Tonight I went out for a sort of reunion with some of the people I work with. It may seem a bit strange to have a reunion with people who still work in the same office as you, but the nature of our job is that we spend precious little time in our office at all, and therefore see each other rather infrequently. There were seven of us who started together three years ago this coming September as accountancy trainees. Two have bitten the dust along the way; one girl disappearing in mysterious circumstances, and another guy being sacked for total incompetence. The five of us who remain have seen each other less and less often as time has gone by, and seeing as we’re now all on the verge of qualifying and becoming fully fledged ACAs, now seemed like a good time to get together and catch up on our future plans. (more…)

I have not been wilfully neglecting my blog recently, I have just been exceptionally busy. I know that sounds a bit lame, but I really have been It all started the Friday before last when I had the first of far too many recent five thirty starts to my day, in order to attend a course about Solicitors’ Accounts Rules at the London headquarters of my firm. A pleasant day, spent gazing out of a massive plate glass window in an eighth floor meeting room with a wondrous view across the city. Around lunch time the clouds cleared and I realised I could see the Gherkin, which was pretty cool We had a rather posh buffet with cute little burgers on sticks and the whole experience was marred only by the extreme lack of aptitude of the main presenter for public speaking and the fact that my friend Mark dropped part of his banana down a radiator vent (more…)

The reason that there have been no posts on my blog of late is that I am spending a fortnight working in the place which fast feels like it is becoming my second home; Wantage. Wantage, if you are fortunate enough never to have heard of it, is a small town somewhere in the hidden depths of Oxfordshire. Imagine the back of beyond, go beyond it, and Wantage is about thirty miles away. One of our major clients has a large plant there; they use materials which are rather exciting and dangerous, and so they have to locate themselves in towns which no one will mind if they accidentally wipe out with an industrial spillage.

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“Have you ever licked a piece of rubber?” asked the client.  “Feel free to try.  You’ll find that the Chinese rubber tastes quite different to the Spanish stuff”.

I sniffed the tube of rubber he held out to me gingerly, but declined to try it with my tongue.  It was difficult to maintain an appropriately straight face. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure whether the client was being serious or trying to wind me up, but I didn’t want to take any chances. This wasn’t a place where the staff seemed to have a great sense of humour. (more…)