Travels with myself and another

In Yeovil, where I’ve started work as the Western Gazette’s newest reporter.

I’m on the newsdesk, tying up loose ends and covering holiday until they give me a patch of my own. What enormous satisfaction to be here. Everyone at the Gazette is supportive and friendly and I hope I’ll be able to do what they’re paying me to do to the very best of my ability, not least by way of thanks for giving me the job!

There’s so much to sort out, from tax to pensions to sofas and televisions. Thankfully, I’m in a reasonably comfortable hotel on Sherborne Road, where the editor has offered to put me up until I get all such details straightened out.

Apparently the ability to live out of a suitcase doesn’t run in the genes. There are several other business travelers here and conversation in the breakfast room is what you’d expect between those who feel too far away from home. I’m itching to get on with the real business of setting up a home of my own with Laura (we’ve found a nice flat just along the road from here, as it happens), but at the moment I’m at the whim of our prospective letting agent. The amount of referencing and arrangement and toing and froing they insist is required is intensely annoying.

Thank goodness I have George Orwell and Martha Gellhorn to ease my blood pressure. And Star Trek, of course.