Time passes... seasons change....

Last night I got home from the last day of a horror migration (here in London) over the weekend and basically collapsed. I won't go into specifics but basically from Thursday to Sunday things were going great and we were well on track while not having to work too late (10pm finishes). Then Sunday afternoon/evening, things just went WRONG! Working till 3am and then back in at 9am Monday got it all fixed, but yeah, last night I just died!.

The other bad thing was that on Monday afternoon I had an interview scheduled to get a National Insurance (like a tax file number). As part of it I had to bring like twenty pieces of documentation proving who I was and where I lived etc. They are positively anal and I even had to bring a letter from David (my uncle I'm living with) saying I was Anthony Hawke , I did live in Southfields with him and Jen and even then he had to provide a bill with their home address to prove who _they_ were! I had a seemingly nice older lady who eventually turned out to be a nazi. Not only do you have to wait before the interview starts, when it's finished you again have to sit around for ages while another person double checks the work the first one did. Oh, and then you don't find out if there is any issue with your application for four to six weeks!?!? Hooray for English efficiency. Their line is 'If you don't hear/receive anything in eight weeks, call this number....'. Great!

But it wasn't all bad as Monday heralded another triumph for me. I managed to actually find a bus and successfully catch it back home to Southfields (blowing work off for the rest of the day). So now I can tick off the 'catch bus in London' box, and all that is left is the ‘catch night bus’ box! (they're scary).

So to get to the point of this post, time! I realise that I've been working so much this last week that time is just disappearing. I have managed to see a movie and head to the pub most nights, but I haven't really devoted time to the blog or emails etc. It was all brought to my attention last night when my uncle commented that the leaves of a huge tree in the back of the garden were changing colour. That meant we get a last burst of nice weather and winter starts to arrive, so the season is changing. I looked around the garden and saw that lots of trees are all changing…. (photo's above and below - those tree's were brilliant green a week ago, you can see the ugly brown on the leaves in the top pic - and the tomatoes photo is there just.. 'cause they're cute). So there goes my English summer and on comes the disgusting cold and nasty winter!!! It seems only days ago I was lying on the beach etc at Brighton lapping up the summer weather and weeks since I was drinking and sunning it up and Fan Fest’s all around Germany during the World Cup! (aaaah…. memories!)

Today (Tuesday) I am back at work again despite it being my 'pseudo-weekend'. We had a huge meeting after the shocking weekend as a sort of debrief though so it was really important to come in (and very constructive). Tonight I am heading off to a Cirque-Du-Solei type performance in North London with CK and his mates, so there's a nice break. Tomorrow I have the day off, but will probably be writing documentation of the weekend issues etc (so I get paid to work a full day.. yay!).

Once again however, there's a silver lining to all of this. In the meeting today it was decided that the this weekend I will be here in London again for a migration, but next weekend I am going to be in Madrid!! This is unbelievable because I was planning to head to 'La Tomatina' (the tomato throwing festival) with CK and his mates for two days. As I'm going to be in Madrid for work the week before, I can simply stay on in the city for 2-3 days and then train it to meet CK and his mates in the house they've organised near the festival (another whole week in Spain!). After it all, I can get back to Madrid and catch the free flight back to London (work is happy to let me use the ticket whenever I want as it's fully flexible). GOOOOOAL!

Anyway, please keep the emails coming. I hope that if things are starting to get colder here that means in Australia they are beginning to warm up again. Send me pics of all the beaches I'm missing out on!

Anka