Requiem

Ernst & Young 2010

Since Easter is a good time for requiems, I have my own personal one tomorrow. After 25 years, I'm finally leaving corporate life. I'm scaling right down to 'part time consultant' which is about as out-the-door as one could get. My new day job will be Chief Biscuit Icer for the family business.

I do look like a complete prat in the pic above but I think this would be an honest reflection of how most people would remember me, as opposed to the glam London one I've desperately been trying to find. Pursed lips. Teensy bit fearsome and very driven (a euphemism really for 'not suffering fools' very easily). My re-occurring bi-annual performance review stressed that despite my unusual and desirable Meier's Briggs profile (I was one of those weird ENJK types. Big Thinker/Perfectionist for detail) I was not a poker player and on one occasion my reviewer said "Julia, you are just too much noise". `None of this ever stopped me, however.

After graduation from the University of Cape Town, my maiden job was in the Economic Development Unit of the Cape Town City Council. I got to use the first fax machine in Cape Town which sat outside the Mayors Office (a highly sought after task) and be part of the land parcel negotiations for the future Cape Town Waterfront. From early 1989 I worked in London. My first project was the result of a helicopter ride by the scrap metal merchants (Don and Frank) who had sold out their land on Canary Wharf for re-development as London Docklands. They, unsurprisingly, thought that property development was a good lark and optioned most of North Kent in order to speculate on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. My job (along with half the City's legal profession) was to try and sort out the subsequent mess.

This project half-killed me and I took some time out afterwards to train as a landscape designer at the RB Kew to find some balance in life. "Finding Balance" has been a fairly consistent theme of mine for the past quarter century. I worked in some fascinating places like Longleat where the Marquis of Bath wanted to build a new Stonehenge and I even ran a little design company doing flowers and gardens. One garden I did was for Lord Kilmarnock who was in a ménage a trois with his wife and Kingsley Amis. Lady K used to greet me in the morning in her dressing gown, blurry mascara & ciggie and then offer me a sherry at about 9:30am to "warm me up". Martin Amis used to come round for tea and I would lurk behind the wisteria, perving.

After this, I tackled an economic & environmental strategy for Stratford. What we slaved over for years, was achieved by locating the Olympic Stadium and Village there last year, but it was a good excuse at the time to run around the East End and go to the dog races.  It also got me the Big Job running the "single largest urban regeneration project in Europe". Although the perks included hanging out with the DJ's from Kiss 100 FM, that job almost killed me.

As a result, I fled into corporate life and the City. I joined KPMG as a management consultant which was a sexy job in the Nineties but doesn't exist anymore, thanks to Enron. I shopped in Bond Street at Josephs (sob) worked like a dog and clubbed the night away. They were good years.  I travelled extensively and didn't really slow down even when the boys were born. 

My second big attempt at 'finding balance resulted in my leaving KPMG and joining Ernst & Young, so a failed one. My travelling increased to such an extent that the children when asked what their Mummy did, said "she goes in airplanes to meetings" which was pretty accurate, really.

I spent more time than anyone should in places like Lagos, swore by Vitamin B12 injections to keep me going and was distracted most of the time. I must have filled in a million timesheets, added grey hairs dealing with impossible clients and deadlines and survived an unhealthy amount of office politics.  I both loved it and hated it all at the same time. I could and should write a short treatise on the changing role of woman in the workplace, but I was working so damn hard, I never really noticed. I also have a 7 year old next to me at the moment  trying to put his Beaver costume together for his school assembly piece tomorrow morning, so my famous concentration is currently shot.

So on my third and final attempt at "Finding Balance" I've moved us to the Caribbean, set up a bakery and we're going to homeschool the kids. This will probably make the past quarter century look like a complete breeze, but it's good to be moving on. I suspect I'll never be balanced.

Clearly not enough poker.