Apology two comes in advance for the length this blog might turn out to be... I have a lot to divulge about my first week living in the big bad city.
So if I pick up where I left off in my last post, sat in a hotel room wondering what my first day at my new job was going to have in store for me... The answer was... A brain overload! I got to meet my fellow interns who are both lovely and then the rest of the team... And all of the managers... I then had meetings with said managers and each one gave me a "brief" overview of what they did at the company.
I'm being sarcastic when I say brief. If you hadn't already guessed.
To add to the madness, I also had to sign for my flat keys and move in on the same day! This worked out slightly better than expected with the help from my wonderful parents, who travelled down from Newcastle to pitch in, and my lovely concierge man Adrian, who I can tell already is going to be like a substitute Grandad to me... If only with an accent so thick it's hard to understand sometimes!
After day one, things at work really picked up and I can honestly say I love my new job! I got my first articles published on the website on day three and I really feel like I'm making a difference to the team and being useful for the first time in months.
My home life however, has not been so plain sailing.
As the majority of my friends could tell you, the phrase "domestic goddess" would never be used to describe me. And on Tuesday night my little studio flat really put me to the test.
If walls could talk, they'd be wetting themselves laughing.
So my little kitchen in my little flat comes equipped with a microwave/grill and a 2-ring electric hob, which is all touch screen and LED lights techno-modern (aka alien to me).
Armed with a variety of instruction manuals, it still took me over an hour and a half to cook some pasta. Starving and tired as I was, this was the flats first offence of the night.
The second offence came from the electric radiator heater attached to my wall. Again, I was armed with an instruction manual (which may as well have been written in Swahili for what use it was), but I couldn't fathom the thing out!
Switching it on was easy, however it decided that it was set to a timer schedule and wouldn't actually provide any heat until Thursday night at precisely 23:59. This was Tuesday. This was no good.
So I shamelessly resorted to the good old tactic of switching it on and off at the mains a few times and hitting the thing until it did what it was told. I think it got scared of me because it did eventually spring into life and warm the place up.
Fed and warm, the only thing left to do before hitting the hay was to sort an outfit for work the next morning. Which brings me to offence three... The ironing board.
It's one of these old-school contraptions with a little lever on the underside which is used to adjust the height and make the thing stay up.
I pulled the lever, pushed the lever, swung it side to side, the thing would not stay up, and clattered to the floor with a loud bang at least a dozen times before I really started to lose faith in my abilities as a human being.
So I did what any girl in this situation would do and rang my Mam in tears. One hand holding the phone and the other supporting the demon ironing board, my Mam tried her best to explain to me how the thing worked... Before it fell and hit me in the eye.
So I cried some more.
Tuesday was probably my lowest point of the week so I was happy to be coming home on Friday night.
It is now Sunday and I'm typing this on the train back to Leeds with a heavy heart. I know things are going to get easier, but until this happens, saying goodbye is agony.
Knowing you're travelling back to an empty flat leaves an inexplicable empty feeling somewhere between your stomach and rib cage which can't be filled by any amount of comfort pizza or ice cream.
This week is a short week with the Easter weekend looming, so I know it won't be long til I'm doing this journey again in reverse.
I'm sure I'll survive... Unless the appliances in the flat have other ideas!
L x
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