Saturday, 28th February 2009
Our New Flat (And A Little Summary)
Fi and I are finally settled in Bristol (jee wizz, it’s only taken a month!).
As you know (actually, you probably don’t since I’ve been so lame at updating my blog over the last few weeks) Fi and I had been living in Thom’s spare room since we got back to Bristol. I get on really well with Thom but, when your married, you just need your own space so it’s great that we now have a place to call our own.
Our tenancy commenced last Friday (eight days ago) but we couldn’t move in that day as we had to drive back to High Wycombe so I could sit my GP exam in Oxford on Saturday (I think it went well but I won’t know for another 10 days or so). Fi got to spend the first night in the flat (alone) as I started nights Saturday (that’s right, a 3 1/2 hour exam in the morning followed by 100 miles in the car and then a night shift!). Fortunately, since our department is currently on ‘minor’ ENT take we only have to cover Frenchay A&E and the ward patients so I managed to get between 6 and 7 hours sleep every night apart from Thursday night (my last night). This meant that I was able to relocate all of our stuff from Thom’s to the new place whilst Fi was at work. It also meant I had the “joy” of regular trips to IKEA to get the essentials for living. I’ll tell you, by yesterday morning, I was exhausted and thoroughly fed up of chores! My parents were kind enough to drive down last Sunday to drop off some of our things that were in their loft although it was a shame they couldn’t stay for dinner (I had to work).
Last night was mine and Fiona’s first night in the flat together (crazy isn’t it?!) and it was great. Fi finished work at about 15:00 and we went and bought a gorgeous solid oak dining table, eight matching chairs and an oak sideboard – all paid for with money from our wedding (many thanks to all who donated!). The annoying thing is that we have to wait 12 weeks for the chairs and the sideboard to be delivered (they’re hand made in Vietnam). The table is being delivered next Saturday though. After table-shopping, we headed to John Lewis to spend some of our wedding gift vouchers. We brought a wicked knife set, some pots, baking dishes and a printer. We didn’t want to spend all of our pennies in one go – besides, we need to wait until we buy a place to work out exactly what we need.
After shopping we walked to Zero Degrees for some wine and mussels. To be honest, the food wasn’t as great as I remembered it being but the company was first rate and I really enjoyed myself.
So, where are we on the job front? Well, I’m currently doing a LAT ST1 job in ENT and Fi is doing a Paediatric Urology job (both of these jobs being a ridiculous amount of work believe it or not!). Fi had an interview a couple of weeks ago for a run-through ST program in Paediatrics which she got (good news), she also has an interview on Tuesday for a Paeds run-through job in Severn. I have an interview in a few weeks for core surgical training in Wales but found out yesterday that I haven’t been short-listed for the Severn deanery. I was really gutted at this. I have been “shortlist reserved” which basically means I will get an interview if enough people decline their interview (of course, I have no idea how many people would need to reject before I am offered an interview) – I’m not holding out much hope. As mentioned above, I sat the GP exam to see if I am eligible to be interviewed. I will find out in about 10 days if I did well enough but I’m already having doubts about attending the interview anyway. Fi and I have some tough decisions to make. If Fi gets an offer from Severn next week she has to decide whether or not to accept it within 48 hours or face losing both jobs. She’s talking about rejecting her dream job (the Severn one, should they offer her one) and taking the Wales one on the assumption that I get the Wales job (there’s no guarantee of that). It’s just too complicated – I think my mind may explode if I continue to stress about it.
I’m writing this whilst at work (that’s correct – I finished nights yesterday morning and I’m back on-call for the whole weekend). At least I get Monday morning off. Toughen up Garry…