Working nine-to-five in a location 220 miles away from your home means you have to live in a hotel. In the past two weeks I've stayed in two seperate hotels. I can't say I've really enjoyed staying in either. At least this coming week I'm staying in the better of the two, and I get to spend my Friday back in Leeds.

The hotel situation is something I can put up with, and surprisingly it does seem to have it's benefits if you look for them (although a complete lack of any reasonably accessible or reasonably priced internet access is not something I'm considering as a benefit).

What I am having tremendous difficulty with, however, is the journey each Monday and Friday. It sounds pretty easy - essentially just M1, A43, M40, A404, M4. On my second Monday morning I opted to leave at 5am instead of the 6am the week before, hoping to improve on my 10am arrival time by at least an hour. I actually arrived later. Leaving Reading on Friday at 1pm resulted in a 7pm arrival in Leeds. That's eleven hours spent on the road over the two trips.

Having the ability to plan my activities weeks in advance would mean that I'd be able to get train tickets in advance and travel by train. But I don't have that ability. I know what I'm doing tomorrow and the rest of the week, but no idea what's happening after that. So, I've got to keep driving down.

This is the negative side to what I'm essentially treating as a new job. Happily, it'd probably take me too long to list the positives. Whether I'll be saying that in a week's time will probably be heavily influenced by how many hours of my life I waste sat trying to get on or off the M40 at High Wycombe, or whether the M1 magically becomes a couple of lanes wider overnight.