Attentive visitors with a long memory might remember me being dead chuffed back in September when I had a job offer for a move to Crawley. Furthermore they might have noticed that I am still commuting to London. The reason for this is that I was not able to move until security clearance had been processed.

That dragged on, and for the last four or five months it has been as if someone pressed the pause button on my life, but today I found out that the bureaucracy has finally cranked out a result and everything can go ahead.  At the moment it feels like the play button has been pressed, but the next couple of weeks will hopefully feel like fast forward.

What a great start to the new year.

Wasn't it Doctor Johnson who said something like "A man who is tired of London is tired of paying a fortune to spend two hours a day crammed into trains with idiots, their germs, their elbows and their amusing ringtones?"

Unfortunately the HR departments really, really, dislike anyone changing jobs at any time except the end of a month because it involves them doing extra work so I will not actually escape from railway-connected work and join the jet-set in the aerospace world until February, but now that I actually have a firm date it is a great relief.  I shall have to go out and overdose on lunchtime visits to the Tate and the National and walks as that is one thing I will miss about working up here.

(And talking of the railways.  At the start of every episode of Torchwood, when the voiceover says "the 21st century is when it all changes" I could not help pointing out that it had obviously been written by someone who had never worked in the rail industry.  The fact that even I was tired of that joke didn't stop me making it every week.)

If I had been able to transfer straight away instead of being on pause for four months has probably cost me about £1200, which would have come in handy over Christmas, but the biggest effect has been on my morale and energy, especially in my involvement in the Labour party.  To put it bluntly I have been mentally pre-occupied and distracted, but now I am raring to go – just in time for all the local elections.