It all works out in the end

My friend and former colleague Stu mentioned on his own weblog that he spent nearly two hours on the tube getting from Clapham Common to the City. I am grateful to him for this as it reminds me why my shirts and suits are now in vacuum bags under the bed in the spare room and why I am busting my butt to learn a new trade that doesn’t involve public transport. So here to remind viewers is a picture of yours truly in front of the old Commercial Union building demonstrating what I don’t have to look like anymore.

What I am further indebted to him for is an interesting snippet of news he passed my way which can be read in full in this link: Bungler Bob’s been a bad boy

In short, this is the news that that nice man – Bungler Bob, the so-called manager of Market Intelligence at Lloyd’s, who made the decision last year that Lloyd’s could muddle along better without my services – has been disqualified by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. His misdemeanour relates to his previous position with Zurich and involves “. [Robert Stevenson] … knowingly facilitated the transaction and in so doing enabled ZAIL to deceive its auditors….”.

So there you go…Lloyd’s had appointed a senior manager within its Franchise Directorate, which fulfills a regulatory function, who has himself been specifically named and disbarred by a government insurance regulator. I trust Lloyd’s will be taking immediate steps to remedy an unacceptable situation which brings the standing of its flagship Market Monitoring Directorate into disrepute. Anyway that has cheered me up enormously. That’ll teach him. You cross the Corr at your peril: it will come back and bite your arse badly.

I had been feeling a little fragile as I went out for a few beers in Northampton last night. It had been a long week, I had been up since 3am and am well out of practice with the drink and I was on the Stella. And of course we ended up staying up talking till 3am righting the world’s wrongs. I am trying to remember where we went – a couple of trendy drinking holes in the town centre that were surprisingly civilized for a town centre on a Friday night. In Bedford you would not be able to move for bouncers. What I do remember is being by far the oldest people in the room which was a wee bit dispiriting. However I am youthful enough to know better than to try to engage a student/barman in a conversation about the Doobie Brothers who were patently alien to the guy, as my bibulous drinking partner, Mr KR Myers of Bugbrook did for some reason.

What James has been listening to;

Mathematics by Cherry Ghost. Song is not yet released, I know nothing of the band though I think it is actually just one guy. Great voice and beautiful song. What he is not listening to is something by some one called Ben Taylor who is even more boring than his father James if you can believe such a thing possible. But it did prompt the lovely Ken Bruce on Radio 2 to say the other day that he was the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon which means that he “is bald with long legs”.

Let’s not talk about work

I had a good day today and finished before twelve which gave me a pleasant afternoon having a bit of lunch and retail therapy in Milton Keynes shopping centre – the Chav Creche. “what’ll we do today Chantelle; shall we go down the shopping centre with our fuck-off big double decker prams and see how many shops we can clog up?”.

Has no one else noticed this trend? Whilst posh middle class women clog up the roads with their 4×4 driving their obnoxious kids to school, vulgar chavscumshit cows do the same with these massive double buggies full of the evidence of their fecund intemperance. If the bitches can’t breed fast enough to fill up a double pram then they hoik their fat arses around pushing what look like teenagers in their prams. Honestly some of these things in the prams have adams apples and stubble. And are called Beyonce or Jade.

Things looking nice and busy at the moment. Lots of stuff from lawyers that I don’t understand but have to sign. Finally got around to arranging for my friend Bertie to come and stay and see the new house (after 4 years) and arranged a date in April. It is now possible that there may be new occupiers when she turns up. I am off to Northampton tomorrow with Ma Myers for a couple of sherries and am excitedly planning a trip to the alps in May. I fell so in love with the place last year as I passed through viaggiando a Italia last year that I am going again in May. I am planning on catching the overnight ferry from Harwich which should disgorge me first thing at the charmingly monikered “Hook of Holland”. Sounds grim but I’ve never done an overnight ferry before with my own little cabin (and I imagine it will be very little indeed) and it all sounds terribly Orient Express.

I should point out that in the above photograph, my trusty old bike does not have a flag pole attached to the back. This is what is known as a photographic schoolboy error.

Also have my friend and ex-Lloyd’s colleague coming up for a day in March hopefully for a trip to the Imperial War Museum of Airoplanes at Duxford whilst also trying to see about getting up to Bradford in April to see the once-a-month showing of the 1950s film “This is Cinerama” at the national museum of photography. Bit anorak-ey those last two. Maybe I should not mention them in public.

Location, Vocation, Embrocation

Well now I now how Michael Fish feels. My confident assertion that Spring was in the air precipitated, literally three weeks of near continuous rain (I believe it didn’t rain yesterday). So its a good thing that my new career direction isn’t metereological. The new job has been a grind though but it is slowly getting better. Getting more confident but I am still slow and cautious and my days are tending to be long and quite physically demanding – Deep Heat for the shoulders etc. So the last 3 weeks have been work, home, bed, up, work, home, bed…to coda. This too will get better with time. Got my first pay cheque at February end so the course has actually paid for itself and the gamble has paid off.

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Give me a few more months and I will move up to the next step. Then perhaps a break for a bit of travel. I am keen to do six weeks in Bologna and hopefully a long one in Africa within 18 months. Sounds a bit ambitious but the whole point of moving into driving is that it is a much more flexible job market. With the right amount of experience it should be easier to work for a while, break for a while, and work elsewhere etc unlike the old environment where they treate a 2 week career break in the last fifteen years as a potential threat to national security.

For the technically minded the vehicle I am driving is a 27 ton, six axle Scania refrigerated. I am now cheerfully reversing this down side streets in London where once I would have been afraid to take the motorbike (still would in some cases). I have tried to take some piccies but the phone seems to have lost most of them. But here is CVT on a loading bay in Wandsworth. It is 3rd from right. It looks tiny, but in fact the camera lens is wide angle: Because the two artics (pantichnicons for those of you reading this South of the Vaal) are longer, they are closer and seem much bigger, but believe it or not they are about the same width and height. Note how neatly it is parked on the bay! I can’t manage this with a car. There is actually a trick to this…you basically align with the yellow lines, then revere back slowly till you hit the buffers with a thump. Bet you just can’t believe the technical skills I have picked up in the last 5 weeks.

 

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The second piece of news is that the house went on the market last weekend and I accepted an offer by the end of Monday. Hopefully I will be shot of it by the end of April. I will rent somewhere in the interim whilst I look for another project to take on. I had hoped to use some of the proceeds to treat myself to a new bike – ideally for my trip to the alps in May – but unfortunately the heap of rust you see bottom left is playing up and its looking terminal so I may have to fork out for a new car instead. How boring.