And if rain brings winds of change let it rain on us forever.
I have no doubt from what I’ve seen that I have never wanted more.
With this line I’ll mark the past as a symbol of beginning.
I have no doubt from what I’ve seen that I have never wanted more.

VNV Nation, ‘Solitary’

Hours till departure: 12. I write this, the sound of my key-strokes echoing around the room like an epileptic tap-dancer. For Thursday saw the descent of a plague of baseball-cap wearing locusts, in the form of delivery men from Fleet Shipping, who did descend and cart away my possessions – all forty-nine boxes of them, totalling 3.77 cubic metres. And that was after three manic days of cleaning house, which saw ten bin-liners of junk thrown into our rubbish bin (and, if the truth be told, next door’s bin as well, when ours got filled – not quite as anti-social as it sounds, since there’s no-one staying there at the moment. Our patio, on the other hand, gets lumpier…).

The cleaning process was actually kinda fun in a bloody-hell-so-that’s-where-that-went kind of way. Having been here for over eight years, that’s a startling amount of junk to filter through, and I confess to having ground to a halt on a number of occasions, purely to wallow in nostalgia. Some of the stuff that cropped up was like a time machine, winging me back to the days of the Scala, anime conventions, and the days when acquiring a copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the highlight of my month. Cue no agonising at all there – far worse was the problem of whether or not to take my vinyl; unplayed for a good five years, but still…

That trauma finished a full ten minutes before the removal men arrived, and I showed them full professional courtesy by staying the hell out of their way, while they dealt with everything from the skull, through the long-sword, to the large stuffed Hello Kitty (though out of deference to their sensitivities, I did dress her in her regular jim-jams, rather than the PVC fetish outfit). Sitting downstairs in the living-room, listening to them thumping around up in my room, it was weirdly like having burglars — albeit very polite ones, for whom you make cups of tea. I kept poking my head round the door to see how things were progressing, and then running off to hide in another room. That’s a decade of my life going out of the house in cardboard boxes. Let’s just hope they actually were removal men, rather than cunning thieves with an inside line to the forwarding company…

I must confess to choosing them largely on the basis of them having a neat web-site, though there was a phone conversation as well, from which I got the impression that they knew what they were doing. Mind you, subsequent calls have had a disturbing quotient of finding myself talking to a phone drone; there appear to be two competent people there; fortunately one of these was the bloke supervising my packing. But the die has been cast, the boxes have been taped up, and the sword carefully enclosed in bubble-wrap and then tied to poster tubes. Let US Customs try and work out what that is all about.

Hopefully, the next time I see them will be in Phoenix, though I will be keeping a weather eye on the shipping forecasts for the next four weeks, to see if there are any reports of cargo ships going down in the North Atlantic. It’d be nice if they had some kind of satellite tracking, so you could follow the progress of your shipment on the Internet, but that’s perhaps a little progressive. I’ll just cross my fingers and look forward to, with luck, a Christmas spent opening forty nine boxes of non-giftwrapped junk.

And so I find myself with what seems like an unshrinking pile of stuff to sort out, as the weeks become days become hours. As yet, I still haven’t actually got a visa, so this trip will be technically “temporary”, even though as far as I’m concerned, I now live in Arizona, and will only ever be visiting London. They won’t let you change from a tourist visa to a legal residency one from inside the country, so when I hear that the necessary papers are here, I’ll fly back, go get them authorised at the American Embassy, then fly back. This is entirely useless, but looking at the ongoing saga of their election, what the hell do you expect? The worst thing is that, until the visa comes through, I’m a tourist and so will be unable to work. How will I ever be able to cope?

Meanwhile, the omens continue to roll in. This is the 150th TC editorial. Tonight sees the death of Victor Meldrew in One Foot in the Grave. It also sees the first million-pound winner on the British version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. [Why do I think this might just be connected to the previous one, which – purely by coincidence, I’m sure – happens to be on another channel at the same time…] Tonight, on the way back from the last “farewell drink”, with Rob Dyer, I fell asleep on the train and missed Tulse Hill, for only the second time in my almost decade here.

What all this means is entirely another matter, but I present them here for your contemplation.

And with that, I depart, for a glorious future. Not without some trepidation, for fear of the unknown is a terrible thing. But I do so with hope, and expectation, and anticipation, and a tremendous sense of joy at the possibilities and love that await me in America, not to mention the wonderful friendships that I have here, and will maintain despite the distance. For the world truly is shrinking.

You shall hear from me again, soon…

Working days left: 0. Days till departure: 20. That’s it. Elvis may not quite have left the building, but he’s certainly had his exit interview. After more than a decade, I have no job. I am unemployed. I presume this means I have to spend all day tomorrow sitting on the couch watching Richard and Judy and The Teletubbies… Funnily enough, I won’t be – ironically, I’ll actually be going back into work! Yes, they can’t keep me away — or, at least, they can’t keep me away from my presents, for tomorrow’s visit is largely to acquire the gold watch or whatever it is they’ve got for me. My manager was sick today, and couldn’t make it in yesterday, so my goodies are lurking somewhere out of reach…

Sunday night’s storms had a spooky, portentous feel to them, as if the gods were saying to me, “Fine! Go on then, leave! See if we care!” — either that, or they just wanted to provide a gentle reminder of what I’m going to miss i.e. foul weather, cancelled trains, and the armpits of my fellow commuters. Either way, it’s an appropriate bookend, since my time in England has been sandwiched by tempestuous weather. These gales were the worst since October 1987 – scant weeks after I started work down South. That great storm was the day before my parents came down to visit me for the first time…and lo, my parents are about to come down once more, to visit me for the last time in this country.

Monday was certainly a strange little day, right from being woken up by the noise of rain hitting the window horizontally, with a sound like a Keith Moon solo. The office must have had only about 40% of the people in, it should normally have, and even at lunchtime, the streets were eerily quiet, the Post Office almost deserted, and Benjy’s sandwich bar seriously overstocked with unwanted cheese ‘n’ ham rolls [That’s one thing I may miss in America: cheese and ham sandwiches which contain no salad, no coleslaw, no mayonnaise. Just cheese and ham.] Mind you, it worked in my favour: I’d scheduled my leaving do for that night, and the attendance was unsurprisingly low, what with the people who hadn’t made it in at all, and those who opted not to risk staying late. By 8pm, there was one other person in the pub. By 10pm, I was out of there, so there was none of the “painting the walls with Guinness and blackcurrant” which occurred the last time I changed jobs.

And so I now begin preparations for departure, which is scheduled for less than three weeks time. I suspect that the days are going to fly past between now and then – partly because any attempt to clear out my junk will likely degenerate into me sitting in the middle of a pile of magazines, reading them. Does anyone want seventy old issues of Empire magazine? I don’t do the throwing out stuff thing – with the possible exception of my ties, which are going to suffer the sort of mortality rate last seen among the post-asteroid dinosaurs. Otherwise, expect lots of agonising over whether or not I should ship my LP records out: I haven’t actually listened to any of them for the past five years, but…but…but…well, we’re certainly talking sentimental value, if not in most cases financial! But I shall be stern. I shall be harsh. I shall undoubtedly be burdened with far too much. And I wouldn’t have it any other way!

As mentioned on the home page, updates during November will be “sporadic” to say the least – there may be the odd editorial, but don’t expect much more. Normal service should be resumed towards the end of the month, when the jet-lag has worn off, from my new home – how odd, yet also how wonderful that sounds – in the warmer (certainly), less windy (hopefully) climes of Phoenix, Arizona…

Working days left: 2. I think it’s finally beginning to sink in. It’s now more than an abstract notion: I am embarking on my biggest adventure, possibly ever, and certainly since coming down from Scotland in the summer of ’87. When I left school, I knew I was going to university; when I graduated, I already had a job lined up. Now…all I know is it’s an era drawing to a close. But as it does, another opens, one of uncertainty, yet also of huge potential. Next Wednesday morning, I am going to wake up, and it’ll be more than “not going to work”, it’s “have no work to go to”. I’ll be unemployed, and feeling like a long-term prisoner who has finally got parole, and must make his own way in life once more. There’s a brave, new world out there, and it’s a little scary.

It’s incredible to think it’s twelve-and-a-half years since April Fools’ Day 1988, when a raw, naive innocent (that’s me, in case you were wondering) first crossed the doorstep of James Capel, as HSBC was then known…and crashed their live dealing system on his first day. I like to think I have maintained this standard of professionalism and integrity ever since. It can’t have been too bad, however, since a year later, they poached me from the software house, and the rest is – or rather, is about to be – history.

I’ve spent a fascinating couple of days emptying my desk drawers, filling two sports-bags with the stuff I want to take home, and several bins with the junk. The vultures are gathering over the remnants, with the destination of my glow-in-the-dark scorpion paperweight and Buffy lollipop tin likely to be the subject of severe debate. The contents act as a time capsule, reflecting both internal and external history. Thus, there are master copies of the early issues of TC; a dozen posters from the team outing to see Barb Wire (the cinema were glad to get rid of them – anybody want one?); a fragment of the Berlin Wall; chocolate handcuffs; the FHM 100 Sexiest Women supplement for 1996 (Gillian Anderson was #1); all my turn sheets for the Movie Mogul play-by-mail game, and so on. Material relating to actual work was in the minority – for I’ve learned over the years that “documentation” = “evidence”, and is thus incompatible with my personal ethos of plausible deniability.

The weird thing is, I’m leaving a job which is perfectly adequately-paid, and in which I am not unhappy. I’m working for a good manager, who believes in letting us get on with our jobs; my co-workers are a generally amiable bunch of social deviants; and after more than a decade, you acquire a certain security of tenure because you’ve outlasted everyone who knows what your job actually entails. But the siren call of America, a new life and a new home, is just too powerful to resist, and so I find myself with a mere fourteen working hours left in this country. I have now received the Termination Letter (capitals used out of fear), which warns me of the direst consequences (it stops short of sending me to sleep with the fishes, but only just) should I reveal any commercial knowledge to the competition. Fortunately, any knowledge I possess is of the entirely uncommercial kind: our team won the departmental pub quiz on Wednesday, thanks largely to our nailing of the ‘Myths and Legends’ section – I knew watching Xena would come in handy someday.

And that’s it. On Tuesday, at around 5pm, pause for a moment, and think of me, as I pick up the last of my possessions, put on my coat – and run screaming from the building. Here we go, indeed…

Working days to go: 7. Shopping days to Christmas: oh, I dunno, must be round about fifty. But I mention it, because I saw my first specifically-Christmas advert on TV yesterday, even though there are still more than two months to go. And it was for freakin’ dog -food: Cesar, the dog-food for dogs that aren’t really dogs at all, but medium-sized rats. You can, it seems, get a special Christmas flavour of it, so that little Snookums doesn’t feel all left out when you’re tucking into your turkey. In terms of nutritional content, it’s probably right up there with a Big Mac, and quite possibly tastes not too bad either – I can imagine it, spread on crackers and accompanied by some good port. Yum. But it’s the surreal concept of a dog celebrating Christmas, and somehow appreciating your efforts, that amuses me. I suppose I should be annoyed by the concept, but I can’t be bothered; anyone who possesses one of those miniature flea-collars on legs, deserves to be ripped off. So good luck to Cesar – and if you run out of cheese footballs or twiglets on Boxing Day, you know what to do. It’s quite likely your elderly relatives will be just as happy, and it does wonders for their coats…

I bought a musical birthday card earlier in the week – I’m a firm believer in the gift that keeps on giving, even if it’s only tinnitus. But how do you write the damn thing? Every time I cracked it open more than half an inch, a ferocious rendition of… well, I’m not quite sure what it was, but it was bloody loud. It didn’t seem that bad in the shop, but in the office, it sounded like The Who had been turning their amplifiers up to eleven once again. So what do you do? Slam it open, scrawl “Hpy Brtdy J” on it really quickly? Or do you adopt the cautions, bomb-disposal approach, cracking it open slowly, until the last possible moment before all hell breaks loose? I went for the latter, though, being left-handed, I was still forced to wedge my hand in next to the spine to try and write anything. Combined with my nightmarish writing at the best of times, it’ll be a major miracle if the recipient can work out who it was that sent it.

In a little over an hour’s time, an era will come to an end; a solitary trumpet will sound The Last Post, as I switch my pager off, and go off duty for the final time. Yes, after somewhere round about nine years or so, I am coming to the end of my time as an out-of-hours support person, liable to be woken up at any time of the day or night for the most fatuous, trivial or pointless queries and errors. Except that at 3 o’clock in the morning, there is no such thing as a trivial query. When that beeping starts, getting progressively louder as you try desperately to convince yourself that it’s someone else’s… albeit someone else in your bed…someone else on call…it’s one of the most hideous sounds known to man. If Pavlov caused dogs to salivate by ringing a bell (or waving tins of Cesar under their noses), it’s likely that for the next decade or so, you’ll be able to get me to twitch severely, by creeping up behind me and going “Beep-beep-beep-BEEEP!”

Years of experience have, however, skilled me in the art of being able to get up, connect to the work computers, analyse the problem, fix it – or, perhaps more likely, foist it off onto someone else – and disconnect, all without hitting genuine consciousness at any point. This is a useful trick, one which actually has its uses in day-to-day life as well, especially when hungover. But while I will miss the pager’s four convenient alarms (I have taken it on holiday with me, purely for this reason, and even once left it behind in a hotel room in Florida, much to my consternation!), I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see it go. From now on, any sleepless nights will be entirely ones of my own making, and that’s how it should be.

Working days to go: 12. The good thing about giving three months’ notice, is that few jobs short of brain surgery actually take that long to hand over to your successor – in my case, a couple of weeks was sufficient to do all the handovers to my pseudo-replacement. I say “pseudo”, since who can possibly hope to replace me? I mean, he’s a nice guy, but hey, he just doesn’t have my devastating good looks, personal charm and work ethic… Besides, he’s a Liverpool fan – although that brilliant goal against England last Saturday elevates Hamann to divine status as an honorary Scotsman [a big “Hi!” to Mal at this point would seem in order…]

Er, I digress. The main point is that work-wise, I’m doing nothing much beyond staring blankly at my screen and occasionally typing in stuff. [We’ll take the sarcastic comments of “And how precisely is that different from normal?” as read, thank you] And it’s intensely liberating not to give a damn. I have to say, I thoroughly recommend resigning – I think the past two months have been among the most enjoyable of my working life. Or rather giving-the-impression-of-working life, since as the days have ticked by, even that illusion has gradually faded. These days, I hardly even bother looking over my shoulder if I’m engaging in not strictly work activities; after all, in the phrase which has become my mantra, “What are they going to do – fire me?” Down the pub for three hours? “What are they going to do – fire me?” Refuse to work overtime? “What are they going to do – fire me?” Printing out dubious, TC-shaped items? “What are they going to do – fire me?”

Bliss. The single biggest threat which hangs over the head of all us wage slaves has been removed from me at a stroke. Even the ultimate sanction, “you’ll never work in this town again”, is of absolutely no use, since I have absolutely no intention of ever working in this town again. The thought strikes me that I could entirely re-invent myself, fabricate an entire new identity as I head off into the New World. I could be a priest; a member of the Witness Protection Program; a dispossesed aristocrat. But truth is, I actually quite like the identity I have, thank you very much: a sardonic media-junkie who believes the recent shut-down of his web site was due to the Babylonian Brotherhood, an ancient conspiracy of shape-shifting reptiloids…or perhaps not. Yes, that’ll do, I think.

However, I note that this resignation thing does appear to be infectious: house-mate Abigail has also handed in her resignation (and was last seen clutching a celebratory bottle of champagne!). Hers was similarly enforced by a move, though in this case, it was the job moving away from her which was the main trigger for the decision, after her company moved out to Orpington. Where that is precisely, I’m not sure, but it does not make for an easy commute from Tulse Hill — not least because you are going against the flow, so so speak. However, she is actually looking for another job, unlike myself, who is looking more for…well, a lottery win would make things simple. Still, all we have to do now is convince Steve to follow suit, and all the residents of TC Towers will be wandering around with relaxed, beatific grins on their under-employed faces…

If I do get employed in the States, I think I may hand in my resignation on the day I arrive. Do you think they’d mind me giving them five years notice? And to everyone else… Quit your jobs! Slack off! Buck the system! At least, I think that’s what my notes here say…