Conorthoughts

Three weeks in

I have been at my new job three weeks now, and I haven't managed to write here, or anywhere else, for two weeks to the day, to the evening, in fact. I promised in my last post to write something the following evening about the explosion in private equity finance, on which I have a mouse-hole view from my desk, but I am not going to try to deliver on this promise now, or tomorrow evening. Sometime in the near future, perhaps.

My ambition to get my writing going again here in the evenings has been thwarted so far partly by fatigue. I haven't worked full-time for some years (not that I say this on my C.V.) so I am not in condition. Also, I am cycling to work, which is adding for the moment to the fatigue. It is a fine cycle, divided into three by my crossing the river twice, over Westminster bridge then back over Blackfriars bridge, cutting out a bend in the river. I thought it was at least a four miles cycle for the first couple of days but it is probably only three and a bit. Even three and a bit each way five days a week comes to thirty three miles or so, meaning that I can eat some chocolate, which I had virtually given up, and lose weight. 

What can I report from work? My fears that I would find it difficult to continue having my lunch in the nice well-lit room where I was having it, mentioned in my last post, have proven well-founded. But it is not so much that I am now, like everyone else, too busy to have it in there. It is more that I feel I should be busier so, uncertain of my relative productivity after some years out of the conventional fast lane, or middle lane, and unwilling to draw attention to myself in a way that might mirror my uncertainty, I am now tending to have lunch at my desk, reading things work-related. I am conforming. But perhaps I should try to look at that little mirror, until it begins to crack a little. I did have lunch in there today.

But I will have to write about something more interesting than this. My lunching habits are of limited interest, even to myself. The problem is, that with my fatigue, which has been extending to the week-ends, I haven't been reading books or articles that I would be like to write about or seeing things - art works, perhaps - on which I could write. Reading and writing, and seeing and writing have always been pairs for me. I have been reading Yukio Mishima's Forbidden Colours, and enjoying it, almost to a high degree, but I don't want to write about it.

My strength will up - even writing this is a good sign - and I need to get to the British Library on a Saturday, when it is open until five.       

New job old friend

It is Monday evening, and I have been a week in my new job now. Well, four working days as I was`away in Holland from last Wednesday evening visiting my brother Paul and his family.

My initial feeling that my colleagues work hard has been confirmed, and I still think that this probably has more to do with the times than with the company. Most of my colleagues have lunch at their desks while continuing to work. That makes a nine hour day. The lunch break seems to consist of a quick visit to one of the myriad of sandwich and lunch bars on or near Goswell Street, the local thoroughfare. Our offices are about sixty yards off it, on Sycamore Street.

I am managing so far to bring my lunch with me and have it at the circular table in the kitchen cum common room where people make their tea or coffee (Being England, there is a good deal of tea- and coffee-making). I like the room as it has lots of natural light, unlike the rest of the office. A couple of people have remarked, not at all disapprovingly, that it is unusual to eat one's lunch in there. I fear that, within a couple of weeks, I won't have time. For the moment, it is a good place to meet people as they come in and out.  Today I met Nicola and Natalie, both nice. Nicola works in conferences, Natalie in ... I can't remember.   

Investoraccess is, as mentioned in my last post, a financial publisher for the private equity industry. Private equity, a way of financially structuring the ownership of businesses, was a long established but relatively small part of the financial world when I last worked in London, as a financial journalist. In the last five or six years, it has grown to enormous proportions. It has become a different animal, and there is little sign of the acceleration of its growth stopping. Hedge funds have also grown enormously, in their case from zero, over the same time period, and for, I think, essentially the same reasons. But I have been drinking some wine tonight, am tiring and will have to aim to continue this tomorrow evening.  Sorry!

New job old rhythm

I started a new job today here in London, a modest one, with a matching salary. It is as a market researcher at Investoraccess, a trade publisher for the private equity industry. I am pleased. It will get me out of bed and will pay the bills, almost.
 
The people there are nice. Unfortunately, there isn't a shower. I had been hoping there would be as I was planning to cycle but get very warm cycling and could have done with a shower. I will give it a try, will rub myself down in the gents and see if that cools me enough. 

Old habits die hard and so do joys. In writing this, I am returning to an old rhythm and pleasure. I used to work in financial publishing in London, as a journalist (1986-1997). I would return home in the evening, cook my dinner then settle down to write for a few hours. That is what I have done this evening. I wrote on art then and, later, on my thesis subject which had in part to do with art. I don't know what I will write on now. I am writing this, and that is a start. If I get the same rhythm going again, come home, eat and write and find pleasure in writing, subjects will come to me, I believe.

I am back in an old place in myself, but it is also a new place, and I like it here where the old and the new threaten to dance together.

Two things I noticed about work today. The hours are long, and people work harder in this industry than I remember them doing. At 5.15, everyone was still working. I was puzzled. I had looked rapidly at home last week at the draft contract of employment that David H. had sent me and had noticed that there was a hour for lunch. If work begins at 9, I thought as I looked around at my colleagues at 5.15, and if there is an hour for lunch, then at least some people should be gone by now. I have looked at the contract again this evening. Hours of work are 9 to 6. The lunch hour is not included. Then it was. But that was 1997 and this is 2006.