the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

Nine years ago I had got back from another overseas trip working for an American based oil and gas multinational. This time I had been working in Bangkok and, as usual in my globetrotting executive days, the joys of working in somewhere very different to the UK had been tempered by not being able to share the experience with the Berkshire Belle.

I was very happy to be home though, and all I had on the books for my consulting business was a four day trip to Riyadh for July. On getting back to base the Hasting Hottie asked me to give up the working away. She had begun to feel very vulnerable on her own and with her support network having all moved away, so I agreed that the Saudi project would be my last. I had my other venture to generate income, and could always pick up consulting jobs that I could commute daily to.

But then the Saudi job was put back to August, then to September, hopefully, and I decided that enough was enough and stood down, someone else could have the job. It seemed to trigger a cataclysmic slump I n my work: The business magazine that I wrote a monthly article ceased publication, the training company that I did some evening classes for closed its London venue and so my income stream got severely dented.

The solution seemed to be to find a part-time job that would provide a regular injection of cash, but would leave me some free time to carry on my trading in collectables where income was erratic, but lucrative enough to make it worthwhile, and with the occasional spectacular success. It was good fun, and I liked the element of living on my wits. A part time job would possibly also allow me to do the odd consultancy work.

And so I found myself back in normal employment for the first time in eight years. It was good fun, five days a week, four hours per day. It was nice being back at the sharp end again, and I could honestly claim to have climber the ladder from the shop floor to the boardroom and took the next snake all the way back to Go. There was the supreme irony of taking a day off to suit up and earn, in that day, more than my new job paid in a month, but life was good and the bank was leaving me alone.

It was a change in circumstances that I had not expected, but I had started my first job back in 1963, and few months before my 11th birthday, working at the village butchers delivering meat on my big trade bike with its small front wheel beneath its bi wicker basket, and doing menial jobs like sweeping up the sawdust. After that I had a range of jobs after school and at weekends until I started full-time work in 1969. Work is a habit for me; I like it and, more importantly, I like being paid.

Jobs change over time. I spent more that 30 years working for an organisation, but only one of the many jobs I had there lasted more than 3 years. Promotions and reorganisations saw me shifting around. The last job I had with them lasted eight years in name, but what I did changed to some degree every year and, in terms of end, one change too may saw me walk away..

My part-time job also began to change a couple of years back, and last Saturday I walked out having put my best into that last day’s work, so here I am, musing on a Monday on what comes next. As yet I don’t know.