Today is my last my last day working down Piccadilly. On Monday my office is being relocated elsewhere. If you were following my website earlier in the year you'll remember we nearly got relocated to Slough, which would have been <insert very rude word here> but thankfully that never materialised so I shall at least still be working down another street in central London. Just not such a famous one. Now you see why I crammed in the last of my local history month earlier in the week.
Today is my last day working for an organisation of my choice. On Monday I start work for a new company that I didn't choose, but that my organisation has chosen for me. Call it rationalisation, call it realignment, call it any corporate buzzword you like, but my team no longer has a place into the new structure and so is being sold off. The team stays in one piece, the team carries on doing what it always did, but the team gets to do it somewhere else for someone else. Terms and conditions remain pretty much the same, as do pension rights because there are pretty strong safeguards in these circumstances, but I'm more than a little uncomfortable watching my livelihood being sold off to a new employer. Ask Geoff, something similar's happening to him in his (completely different) job at the moment:
Today is also my last day working in the public sector. It's been 17 years since I took my first job at the useful end of society and there I've stayed, out of choice, until today. Some might call the public sector boring, though I've never found it so. Some might call it unimaginative, though it's never been that for me either. And some would just call it safe, which is one of the reasons I always liked it. From Monday I'm working not for the country but for shareholders. I can sell my services, I can sign up for private health insurance and I can keep my fingers crossed that the company pension scheme is still going strong in 20 years time. It's one giant leap, this.
Yesterday I stood at my desk, surrounded by packing crates, and looked out of my window across London. Big Ben glinted in the evening sunshine. Birds swooped across the green canopy of Green Park. The London Eye turned, imperceptibly. St Paul's Cathedral and the Gherkin stood proud, old beside new. Aeroplanes soared over the chimneys of Battersea Power Station. South London rose up in the distance, bright and sharp. The view from my office window has been absolutely stunning for the last three years and I shall miss this historic panorama more than almost anything else. Somehow staring at a neighbour's brick wall isn't going to be quite the same.
I was late leaving the office last night having taken one final opportunity to stand at the window and soak in the view. I emerged onto the street just in time to watch a number9Routemaster chug by. We're both leaving Piccadilly this evening for the last time, both because we worked perfectly but some policy document decided we didn't fit any more. Shame. The replacement number 9 buses are hideous - nasty boxy double deckers with zero character. I hope my fate come Monday is somewhat better.
