London

Having finally scored a job and a roof over our heads maybe there's enough time to come back here. I'm in to my second full month in the UK, having arrived in early January job hunting for a few weeks and not enjoying the winter one bit. I spent a couple of weeks in a basement flat with no window going to interviews and cursing the cold and dark. But now we've managed to get a flat in a nicer suburb of London, close to a river and parks but still theoretically close to London proper. I say theoretically because the commute isn't as I'd hoped. I take the drain to work everyday (yes the drain - so called because of all the people being drained from the City, or maybe just cos the Thames keeps leaking in). And filing in and out of the station is like leaving a stadium. I miscalculated the commute time from our apartment, figuring only the travel on the train and not the delays and all the slow shuffling with thousands of others along platforms and narrow corridors. We've had a few bad experiences getting stuff organised for our place - furniture dumped on the side of the road (thank you Home Base), being billed twice, stuff never appearing - none of which makes adjusting to life here any easier. The steel grey winter makes staring out the train at all the rows of terraced housing and bare trees less than uplifting on the way in to work.