Flat hunting

Due to not knowing where I’d be in September until a couple of weeks ago (I have bounced between the possibilities of Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester and ‘elsewhere generally’ in the last few months) I’ve still not found anywhere to live this year. I did have two viewings lined up for today, but the agency called me this morning to say that they don’t have the keys for the property—not really an encouraging sign—though thankfully they told me this before I’d set off into Manchester. I’m not entirely sure where I want to live—Didsbury is a pleasant area with good public transport, but it involves going through Fallowfield each morning which is not a pleasant experience. At the moment I’m looking at the city centre and have used a few websites to contact five or six letting agencies so hopefully I will be able to arrange some viewings for tomorrow and get things moving as quickly as possible.

Thankfully, the University has finally made me a proper written offer which I have accepted, and I’ve got them to push things forward so that I can actually register next week. Annoyingly I can’t register online from home because my offer is conditional on the award of Masters degree, and I won’t get official confirmation of whether I’ve passed the course or not until November/December. No doubt this will cause confusion at registration, as will the fact that my offer letter states that it is conditional on me getting an MSc, which will be rather difficult to prove.

Anyway, I feel much better about FoE stuff than I did earlier in the week, even if they have annoyed me immensely by pulling out of the current nuclear power consultation which the Government is running, after I’d started to write a response to it (as usual I discovered this via the Guardian rather than directly from FoE).