Go West (End)

OK, time to get over the Christmas blues and spread some good news, I think.

I've got a new job. Hoo-fucking-ray! The ghost of Christmas Redundant will not need to visit me and I won't have to eat Tesco value beans from the can.

It all happened rather fast and it hasn't really sunk in yet. Since the redundo situation was announced, I have been applying for many, many editorial positions and as the competition is so fierce, none of them responded.

I got a call last Thursday from one of the jobs I was really interested in and she sprung a 20 minute telephone interview on me. Then she asked me to come in on the Friday for a face-to-face one with her and the publisher. That lasted an hour and a half (unusual for me as I normally perform so badly at interviews that I'm out within 30 minutes) and involved a serious grilling and a couple of sub-editing tests.

That went well and they asked me back for a second interview on Wednesday of this week with the same people and also the editor. Another hour and a half later and I was positive I wanted the job.

They called yesterday and offered it to me. And I accepted.

For the first time in months, I have some good news and haven't stopped smiling. The people seem really nice, the work will be hard but rewarding and the best bit of all is that I can finally ditch the SE1 postcode of the South Bank as their offices are based in W1. So I will become a fully-fledged Soho Mo.

As if that wasn't good enough, even though I am going before the Redundancy Fairy was due to visit and drag me kicking and screaming from the building, I still get the full pay-off they were offering.

So what with the new job starting in a month, I will be able to use the pay-out to clear my overdraft and pay my car loan off*, leaving me free to move out of the sticks and back to London Town, baby!

I will definitely stop moaning for the rest of Christmas now.



* This is obviously never going to happen. The money will be spent on a new iPod, a whole new wardrobe to start my new job in Soho, a laptop, some Converse trainers, a few new pairs of jeans, some CDs from eBay, plenty of Clinique skin care products and whatever else I can spunk the cash on in as short a time as possible.