All change - eek exciting!

Isn’t it funny how things can work out sometimes?

I’ve always been a bit of a risk taker, in a minor way. I don’t mean risk to life and limb (although I do drive rather fast and The Hubby says I have a heavy right foot) nor in terms of being very adventurous doing things which would make me uncomfortable (I’m a bit of a wimp about my creature comforts) but a risk in terms of doing something unconventional and different which doesn’t conform with the Surrey ‘norm’.

For instance I’ve married three husbands and dumped two of them for varying different reasons (The Hubby number three is doing OK so far, he’ll be glad to know) changed jobs and careers a number of times and not abided by the conventions of politeness when I think others are, quite frankly, stupid or need a few home truths telling to them. It hasn’t made me any new friends and on occasion has lost an old one, but I’ve almost always had the conviction in my head that I am comfortable with what I have said and done and have said or done it for good reasons with a degree of integrity. I have never set out to deliberately hurt or disadvantage anyone, although I know a few people have done so to me. I hope they can sleep at night. I have never had a great deal of interest in climbing the overpriced and overhyped UK property ladder (who needs a six bedroomed house with a posh postcode anyway? As long as you have a comfy bed and a warm partner to share it and your life with, what else matters?) and I want to go and live abroad in the next few years to get away from the miserable British climate with its rain and chilliness. I am a creature of the sun, I think.

Regular readers of this blog will know I have hated my job for quite a while. The sheer tediousness, expense and unreliability of the travelling, the thanklessness of the customers and the moaning and discontent of colleagues has pissed me off no end and made the whole thing pretty intolerable most of the time (although in fact I have had to tolerate it because it has paid the bills). So back in February, after a particularly bad meeting and appalling treatment by someone in a position of influence over my job and who should have known better, I wrote myself into a report on some restructuring as a redundancy. I wasn’t entirely sure it would go through and be accepted, but it was and a departure date of 31st March 2015 was agreed.

Doing so was an enormous risk; we have a mortgage and bills to pay. A decent redundancy payment will last a fair while, but I will need to earn some dosh and top it up if it is to last until I can access my pension.

So I have taken the opportunity to retrain to do something I have been interested in for some time but couldn’t really justify chucking in a perfectly good job with a high salary to do – beauty therapy. I’m doing a course every Saturday at a really nice little beauty school in Walton on Thames to become qualified to level two standard, and will do a couple of extra modules in popular stuff like massage, then set up my own mobile beauty therapy business. I will be qualified by January in the whole thing, and have already qualified to do manicures and pedicures. I’m loving it; it’s creative, with people and not a computer and much more relaxed.

But the Council is now trying to bring my leaving date forward. There is a significant financial cost to me if it does so, and I have to fight my corner. But there is a lot to be said for getting out of a place that you really don’t want to go to every day and moving on to a new stage of your life. So really, it’s just a case of what I can get out of it.

Goodness knows how we’ll manage financially. But we’re both resourceful, and we will manage even if it means we have to live on beans every day (if that’s the case, ours will be the house with the roof blown off – you won’t miss it). And overall even if we’re skint we’ll be happier. And I can be at home with my dog and cats every day, and we may even get another puppy.

Who knows?