Hi ho, hi ho

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it’s off to work I go.

Yes - that is right, after nearly 4 months of freedom (actually, when I start work on December 4, it will be exactly 4 months), I once again join the land of the employed.

I am working for a medium sized firm. It will be good to have some money coming in again - especially as I am already planning a number of snowboarding trips!!

So, I can hear you asking yourself, ‘What did she DO with all that free time?’. This is an attempt to work that out, because I can tell you - it does not feel like 4 months have passed.

Well, we may as well be scientific about the accounting for my time:

122 days = 4 months

3 days - music festival;
1 day - day trips from London - Brighton (hmmmm must improve here);
4 days - weekends away in England - Bath, Cotswolds;
16 days - travel outside of England (Paris, Dublin, Edinburgh, Geneva and a yet to be determined destination to celebrate the gaining of employment);
1 day - recovering from a dawn finish at one of London’s superclubs (Fabric);
5 days - recovering from earlier (but no less debilitating) finishes at a selection of London’s pubs thinking ‘I must not drink a pint like it is a schooner’;
1.5 days - start (and end) my career on London’s West End;
10 days - visiting sights of London - Trafalgar Square, Barbican, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Millennium Bridge, London Bridge (and all the other bridges), South Bank, Tower of London (outside only), Brick Lane, Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, St James Park, Hyde Park, Australian War Memorial, Westminster Abbey and walking around the streets of London;
6 days - visiting museums of London - Tate Britain, Tate Modern, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Science Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, British Museum, Museum of London, Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, Victoria and Albert Museum, Natural History Museum, Imperial War Museum, Foundlings Museum (thanks Gilesy for the Lonely Planet London - as you can see I have been putting it to good use!);
7 days - shopping;
3 days - visiting markets - Portabello Road, Leadenhall, Borough;
2 days - seeing London shows (for free - thanks Yolande!) - Daddy Cool, Spamalot, Porgy and Bess, Waiting for Godot;
7 days - playing sport - netball one or two evenings a week plus a one day tournament;
3 days - acting as ‘home handywoman’ - filling the gaps between the floorboards to prevent the cold cellar air diluting the warm living room air;
20 days - job hunting - meeting with recruiters, searching for jobs on the internet, amending CV, going to interviews;
2 days - ranting about how crap recruiters are;
2 days - lost in London because the streets change name every two blocks (but within that two block radius there are at least 5 variations on that street name - X Close, X Road, X Circus, X Mews, X Terrace, X Square, X Circuit, X Lane), none of the streets are straight, every street corner looks the same (with a Pret sandwich shop and a Nero coffee shop) and I seem to lose all sense of directions in London;
2 days - listening to English people tell me how lucky I have been with the weather and how mild it has been for this time of year.

That leaves nearly a month of just hanging about, sleeping in (not that this means I did not sleep in on the other days), reading, watching bad daytime television, listening to music, writing e.mails and my blog, searching the intenet for cheap travel deals…..

No wonder I am exhausted!!! (JK)

Some things that I failed to do while a lady of leisure (I had high hopes for myself) include:

Become a domestic goddess (cooking aspect only)
Learn a language (not even a start on one…)
Become amazingly fit

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