Relocation Relocation Relocation

So as mentioned yesterday, my workplace is moving - lease on the building where I work at present in Godalming has been ended and we are relocating to Reading, starting next week. This was announced in early July and since then there have been several consultations (both individual and collective) to understand how this will impact everyone and to try and agree a support package to assist those who now have significantly longer journeys as a result of the move.

Unfortunately I'm one of those who is adversely affected. The journey down to Godalming is very straightforward, and is around 40m (although my memory of traffic may be biased from the August journey which has been much easier). A journey to Reading is less obvious, and likely to take at least an hour. Probably more.

For the moment I'm willing to give it a shot. There's going to be support in terms of compensation for increased costs, and the ability to work from home one or two days a week on a regular basis. This will help to make any transition easier, and while the new journey is going to be no different in time to my train journey when I started working here, or perhaps slightly shorter, it will still be an increase from my current trip. And as a result interfere with my sleep, a more severe inconvenience.

It also puts a spanner in the metaphorical works of Chrissi and myself looking at a new home, something we were increasingly focusing in the first half of the year. The plan was to move to the Guildford area, between and closer to both our workplaces. Fortunately our lethargy has been to our advantage as we have not devoted significant amounts of time to a futile exercise - now to find a new point on a map which works for both (a) our current workplaces and (b) hypothetical future workplaces, as we're both fully aware of how impermanent such arrangements are!