The Big Move

Three years ago I moved to Manchester from Somerset where I had spent most of my life.  I had a separate home and office, 11 miles apart, so my work and home life were kept separate.

When I moved to Manchester, I decided to intially work from home until I got to know the city and could choose a suitable office.  Then the recession came along!  So I did the sensible thing and continued working from home in case business took a dive.

The trouble with this is that I lost the division between my work and home life which slowly but surely takes its toll.  I definitely work more efficiently doing a strict 9 til 5 rather than letting work drift into the evening. 

Last week I finally made the move into a new office so I now have a separate work and home life again.  I can't tell you how good it feels to have that seperation back again!

The move went very smoothly - I hired a van (from Salford Van Hire - very good value no-nonsense service), and with the help of a friend and the very helpful caretaker at the office block we moved me in within a few hours.

My new home is Ducie House, close to Piccadilly Station in the north of the city, the complete opposite side to my home.  Ducie House is an old converted factory, and has been modernised with lots of frosted glass to give the 'old meets new' effect common in so many of Manchester's buildings.

It is home to a number of businesses, mainly in the creative sector which will hopefully provide some networking opportunities once I've got to know my fellow tennants!

Ducie House is unique in Manchester, in that it offers proper self-contained individual offices (not just divided off sections of a big room) which are semi-serviced, in that your electricity and heating are provided and you have shared kitchen facilities, but you are left to sort out your own phone line which means no need to join a slow shared broadband connection or have all your calls go through a central switchboard, which is common in serviced offices.

My first week was slightly marred by BT taking a week longer than expected to provide broadband (you don't realise just how much you rely on an internet connection until you lose it!), but other than that I'm very happy in my new home.

All that remains now is to decorate the office to make it feel a bit more homely.

I'll post some pictures once that's done!