All Change

As of the Tuesday just gone, I am a nomad. I am littlest hobo.

I am now living with my boyfriend's relatives. While this may sound like an absolutely terrifying and frankly awful prospect to many people, my potential inlaws (boyfriend take note: just a turn of phrase) are absolutely bloody fantastic; laid back, relaxed, friendly, funny, welcoming.

And they have a pool table.

So things could be worse. They also have an enormous bed in their spare room. I'm talking seriously huge, a vast oasis of calm in a room clattered with things I apparently think I need for my day to day running over the next 6 weeks while we are imposing ourselves on them in what I'm praying isn't an enormous abuse of their hospitality.

They also have a 7 year old boy. Which means they have a pirate ship, various figurines and an Eddie Stobart lorry to play with in the bath. Oh and an inflatable bowling alley (has to be seen to be believed/understood).

So on the whole I've got a pretty good deal out of this.

However, now I am living in Kent. And this involves an overground, common-or-garden, unreliable, over subscribed train journey.

And that is before I have to spend 20 minutes in District Line Hell.

My journey time now has increased by 50% to an hour and a half each way, each day. And I no longer can work from home to ease my stress levels. And, along with my journey time, my travel costs have also rocketed to an unsavory £42 a week. Someone's trying to get back at me for the compulsory council tax rebate I've just been issued.

Its not so much the length of journey, its the change involved. I am now one of Them: an outsider, an imposter trying to pretend to be a Londonite (rather than an insider pretending to be a Londonite like I was prior to Tuesday). I really now am in Commuting Hell.

In an effort to ease this assault on the senses, I have maintained my work hours of 8 til 4, so I supposedly avoid rush hour, but in London rush hour appears to run pretty much all day (with perhaps a 45 minute lunch break when noone's looking).

But it isn't really helping. Because now, instead of joining the tube in the far west or east of the city, I now have to fight tooth and nail to get on the overcrowded, sweat scented, uncomfortable tube train in central London. With a rather conspicuous bulky, cumbersome rucksack on my back, and a heavy laptop (and usually a variety of assorted crushed and brusied fruit) within. And I've still not grasped that if I put my rucksack on and then put my headphones in that when I take my rucksack off, my headphones are wrenched painfully from my ears. Every time.

I am not making friends with my new commute. But I am determined to become a pool genius by the time we leave. Which is a. slightly ambitious and b. completely unachievable as not only do I suck badly, I suck so badly that even the 7 year old won't play with me.