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The first problems?

 For the first two years of working life, I lived on my own.

I had a flat in a small village in North Bedfordshire, which was above a hair dressers.

I hadn't seen the flat before signing the agreement, it was one of the few that was available on a MoD accommodation list, at the short notice I had before starting my job.

It was pleasant enough, it was an old stone cottage, I had a big bedroom on the top floor, with enough room to have a desk, with a lounge next to it.

The floor below then had a large bathroom and the kitchen, then the ground floor was the hair dressers.

The entrance to the flat was within the reception for the hair dressers (I had a key for their front door too)

It was a small village, there was a small Co-op food store, a post office, a news agents and two pubs.

For those first two years I didn't go out a great deal.

My take home pay was around £600 a month.

Rent was £325 a month, after electric bills, water rates, council rates (initially, then the 'poll tax') a car loan payment and paying off my University overdraft, I was left with perhaps £50-60 a month which had to cover petrol, all my food/groceries and any entertainment.

In short, I didn't have a lot of money.

I'd perhaps rent a video once a week, get a can of beer and that would be my weekly 'entertainment'.

The flat didn't have a washing machine, so I washed my clothes in the bath, with an over bath airer to dry them.

The flat didn't have central heating, just night storage heaters and only had single glazed windows, so in the Winter, I'd get ice on the inside of the windows.

I don't remember being horribly cold though, guess I just wore lots of layers.

I don't remember it as a particularly hard or difficult time, I was, by and large, enjoying myself.

I do though think I was perhaps a bit lonely.

I didn't really see anyone outside of work, I kept in touch with my old Uni friends, and I'd meet up with some of them perhaps once a month or so, either going back up to Salford for a weekend, or meeting up with friends in London.

I'd go to the cinema on my own every few weeks, and very occasionally go for a pint in one of the pubs.

It didn't feel lonely at the time, I thought it was brilliant.

There were though a few things that started to happen that made things just that bit harder.

Firstly, my 'new' (2nd hand of course, all I could afford) car was written off one night driving back from Salford, a Lorry drove me off the road, not even stopping. In truth I was extremely lucky to walk away without a scratch, just badly shaken, it could have been very much worse, but losing the car was a blow.

The insurance then wouldn't pay up remotely what I'd paid for it, only giving me a small fraction, I didn't then know anything about the financial ombudsman or what to do to force them to pay up, so I could only afford a run down banger to replace it, whilst still paying £70 a month paying off the loan I'd had to buy the car in the first place.

That started to weigh down on me, and the car I'd bought turned out to be far from reliable, which led to me going out even less.

At the time, it didn't seem to be a problem, I was still 'enjoying myself', but with the knowledge of hindsight and being able to look back now, I can see that that was perhaps just the first in a dominoes effect of problems that would reach out into my future.

Things I didn't know at the time:

1. Getting a full time job with an annual salary felt to me as though I was rich. In truth the Civil Service starting salaries at the time were quite poor, well below what I'd have earned in 'Industry', and I was living in an expensive part of the Country. Though I thought I'd budgeted for what I could afford, I hadn't done a very good job, and I was left with far less money than was comfortable.

2. Though living in a small village miles from anywhere didn't seem to be a particular issue at the time, it left me rather isolated, if there was a problem, for instance, with the car, or I wanted to not use petrol, I couldn't actually get anywhere. I though didn't know the area, it was years before the internet would exist and Libraries were limited in what information they would have on other towns, so practically, I perhaps couldn't have done much else.

3. I didn't prioritise making friends locally, neither with colleagues at work but certainly not going out to do anything where I'd meet new people. This left me with limited options for socialising.


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