3 am in the vast, humming silence of Stansted is a grim time and place in which to be. The fluorescent light are switched off and for that we are grateful and the great expanse is dimly lit by the light of the signs of various food stands, most closed and shuttered except inexplicably the hot do counter.
In the dark corner where the Bureau De Change meets check-in desks 110-120 there is a figure curled up on the floor, a little wheely suitcase trying its best to act as a pillow. Gareth shrugs his high viz jacket on, straightens his lanyard and approaches the figure. The check-in for Prague is opening on desks 115 through 120. It is his unhappy task at this hour of the morning to makes sure everything is ship-shape. There is a grubby and much handled piece of paper lying off to one side and Gareth stoops to retrieve it.
The still figure shoots out one hand, opens one eye and squints up at him,
"Leave that!"
Gareth leaves that well enough alone.
The figure sits up, unfolds the grubby scrap and digs a pen from the recesses of a pocket. Gareth can just about make out a few bullet points. The figure, more wearily than gleefully but the glee will come later, puts a line through two of them:
2. SECURE GRADUATE JOB
3. MOVE TO LONDON
and squints up at Gareth again.
"I am here for the 6.50am, yes you heard right, 6.50am flight to Belfast because I wouldn't pay the £125 to have it at a civilised hour. I was supposed to be home three days ago. I haven't really slept since then because of this unseasonal heat in which I had to trek around London flat hunting in kitten heels because I didn't think I'd need sensible shoes. Can I snooze here?"
"To be honest love, yer can do what yer like..."
What a whirlwind of a week. In seven days I have managed to cross off two off the, what, five life goals on my list? That was comparatively easy. Don't get me wrong, there were three days of condensed stress as I tried valiantly to find lodgings in London, the shock at actually finding a job, the guilt at imposing on friends who went to the ends of the earth to make things so comparatively easy for me. The girl in me is chuffed to pieces. But the writer, she suffers...
Writer: <click clack of keys, a slosh of Sauvignon, purse of lips รก la Anna Wintour> "The sun scorched down upon the streets of London and upon one lone room hunter as she fends tourists of with one hand and swigs from a bottle of water with another...GOD DAMN IT!"
Actual Human Being: What in the name of God is wrong?
Writer: How am I supposed to work with this dross! Interview, offer, job hunt, lols with friends! Subtract the stress and it's disgustingly easy! You remember Madrid?
Girl: We still wake up screaming at night, yes...
Writer: Juan Carlos and his dodgy building sites he promised would be done by August? The uncertainty of the Spanish? The putas and mala suerte and the vino? And the job hunt! The months we spent since November this year opening our inbox to a rejection every day? By God it wasn't perfect but it was drama!!
Girl: Despair and distress make for funnier stories, I agree. But I think it'll be good to let people know that things generally turn out right in the end and there are happy endings. I'm sure we'll have all the time in the world for things to go horrifically wrong. We'll let everyone have a glimpse at them going stupendously right...
And stupendously right they did go, but I wouldn't be me and there wouldn't be a blog if we hadn't accrued some anecdotal urges. A few vignettes then from the week end the world actually said yes yo our ever present prayer: "Giz a job and giz London..."
The interview! I wanted this job, a job where I would I could write and publish content, where I could have the best experience ever that would provide the key to the locked halls of true authorship. My job title is WRITER. It's going to be in Italicised letters on my very own business card soon. And I couldn't be happier. But first, the interview!
The company is beautiful, a cream brick building in Covent Garden and I already know the receptionists. We had all the chats on the day of my first interview...
"Hi Claire! Like Terminator II, I'm back!"
Oh that's wonderful, I'll just let Jamie know, best of best of luck, I'm sure you'll be fabulous!"
And everyone who passed me when I was waiting asked if I was there for interview, told me to just be myself and wished me luck. Fate was dangling working for this place in front of me, tantalisingly. And the interview started,
"So where did you grow up?"
"Well, do you know the song Mountains of Mourne?" (in the certain knowledge that every resident of the British Isles over 50 knows this song)
"I don't actually, will you sing it for me?"
"<the carefully cultivated professional cool and polished accent falls away at this request> What, d'ye really want me to sing to ye in a job interview?"
"Yes please, if you'd like to,"
I considered how much I wanted this job. And I came to a decision. And I opened my mouth and sang the (oddly appropriate) song of my people..."
"Oh Mary this London's a wonderful sight,
With the people here working by day and by night
They don't sow potatoes, nor barley nor wheat,
But there's gangs of them digging for gold in the street,
At least when I asked them that's what I was told
So I just took a hand in the digging for gold,
But for all this dear Mary I might as well be,
In the place where the dark Mournes sweep down to the sea..."
He applauded. And then we spoke of many things. And then we two parted. And the next morning he gave me a job. Rang me while we were on the train. And I whooped and cheered. And I rang everyone I could think of. And when some ill-bred wanker who had probably just been made redundant had the nerve to tut I looked him full in the eye and raised an eyebrow. That's as far as you're able to go on a train/the Tube without being arrested...
And we were on our way to the Tower of London! And of course when our guide asked if anyone was from Ireland we stuck up our hands and when he asked why we were in London I replied,
"I just got a job! They rang half an hour ago!"
And Dicky, elated and exuberant raised his arms and cried in the accent of every cheeky butler since the original Jeeves, "Ladies and gentlemen, this young lady has just become gainfully employed in the greatest city in the world. A hip hip hooray for the young lady! Now that'll be a nice interval before the husband hunt..."
And all was well with the world. We saw the Crown Jewels (Dicky: "The two foremost questions posed to me in the enactment of my office as tour guide. "WHERE are the Crown Jewels! And WHERE...are the toilets?") and we had chips and we had wine and good food and this was all wonderful until my mother, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, know of all things, Her Magnificent Omnipotnce and the origin of the phrase "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" rang and proposed a question:
"Would it not be better to stay and get some accommodation sorted for the autumn?"
Of course it would! I mean it eventually involved eight hours straight glued to Spareroom.co.uk, a full day trekking around London on one of the hottest days of the year and that ever residual panic you will all know. It's an awful lot of money and trust to spend in one go, finding somewhere to live, especially on your own. You don't know the area, don't know who you're dealing with and by the time you give over a deposit you feel every single mile between yourself and home. I imagine like a relationship. The first one I got into was a flat in Madrid and no sooner were we back in the UK after spending money, time and tears that the landlady rang up, changed her mind, was giving back the deposit and wished us the best.
And then people will say, "Why didn't you lawyer the shit out of her??" But that isn't how it works in real life. Drag her to court, demand she put us up, spend what could easily be six months and a lot of money embroiled in legal proceedings when we needed somewhere to live? No. In real life we took back the money and had to arrange to do it all again.
So, as life as in love, I was once bitten, forever shy. And that might explain my reaction when my mother filled me in on everything that could go horribly wrong (flaky landlord to internet scams) that I had to do all these complicated things to avoid (sign everything...EVERYTHING) Forgetting my friends were enjoying Angel Delight in the next room, I snapped and quasi-sobbed in an almost Italo-American accent in my panic:
"MA!! GAWD!! PLEASE!! I'M NOT GOING TO END UP SQUATTING IN SOME HOVEL COVERED IN MY OWN SHIT!!
Now she did find it funny, but at that stage she and shocked friends were the only ones in good humour. I was uncharacteristically worried sick...
We shall fast forward past the two days of intense hunting, because that's how fast things come and go in London. And eventually I found a room in Islington, ten minutes from The Angel, which filled me with delight because my knowledge of London is squarely based on the Monopoly board. And my landlady Angela is the salt of the earth. So that's were I am for the first two months of life in London and I couldn't be happier.
Of course the city itself gave me signs. Now I may not be the "spiritual sort interested in the healing arts and power of the earth" that some 42 year old Malaysian man wanted to share his flat with but every time I worried if I was doing the right thing I would see a penny on the street, turn a corner and find a Benet's of Cambridge (an ice cream shop that I know well in Cambridge itself), see an ad for Dame Edna at the Palladium or run into a Starbucks to surf Spareroom and hear my song playing. Frank Sinatra "That's Life" for those of you curious. And seeing all of these familiar things I loved, well, I'd have a heart of stone if I didn't take them as a sign...
But there you have it! That is the story of how one week saw me from crawling up the walls at home, wracked with existential uncertainty to excitement at the prospect of moving the London to start a proper job. But there'll be some homesickness as well.
I found a postcard in Spitalfields Market. A one hundred year old postcard sent from that place I sang of, where the dark Mournes sweep down to the sea to a place called Downpatrick which nowadays is fifteen minutes up the road by car. My daddy, (and believe me if you all met him you would love him, one of the sweetest men in the world, think of him as Dahl's character Grandpa Joe and my Mummy as a 1st class degree holding Hyacinth Bouquet, not Bucket darling and you're there), Anywho my daddy adores history and read this postcard in delight, glasses perched on the end of his nose. And in the car on the way back from the airport we pulled in at a Spar and I asked jokingly, "Daddy, daddy, can you get me a Porky Pig (a 60p ice lolly we devoured as children) please?" And he replied solemnly, "Of course I will! Be you five or fifty, unemployed or the editor of the Times you'll always be my child and I shall always get you ice lollies."
Oh Dad...
But enough, C S Lewis said that if we are brave and patient the things to come are infinitely better than the things we leave behind, though you can be your bum (can't say "ass" so close to a mention of my Daddy...) I'll be home as often as possible for the family.
And in the spirit of that advice from the man who wrote my childhood though he didn't know it, I take you back to where I am sitting in light of the approaching dawn (symbolism see, new day imagery, I really am a well good writer) looking speculatively at the list Gareth of Stansted almost did away with and tap the next two items thoughtfully...
4. FALL IN LOVE
5. BE READ
And they may be the last things on my list but I have a feeling they'll be the hardest.
The search of a twenty-something for love and literature in the city of London then! But surely there will be the occasional obstacles and impositions that every twenty-something will know only too well. We can but hope that from now on the blog does not descend into whiny mediocrity, spouting rubbish about real life and romance like a two-bit Bridget Jones wannabe. It shall not be so!
Thus next week, the gearing up to leave; the loose ends tied, the friends good byed, last Ulster fried, and all implied in the move from the Dark Mournes to London Town.
All that remains is to thank so many who were rooting for me and didn't hesitate to make congratulations known. I must remember that short as a week was, this dream has been alive since 2009 and the job hunt was in full swing since November. And now I shall pour some white wine, drag a chair out the back under unseasonal blue sky, surrounded by leafy trees, green fields and the purple haze of the mountains in the not-so-distance. I shall turn up Olly Murs "Right place, right time," let the apt lyrics wash over me and lie back to contemplate my happy beginning...
xo
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