I woke up on the sofa and 'This Life' was on. I loved 'This Life' - it was groundbreaking cool telly, and I even got into it ahead of the curve which made it the most talked about of 1996. In 1996, the characters were beautiful people that I wanted to be (or, by then, had missed the boat at being). Now they're annoying and immature. And that's just when you meet them in real life.
However, watching it this evening reminded me that first time round was the first time I realised that in a place of work the senior people - in that context, the partners - if they are any good, should be encouraging the young bright things to use their initiative and shine. At my then workplace - at the time, my only workplace - the norm was for the seniors to be constantly on their guard, fearful of the younger brighter ones, lest they overtake them on the career path.
Sometimes it takes seven years and a lot of distance to realise that some mediocre TV programme is shouting a message that you took two years to absorb.
Now, I look at the colleagues from the old place, whom I see round and about, and almost without exception, I pity them.
It's strange, because way back when we got up to hi-jinx unimaginable elsewhere - the kidnapping of Creme Egg, and subsequent ransom note for 'Slurpy'. The quote board in the 'room' - you know, where the secretaries, photocopier and filing is located; the posting up of pictures of Alan Shearer because of Matt G's alleged similarity; the sheer silliness.
As trainees and junior qualified, we conspired in our own hood-winking. Because we were allowed to be lads-and-ladettes, and because we got paid good money, we failed to notice that we were complicit in being downtrodden by an entirely dysfunctional management system. Half of us got out, and like survivors from a cult, we look back in astonishment. Guiltily, we acknowledge that we got the best possible training. We look at our erstwhile colleagues and sometime friends - me more than some, because of the proximity of the other place - and we are astounded at how depressed they are.
We don't tell them, they can't see it. But we have managed work-life balance, and they haven't. They live under a culture of management-by-fear; we merely have to put up with indifferent managers. They are living the dog-eat-dog, banned, past thirty, from smiling. They haven't moved on; we discovered a big wide world out there. I reel off my employers since leaving there. They can't comprehend life outside the Gulag.
At this point I raise my glass to the National Audit Office - you taught me to audit and to appreciate the finer things in life.
