To Belgium with love?
So for the pas few months the boy has been living the stressful life of a graduate, going from assessment day to interview to assessment day in search of the illusive beast known as graduate recruitment. It's not been a pleasant safari but finally the hunt is over. Two of his favourite companies have offered him jobs including the one he's been working towards since college. Understandably he's thrilled (though he still insists its a mistake and they'll change their minds!) and I'm very proud. You'd think once job offers are in the waiting game would be over but alas it's just the beginning of it, you see his favourite offer comes from Cisco (geeky network gods for a geeky network boy) who have two centres here in Europe: a small one in Reading here in the UK and the big one is in Brussels, Belgium. Now daunting as the idea is of moving to another country and learning the language it also seems very appealing and exciting. A completely fresh start (we'd have to get rid of most of our stuff and start again by the looks of it!) and a chance to live on the continent, spend weekends in Paris or Amsterdam, being forced to make an effort and meet new people. In Reading (though its the nicest part of the country, close to London but not too close, easy access to friends, places to do my PGCE, good shops and gigs) I'm worried that I'd find it hard to motivate myself to do anything except coast, that there'd be just that little bit of change that makes you homesick but not enough change to replace that with excitement.I know "being thrown in at the deep end" is a cliche but here i think it works. Belgium is the deep end, it will be very much sink or swim where as Reading is half way down the pool where you can just about touch the ground if you tiptoe so you spend all your energy trying to balance rather than just letting go and swimming. Yes Reading will be technically safer but perhaps that safety is a hindrance?I'm also a great believer in tempting fate, i think i want Belgium to much so it won't happen, i keep trying to find things in Reading to get excited about so that won't happen or just try to forget Belgium but then i find myself on Google maps looking at where cisco is and secretly thinking that one of those houses could be ours this summer.If we do end up in Reading i need to make sure i know that it's a good thing, that it's an awesome place to live, that where ever we end up the boy has his dream job (well short of rock star!)and that where ever we are we are together and happy.It is out of my hands at the moment anyway, we should here where the contract is within the next few weeks, every morning the first thing i do is check the post just in case only to bring up yet another takeaway menu!
On Saturday morning a dear friend passed away. He'd been in our lives for nearly three years and has been all we could ask for from a friend. I realise this may make me sound insane, but this dear friend was CharlieSam the Hamster. I know it may seem silly to those who didn't meet him to be this attached to a 4 inch fuzzface especially as I'm a grown woman and the boy is a grown (tattooed and pierced) man but he touched our lives and made them a better place and because of that he is sorely missed.As I've had to move around a fair amount in the past couple of years (the perils of falling in love with someone who not only doesn't go to the same uni as you but also doesn't live in the same half of the country as you out of term-time!) Charlie went everywhere that I went. We got him a carry case early on (which he learnt how to open and escape from pretty quickly) and took him on trains, buses, in cars...all of which he travelled in better than I did!(he'd be running in his wheel on the long distance coach while i was getting motion sickness in the toilets or when5 hour boredom hit on the train he'd be amusing the kids/grannies/students opposite while I ran out of books to read. How many other hamsters have seen Buckingham palace? (We missed a connection and went for a walk...not wanting to put charlie through the x-ray machine and into baggage he came with us! And how many have been to a graduation ceremony? (with no time to drop him off at home and too hot a day to leave him in the car the air conditioned ceremony seemed the best option). There for every big occasion, every up and down (always waiting to play the clown and jump off something if you needed cheering up) he has left a pretty big hole in our lives (and clothes from all the things he thought were snacks!) for such a little thing. The comfort comes from knowing that he was not only better looked after than most hamsters and definitely more spoilt but also that we had five extra months to appreciate him and say our goodbyes. We were told the week we moved to Cardiff that he only had weeks to live as a lump had appeared under his leg and there was blood in his bedding but that as he was his usual happy, eating, running, jumping self that it would be left for nature to take it's course. For five months we have spoilt him rotten, kept him clean and warm and happy until Saturday when he passed away peacefully in his sleep. We don't have a garden and anyway we're never in the same place for very long so we buried his in a secluded spot where the robins nest in the park that way he's always somewhere special.I may be a crazy cat/hamster woman one day but for now i make no apologies for loving something small and fluffy. While I'm not even sure if there is an afterlife for humans let alone their smaller friends I hope that he is somewhere in peace......maybe with the worlds supply of corn!Thank you Charlie for all the laughs and friendship you gave us!
