Hi Ho - Its Off To Work I Go!

I got up at the rather early time of 6.30am and got ready for my first day at work for MWH!
I left home at 7.30am and made my way down to Marylebone Train Station in hope to catch the 7.53 train, but missed it by about 2 minutes! Thankfully there are regular trains to High Wycombe, so caught the 7.59 train instead.

I read my Bill Bryson book ‘Notes from a Small Island’ that Ben had given me for Christmas last year on the way. I decided to start reading the book again, as now I am a lot more familiar with the locations and names that he talks about (I had no idea what ‘Mark and Spenser’s’, ‘Waterstones’ or ‘Boots’ were until I came here!), plus I have been to some of the towns!

I arrived in High Wycombe at 8.50am (so not exactly the express train) and managed to walk to MWH without getting tooo lost, after taking a wrong turn somewhere.

The guy I was meant to met, Steve, wasn’t there when I arrived, nor was my computer. A guy called Michael happened to be the lucky one to bump into me as I walked in the door and got me set up on a computer on the neighbouring desk. Emma, who I had meet at my interview, gave me a bit of a tour and introduced me to a number of people in the building, until Steve came and found us.

I did a bit of background readying and getting used to their systems (i.e. nothing much!) until my laptop arrived, which will be my temporary computer replacement.

Darren, Kevin, Emma and I headed down to the local pub to watch the NZ vs Aus one day cricket game in India. We had a lunch and a drink before heading back for another unproductive afternoon.

I got a call from Brendan in the afternoon, letting me know his plans as he is not getting off the ship when he expected. He has been offered a permanent position with them, which means can now come to Paris with us in a few weeks!

I stuck around to 5.30pm doing a little background reading and then headed to the train station after organising with my boss to have next Friday off for our trip to Berlin.
I caught the 17.46 direct train back to Marylebone (a lot quicker than the way here!) and walked back home.

I had a bit of dinner, and decided to turn on the central heating because it was getting so cold!!

It’s really good to be working again, and to actually be able to use my brain! I can’t believe it’s been 4 months since I’ve worked (what a slacker!).
It always seems to be the little things that get me excited, and I’m sure I’m going to find a few of them working here, especially during my first week …

Excitement of the day: having my name on an In/Out board again!


The next day I got up at little later and caught the 8.20am express train as suggested by Darren at work.

I was introduced to my job manager, Tony, who had been away yesterday. He gave me some background reading for a flood alleviation and foul sewer upgrade at Blenheim Crescent in Luton.

At lunch time I went down to the shops to have a little look around and try and find something to eat. I saw a few people with Tesco bags, but couldn’t for the life of me find it!
I ended up at Greg’s and probably bought enough food for the next few days. I took my lunch back to work and spent the afternoon switching between reading, eating, e-mailing and eating.

Tony gave me a detailed briefing of the project, and finally at about 4.30pm I actually started to do some real work!

I left about 5.30, to once again catch the express train back to London. I had a bit of a rushed dinner, while Helen came over.

We caught the tubes over to Angel, met Benny, and then headed to the ‘Beirodrome’ for Brian’s farewell drinks at about 9.30pm. We had one last chat with Brian before he heads off to The Netherlands tomorrow to live!

Excitement of the day: MWH get their milk delivered in little glass milk bottles, like the ones we used to get as a kid, even with the foil lids - very cool!


I had a bit of a struggle to get out of bed on Friday, and scuttled out the door to the train station. I managed to catch my train despite a little mishap with the debit card system at the ticket office.

I spend a day in a mix of inductions, working, and e-mails. I got invited out to Lunch at ‘The Bell’ - A pub on the corner near MWH that has rather tasty Thai food.

The afternoon was spent eating the lunch that I brought in with me and watching the time pass by. I headed out the door at 5pm to catch the train home. This is the first train that I not only actually had to share a seat, but there were also people standing!

I got home about 6.30pm, and due to indecision on what to have for dinner, I settled on a hot chocolate and some cookies.

I headed down to ‘Match Bar’ near Oxford Circus to meet Beth and the birthday girl, Trish.
Match Bar was a pretty good bar, nice music etc. We had a few drinks and got talking to a few people, and I finally got to meet the infamous ‘Josh’, who has been dosing at Beth and Helen’s.

Excitement of the day: unfortunately its not that MWH have a casual Friday, because they don’t , but because I am ’25 or under’ I can get a youth travel card and get up to 1/3 of my train tickets! Yay!


I had a nice sleep in on Saturday and had a big breakfast of bacon, toast and Weetabix. I had planned to have baked beans, but I didn’t have any, nor any spaghetti. I was then going to have some banana with my bacon on toast, but I didn’t have any of those either.

I caught the tube to Westminster at 12pm to meet Beth, Helen, Josh and the gang at St Christopher’s Tavern, where we had our first drink and the start of the circle line pub crawl!

We slowly made our way around every stop on the circle line (anti-clockwise), alighting at each station to have a drink at the nearest pub.

12 hours later, after numerous photos and losing a fair amount of people along the way, we gave up at Kings Cross Station and jumped on the Hammersmith and City line and headed home with some quite good footage for future incriminations….

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