Went on survival and it was night time, got killed by a zombie and a skeleton. Respawned, went back, killed a creeper with the help of a skeleton and then killed said skeleton. Ran to someone's house (BP's?) waiting for light.
Starting during the day is definitely a critical factor in whether or not you can get anything done in survival.
If you're still there, go into the upstairs bit and remove some mud/brick - it's only one layer thick, so you can get out before he follows.
Oh, and if there's anything left in the chest/furnaces, go ahead and use it - I've gone off to build a bigger place for myself.
The spawn is in the middle of a little ring of torches not far from your house. I accidentally destroyed a few of them while fighting off a zombie and couldn't replace them due to weird glitchy lagging. :-/
It would be good to make some kind of one-way safe house at the spawn, something that's safe to spawn into but that you can't run back to one you leave it.