And so the next instalment begins... well it has been sometime since our last update and by the title it has been quite a journey. By new life we mean; house, bank account, job, mobile phones and learning the transport system aka. the tube, overground and limitless double decker buses that trawl the streets day and night!We arrived back on the night of Thursday 4th Sep to head to our base for the next 10 days at Streatham Hill, located in the outer southern suburbs of London, where we were dossing (sleeping on the floor) at Michelle's house (Dee's sister). During these 10 days we were registering with numerous agencies where James came to realisation that the job market over here was very bleak with the current "credit crunch". It took nearly a month before James found work, and Dee a couple of weeks... which leads to another story...
Dee was called the day after registering with her OT agency by her consultant informing her he had a role within Acute/Neuro..... (rehabilitation although this was not clearly specified). This conversation took place at Victoria station which is a busy, loud and overcrowded place that doesn't help when speaking on the phone. After telling her consultant she would be happy to speak with the hospital manager about the role her phone began ringing 30 secs later and it just happened to be the manager from Royal Free Hospital, which is located in Belsize Park in the northern suburbs of London. Before she could even blink an eyelid Deanne had a new job beginning Monday the following week....which she was not all to rapt in considering she had zero experience in rehabilitation and with Neuro being one of the more complex areas too! Fortunately for us both, Dee was able to find work easily that pays well, however the hospitals tend to be a little distance out of London. Since her initial post Dee has begun work at Epsom Hospital which is located roughly 1 and a half hours from where we live... 6am wake up calls can be rough and the UK health system is somewhat ‘interesting’ to put it nicely however it’s all about earning the pounds for the next trip!!
James, whilst not quite what he expected commenced his employment within a telesales role at Haymarket Publishing. Even though the pay was terrible, the location (Hammersmith, 15 minute walk from home) and the people he worked with, being a young office with mid 20's people, made it easier to do the job. The London economy can be brutal and this contract only ended up lasting a month, so after another week of job searching (now he knows how the unemployed feel and it is not FUN!) he again landed back in Haymarket Publishing doing administration work for two weeks. Week 12 in London is job number three; however it is an ongoing role with Her Majesty’s Court in customer service.
Our other major task in London was finding a place to live. Fortunately for us, this exercise was pretty quick and not to painful. Gumtree the website of all websites to find rooms delivered us four different houses that we were interested in. We had decided on the Fulham or Putney areas after one weekend of visiting both locations (most people decide on places close to where they work, however we decided we would rather live in an area that has everything we are looking for eg. close to shops, tube, pubs and of course a good room). Our main dilemma is that most houses like to exclude couples because of the "added person" factor and so that effectively eliminated two third of the ads we were looking at, coupled with Dees one request of having an ensuite, our search became quite limited. Our very first place we looked at in Fulham met what we were looking for in the ad... until we saw it in person... run down, located on a busy road and not great on the eye, it was a quick NO. The following night we visited three places, one in Putney and two in Fulham. Putney place was a no, small house with too many people, the first Fulham house of the night was nearly on the mark except for the small bedroom and finally our last visit of the night landed us at 37a Niton Street, Fulham. Like a street out of Toorak, with big maple leaf trees lining the sides of the road, we met with Hunter who was one half of the couple that was leaving. 37a is a two story house that has a large lounge room, good size kitchen/dining area and enter the bedroom, large bright room with built in wardrobes and great ensuite, all for a fairly reasonable price... Dee’s eyes that night lit up on arrival. We both agreed on inspection this is our place for the next five or so months. We agreed on a moving in date on Sunday 21st September and also that we would doss for one week before that date.
Our housies, Bec who is in marketing, Allyce a PA, Renee in HR and Scott an Electrician are all great and we couldn't ask for better roommates. We welcomed our arrival by having a Saturday BBQ one weekend on our webber in our spacious backyard by London standards anyway (great cricket pitch), this was before the cooler gloomier weather really hit so it was a great sunny day.
October was a great month for the big reunion for Deanne & Michelle as Ian & Linda arrived at the start of the month for their month long visit. During their stay we all managed to pack in plenty of sightseeing of London and surrounds and numerous Sunday roasts and home cooked dinners. Deanne went on an Evan Evans tour to Oxford and Shakespeare country with them as well as a ‘west end’ theatre show Buddy (chosen by the parents of course) which was great.
Since we have been in London we had made use of every weekend that has come and gone, its incredible how much there is to do in London and surrounds. We have been exploring the Camden & Portobello Markets, been rowing on Hyde Park lake and just recently went to Bath for Guy Fawkes Day celebrations. We found a little gem of a place at Bath Uni to see the fireworks in what was a wet and blustery night which sadly our umbrellas did not survive! The town is famous for the Roman Baths and Pump room.. and course of we visited them. The hop on, hop off bus was a great way to explore the city also with the like of The Jane Austin house, Nicholas Cage’s 4million pound home and famous bridges that are in and around town. We also made a daytrip out to Stonehenge the famous pieces of rocks that appeared from nowhere... in the middle of nowhere. No one really knows how they got there all those many hundred years ago, but it was fairly interesting even if it was freezing out there.
James also ventured back to Munich for the celebrations of all celebrations.. Oktoberfest. Pictures tell it all... an amazing time, with alot of beer, pretzels and weiner sausages (strangely they also love whole chickens and these were sold everywhere).
In the coming weeks and months we plan on visiting Cambridge, Wales, Ireland, the French Alps for Christmas and Scotland (Hogmanay festival) for New Years. But most interestingly and most randomly, James is going to be on BBC’s Bargain Hunt (if you are bored one day watch Channel 9 at 5:30pm to get an idea of the show!!!). A friend from uni is over and rang him up one day to ask if he wanted to go on the show with him.. so why not remember London by going on the BBC. He has NO IDEA how to shop in a flea market, but by god he is going to give it a go! He has £300 between the team (for which there are two teams of two competing against each other) to buy three items and then it will go to auction two weeks later. The idea is that you have to gain the highest profit from the three items that are sold, beating your opposing team. Fingers crossed!
There has been so much more that has happened, but we think that we have said enough for now.
Hope all is well back home and enjoy the upcoming Christmas holidays.
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