Christmas cards yet, I haven't bought the Christmas presents I wanted to buy for my family and friends, and I'm so behind with email that I just want to give up on the whole communication thing.
Do I miss Cambridge? I don't really miss it as a place, but I miss a lot of things about the life I'd built up there. I thought I'd be able to transplant most of them here, but it's harder than it looks; I know the grass may only be greener back there because it's had longer to grow, but I feel as though it's a big scratchy grey patch of land that I've acquired here and I currently don't have much confidence that the things I've planted will take root.
I guess we'll just have to see what the spring brings. Lilacs, maybe.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 11:44 am (UTC)I'm hoping in the new year to start finding things to do again (there is a climbing wall on campus, for example), but it'll take time.
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Date: 2006-12-13 11:49 am (UTC)Oh well then, get a cat!
Must come up to Oxford sometime. It's on the list.
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Date: 2006-12-13 11:53 am (UTC)Do come to Oxford, though!
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Date: 2006-12-13 11:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 11:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 11:58 am (UTC)I owe my young lady a weekend in Oxford, but also in lots of other places, and she has some exams over Winter and early Spring, and I imagine will have ditched me by Summer. Combine that with DJing every Saturday night, and you see why I have not been to Oxford in so long.
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Date: 2006-12-13 12:08 pm (UTC)You didn't build your life in Cambridge overnight; it will take you a while to build one in Oxford. In the meantime, hibernation is not necessarily all bad.
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Date: 2006-12-13 12:18 pm (UTC)Tell you what, I'll buy you a drink! :-)
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Date: 2006-12-13 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 01:06 pm (UTC)Bikes: is there any wall-space you might be able to convince the landlord to allow you to install bike-holding devices on? (We have ours hanging vertically in the niche bit of the hallway, which works OK, though a Rethink is needed as currently there are only 2 hooks & the Cheviot has therefore evicted P's bike to the balcony) The hooks we have, you could take down & Polyfilla the holes & paint over it & it wouldn't be a disastrous & permanent change to the blah. (i.e. landlord might go for it if you offer to make good before leaving).
FWIW, my Dad has always told me that it should take 3-6 months to feel comfortable in a new job (less than that & it prob will be v boring far too quickly; more & you might not be in the best place for you).
Lilacs! Maybe we should put lilacs in the allotment. Have baby rhubarb leaf icon instead, as symbol of spring-to-come :-)
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Date: 2006-12-13 01:13 pm (UTC)YKIMK!
But seriously, why not? :)
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Date: 2006-12-13 01:45 pm (UTC)My ex has some very nice hand-built bookcases, for example.
Happy Badgermas!
Date: 2006-12-13 02:38 pm (UTC)Sorry - and (I suspect) like you, surprised - to hear that Oxford isn't suiting as well as logic would suggest. Seems to me like you can expect some sort of useful change once the web site moves and you can actually get down to the business of making things better.
If we lived anywhere near anyone else then we would certainly come and see you for good cheer. My gut reaction is that you (pl., probably) could probably go and become one of those eminences grises whose company we all used to enjoy in our university society days, but perhaps you've moved on from that - and perhaps I might find that I had too were I in your position?
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Date: 2006-12-13 02:38 pm (UTC)I can't help but feel that's the wrong way round to be doing it.
... Hey,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
j4: you could get a duck and staple baby-hands to it! We've talked about it and, goh, even joked about it... but now could be the perfect moment.... I'll ask my contacts in the furnace room at the JR and we'll take it from there.
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Date: 2006-12-13 02:58 pm (UTC)Fly, my pretties!
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Date: 2006-12-13 03:02 pm (UTC)I mean, to be honest, I suspect in practice the landlady wouldn't know or care if we kept a cat. But I'm not sure how we'd let a cat in and out of a first-floor flat anyway. And it might not like next door's dog...
And then there's the expense. Argh. :-(
Anyway, I do hope your young lady doesn't ditch you, and we do intend to come to Feeling Gloomy at some point (hey, is there a New Year Gloomy?) so hopefully we will see you sooner or later even if you (singular or plural) don't make it to Oxford. (NB Oxford is not far from London! You can get there on a weeknight!)
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Date: 2006-12-13 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 03:12 pm (UTC)tenancy agreements. This includes the term 'keeping pets':
"Our objection is to blanket exclusions of pets without consideration of all the circumstances. Such a term has been
considered unfair under comparable legislation in another EU member state
because it could prevent a tenant keeping a goldfish. We are unlikely to object to a term prohibiting the keeping of pets that could
harm the property, affect subsequent tenants or be a nuisance to other residents."
So clearly 'no dogs' is fair enough, and 'no goldfish' is not. A cat is somewhere inbetween, I'd say.
She'll ditch me eventually, just if I'm lucky it won't be soon. At the moment I can't face Oxford on a weeknight, just the added hassle of getting from Victoria to my flat makes it a little bit too much, but I'm sure eventually something will be sufficiently tempting! It's mainly the weather, I didn't mind doing it in Summer.
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Date: 2006-12-13 04:11 pm (UTC)I got completely the wrong sense of, "does pine around," the first two times I read that. and now I think there really should be a Scandinavian furniture shop called Norwegian Blue, with a slogan Pine from Fjords.
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Date: 2006-12-13 04:16 pm (UTC)It's not easy, moving, but you'll find your feet. There will be plots of Chrimbley lights up on Cumnor hill to look at, and Tilbury Farm and Whytham hill, and museums, and so on. All will be well and all manner of things shall be well.
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Date: 2006-12-13 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 10:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-15 06:52 pm (UTC)Re Gloomy, do you know what the drinks prices are going to be like at this new "plush" venue? We're currently dithering between Gloomy and B-Movie, and we'd like to go to Gloomy, and the venue sounds nice (as opposed to the Rats which as you know is a dive, but kind of a nice dive, with cheap drinks), but Gloomy tickets are more expensive, which isn't a problem if drinks are going to be affordable, but, you know, you see the dilemma.
*faff* *dither*
And of course it's increasingly likely that *both* will be sold out, thus making the decision for us... :-/
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Date: 2006-12-16 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-18 01:20 am (UTC)In other news, I'll be in Oxfnord for the masqued ball on Friday Jan 26th. I have no other free weekends in January!