For better or for worse, my year in Nottingham

5Hello all

Before I start, please note that to make sure I can avoid legal action against me, because I do get very ranty about some companies, I will be referring to them only by the industry they are in. If I name them, you know I liked them and had a lot of respect for them.

As I mentioned in another blog recently, I have joined what I consider to be my virtual family and a few have been asking why I disliked Nottingham for the majority of the time I was there…..so is my long winded account of my July 2008 to July 2009, a year where I changed.

Me in early 2008 - Looking a bit
like Musfasa from the Lion King

Introduction – How I came to be in Nottingham in the first place

So let’s begin with a back story that starts in January 2007. I left my job at British Telecom and became a temp, working for various companies around the surrounding area and although I did enjoy it to a sense, I was always after a permanent job. It gets to around April 2008 and I’m walking for a local company that dealt with water pipe repairs and let’s put it this way, I left there in a less than professional fashion and I thought my time as a temp for Ambitions Personnel was over. By the way, Ambitions are bloody brilliant. If you ever find yourself out of work, go and find them, they were fantastic with me.

But anyway, weeks go by where I am regularly only working for four hours in the entire week. Luckily I had no major expenditure so I wasn’t actually losing any money, but that’s besides the point, I needed a permanent job. I started applying for roles around the UK and got interviews for roles in Nottingham, Northampton and somewhere that I can’t recall off of the top of my head. The first interview was in Nottingham for an energy company.

I thought the interview went very badly. I was convinced I hadn't got it and was already planning for my interviews at the other two places. The interview was divided into four sections, an actual interview, a competency based phone interview and two tests, one maths and one writing an email whilst listening to tapes, amending what you’re putting along the way. I had seriously screwed up the maths section (despite generally being quite good at maths) and the interview didn’t go well, but I did do quite well in the email and telephone sections, but I thought I hadn’t got the role.

Unusually for a role they told you on the spot and that’s one of the few positive things I am going to say about this energy company. They don’t leave you hanging about and the 40 or so candidates were told there and then whether they had gotten the job or not. So I’m taken into the room where  my interview took place and I am stunned as they say my application has been successful, they even said they’ve never seen anyone so surprised.

The door to my flat

So I had the job, but what about the place to live? The job didn’t begin for nearly 4 weeks, so I had plenty of time to prepare and find a place to live. I find a student flat that was only £217 a month, amazingly cheap, so I go to look. The place is literally a corridor with six bedrooms, a dining area and two showers. My £217 gets me a room and the share of the communal area. I take it though because it was cheap.

Skip forward to July 4^th and I finally make the move.

July 4^th-July 20^th – A good start….for the most part

So I sign my contract and get the key on July 4^th, ironically Independence Day. I had been invited to the family fun day of the last company I had tempted for, DSG International, another company who I have a lot of respect for. To this day I have no idea how the hell I managed to get away without my car getting broken into and everything stolen as I literally had a car full of boxes of stuff on display in an open car park.

After that’s done I finally make my way to my new home. After spending an hour shifting all the boxes from my car to my second floor flat, I notice how muddy my clothes were from the fun day and decide to put the clothes in the washing machine…..two hours of unpacking later and the washing machine stops…..but the clothes are still wet and there’s just a puddle in the machine. The water doesn’t drain away, the first problem of my time in Nottingham and I hadn’t even been there for a day yet.

It took the rental company three weeks to get someone to come out and have a look at the problem…it turns out that the last occupants of the flat had clogged up the drain pipe with a cloth of some variety. But on the first night, not having any clothes meant I was really panicking, so I drive back to Lincoln with just my underwear and a coat on. I eventually get back and surrounded by a unpacked boxes and on a bed that is barely made, I sleep for my first night in Nottingham.

The area I live in turns out to be full of interesting characters. There was one woman from Jamaica who I had first seen when I went to view the flat and she regularly went around talking to herself. Infact the first time I ever saw her she was shouting "Did you know if you go from London to Kingston they give you a free banana on the plane?" ..... I didn't and I still know if that's true or not, but every time I saw her she was coming out with stuff like that, it was quite amusing.



The flats I called home for a year
Mine was the one with the open windows in the middle



I spent the next day getting to know the local area, it wasn’t pretty to be honest but I certainly wasn’t complaining…..yet.

Then it gets to Monday 7^th and my first day at my new job. I’m sitting in reception and am sat waiting for the start. As I’m waiting the other members of the training group came in……

·         Callum – A skater guy who, in a day where everyone is turning up in suits, decides to turn up in loose fitting jeans and a t-shirt full of holes, it was quite funny in a way.

·         James – A nervous guy who I had worked with at the interview who I almost started living with at one point.

·         Ian – If Yoda talked bullshit 24/7, he would be this guy. Ian was a nice guy but dear god did he talk crap….and plenty of it.

·         Alison – A girl from Derby who was one of the first friends I had made in Nottingham. I was pleased she had been offered the job as she was also in my interview group and I found her very attractive, although nothing happened.

·         Steve – A very quiet guy who just sat in the corner and didn’t say a lot. Very nice and quickly quit because he realised it wasn’t for him. I always wondered what he ended up doing after I last saw him. I don’t even know his surname so I can’t even find him on Facebook.

·         Ashleigh – A chav, but not one of the proper chavvy chavs, just one of those chavs that likes fashionable stuff, rather than dressing like she lives in sports shops. Me and her did get on though despite our considerably different lifestyles.

·         Emma – A 30something woman who I sat next to in the training group. Pleasant woman from what I remember.

·         Leanora – If there was ever such a thing as a child trapped in a twenty-something’s body, it was her. Whilst we were all training she would be sat there looking at cats on the internet….very bizarre girl.

So that was my training group, led by a woman called Debbie who I got on with. Training goes well and I am introduced to my future team within a few days, including Craig, who would be my mentor. Craig was awesome and was far too smart to be in a job like that. He encouraged me more than I’ve ever been encouraged and he was a good guy. He even got me to take a call on my third day in the job. The call failed miserably but it was a good experience.

However, then there comes the first major problem I had with the energy company. At the interview I was asked to take along my birth certificate and other relevant documentation so that they could photocopy it, so I do that.....but then I constantly keep getting messages saying that I need to submit the documentation or risk losing the job....despite doing it a good six or seven times already. After 4 days in the job I get asked yet again so I actually walk over there and sit there whilst someone actually registers the stuff. So after six or seven attempts to get those incompetent fools to do something, it took me actually sitting next to one of them for them actually not to fuck it up.

My first week ends with Callum and James coming around to my flat, which is still empty other than myself, for an evening of drinks, DVD and pizza…….I say pizza……I hadn’t figured out how to use the oven by this point (I literally lived in fish fingers and fishcakes during the first few weeks) and my best guess was not good enough and my pizza, which I had bought especially, remained cold and raw.

Bizarrely though I get someone ringing my buzzer, a pizza delivery guy saying "your pizza is ready." I hadn't ordered a pizza but took it anyway, it was quite a bizarre turn of events.

The next week goes by rather uneventfully until I am told on the Thursday that I would be having a room-mate on Friday, a guy called William. After I get back from football I see a load of shoes outside of one of the other rooms and I figure that my time alone in the flat is over.

July 20^th-October 23^rd – Into this den some evil serpents came

So I settle into my room for the night and I hear a door open in the background…..a knock on my door. I open it and there was an Asian man stood in front of me. We sit and talk for an hour or so, getting to know each other and at first William is quite a nice guy. He was from Malaysia and had just qualified as a pharmacist. Me and William did get on quite well at first, although I’ll be honest, I wasn’t that keen on the fact his shoes were all over the place and whenever he had a shower, he would leave his fallen out hair in there…..it wasn’t nice.

I spend the next few days continuing to get to know the city, afterall, football season hadn’t started yet so I had a bit of free time at weekends. I end up at the job centre and am looking for part time work in the evenings and find a few vacancies I am interested in including a trainee wrestler and a role at a cinema….more on that later. I phone up about the trainee wrestling and I go to the first lesson. I’ll tell you one thing, wrestling DOES hurt. It may be choreographed but I have never been so stiff and sore in the few days after this.

My 24th birthday with members of my team. That girl I'm sort of pointing at
is a Jodie, who I mention in a bit.

Work is continuingly relatively nice, I am by far the best in my training group and the only one of us who was taking calls on a regular basis. I’m still a bit nervous about them but I’m starting to know what I’m talking about and conversations are free flowing…….nearly :P. I did have one bad day though as the fire alarm went off at the flat and the building was evacuated…..this was at 5:30pm…..it eventually turned off at 4:30am…..I was absolutely shattered the next day and was very grouchy, pissing people off all over the place.

So it gets to the Thursday on the fourth week of me living in Nottingham and I hear some movement outside of my room and a girl’s voice. I open my door and there’s a guy and a girl there, the latter of which turns out to by a new room-mate……..the landlord hadn’t told us. This girl was called Leesa and we got on relatively well, she was quite cool…..at first….but more of that later.

The next day I return home from work and I hear a door open in the background and I close the fridge door and there’s a smiling brunette in front of me…..oh, hello, another room-mate. This one was a Polish girl called Roxanna and this is the moment where my time in Nottingham started taking a sour turn. Although we are quite civil at first, things turn EXTREMELY bitter very quickly.



She starts making obscene demands, such as the bigger of the two shower rooms being exclusively for the females, which to be fair I wasn't that fussed about, a shower is a shower, but after a few days neither myself or William can get the hot water working in the other shower because the control box is in Leesa's room, but none of us know how to work it....nor does the landlord. Eventually me and William start using the "girls" shower room, something which Roxanna is far from happy with. Stuff also suddenly starts going missing out of cupboards, it even got to the point eventually where I kept all my food in my room, luckily I had nothing that needed being refrigerated.



Roxanna in a previous incarnation



But anyway, on the say same night I met Roxanna, myself and Leesa go out to a party and get back at roughly midnight. We have a conversation in the dining area for about 20 minutes before retreating to bed.

The next day is the second Saturday of August and you know what that means, football season. The Imps are one of the pre-season favourites for promotion and we’re heading up to Sheffield to play Rotherham United….but don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about football very often in this blog entry. It gets to half time and all of a sudden my landlord is ringing. It turns out that Roxanna had claimed that we had woken her up and she was supposed to be at work on Saturday morning, meaning she went into work tired.

I speak to Roxanna when I get home and apologise for waking her up, even if it was the case that we didn’t actually get back that late. It turns out that she doesn’t even have a job, so in other words she bitched about us to the landlord with lies.

Meanwhile at work a young girl called Jodie (the one I'm stood next too in the picture above) starts working in my team and we get on extremely well and after a lengthy conversation at my birthday night out, I found myself falling for her. 3 nights pass and I ask her out on a date. Of course she said no but it was good for me to have asked someone out. That was one of the few good things happening at the time.

Things at the flat turn extremely sour. Roxanna turns out to be a controlling bitch, everyone in the flat gets pissed off at her, whereas Leesa is not that great herself now. I drop my car off for repairs in Lincoln after it had broken into three times by this point, and whilst walking back I get texts accusing me of stealing the wire for the communal TV…..my simple response is “Why would I steal a cable for your TV when I have my own TV in my room?” and all I get was abuse back.

I get back to the flat about 3 hours later and the two below signs from Leesa and Roxanna are on the fridge. Granted, the first one isn't directed at me specifically, but I can’t be dealing with this shit…..

I now spend most of my time on the roof of our flat building. Luckily there was a nice view from the top of our building and it was good for thinking. I had some good memories of my time up there. We once had a barbeque on the roof and it was a place where I still go to on a semi-regular basis as they still haven’t changed the code for the door.



View from the top of my flat



Unfortunately things aren’t going that well at work now either. My manager had returned from a car accident where she had injured her back and me and her really didn’t go on with each other at all.

For example, we were in a team meeting and I look at her when she’s saying something…..the meeting ends and I get held back for apparently using threatening behaviour by looking at her. What the fuck? Since when we looking at someone when they’re talking to you a bad thing?

The stupid twat did my nut in, she really did. You would go up to her to clarify something and she would cut you off half way through your sentence stating that she was on her break…..well why let me even start the sentence? Why even sit at your desk? What sort of manager refuses to help their team?

At this time I was also having a few issues. I always felt like I was in a sense of deja-vu, which isn't very nice, and I found out that my old next-door-neighbour had died, which hit me as we had always gotten on. RIP John.

And then came the moment I knew I wanted to leave. A customer started kicking off about his complaint not being actioned. I investigate and it turns out that it’s someone in my team so I talk to them about it and he’s waiting on an answer from a woman called Jodie in another department (so not the one I mention earlier)…….it then turns out that Jodie went on holiday without finding out the answer for the person in my team and didn’t leave it with anyone, so I write an email to her team manager. I get the response saying “Jodie is completely innocent in this situation,” and he escalated to my manager, who agrees with him.

IN WHAT FUCKING WORLD IS SHE INNOCENT WHEN SHE PROMISED MY TEAM-MATE AN ANSWER AND THEN WENT ON HOLIDAY WITHOUT PROVIDING IT, LEAVING THE CUSTOMER TO BE PISSED OFF?

By this time I had secured a part time job at a cinema chain, a job that my manager wanted me to not take despite the hours being part time and in the evening, away from my job at the energy company. I decide to call an end to my time with the energy company, one of, if not the poorest run company I have ever worked for and although I can't mention them by name, to give you a hint who they are they sponsored a football competition in the UK at the time.

October 23^rd – January 11^th – A new beginning but everything’s still a bit crap

So I’m now working for a cinema chain, which I did like but I can’t mention which chain it is due to an agreement I signed with them at the time….although technically there would be nothing stopping me, but it’s more out of respect.

I turn up for my first shift and the manager on that shift is a guy called Jamie who had done all my contracts (in other words, gettnig me to sign about 400 bits of paper....and that's me being roughly accurate, it's not an exaggeration), he shows me to the changing rooms, gives me my uniform and leaves me to it. In there is a guy called Jonjo, we have a brief conversation before I head down. Within 3 minutes of my shift Jamie comes up to me and says he didn’t photocopy my birth certificate correctly, meaning I couldn’t actually work that night. To be honest that was a blessing in disguise as it was the night that High School Musical 3 was released and it was crazily busy. I head back up and Jonjo’s still in there and says, and this made me laugh, “Had enough already?”

I do start the next night and despite it only being a part time job, I am quickly into doing full time hours, although I’m still looking for full time work. It was nice to have the change though. It was nice to be in a relatively pressure free role after being so stressed out at the energy company.. I quickly gain the reputation of doing stuff other people don't want to do though, such as going around the room where all the soft drinks are kept and cleaning it all....which given that it is very sticky and dirty, too bloody ages.



Jonjo (front) and Adam, two good friends that I
made whilst in Nottingham

 My first shift was quite good. I was trained by a guy called Adam and a girl called Emma. Adam would later become one of my best friends in Nottingham, whereas me and Emma got on reasonable well I thought. Their training techniques were VERY different. Adam's technique was "that's in there" and just pointed at a cupboard, Emma was very thorough. At first I got on with everything......the key part of that sentence being "at first."

At home things aren’t going great still and I’m now spending my weekends back in Lincoln with my parents. It was nice to be able to get away from that flat for a few days. They are constantly arguing with each other and me, and they just did my head in. The main reason I stayed in Lincoln over the weekends was that it just made it easier going to football, but any excuse to get away from that flat.

I tried to keep myself to myself in the flat, I spent most of my time looking for excuses to either go out or stay in my room altogether. It was just horrible being there and I did say to the landlord that I don't care about the cancellation fee, I wanted to move out, but the contract didn't have such a clause, which meant I was stuck.

With mainly working late on in the afternoon and evening, I was often home during the day alone with Roxanna. I try to be civil to her but she is just such a horrible, horrible person. There would be times when I would get home and she would be playing her music so loudly that you could hear it down the other end of the street, and I would be able to watch TV for a while, have a shower, have something to eat and then leave again without her even noticing because the music was so loud. She was horrible to live with because you could guarantee that if you got home late at night, within 5 minutes of closing your door she would be knocking on it.



The other view from the roof the flat



Me and Leesa do settle our differences eventually, which was cool. Me and Leesa had a very inconsistent friendship during our time in the flat together. When we got on well, we got on really well, but when we didn’t, it was like World War 3.

Meanwhile I have sorted out some temp work for during the days working for a telephone company, moving information from one system to another. It was easy work and easy money, I was effectively having 70 hour weeks but given that I didn’t have a social life at all, I didn’t mind. By this point I didn’t really know anyone in Nottingham that I didn’t know through either working with them or living with them, which was a shame. When you don’t know anyone in that situation then it’s hard because you don’t have anyone to talk to really.

I certainly wasn’t making myself popular at the cinema. At the time I was 24 and one of the oldest who did my specific job, and I just started getting fucked off by doing a lot of the work and then people taking the piss. For example, one person would consistently make an ice-blast (basically a slush-puppie) by “mistake” and then go into an area where you’re supposed to dump it…but he would drink it. I did say that he should be careful just incase a manager walks in, he ignored me. Then one day I just got fucked off at something happening so I told the managers what he was doing……a manager followed him into that little room and saw him drinking the ice-blast and sacked him near enough on the spot. Looking back I do feel bad about this.

I gain another full time job that isn’t temping and that is, are you ready for it?......fundraising on the street. Yep, I became one of those people who you see collecting for charities on the street. I was amazed that I was getting paid to do it but it didn’t last long…..a day and a half to be precise. I’ve never been comfortable talking to random people on the street, so I was never made out for a job like that and I quit.

Christmas soon comes and it’s nice to go and spend four days with my family, a welcome break if ever there was one.  I return after that time to find out that Roxanna had gone to Poland for Christmas to be with her family, brilliant news until I find out she had taken the key for the mail with her, meaning for two weeks we couldn’t get to our mail.

More temp jobs follow but I finally get offered another full time job, this time working for a computer software company, however, this certainly didn’t go as well as I had hoped and I was sacked after one day for apparently being “too arrogant”.

Roxanna returns to the flat and then after three days, at 2am in the morning, starts asking for money for the electricity. Now, it’s not unusual that she would want money for the electricity meter, afterall, it ran out quite quickly, but the rest of us did have our doubts whether she was actually contributing to the money into the meter or not, what was unusual was that it was 2am. We had money on the meter still and even if I gave her money then she would not be able to top it up until morning, so I said I’d get her some in the morning, but she was remarkably adamant I get some there and then. I said “I’ll get you some money for it but I am not going out at 2am after a 9 hour shift at work to get some money, it can wait until morning.”

January 12^th – April 30^th – Inconsistent feelings and several failed permanent jobs, but friends suddenly turn up

Skip forward to the next day after Roxanna is bizarrely adamant about the money and I go to work as normal, it’s a relatively normal day. I get home and I’m talking to William and he mentions that there were strange noises from Roxanna’s room all day but they haven’t heard anything for a while. I go and open the door, afterall, the bitch already hates me so what harm could opening the door do? What do you think greets me? A dead body? Her having sex? Her sleeping? No, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everything had gone, she had left. DING DONG THE BITCH HAS GONE. I phoned up the landlord and he knew nothing about it, it turns out that she had done a runner and we never saw her again. I later found out that the landlords did eventually catch up to her and they sued her for the rest of the rent.....and more.

I was so fucking happy that night and when I say happy, you wouldn’t believe how happy I actually was. I phoned everyone I knew in Nottingham asking is they fancied coming around for a party. No-one took me up on it but I was so happy.

All of a sudden everything was rosey and despite the dodgy start, I was starting to make friends at the cinema chain and I was even invited on a few nights out but I got a bit ahead of myself and started trusting the wrong people. My time in Nottingham saw the disappearance of the last part of me that was willing to share certain pieces of personal information with people I barely knew.

Nottingham town centre
I'm quite pleased with this picture

Then one night at roughly the beginning of February I post a comment on Facebook about winning a competition quite comfortably at work. It was meant in a joking way to be fair but someone who I work with really didn’t take it very well at all. Whether she was drunk or not was anyone’s guess, but the next half an hour of my life was basically her telling me what a shit I was and it was stuff that really hit me a bit hard, but to be fair she did have a lot of good points.

I was all of a sudden very conscious of what I was saying and to whom. I don’t like offending people but it just happens, and slowly the people at the cinema time did start turning around and other than one self-important woman who looked like a female version of Harry Potter, but with a gap you could park a car in between her two front teeth, I got on with generally everyone there after that conversation with that one person.

Meanwhile at the flat things are going nicely without Roxanna there. Leesa is very rarely there these days as well, so for the majority of the time it’s just me and William, and although we got on, we didn’t really speak, so it was good. The odd person here and there moved in and out very quickly. Me and William did soon get into a major argument though as he kept on removing the fuses from various things such as the washing machine. I posted a rather abrupt letter on his door saying that he had no right to do one and it turns out that he thought I wasn’t contributing to the electricity, whereas the case was that because we weren’t topping up at the same time, we never knew the other had paid.

By now I had already had my heart set on moving back to Lincoln and was offered a job after doing some more temping. The job was working in sales for a newspaper’s advertising section. Now, I couldn’t sell a bottle of water to someone in the desert, that’s how bad I am at sales. It came as little surprise when I was asked to leave after four days after failing to sell a single bit of advertising space. I wasn’t that bothered to be honest, I was relieved in a way. I never actually got paid for my time working there and I am still chasing them up on it to this day.

I was quickly offered a temp job working for a driving company in Upper Parliament Street in Nottingham but again that didn’t work out well, although it was nice to be able to have a proper shower as they had a full on gym and shower system, which was nice. I was stationed with a guy called Chris who ended every single sentence with the word “sorry,” STOP FUCKING APOLOGISING! I left there after being offered a job working for a homecare company. Again, that didn’t last long. I was really struggling to hold down a job…..maybe I was just cut out for part time jobs and temping for the rest of my life.

Meanwhile there are lots of new starters at the cinema and all of a sudden I find I’ve become reasonably popular, I’m invited on nights out (not that I really do a lot on them as I’m not a going out type of person, but it was nice nevertheless) and I find myself getting close to some of the people I work with, including Becca, Melissa and Gina. I have good memories of all three of those.




 

Me, Todd (another good friend) and Becca.

My favourite memory of Becca was walking into a club on a night out and she was already in there. She ran over to me and jumped on me and hugged me. It was nice to have someone pleased to see me, it doesn’t happen often.  Me and Becca got on really well but we grew apart after I left Nottingham and she moved off to the States.

I have two outstanding memories of Melissa. The first is how she got you to write a name, a number and a place on a bit of paper and put it in your pocket. She would then guess them correctly first time, every single time, it was freaky. And then there was one time when she and my friend Richard got into a big argument  after he called her a retard in front of customers.....and I was asked to go and sort it all out (lucky me). We shared a good conversation. We haven't really spoken since I left Nottingham.

And then finally Gina. Gina was awesome, we got on really way and we decided to go and watch Final Destination 4 together and I’ve never known anything to laugh so heavily whilst people were getting killed on the screen.

These three girls were awesome and helped change my opinion on the people of Nottingham. What was even more bizarre was that one a night out at one point they invited me into the female changing rooms to talk to them whilst they were getting ready and whilst they were about to change clothes, I said “Well I’ll leave the room now so you can get ready properly” and they said “no, it’s fine, you can stay if you want.” I left anyway because I didn’t feel comfortable doing that.

I am then asked to help train new starters by the new General Manager, who I got on with quite well, and I start to train a new girl called Kirstie, whom it turns out was the sister of someone who I worked with at the energy company. To say I was being thorough was an understatement and although I was praised by the managers for that approach, the other members of staff could only laugh as I was quite clearly overloading this poor girl's head with more information than any one person could ever need on their first day.

May 1^st – July 4^th – The end is coming

So I’m now in my final few months of living in Nottingham and I’ve sorted out accommodation for when I move back to Lincoln. I’m slowly moving stuff back and a week off from work, both temporary and part time, means I have a great chance to pack up my stuff properly, which was a good thing.

With just over a month to go I get a phone call from my landlord saying that they have had an offer for our flat from a family of six from Russia. Leesa has already moved out by now so it’s just me and William and both of our tenancy agreements were coming to an end. He says that they are willing to move me into another flat within the building as they have a spare room in another flat. This flat would be the same price as before, but with all bills included and only two people in there already. I decide to take him up on the offer…..and packing all the rest of my stuff and moving it into the other building took literally all night. I was shattered.

So there I am in my new flat with a girl from Mexico who’s name completely eludes me, and Neema. To be honest I never really had a proper conversation with either of them, but both were quite nice and they were pleasant enough to spend my remaining time in Nottingham with.

However, at this time it is FUCKING BOILING and swine flu is going around…..and guess who catches it. Heat and swine flu was not a pleasant combination and I felt absolutely destroyed, especially as there was no wind at all to get some air into the flat. I struggled to get to the nearby Asda and I was hoping there would be some air-con units there…..nope, all gone.

When I do eventually get back to being healthy I am offered a job working for Vodafone. I told my temp agency about this and they stopped finding me jobs, so for a month I was just on wages from the cinema, which was ok. I liked having time during the days to myself, being able to wake up and whatever time I wanted because the chances of me sleeping until 6pm were very slim to say the least.

Me with a hook-a-duck prize that I won by cheating

I was still getting on really well with my other staff members, other than the car-park teethed Harry Potter who I mentioned earlier, and me and three of the staff go to Alton Towers and have an awesome time, but again I got really ill after this, but it was followed by a good night.

By now I am actually really enjoying being in Nottingham but it was already too late, I was already committed to going back to Lincoln, which was a shame. I am loving living in the city and I am regretting that I can’t stay, but oh well, too late now.

July 4^th finally comes around and my year is up. It was a year that started off badly but got really good in the final few months. I won’t go as far as saying I would love to move back there, but I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.

And finally, a video I made of the flat that I lived in for the majority of the time in Nottingham. This was recorded in around March 2009......it looks weird having long hair. Please also note that my room is a bit of a mess in this.

SO WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

Well I moved back to Lincoln and started working for Vodafone and that became my longest serving job by quite some way. I still kept my job at the cinema for a while but the commute just became too much with the day job, which was a shame as I did like working there.

I haven't seen or spoken to William or Roxanna since leaving Nottingham. I would like to get contact with William though, but if I search for his actual name on Facebook (Sie Wie Wong, but he had used William for some unknown reason) you wouldn't believe how many came up. I did briefly see Leesa at one point outside of Rock City but haven't seen her in a long time. I don't keep in contact with anyone from the energy company anymore, although if I ever saw the ones I like then I would have said hello.

I still go back to Nottingham on a semi-regular basis and do still see some of my old friends, but as most of them were at college age when I knew them, most moved away to university.

I look back on my time in Nottingham as the time my life changed. I am a far different person than I was before I lived in Nottingham and it's bizarre that other than Marinda, who was my best friend at the time, I can't really recall any interaction I had with any of the other friends that I've had since before I moved to Nottingham that I still have, which is quite bizarre