Quit your day job. Go on. I dare you.

OK, I can’t pretend anymore. I’ve properly had enough of London now. 3 months I’ve been coming into this office in Angel and the tank is dry. I’m sick of the tube, sick of the food, sick of the English, sick of the advertising, of the free fucking newspapers, the noise, the stress, the expense. I’ve had enough now and I want to go home. I want to drive my van, breath the fresh air, and see my friends.

There have been a lot of good things about the last 3 months. I’ve got back into my job, updated a few skills, my software, refilled my bank account, developed a good working relationship with a new client I’ll be working for over the coming winter and finally given up smoking.

But it’s been snowing in Chamonix, my ski pass is bought and paid for and waiting for me to pick up from montenvers railway station. It looks as though there’s been so much snow that the Compagnie Du Mont Blanc are going to open the ski areas early. So just today and tomorrow, a weekend and 5 more days of tying up the work I’ve been doing and then I can leave everyone to it and get on that easyjet flight to geneva I’ve been dreaming about for months.

I’m enjoying being back in Deptford, even more so because I’ve only going to be there for a month. Even though I haven’t lived there for a couple of years I still run into the odd person who remembers me. From the landlady at the Wibbley Wobbley pub to Abdul the video shop geezer. I stopped by the video shop to see if they still had me on the computer and would be willing to lend me a film or two. Abdul remembered me, but the shop looked like it was being refitted. I talked with him for a while and it turns out that bitTorrent is putting him out of business. That and web companies like screenselect. It’s so easy to get hold of the films you want that no one goes to the video shop anymore. To be fair I quite resented paying a fiver to rent a couple of DVD’s for the night, but I didn’t tell him that.

I’ve obviously been here for a while now. I was just walking through chapel market this evening and exchanged nods with 4 or 5 different people who know me by sight. Mostly they’re shopkeepers whom I see every day, but today I saw the old geezer I met in the pub when I was on  bender last Friday afternoon. He’s 45, lived in Islington all his life, and for the last 30 of those has worked in the market pushing the barrows about at the start and end of each day. Trouble is he had a heart attack in September. He was in hospital for a while and the doctors told him to take it easy and not go back to work for 6 months. As he happened to be at work when I saw him this evening, I brought it up with him. He growled ‘What the fuck else am I going to do?’. Fair point.

Working in London is very stressful, and sometimes its difficult to keep focused on the goal. I’ve been doing quite well up till now, but suddenly at the end of last week the cumulative pressure built up a little too much and I suddenly found myself on a mini-bender. Not in the same league as those benders in your early 20’s, but a recognisable bender none the less.

Suddenly I’m drinking coffee and smoking fags to get going in the morning, drinking booze to calm myself down in the evening, passing out rather than falling asleep. I’m not thinking about what I’m eating and have been putting on a lot of weight. I can also feel my fitness and energy slipping away - wheezing as I walk up the hills in Brighton, and possibly most destructive of all - spending far too much of the money I’m earning for the winter in the Alps.

It was bound to happen at some point. It’s a trap I’ve fallen into before. One I really escaped only by leaving London in the first place. But if I can nip it in the bud right now and refocus myself on the goal. That goal is to earn a fair amount of money for a fair amount of work and return to France strong, healthy and having quit smoking ready for the winter season to begin.

I think moving up to Surrey Quay at the end of the month will help. I’ll have more time to chill and there’s a gym with a pool and sauna nearby where I can start to get into shape in the evenings.

7 more weeks till I go home. To some that might not sound much, but at the moment it seems like a lifetime to me.