I’ve only been living in England for five and a half months, and it’s safe to [...]]]> As of today I have just under a week left in my job. Next weekend I’ll be packing up all my stuff and doing the long drive back up Britain to the land of the haggis toastie and salt n’ sauce.

I’ve only been living in England for five and a half months, and it’s safe to say that, when I arrived in May, I was expecting to be staying a lot longer than this.

Having worked for large multinationals for most of the past seven years, it’s been enlightening to see how vulnerable small businesses can be (although in the current climate, of course, large multinationals seem just as vulnerable). I guess what I had failed to realise was the extent to which most companies are built on a wing and a prayer, or a lot of hot air, to put it another way.

The experience of watching a business disintegrate has taught me quite a few things. If I ever go for another job interview, it won’t be the training opportunities and the staff canteen arrangements I’ll be asking about; I’ll be requesting to see the balance sheets and to have a long chat with the company accountant. I’ll be asking exactly how much guaranteed business is coming in in the next six months, what contingencies are in place in case a client drops out of the picture, whether there are savings to cover salary payments in the event of an emergency: all things I would never have considered it necessary to ask before.

Not that I’m likely to be looking for a job anytime soon. I seem to be much better at keeping myself gainfully employed than any boss I’ve ever had.

Despite my somewhat unclear living arrangements over the next few months (part of the time in the North, part of the time in Edinburgh, part of the time back in England) I am inundated with offers of work, which ought to be comforting, but is actually quite stressful, as they tend to cancel one another out. It’s the old freelancer’s dilemma of being scared to say ‘no’ to anything in case the offer is never repeated.

However, I’ve pretty much settled on the e-learning stuff, as I need a break from print, and I’m very keen to go back to Shanghai and see how things have progressed there in the past two years.

So October is likely to be a month of contrasts: drinking endless cups of tea, going on long country walks and breathing in bucketfuls of piercing Highland air for the first couple of weeks; then sipping expensive cocktails, sitting in taxis in gridlocked traffic and breathing in exhaust fumes and the stink of fried tofu towards the end.

The best thing about leaving England: no more bl**dy bell ringing!