You Can't Coach That

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Do you ever come across a particularly useful website and think to yourself “I wish I had known about that when ......”? I have an opportunity to earn some beer money by mentioning just such a website. If you feel inclined to read on I will relate a little of my past life.

While I have been teaching for some time now, I was for many years a Chartered Accountant (yes I’ve heard all the boring accountant jokes). This provided me with the opportunity to live a work in London for several years.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to work in one of the great cities of the World and one of the finance capitals. I still remember how excited I was before I left. And oh how I hated it. The work that is, London itself was a wonderful place to live.

My mistake was a lack of preparation and research. I went to London as part of a secondment program with the accounting firm I worked for at the time. This sounded like the best course of action - stay with the firm I knew and who I thought would have my interests at heart. I had after all given them faithful service for several years. Wrong! Here is roughly how things went:

• 18 hour work days for weeks on end. No wonder people were telling me how much they liked people from the Australian firm
• Promotion and pay rises withheld - I never found out why. The Managing Partner seemed happy enough with my work given he put me in charge of his largest client
• Working for a psychopathic senior manager who was having an affair with the bloke that I replaced at the firm - could explain the promotion and pay rise question
• The vending machine coffee tasted like it was made with water from the Thames

I could go on but you get the idea. Now here is the part where “I wish I had known about that when ......” Some research about the hundreds of jobs in London crying out for a particularly handsome Aussie accountant could have made all the difference. What didn’t help of course was the fact that at the time the internet was but a gleam in the eye of Tim Berners-Lee. Heck most people thought that computers were an interesting idea but couldn’t imagine a time when we would all have one on our desks.

Some good old internet research that we all take for granted would have come in handy in so many other ways. The accommodation search for example. The first place my wife and I stayed provided plenty of entertainment. It seems that the local West Indian gangs were in the middle of some sort of disagreement and the day after we arrived one of them was shot dead in the street. We moved from there pretty quick.

There were many great things about living in London:

• Being able to fly to Rome or Paris for the weekend
• Driving holidays around Europe and Ireland in the company car
• Guinness in Ireland - It just tastes so much better there
• The tulips that would magically appear in the local common every spring
• Friday nights at the local pub for 6 or 7 pints followed by a curry next door (Saturday mornings not so good)
• Wimbledon
• Watching Rugby at Twickenham
• My mate Anthony
• Not getting blown up by an IRA bomb

It’s good to reminisce - thanks for reading.

“You can’t coach that”