Following the bombshell at the end of the last post we were now in the undesirable position of having to find a new roof over our head. Sad face. No, fuck that, grumpy face. Why? Bad timing, that’s why. Two reasons:

1. At that time we were already going through the process of a bloody office move for Xcite – a new office in Covent Garden and a new studio closer to home in Basingstoke. The studio move (which we were doing ourselves) was now going to be within 2 weeks our eviction date    – and –
2. The real killer: we were currently viewing houses. TO BUY. To actually BUY; get on the property ladder and be real homeowners. But now, the 6 weeks notice we had wasn’t going to be long enough to find a house, secure a mortgage and exchange, let alone move in. This meant we were going to have to commit to a minimum of further 6 months, if not a year, in another god-for-saken rental property.

Needless to say, Ocado’s sales of Smirnoff increased considerably over the next few weeks.

There was however a certain sense of irony about the situation. The whole way through filming my mantra was always “marriage, house, kids”, in
that order. No debate. Whereas Rob was quite happy to have kids straight away. Good for him. My reason for wanting to buy a house before attempting a family was because of the insecurity renting brings. The continual stress of knowing you (and your now family) could be turfed out at any point would be most disconcerting.

It’s bad enough when it’s just the 2 of you, but bring a young child into the mix or, god forbid, a pregnant Emily and there’d be a whole world of shit…  And yet within hours of filming finishing, that’s exactly what happened. Not the pregnant bit. Jesus! I’m just talking about the eviction.

Not only that but out of the 4 previous rental tenancies Rob and I have had together, this was the first time the landlord had given us notice, not the other way round. Just like I’d said I was worried about. If filming hadn’t finished, part of me would have suspected foul play. My initial reaction to the eviction notice definitely would have made for entertaining viewing. lol.

With the new London office secure we turned our attention to the new studio location. Once that was sorted we based the house search within close proximity. It’s only a temporary thing (we hoped) so we figured we might as well get somewhere close-by. There was only one problem with this whole plan – by the time we actually got around to looking at houses there were literally two available with our required move-in date. Two. TWO.

The long and short of it is we have moved… into a cupboard.

To be fair, it was the better of the 2 cupboards on offer so I shouldn’t really complain.

You know that phrase, ‘the grass is always greener’? Turns out, not always the case. Shocker. I spent months moaning about our old house, mostly on camera (not embarrassing at all), and yet I’d move back in a heart beat. So would the cats. Well, no, if I could have anything it would be to have had the time to buy our first home as we were planning to. So would the cats.

Zac and Dexter were distraught to find out we had to sign a 12 month contract here. You can therefore imagine my reaction.

Having said that, as Rob so eloquently put it, living here does mean when we do eventually buy a house, whatever we buy… it will be better than this.

Happy face.