Just in case any of you were wondering, this is the current state of the fallout from my not being able to travel to the USA.

Kevin is OK for now. A combination of cost cutting on our part, negotiation with the landlord and continued support from me should ensure that he can continue to afford to stay in our apartment, which I very much hope to be able to return to one day.

My situation is more difficult. Kevin has a good full-time job. I don’t. I also have a lot of expenses. By the time I have paid things I am legally required to pay, things that I need for work (e.g. Internet access) and helped Kevin with the rent I have about $1000 a month, and that can be rather variable, especially with exchange rate risk. That’s actually a very good income if you don’t have to pay rent from it, but even a studio apartment will set me back around $650/mo, and with council tax, utility bills and the like on top that doesn’t leave much for food, let alone books or going to cons or whatever.

So what I’m trying to do is avoid having to pay rent so that I have money available to help Kevin and do interesting things. One possibility is flat shares, but I’ve been looking at web sites and most of the ads tend to include the words “young” and “fun loving”, so I suspect I have difficulty finding anywhere. The good thing is that I can go pretty much anywhere there is a high speed Internet connection (which my business will pay for), though I have no transport which rules out some cheaper locations. The bad thing is that I’m so busy that I don’t have a lot of time to look.

Anyway, concentrating my mind is that I need somewhere to live for a few weeks in April/May. If I can’t find somewhere I’ll need a short term rent or a hotel, and that will be very expensive indeed, so I need to get my act together. In the meantime, if anyone knows of someone needing a quiet older lady (who spends most of her days glued to a computer) as a lodger, please let me know.