Categories: uncategorized
Date: 25 August 2008 23:33:51
I will never forget my 25th birthday. A work outing had coincidentally been arranged, so we spent the evening punting on the Cam and then had a large meal where I was called upon to give a birthday speech and somehow got away with simply standing up, saying "Cheers." and sitting down again (I tend to reuse this speech wherever possible). But that's not why I remember it.
As I was sitting at work that morning, I suddenly heard God speaking to me. Now I don't usually get a really clear sense of what God's trying to say; mine tend to be a more vague feeling of, "I've just had a thought which I would never have actually had on my own, so it's probably God; I'd better look into that a bit more". And that's what this was. And God was saying, "go to Birmingham".
I had no idea why. I had a couple of friends in Birmingham, and I knew one of them was about to move out of his shared house because he was getting married. So I phoned the other mate, Mark, who I knew better, and who was still going to be living in this shared house, and we talked about it a little and he was quite excited. I talked to Mum straight away as well, and she was really encouraging and suggested I should see if I could go and visit Mark for a weekend and see how I felt about it. So a couple of weeks later, that's what I did; and I really felt I should move. When I got home, I talked it through a bit more with Mum, and in the next few days I agreed things with Mark, wrote and handed in my resignation letter to work, started looking at job possibilities in the Birmingham area, and told a few close friends that I would soon be leaving. And then we had to work out how I was going to tell Dad.
Bless him, I love my dad. But sometimes he doesn't realise that, just because something isn't what he would do or isn't done in the way he would do it, there's nothing wrong with it. We approached the subject carefully, and although he knew I was looking into moving, he didn't know I'd handed in my notice. His main concern seemed to be that I didn't already have a job lined up for when I arrived in Birmingham, and he seemed to equate this with a sense that I would simply arrive here, then phone him up asking for money every five minutes (which in fairness, had probably come about as a result of me asking him for money every five minutes). I explained that I was thinking through my options and I'd already been in touch with a few people and had a plan formulated, and after Mum spoke to him too, he came round to the idea and sent me off with his blessing. Conveniently, he also drove me and all my stuff up to my new home, which was nice.
It was sad to leave my old friends, my old church and my old youth group behind. And especially as I struggled to fit in over my first months in Birmingham. You see, a couple of weeks before I moved, Mark had started going out with Claire. And this caused a problem, in that they were due to be living in the same house, and felt that wouldn't be a good idea. So, about a week before I moved, I was asked if I'd mind moving into the house where Claire lived, two doors down from Mark's place. It didn't really make any odds to me, but it did mean that the only person I really knew around here was spending all his time with someone else, which made it hard for me to fit in. But over time, I got more settled. I started going to the same church as Mark and Claire, and got to know more people, and soon I had some really good friendships.
I was also rather fortunate to have a great selection of housemates, both when I arrived and subsequently. As well as Claire, when I arrived I was sharing with two of Mark's friends - Olly, his very laid back former uni housemate, and Tim, a guy from church who was really fun to hang out with, although I rarely got the chance (his general routine involved working in the afternoon, coming home about 10, going round to friends at about 11, and getting home in the early hours to sleep through the morning). Since then, a procession of other people from a wide variety of countries have lived here, including a French wallpaper salesman, a German scientist, a Belgian jazz-loving music teacher, a South African call centre worker, an Estonian student and a Congolese football fanatic, who sadly died from stomach cancer at a tragically young age just a couple of months after moving out. Ironically, his replacement was the only person I ever had language problems with - a trainee plumber whose Glaswegian accent was so strong that I didn't understand most of what he said aside from "chicken fajitas" and "Big Brother". And I can't guarantee I actually understood that correctly, but since he spent his evenings cooking chicken fajitas and watching Big Brother, I'm fairly confident I got it.
Work sorted itself out, after a fashion. Upon my arrival, I spent a week or so settling in, and then set about finding the temp agencies in town to ply my administrative trade. I found one who were very helpful and one who weren't. And then the next day, a Friday, I found another one who phoned me back within two hours of my visit to ask if I wanted to start work the following Monday. Does the Pope wear a funny hat? (in case you're not sure, the answer's "yes") I spent the next two years in an office with a bunch of men (and one woman), which made an interesting change from my previous job where for the most part I was the only guy in a team of women. They were very supportive, and my boss encouraged me to hang in there while he tried to find the funding to make my post permanent.
After two years hanging, the boss told me he couldn't guarantee he was going to get the funding after all, and said he would fully support me in looking for something else. Then he said that another department, who worked alongside us doing similar work but for a different client group, had a vacancy, and that I ought to apply for it. So I did. And I got the job, and I started a couple of weeks before Christmas 2005.
It hasn't all been plain sailing; those of you with long memories will remember that I started this blog during a two-month period off work with stress-induced depression. But my managers and colleagues have been incredibly supportive, and I now feel much more in control of my work. I don't necessarily intend to stay until I retire - assuming there still is a retirement age by the time I get to it - but I feel settled now. And I feel settled in Birmingham too; after about a year, I found myself thinking 'ah, here we are, home again' not when I arrived back in Cambridge, but when I got off the train at New Street. Birmingham has undergone a lot of regeneration in recent years, a lot since I've been here even, and finally seems to be shaking off the reputation of being a bit of a dump. Not saying this is all down to me being here, of course, but...
So that's the past, and now we reach the present. And we all know what comes next, eh?