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Alternative Strategies - A year away from the City

Patrick Healy There are some good general reasons as to why now is a good time to take a year out; the most obvious being the slump and uncertainty in the financial markets and the knock-on effect of a widespread re-evaluation of job (and bonus) expectations. For me the timing also worked – no mortgage, no children and a release from my job with a comfortable pay-off.

Nobody knows anything

Looking at the expert view of the current situation the lack of consensus confirms a suspicion that those to whom we would look for an authoritative analysis do not know what is going on or are trying to persuade us to a position that either supports their economic interests or, particularly in the case of our political leaders, hopes to solve the crisis by wishing it over. Perhaps years working in risk have made me too cynical and we will all benefit if we suspend disbelief and embrace the beautiful shining future. I have my doubts.

From my slightly distanced position there is a certain amount of pleasure in watching economic journalists whizz forecasts up, down and sideways in ecstatic Brownian motion as they zip from explanation to explanation and we are left only with the rather weak conclusion that things might get better.

For our world – banks, funds and the rest of the City agglomeration – we watch each other intently in the hope that somebody has a better understanding or that their behaviour or results are good weather vanes of change.

The helplessness of politicians is apparent. Yes, they can. Well maybe; economic weather permitting.

The political need to be seen to ‘do something’ exacerbates the uncertainty for us. Will regulatory changes kill or wound our business models? Will the need to punish institutions change the fundamentals? Most worryingly of all, will the changes devalue skills we have, for better or worse, spent years building up.

See the end of this article for the answers to these questions.

When the going gets tough

I’m taking a year off. Too old for a gap year. Too young to retire. I could call it a sabbatical but that gives it a more purposeful air than it deserves. I might learn Spanish. I might learn to take better photographs or cook better meals. Stranger things have happened.

In the short term I will definitely become a better runner, as I had already committed myself to a half-marathon in October. In the meantime I have knitted together trips already planned for the summer into a 6,500 km round trip to Athens.

The time between the departure from my employer of nine years and the planned arrival date at the first of my holiday destinations was just three weeks and in this period my girlfriend managed to arrange a year off from her job (she is in design recruitment and they called it a sabbatical, but perhaps things are different there), and rent out her place. I managed to sort out my various work, bank and financial matters and give up my flat. I was also able to move all of my worldly goods into storage, where they are packed so densely that to add any more would have run the risk of creating a singularity.

Packing density also became an issue as we attempted to force bags for two people for 11 weeks into the not notably capacious luggage space of a two seater convertible. I don’t doubt that we have exceeded the manufacturers’ specifications with our packing but in German engineering we trust.

Leaving London

We blasted out of London at dawn on the 30th of July and not watching the speedo as Lucy drove meant that we were at the eurotunnel nearly an hour and a half before our scheduled departure. The familiar Tube-like nature of this mode of transport meant that we could just leap onto the next one and we were on our way.

In a further instalment I will take up the story of the trip so far but for the moment I would like to share some lessons learned:

  • Driving to the South of France on the 1st of August is a bad idea
  • Leaving wine in non air conditioned parts of your car while driving to the South of France on the 1st of August is a very bad idea
  • Lucca and Bologna are beautiful cities; Genoa is surprisingly dodgy, with the narrow medieval streets filled not with picturesque boutiques but with remarkably rough looking prostitutes and their clearly not terribly discerning clientele
  • The Catholic Church seems to be aiming to incorporate a number of areas of doctrinal teaching, including elements on the nature of purgatory and the resurrection, into the way visits must be conducted to the Vatican Museum; a sweaty human sludge of visitors is funnelled through progressively narrower and more oppressively hot and crowded confines into the Sistine Chapel and there exposed to beauty in the ugliest way possible before being expelled back into the world
  • Not taking a cabin on the 15 hour overnight ferry journey from Bari to Patras is probably a false economy as sleeping on the floor or in a chair is even less appealing in practice than it is in theory
  • One can become overexposed to The Grandeur of the Ancient World – visiting Rome, Pompeii and Athens in quick succession is apt to bring one to the conclusion that one ruined pillar looks very much like another.
  • This impulse is clearly to be fought.

We continue to learn…

Postscript - the answers

If you really think that I have the answers to the questions posed above then perhaps you should consider taking a year off too.

Patrick Healy was the Group Head of Risk Reporting for Man Group plc
© Patrick Healy

I am running the Parks Half Marathon for brainstrust, a charity that aims to improve clinical care and support for brain tumour sufferers www.justgiving.com/Patrick-Healy

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