As I type it's a few minutes to 5pm, Friday evening.

One morning in April 2001, along with a number of other colleagues, I was asked to hand over my company pager and mobile phone, retrieve a few possessions from my desk, and leave the office where I worked for an American investment firm, at the top floor of the Canary Wharf tower. I continued to be employed, and paid, until the end of June 2001, but for security reasons, I wasn't required, or indeed permitted, to attend the office, or work in any capacity.

Although this still seems like an amazing statement, I haven't done a single day's work since that morning in 2001. It's been a remarkable four years.

I remained in London initially. My old company had kindly provided me with a large sum of money as part of a separation package, and I was happy to continue paying the rent on my flat in East Dulwich for a while. I had always loved living in London, and now, unfettered by the tedious and occasionally stressful concerns of investment banking technology, I had much more time to enjoy life in the capital city.

I settled into a leisurely, comfortable routine. I would lie in bed until about 11am, then get up and make fresh-ground coffee and toast while listening to Ken Bruce, then Jimmy Young on Radio 2. Sometimes I'd walk to North Dulwich railway station and take a train to London Bridge, then the West End. Occasionally I'd attend the outplacement consultancy with which I'd registered, and use their facilities at their offices near St Pauls to browse the various job websites. I'd take a train to Charing Cross station and stroll along Fleet Street to get there, taking in a coffee shop on the way - or I'd take a train to Blackfriars; it was only a two-minute walk from there.

Unsurprisingly, one of my most vivid memories of that time in London is of September 11th, 2001; although I'd seen the pictures of the burning tower as the first newsflashes broke, the enormity of what had happened didn't sink in until an hour later, when, while listening to my car radio as I arrived at Sainsburys, a news presenter reported that the South tower of the World Trade Centre had collapsed, unable to keep the emotion from his voice. I remember too the dismay of the following days and weeks, as it became obvious that the US government was determined to exacerbate the situation which had led to the attacks, and that our own government was determined to help them do it.

Eventually, I decided that it was no longer prudent to be simultaneously paying a mortgage on my house in the Midlands and rent in the capital city, and I reluctantly abandoned my South London flat in February 2002, to make a 'tactical withdrawal', as I optimistically termed it at the time, to Derby.

The rest of 2002 was an unhappy time, really. Living in Derby requires a difficult adjustment after life in London; my frequent journeys to the West End to stroll along Piccadilly or Bond Street were replaced by a walk through Derby town centre, a much more mundane prospect. To make things worse, my old friend and colleague in Derby, Shaun Appleby, died after an operation following a long illness - one of the few things which helped to make the idea of moving back here less unbearable was the anticipation of seeing more of Shaun, so that was hard to take.

I spent my time straightening out my house - I hadn't lived here since 1994, and it was now jampacked full of stuff I'd brought back from London; I could hardly move from one room to another without climbing over something. I bought a desk and turned my second bedroom into a study, then started to spend far too much time glued to the Internet, taking part in discussion fora, arguing over US foreign policy belligerence, or over the relative merits of this Rush album or that.

Since then, each year has dissolved into the next at alarming speed. I remember 2003 mostly for the Iraq war and discovering BBC Radio 5Live, which I've spent hours listening to every day since. In 2004, I studied for a professional certification in networking, and Rush, my traditional "favourite band" toured the UK for the first time since the early '90s. I met a charming Finnish girl a year ago, and visited Finland twice, as I've recorded in this weblog; both very happy occasions. But mostly, these last years have passed in a sort of blur of Internet activity while listening to 5Live, punctuated by occasional visits to the shops.

This has been a strange limbo period, coloured by a degree of numbing uncertainty over my future. I feel almost as if I've sleepwalked through it. My overriding memory of this time will be of waking up wondering what on Earth I was doing in an anonymous housing estate at the edge of a dull provincial town, with nowhere to go, asking myself how it had come to this. Yet I can't deny that I've appreciated all the time to pursue my interests, and especially not having to set an alarm clock - being able to lie in bed listening to the radio in the morning, then get up and make fresh coffee and toast without needing to glance at a watch has been a precious privilege, and I'm sure I'll miss it.

On Tuesday I will be taking up a new position with a technology outsourcing company. I'll still be in Derby, 150 miles away from London, and my new job is rather different from my old career there; it doesn't offer a huge salary, or frequent business trips to New York, Europe and the Far East. Nonetheless, I feel that a chapter has closed. I start work immediately after the weekend and bank holiday, so these are the very last minutes of my mid-life sabbatical.

It's 5pm. It's all over.