Three month plan

I love a good plan. I don't care if it comes together, I just like knowing when it goes off piste.

To that end, I spent three days mapping out the next ten weeks.

June is pretty straightforward--work up north three days a week, home four days.  Of course I have to move out of my flat by the end of the month, so two weekends will be spent packing, one will be spent moving, and the other will be travelling--probably Bath, Brighton or the Cotswolds.  (I'm also going to two plays, a concert and a festival.) One friend has offered me her attic space in Bournemouth, and I'm hoping another friend will help me move it there, as I can't use my car.  (Speaking of which, I need to sell my car!)  Packing is particularly challenging because in the end I will have stuff in five places: Up north at work, in London at a hotel, in storage in Bournemouth, in my mom's garage, or with me on my travels!

July I'm officially homeless, so instead of three days a week at the office, I will spend five days there, and let the company pay my hotel bill.  Two weekends I will go travelling--Glasgow, Geneva, York and Northern Ireland are the finalists--and use my points at Holiday Inn.  The other two weekends I will stay with friends in London. (Actually, one weekend I only have one commitment in London, so I'm going to try and get out of it so I can spend that week travelling as well.)  I will be three weeks without access to a washing machine, so I have to organise this with military precision to ensure I have clean underwear! 

I'm also going to go back to Reading for one day to see my dentist and get my prescriptions refilled.  My phone contract is also finished in July, so I need to change it to pay-as-you-go and get the phone unlocked, so I can use local sim cards when I travel.

Mid-August I plan to leave, so you'd think I'd be ramping down, spending time with friends, but it's just the opposite: I'll be travelling both weekends, including Edinburgh for the fringe festival!  (Sadly, the Cambridge Folk Festival is completely sold out, or I'd be spending one weekend there, as well.)  My last day up north will be Thursday the 14th; on Friday the 15th I will go to the London office to drop off my laptop and take care of any final paperwork, and then I will get the train to the airport and go.

Of course I'll be back in mid-October, and will start looking for work then.  However, that will take a little time and I've already scoped out a couple of weekends to go to Canterbury and Cornwall, plus visit friends in Stroud, Gloucester, Oxford, Birmingham, Manchester, Reading and Bournemouth. (I may even visit Runcorn for old time's sake.)  In November I'm going to tour the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, where the Liberty Bell was cast, and go to Northumberland to watch the Leonid meteor shower (and also check out the Angel of the North and the Battle of Flodden battlefield, where the English crushed the Scotts 500 years ago).  In December I will attend Limmud in Coventry.

So basically what I'm saying is that I'm going on holiday to relax and get away from my regular life.