Part 1: Bidding goodbye to my Leicester odyssey
Decision made on the back of a close friend moving back to the Midlands after he got tired of his job. Problem was, I wasn't from the city-I'm from a town 13 miles away. I'd been living up north for 7 years. Still trying to be a student, pretending everything was all right. Moving to Leicester was like a false homecoming after nearly a decade; didn't have friends there, or family, but wait, I did, but we'll get to that later.
The house I moved into was chosen on the basis of being near to a job I thought I'd secured-a miserable, low position in a chain eatery in a separate part of the city, not even sharing the same post code. In fact, my house was a 45 minute walk from the city center. The eatery used me for a trial shift, and didn't pay me.
Before moving down there, I resided in Wigan, a satellite town to Manchester, an ancient milltown, pleasant, charming. I lived with a Chinese woman whom I met whilst working in a Chinese restaruant, and I lived with her and her son for a year and a half. She announced plans to sell the house, so I moved to a second house in Wigan, where the landlord suffered from a personality disorder-one of the symptoms was insisting every tenant work a 50 hour week because he didn't tolerate people being in the house too much.
After an argument at work, resulting in me being sacked/voluntarily leaving, I received news the landlord wanted me out. I'd had enough of being up North, and felt a vague yet strong calling to follow my friend to Leicester, where he'd secured work as a golf course green keeper in Lutterworth. I found a van driver from Oldham, a reliable Pakistani Gentleman with the Pakistan flag painted on the back van doors. I left at 9:30am, late September 2015.
The person who opened the door to my new house turned out to be a friend of someone I went to school with, quite a close friend actually, so this made me feel at home already. I didn't even view the new house, just drove down there blind, and was greeted with a double room. The random nature of the move was offset with an intuition that something needed to be done. This looks like bad writing, but in hindsight the move was important. I was no longer living in the vicinity of my University in Lancashire; I now lived in Leicester-work was easier to come by, I lived just close enough to the city center for convenience, but not too close for comfort, my good friend lived a 20 minute car ride away.
I made contact with folk already; I contacted said friend of my house mate, my old school friend, and we caught up for a pint. He was from Loughborough, the same town as me, and took the shuttlebus over, a 15 minute journey. Caught up, chatted. He wouldn't be in Leicestershire for long-was due to move up to Chester to be with a partner. I felt saddened; I'd moved down, and he was moving away. I managed to go up to Chester to see him on one occasion.
The house I moved into was chosen on the basis of being near to a job I thought I'd secured-a miserable, low position in a chain eatery in a separate part of the city, not even sharing the same post code. In fact, my house was a 45 minute walk from the city center. The eatery used me for a trial shift, and didn't pay me.
Before moving down there, I resided in Wigan, a satellite town to Manchester, an ancient milltown, pleasant, charming. I lived with a Chinese woman whom I met whilst working in a Chinese restaruant, and I lived with her and her son for a year and a half. She announced plans to sell the house, so I moved to a second house in Wigan, where the landlord suffered from a personality disorder-one of the symptoms was insisting every tenant work a 50 hour week because he didn't tolerate people being in the house too much.
After an argument at work, resulting in me being sacked/voluntarily leaving, I received news the landlord wanted me out. I'd had enough of being up North, and felt a vague yet strong calling to follow my friend to Leicester, where he'd secured work as a golf course green keeper in Lutterworth. I found a van driver from Oldham, a reliable Pakistani Gentleman with the Pakistan flag painted on the back van doors. I left at 9:30am, late September 2015.
The person who opened the door to my new house turned out to be a friend of someone I went to school with, quite a close friend actually, so this made me feel at home already. I didn't even view the new house, just drove down there blind, and was greeted with a double room. The random nature of the move was offset with an intuition that something needed to be done. This looks like bad writing, but in hindsight the move was important. I was no longer living in the vicinity of my University in Lancashire; I now lived in Leicester-work was easier to come by, I lived just close enough to the city center for convenience, but not too close for comfort, my good friend lived a 20 minute car ride away.
I made contact with folk already; I contacted said friend of my house mate, my old school friend, and we caught up for a pint. He was from Loughborough, the same town as me, and took the shuttlebus over, a 15 minute journey. Caught up, chatted. He wouldn't be in Leicestershire for long-was due to move up to Chester to be with a partner. I felt saddened; I'd moved down, and he was moving away. I managed to go up to Chester to see him on one occasion.
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