Sorry, mate. Fish of any kind is a no-go for myself. And I like cheese to be, well, “cheese”, so goat cheese is out of bounds, too.
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A clown made me dance in the circus today.
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Should’ve asked me to perform a fatality on you to spare you from that.
Was his name Mikel?
Do you think rush hour crush in the metro is real?
I get second hand embarrassment from reading it every morning 
I thought this Ibiza Final Boss Cunt was wearing a hat until today.
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Hearing Samrat has closed! 
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Is anyone else seeing lots of weird, sometimes huge spiders indoors this summer?
We’re fairly rural here so you get the usual few big house spiders scampering around once the weather turns autumnal but it’s already been busy.
We’ve got 7-8 Nobel False Widows in our conservatory. They’re nasty looking bastards with venom that can cause problems but keep themselves to themselves and eat other spiders. We’ll vacuum them up in Autumn. We’ve got Cellar Spiders in every corner of the house and every morning to there’s a bloody huge House Spider in the sink.
I fucking hate spiders and Autumn.
Hate the bastards, too. We see very few spiders here - probably seen two little ones in the house these past twenty years. I’m surprised to hear about false widows (I’ll have to look them up), even more surprised to hear of venomous spiders in England. Never heard of such a thing when we lived there.
We have a few venomous spiders in England but none usually give you more than a red itchy bump. Wolf Spiders (look like small tarantulas) don’t build webs because they poison their prey, they can give you a nasty bite but they generally stay outdoors. Our false widows are about 4-5 cm across including legs.
I also forgot to mention some weird smallish green spiders in my office. I’d take pictures but I’m usually too busy trying to scoop them into a glass to get rid of them.
It’s definitely to do with our warmer summers. We’ve recently started to hear those large crickets that sound like you’re on holiday somewhere warm.
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Have a load dotted around in my conservatory too and letting them pay the rent by killing off the flies and the like.
Will think about their fate when winter hits.
I’ve had several over the last few weeks! Hate the buggers ever since I went to Australia and put my shoes on one morning and realised that one of them was in my shoe! Turned out to be a huge huntsman! One of the reasons you must shake your shoes before putting them on!
I want to give a life update but I’m not even sure where to start, this year has been so hectic.
The year started with me wanting to find a new job. I’ve been wanting to leave my current role for a couple of years now, despite it being very cushty and comfortable, and while I work in government it’s related to a new sector called Quantum computing which is a very young and nascent industry with not a lot of jobs going. I could probably have found another job in another industry in the private sector much more easily but I really wanted to stick with Quantum as I think it’s the future so I waited patiently in this current role for something to come up. Anyway, 2025 is the UN International Year of Quantum and the level of private and public investment has reached new heights. From January - June I had 21 interviews with 4 different start-ups including various tasks and presentations I needed to do, interviewing like that is stressful enough on its own without also being served notice on our lease on the flat we rented in London in March.
Our landlord wanted to evict us so that he could raise rent from £1,900 a month to £2,600 a month and so we were left with trying to find a new home in 2 months, which in the current rental market in London was nigh on impossible.
We were viewing 1br flats with water damage and mould in Hammersmith that they wanted £2,300 a month (and that was the lower end of what we were seeing) for and it was just absolutely bonkers. We’d hoped to stay in London for another year or two after seven happy years there, but we couldn’t face spending that much on rent and the prospect of having to move again in a year or two. It always sounds morbid to say, but my wife’s grandfather graciously left some money to her in his will when he passed away last year so we had enough for a deposit on a house and realise that if we looked outside of London we could basically get a house for what we could get a flat for.
The decision basically made itself for us, but as many of you will know, finding a house and buying one in two months in the UK is essentially impossible and the probate of the estate was still on-going which was an ordeal as well. However, we found a house on the outskirts of Bath that we fell in love with and put an offer on in late March and things were progressing well! No chain either so it looked like we could get it over the line fairly quickly, maybe even by late May. Then in April, the sellers pulled out completely randomly and we were scuppered. That was really tough, because at the same time in March/April my wife started a new job managing people for the first time (which was incredibly stressful as they’re a growth stage start up), I was interviewing multiple times a week, and travelling loads for work. In the span of 4 weeks I had to travel to Paris, Munich, Gothenburg, Brussels and Copenhagen all while this was going on.
Come May, we were homeless. We were lucky enough to have some family to stay with in Bath for a while but they had ALSO been served notice so we could only stay with them for a few weeks (challenging enough in itself as well). We stayed with family, then into an Airbnb, then into another Airbnb and now currently staying in the empty house of a friend who has moved abroad and are trying to sell it (we’ve got a mattress on the floor and two beanbags). From May to August we’ve had five different addresses and having been living out of our suitcases with all of our worldly possessions in a storage unit.
Right around the time we moved in with family, a house four doors down from the one that fell through came up for sale as well, basically a mirror image, and we pounced on it. Offer accepted, no chain, woo.
However, buying a house with an overseas deposit (wife is American) and your address changing several times is easier said than done and it has dragged and dragged and dragged.
In July I was offered a new role at a company I really wanted to work for and had worked with in my current role, and just resigned last Monday with a start date in October.
We’ve also finally gotten to a point where we can start talking about a completion date on our house in early September (just before we go away on our delayed honeymoon from last year…).
My wife’s new job has been crazy. She’s in meetings from 8-6 every single day all day, and combined with all the work travel she’s been doing and I’ve been doing, I’ve worked out that we haven’t had a full 7 day week together since late February this year. Although we have had several weekends together (most of which were with family around).
I am totally, and utterly, spent. Completely drained physically and emotionally. There are so many more details and branches of stories I could elaborate on that just make this year even more ridiculous, but I’d be here typing for another hour.
I haven’t had any energy to see friends or interact socially, which is very unusual for me. I just feel like a shell of myself. Sleeping terribly, drinking too much.
This has definitely been one of the hardest years of my life. My mental health has been shot to pieces, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel and ultimately I think we’ll have a wonderful end to the year but the last 6 months have been horrific.
Now I realise how incredibly fortunate we are. We’re in a privileged position to be able to buy a lovely home that we expect to be in for the next couple of decades, in a beautiful city in a wonderful part of the country and I even got a nice pay rise too. But fuck me doing all of these things at once in such a shortened and concentrated timescale is not to be recommended.
If your partner is starting a new job, and you’re looking to get a new job, I would not recommend trying to also get a mortgage and buy a house.
Thank fuck we weren’t also pregnant.
Anyway, pic attached is my current situation as my wife is yet again away for work. Poppy, as always, has been incredibly supportive and living her best life lol
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This must have took ages to type out 
Glad to hear it all worked out in the end. Did you stay in Bath?
Yeah mate, over the course of an hour I kept getting distracted lol
yep been in bath since May - my wife is fully remote so can work from anywhere, and my new job is pretty flexible regarding days in the office and I’ll be travelling quite a lot so that made leaving London a bit easier as well.
I’ll still be in London quite a bit every month, so I’ll manage to get my “big city” fix then but I do not miss it at all. Definitely prefer town vibes with more of a sense of community.
I love walking through Bath and bumping into people etc
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So pleased to hear about the new job! I know what it is like doing multi stage interviews and it really takes it out of you, so well done getting through it and coming out the other side. Hope the new role is everything you want. Are you on gardening leave or do you have to work out your notice period?
As you mentioned Quantum, I will forever think of you now as 007 
Really great to also hear about the new house too - just hope it goes smoothly for you from now on. I found the whole thing very stressful, and the estate agent and solicitor first time round for me, didn’t help at all. Hopefully, you will have a calmer end to to the year and can take some time back for yourself. As someone who is currently suffering from fatigue, I know what exhaustion and burn out feels like and you need to take care of yourself. Plenty of rest, time to chill out and relax and hopefully some good football results to enjoy!
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Sounds very hectic and intense indeed. Am glad it’s all falling into place now. Wish you both all the happiness in the world and hope you have a great honeymoon.
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