jump
I quit. Yesterday. By email.
I guess she said it right (even if she so rarely says anything right, nowadays):
“There’s Only so much You can Learn in One Place
The more that I wait;
The more time
That I waste
I’m Not afraid of what I’ll face
But I’m afraid to stay…
We learned our lessons from the start
My sisters and Me
The Only thing you can depend on
Is Your Family…”
The weekend was simply wonderful, in so many ways.
Friday, just before leaving for the day, I got the call from the recruiter for my new job. “Just checking the address so they can courier the contract to you,” she said, and my heart started racing a little; it’s finally happening. Oh shit! It’s finally happening!
Off to the BTS, where the usual team was in full effect, on a warm Friday evening at the start of a bank holiday weekend. The beer was drunk (and duly noted in my food diary), the chat was funny and witty and warm and caustic and as wonderful as always, and where at least one other member of the team mentioned that he was working out his notice (3 months in his case), and intended to downscale, abandoning the rat race, and stop working in London entirely. Coupled with what I expect to eb a very busy few months for me (which might well make Friday night drinks a not-entirely-guaranteeable prospect for a while), I immediately fell into a sort of mini-funk.
Endings. Things not being the same as they were/are forever. Always make me a little down. “But we’re not just a bunch of workmates who go for drinks out of some sense of duty,” Lord Wozza of Hainault explained. “We’re friends. We’re people who actually like - even love - each other. This might go on the back burner, but we’ll keep seeing each other.”
Yeah, I thought; that’s how it always starts.
Saturday, the cotnract arrived by courier - a big, glossy package with lots of legal documentation, some lovely presentation, and a cd rom I need to read (still only an hour into it).
All looks to be in order, and we head off to a friend’s house for his birthday barbecue, which was perfectlt pleasant, but civilised somewhat by my decision not to drink.
And that decision was formed from the knowledge that Sunday we were off to see the DE Experience at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern with Bob et al. Except that the et al turned out to be a very brief (but wonderfully charming) appearance by Ms Coco. DE was as vile as Coco was charming, the crowd - a whole forest’s worth of hot hairy bears - was sexy and funny and, quite honestly, largely ripped to the tits. We had a blast, I got quite drunk, D got a little paranoid and flappy when his blood sugar dropped, and we headed home at what was, probably, just the right time.
Yesterday, bright and early, I emailed my resignation to my Management (who are all based in NY, and therefore, were working on the UK bank holiday). The text:
**********,
the time has come for me to advance in my career, and, after much thought, I have come to the conclusion that this is unlikely to happen in Capital Bastard Markets.
Consequently, I wish to resign my position at CBM effective immediately.
Regards,
Valley Boy.Â
They called, about 2:30. Just to check that, by using the phrase ‘effective immediately,’ it didn’t mean that I wasn’t coming in today, did it? I mean, what the f*ck?
Fourteen years, and it ended with a whimper. D gave me a big hug, and announced that, even though we have lots of more important things to spend money on, (a garden fence, some work on the central heating), he’s buying my ticket to NY for a weekend so we can well and truly put this job behind us, and look forward to the glittering future.
As D had work to do, and since everyone else was being civilised / hing over / otherwise unavailable, I spent the afternoon in garden alone, reading, and trying not to hum ‘Sunday afternoon,’ from Blood brothers.
Nothing wrong with that, but still, a little down.
Silver lining: After months - and I mean months - without finding something to read that made me rememebr why I love to read, I picked this off the bookshelf. Middlemarch? Beckett? A little Joyce? A soupcon of Proust. Not quite. The man from the League (and those wonderful Lucifer Box stories) working with my fave hero. Super. Really super.
