I am going to miss Basingstoke. It's been 'home' to me for the past eight years. In December of 2007, I moved back to Southampton from Bath and Bristol (where I was working in a small village near Clevedon in Somerset) in order to start a new job in Basingstoke. My partner at that time, who was from Southampton, also started a new job in Reading on the same day, so we planned to move closer to our new jobs.
Sunflowers in my apartment
Things were going great then; my partner at the time and I were in the process of buying our first home closer to our jobs, and it was a new build and very closely fit the idea of my dream home. But then things took a bad turn - the chain fell through and then, I assume from the stresses of buying houses and responsibility, he split up with me as he became infatuated with someone he knew from an online forum; she didn't have feelings for him but liked the attention and led him on. (He was actually really abusive mentally and physically, so I don't regret leaving that chapter behind but only wish I could take back the many years wasted with this horrible person.)
At the time, I had only started my new job in Basingstoke in early December of 2007, and the split happened six months later. I enjoyed this job in Basingstoke very much, and a few of my colleagues were very supportive of me. With their help, I moved into a small rented flat and had a ten-minute commute to work as opposed to an hour or two hours one way, which is what I had to put up with for the past several years.
The bulk of my income was paid to rent while some of my items remained in storage, and I viewed it as a waste as I wanted to stay in Basingstoke and at at the company I was working at for awhile. I started to make permanent plans for purchasing an apartment, since everything (except for my job) fell through in my life, and this took all of the savings I had plus some help from the parents. My life slowly started to come together, and I completed on my apartment at noon in January 2010. However, there were talks about redundancies at work and I was at risk, so a couple of hours after I signed my completion on the apartment, I was told that my role was made redundant. This was not expected; I'd had communication from colleagues who also could not believe it. I'd had glowing appraisals and reviews from colleagues, was known in other departments for being helpful, and was working on several projects. By this time, I'd also been there for 2.5 years.
Afterwards, I ended up working in London although I had been trying to find a similar role in Basingstoke off-and-on without luck. After a short stint in a start-up company near Reading (which ended up taking the same amount of time to commute to as commuting to London), I became self-employed and realised that I'd have to move to London. My partner was also working in London, so it just made sense; we'd save money in the long term.
Although I am sad to leave Basingstoke, I have a new area to explore in a suburb of London. It's also convenient to get out of London in order to visit other parts of the UK. I've also got the task of making my new home my own and decorating it, so readers will no doubt be seeing before-and-after photographs.
Until then, most of my possessions are still in boxes as we decide what work on the house we will have done first. I may not get as much time to post updates as frequently as I have in the past, until I get settled a little more. I only just picked up the keys on the late afternoon of September 30 and moved on 1 October, so it's been a very busy week, and I still have not been through all of the boxes.
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