Carol Brown just took a bus out of town -- but I'm hoping that you'll stick around

Since we heard about the imminent merger, things haven't been the same in work. It's the constant topic of conversation -- who will keep their jobs, where will the new company be based, how rubbish the company is that is being merged with ours, how the new MD isn't like the old one, and on and on and on.

I go from hopeless despair to reassuring myself that a decision such as this would have enormous marketing and PR applications, which the one employee in the other company would surely be unable to handle on their own -- meaning there would surely be a need for me, and my mad media skillz.

But the truth is you really can't tell. At first I was wondering if it was my punishment for leaving the purchasing department -- since purchasing was responsible for three counties instead of just ours it wasn't going to be affected. Then this week they were all told of the cost cutting measures and streamlining initiatives for efficiency that would be affecting them. More departments being merged into larger bodies, meaning job losses for them, too. My own risk of redundancy is a scary one, since I wouldn't get a redundancy payout -- having only started the job six months ago, they need only give me a month's notice.

The latter revelation has the girl really worried. I think it's shown how unstable everything is for me -- which makes our whole home situation very precarious. Her thinking goes along the lines of if I lose my job, we won't be able to pay the rent, and if we can't pay the rent then we'll have to end our tenancy agreement in May when it's up for renewal. From there, with no place to call our own anymore, the girl would have to find a share house in London and I'd end up back with my parents again. So, back to square one -- or really, worse than square one.

The girl's worries aren't helped by a heap of other things playing on her mind -- long work hours, being tired of commuting from Essex to London, and missing Australia. Living together has been a new experience for us both, and you can't help but wonder if she might sometimes imagine the grass to be greener on the other side of the fence -- having nobody to answer to, and not having your own living situation risked by someone else. The girl sometimes seems disillusioned with life in England, and I occasionally worry that it's partly because of me -- living in Essex means she misses out on the London life and seeing her London friends. She is working on it though -- trying to get out more, make plans to see friends more and socialise more with work colleagues when she gets the chance. She is also making interesting plans for when I'm gallavanting up Andean mountains.

Last Autumn, the economic downturn didn't much concern me. For the first time in my life I felt I had got a "real" job on a contract, the girl and I got ourselves a house to rent, and if anything VAT cuts and falling fuel prices were welcome. It didn't take the universe long to rob me of my smugness. Christmas was almost cancelled when it looked like my brother was going to have to declare bankruptcy and fold his business, threatening to leave him and his family homeless. Everyone was feeling the pinch, and were putting off paying their bills until the New Year -- but this meant he wasn't getting what he was owed, and relied on. Luckily, a client who owed him a large sum of money did pay up in time. But it showed me how close to home these things can get.

It's only a few months on, and though he didn't have to go bankrupt, my brother had to sell his business to his wife's uncle -- which saved any job losses for him and his own employees. My sister in law is now being made redundant, putting them again on the edge.

The recession is biting in other areas, too. While the girl is assured she is safe in her job, that her company won't be making any redundancies at her level at least, the British government have decided to tighten up on immigration. Gone is the option of a Skilled Migrant visa for the girl, since they now require a Master's Degree, and there is rumours on the wind that sponsored work visas are being refused, also. We're hoping that the girl's position there is a more secure one -- she will have been working for the company for a year already, and they have a team of lawyers for this kind of thing, so it isn't like she is coming fresh to these shores and hoping for a sponsored work visa.

The worst case scenario for the latter is the girl returns to Perth, and I apply for a working holiday visa down under. We'd be eligible to apply for spousal visas if we lived together for another year, then we wouldn't need to worry about governments tearing us apart.

We hope for now I don't get made redundant, or get offered a job elsewhere in the country -- the purchasing team were offered alternate positions in Glasgow and Oldham, if they were also willing to take a paycut of a third with the positions. And if I can manage to not only keep my job, but keep it where we are living, then we just have to cross our fingers that the men in Whitehall (or whoever decides these things) don't clamp down too much on work visas for cute Aussie girls.

And just to lighten the tone, today's title comes from this song: