Relocation Relocation Relocation

After so much stalling the long-anticipated move to Basildon came as something of a surprise – the surprise being that it had actually happened. Another surprise is that taking two trains and a bus to work hasn't killed me, though you really know you're in the precariat when you're standing shivering in the Winter winds (of May) waiting for a bus next to a blackboard announcing: 'Ham Roll Only One Pound'.

Wickford is a Place of Signs. Sometimes it seems that you only need to turn your back on a fence or lamppost for a moment and someone has attached a sign to it by the time you've turned round again. The other day it was 'Floor Sanding and Varnishing Services' appearing one morning attached to lampposts everywhere. Of course it's probably a euphemism for sex.

My favourite sign was the one I used to pass (before they changed it) on the bus every day on the Nevendon Road advertising the services of a solicitor: 'Thinking about divorce or separation?' I wonder how many relationships that has doomed as someone, glancing out of the bus or car window, idly decided to end their marriage when they got home.

The office block looks pretty grim on the outside but inside it's a bit like a hotel, though you wouldn't necessarily want to go on holiday there. Many companies live there but you only glimpse the workers from the other offices briefly in the hushed corridors as they scurry to the toilet and back again like foraging wildlife.

The office itself is something of a pleasant surprise. Instead of the gunmetal grey holding cell I had been anticipating, it's all bright white with motivational words on the wall in different colours: 'Innovating', 'Performing'. Initially there were the usual jokes about replacing these with less elevated sentiments ('Irritating', 'Hibernating') but I must admit I quite like the ambience. It almost makes me feel professional.

Not that we haven't brought some of our issues along with us – even the toilet dysfunction which forced us in the last days of Brentwood to trek all round the building for a piss seems to have followed us. Within a month of our being there a mysterious blockage had occurred, putting the toilets just next to our office out of action. I feared that suspicion would fall on us, and that we would be detained until the culprit owned up, as in an Agatha Christie. But it was all sorted out in a couple of days, the blockage located and destroyed in, I like to think, a controlled explosion.

The main thing I was dreading was not having the radio. In fact there is one but you can only get Heart, which is pretty much the same thing as not having a radio at all. Nevertheless, life without Ken Bruce's Popmaster appears to be possible, and as for the Jeremy Vine show, well that was always a mixed blessing. They must be loving the EU debate, since from what I have heard it's all about opinion, not fact – the phones must be ringing off the hook.

I have observed the Daily Mail making no bones about its scepticism regarding the Remain camp's 'Project Fear' – imagine, the Daily Mail accusing other people of scaremongering, when they've been running their own Project Fear for the last century or so. The whole thing is depressingly like a General Election where you can only vote for the Tories – it's either the vaguely sinister Tories, or the really sinister ones who look like they've just crawled out from under a rock. Although which is which now? – I can't remember.

I suppose I am temperamentally more inclined to the Remain camp – after all, I watch quite a few subtitled films – but there's a part of me that simply wants to flip a coin. This seems to be in the spirit of the thing – and any given coin has far more real experience of economic systems than I can muster up.

Not that my vote is going to make much of a difference either way. According to the latest polls, this time next week we will no longer be in Europe. Where will we be then? – up the Limpopo I expect. While over in America, Donald Duck prepares to become President. Interesting times.