Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista

working for them because they specialised in corporate finance rather than trading, so that would make for a somewhat less fraught atmosphere in the office. On the downside, corporate finance people worked every hour God sent – no market hours to follow – and I wasn’t quite sure how that would apply to personal assistants. I had read through all their corporate blurb and they seemed like pretty good employers – they even featured on The Times list of the best places in the UK to work, which is pretty unusual for a financial services firm. And although they were small they had offices in Hong Kong, Frankfurt and New York, so there might be opportunities to go abroad, if I could move up the ladder a little. Assuming, of course, that I lasted more than a week.
    Simmons & Blaythe’s London offices were in Canary Wharf, like Hamilton Churchill’s, although they were situated in the less prestigious Number 25 Canada Square. Still, I had to recreate the journey that I used to enjoy so much, and even the unpleasant bits (the Northern Line, the Waterloo & City Line) brought back pangs of nostalgia. For once, everything ran smoothly. Trains arrived as I descended to the platform and parted immediately after I had got on,there were no long, inexplicable delays in the middles of tunnels, there were no signal failures, no people taken ill on trains, no bodies on the tracks. It was one of those days when you wonder why everyone whines so much about working in London.
    To get to Number 25, I had to walk past Number 1, my old stomping ground. Despite the sun barely breaking through grey clouds, I donned my sunglasses, just in case I bumped into anyone I knew and wanted to avoid. I had passed the main entrance and was just breathing a sigh of relief, believing I had snuck past unscathed when she appeared, walking in the opposite direction. Christa Freeman, dressed in a short (unnecessarily short, I thought) black skirt and jacket and waiting-list-only snakeskin heels from Miu Miu. She was striding towards me, her head held high, a trace of a smile on her lips. Bugger. She’d seen me. I steeled myself for an onslaught of patronising remarks. And then it happened. It was a glorious moment. Everything seemed to go into slow motion. As Christa stepped onto a grid covering the guttering outside the building, her stiletto heel slipped into the grate. She stumbled slightly, her smug little smile disappeared from her face. She righted herself just in time, but as she pulled her heel out of the grid there was a loud and satisfying snap. One of the heels on her £400 shoes had just disappeared, quite literally, down the drain.
    I didn’t collapse into hysterical laughter. I didn’t even break stride. I just kept on going, calling out,‘Morning, Christa,’ as I swept regally past her. When I glanced back over my shoulder I could see her hopping around on one foot, trying to keep her balance while peering desperately into the grate in an attempt to recover her heel, all the while revealing a good deal more of her stockings than I’m sure she intended. Maybe God doesn’t hate me that much after all. Or perhaps he just hates Christa Freeman too.
    After an exceptionally good start to the morning, my day just got better. My boss for the week was Ms Stella Conrad-Pickles (a woman!), who was tall and thin and terrifyingly elegant but turned out to be lovely. She did not bark orders at me, she said please and thank you and smiled when she did so. Astoundingly, she even offered to drop in at Starbucks and buy me a coffee on the way back from her lunch. Extraordinary! Nicholas would sooner have taken out an eyeball with a fork.
    The Simmons & Blaythe offices were much more civilised than Hamilton’s. People didn’t tend to scream at each other across the open-plan floor; some of them acknowledged the presence of the assistants – even temp assistants like me – occasionally with a smile. And the other PA in my section, an Australian girl called Becky, was a world away from Christa. She didn’t exactly greet me with a hug, but she showed me where everything was and how everything worked, she took me to the canteen at lunchtime and overall she seemed perfectly pleasant. By five o’clock (which was when Stella told me I could go, despite the factthat I was supposed to work until six), I was convinced: this was the job for me. I just had to convince them of that fact, too. God, I love the City.
    Wednesday
I hate the City. Everyone is