I love baseball. It may not surprise you to learn that I have thought out the reasons why. In my opinion, the World Series is the most exciting sporting championship. At its best, baseball is as much a chess match between two managers as a sporting contest between athletes. And the main reason is that any game, even one that seems lost, can change with one stroke of a bat.

Yesterday morning, Jo and I walked up the High Street, got fresh bagels from Roni’s bakery, picked up a Times newspaper and coffees from Costa coffee. The weather was warm, pleasant and sunny. We stopped, looked in shop windows, pointed at cafés where we would like to eat and decided to go to a lecture at the used book store. When we got home, we traded sections of the paper and ate our breakfast. It was very relaxed, very pleasant and very unemployed.

We were deciding what we would do to fill the day when the phone rang. It was the employment agency with whom I had been dealing. I had interviewed for a position in a claims department last Friday. They had been impressed with my interview, and could I start on Wednesday? Well yes, I suppose I could do that.

With that, I had a job. I started today in the claims department of a large insurance company.

I returned from my first day at work to find none other that my beloved wife waiting for me at the train station. Never one to let the grass grow under her feet, Jo hugged me and reported that she had gone for a second interview at a large law firm in the City. And landed the job that she had really wanted out of all of the interviews that she had done.

With that little turn of events, we are both employed. Jo and I agree that that last, large piece, having jobs, has really made us feel settled here in the U.K. We celebrated with a bottle of wine from the store on the High Street and a plate of spaghetti. I daresay that today was a home run!