Phew. Somehow I survived my first week in London, somehow being the operative word, because let’s just say things didn’t go entirely to plan

I had been looking forward to staying in the Hilton because I figured we might get nice rooms, so I was quite surprised when I checked in on Monday night to discover that it was the second worst hotel room I’ve ever stayed in in my entire life. The fact that it was only a single bed didn’t bother me, because I am perfectly happy sleeping in single beds, but the fact that the room was only wide enough for a single bed and so I didn’t even get a bedside table, was rather a disappointment. The second thing which struck me as I entered the room was that there was a nice long window at the far end of it. I approached this and pulled back the curtain to see what sort of view I had, and this is what confronted me… (more…)

Blogging appears to continue to be at best spasmodic, which I regret, but I still seem to be very busy with work, and in the spare time which I have had, I’ve been trying to do things other than surfing the internet, mainly learning to type and to speak some limited Czech. Surfing the internet is at any rate severely hindered by the fact that our wireless connection at home is nearly permanently down, and since I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress it’s become virtually impossible for me to log in and make a post from my phone (more…)

I don’t seem to be doing too well at this blogging lark recently Too much work, not enough free time to do anything interesting worth blogging about! This weekend Babel and I went to have lunch with my aunt and her family, which was rather pleasant, but poor Babel was feeling rather ill so after we left he had to go home to bed. That theoretically gave me this afternoon free to do some much-needed auditing, but I’m rebelling and can’t be bothered. I will do it tomorrow, but today I just feel a bit tired and grey and depressed.

I’ve been working in Banbury for the past week, one out of three which I am spending there in total. It would be a really easy place to get to if I drove, but not driving makes it more troublesome. This week I have been getting a lift off a colleague most days, but it was taking me over an hour to get to the place which she needed to pick me up from, so it wasn’t much of a treat. And often I actually prefer taking the train to getting lifts from people because I’m a bit antisocial, and anyway, the train is an opportunity to do more work. Let’s just say this job is very time-pressured (more…)

Personally, I am not terribly excited by the fact that it has snowed, because I still have to go to work and I wasn’t allowed to go home early yesterday. I admit to being a little perplexed as to why if I can get to work with no problems, none of the teachers in Birmingham schools are capable of doing likewise, but I am rather glad that they seemingly cannot, because it meant the roads were nice and free this morning and my bus arrived in record time I would add that I am also rather impressed with myself that so far I have managed not to fall over in this particular snow, but they say that pride comes before a fall and so perhaps I’d better not! (more…)

I must apologise for the severe lack of blogging which has taken place at this blog over the past few weeks. I confess that I have never liked the month of January, since childhood having found it the most depressing month of the year, and these days my January is a complete and utter write-off by virtue of the fact that I am obliged to spend it in Wantage.

I could write at great and tedious length about how much I hate the town of Wantage. If you saw it yourself, you might not think there was anything particularly objectionable about it, but if I add it up now I have spent no fewer than 14 weeks in this place over the course of the past few years, and it has begun to become wearing. The attractions of Wantage are severely limited, the highlight being a small branch of Waitrose which stocks an extensive selection of approximately six different sandwiches. Compare this to the even smaller branch of Boots, which stocks approximately three different sandwiches, and you have covered the entire lunchtime eating possibilities of the town in one fell swoop. That is to say, there is also an independent sandwich shop where in days gone by I confess that I have made the occasional purchase, but a colleague subsequently pointed out some of their rather unhygienic food practices to me, and after that I began to view it more as a health hazard than a nutritional opportunity. Apart from the afore-mentioned shops, the town boasts a small newsagents which admittedly sells Wispas, a statue of Alfred the Cake, and the only hotel I have encountered in my entire life that I would refuse to stay in ever again. Impressive. (more…)

I feel a little bit less depressed this afternoon than I have for the rest of the week. I’ve been having one of those weeks where you don’t want to get out of bed, not because you’re tired, but just because you feel you can’t face the day. The audit I’m working on is so rubbish – I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing and the client isn’t here/keeps refusing to speak to us, so it’s virtually impossible to get the information I need to do my job, even if I could work out what that was. Obviously I am doing some work, I’m working quite hard in fact, but most of what I’m doing is probably inadequate and that’s kind of depressing. Like I’m doing it as well as I can based on the knowledge and resources available to me, but that’s still probably not well enough, and everybody out here is basically just hoping that the company goes bust and we don’t have to finish the job. With net liabilities of £11million, it is somewhat difficult to argue that the group is still a going concern! (more…)

I apologise for the distinct lack of blogging over the course of the past week, and resolve to do better going forward After my rather wonderful birthday, I proceeded to have a rather miserable week in which I succumbed to a slight cold and had to get up at the godforsaken hour of five in the morning to commute to London. I was booked to a small audit in London, of a computer software business my firm had never dealt with before, and so there was some uncertainty over how long the job was going to take. For this reason the manager decided it was going to be too risky for me to book hotel accommodation, which I then might have to cancel at a later date and incur charges for, and thus I merrily agreed to commute. Commuting to London is something which sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea on paper, but when it gets to 5am, it’s cold and dark outside and your breathing resembles that of Darth Vader, it’s the sort of thing you wish you hadn’t volunteered for (more…)

I have just accidentally swallowed a tic-tac. That was not the opening sentence I was intending to write, but literally just as I was on the verge of starting typing, I mismanaged putting a tic-tac in my mouth and narrowly avoided choking I can now no longer remember what my incredibly witting opening sentence was going to be (more…)

You might have thought that, as accountants, we were fairly immune from the credit crunch.

Not so.

Our entire Transactions Services department has just been sent home, on the grounds that there are no longer any transactions for them to service. Some of them have been offered redeployment within the insolvency department which, funnily enough, suddenly has a whole load of work on.

The entire office admin team has also been put on notice, while they decide how many of them they want to keep.

No one has done us the courtesy of telling us whether there are going to be redundancies in audit, so currently we’re just sitting here and waiting to see what happens, whilst unsettling rumours abound.

I must say I hate this job, but it will mess up an awful lot of plans if I lose it

I apologise for the extreme lack of blogging recently, but I have been having a hellish sort of week. Workwise I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had any scope to do anything other than, well, work(!) during work hours, and have even had to bring home several hours work a couple of evenings. Bizarrely, this is supposed to be our quietest time of the year, and yet I am ten times more stressed out and under pressure than I was during January and February, which are allegedly our busiest times

What it all boils down to is pension schemes. In order to audit pension schemes, you have to be specially trained, and all of the specially trained people, with the notable exception of me, have either left the firm or are currently at college doing exams. Combine this with the fact that there is an annoying piece of government legislation, which requires that all pension scheme accounts be signed and filed within seven months of the year end, and add into the mixture the fact that the overwhelming majority of pension schemes choose 5 April as their year end to coincide with the tax year. The net result is that the reporting deadline is the week after next, and suddenly there are in excess of twenty half-finished pension scheme audits which have my name on them (more…)