Writing Wednesday?

Instead of this...

Writing Wednesday

... today consisted of this:

Day 1 done and dusted.

Words will wait: today was spreadsheets.

Scarily enjoyable.

No more maternity leave!

This is the big news, alluded to in the last post. After nearly eleven years, my UK maternity leave is about to end.

I have an accountancy job, due to start in about a fortnight.

Eleven years since I walked out of the office in London, so pregnant with my boy that I didn't think I'd make it through another month end. I remember clearly spending the last six weeks BC (before child) watching (a) massive storms and floods across the UK and then (b) Bush being elected, and the tension over the Florida vote and missing chavs. It seems an age ago!

There are several good things about my new job.

1. It is part-time: two half-days to fit in with school hours. 
2. I don't have to work any school holidays. 
3. I'm going to be paid. (This is quite an exciting development after four years of being a SAHM!)

Of course, every upside has a downside. What the heck is corporation tax now? (And other such panicky questions about rusty accountancy knowledge!)

I do know that I have landed on my feet. The offer came completely out of the blue and I feel most grateful to get anything so flexible and appropriate for my family's circumstances when there are many struggling to get - or keep - a job at all. I know my fears will recede after a week or two, when I've got back into the swing of things.

In the meantime ... time to pick up those accountancy magazines ...

African accounts

Thoughts on a place I used to work

I am sitting at my desk, tapping figures into a spreadsheet. I am the privileged one: I have the biggest desk and the only laptop. On the other side of the room Maggie and Winnie write up their accounts longhand, in pencil in the massive ledgers. These ladies are my rock and support, people with all the answers I need to the history of the organisation and its finances. They carry on in the way they have done for years and in all reality they would be better with bigger desks so they could spread out. Glancing at the piles of papers that surround me, I am in no hurry to reduce my working area: I need all the space I can get.

The windows are open, light cotton curtains fluttering in the breeze. The cooling air is welcome to counter the heat from the tropical sun. Mid-morning is still warm, and by this afternoon the sun will be streaming in through the glass on my left, baking us for the last three hours of work. Out of habit, I reach for my two-litre bottle of filtered water and take a long, refreshing draft.

From outside I can hear the sound of the school children laughing and shouting to each other: it must be break-time. They run and skip over the parched earth, red dust prevailing over the scratchy grass. There is an attempt at a play area with a climbing frame, swing and roundabout made by the local metalworkers. The primary-coloured paint has faded and largely worn away; the feet have sunk into the ground during repeated rainy seasons and the resulting angles are concerning. It is not a school I would be happy to send my child to, which saddens me greatly. These beautiful children will (in my eyes) get a sub-standard level of education because they cannot afford the luxuries of the international school that my son attends. Then again: these children are getting an education, and many in Africa do not.

I sigh, and return to my work. Somehow these books have to balance. Somehow I have to persuade all the other staff that cash cannot be available just at the click of a finger. Somehow I have to bring some order into their chaos, if only to satisfy the Western donors who fund their relief and development efforts. And fund my job.

Yet I am white: the outsider, the novice in the country. How can I understand what they go through? I don't have to work 8-5, and then go home to work more hours as a seamstress or carpenter in order to make ends meet. I don't have to feed an extended family, the children of my brothers and sisters who have succumbed to The Disease. I don't understand the need for travel allowances, payments to the local chief, the perks of being invited to a conference. It is all a far cry from working for a Big Four accountancy firm in the City of London.

On the outside, I provide confidence for the funders and hope for my colleagues. Inside, I flounder and panic, wondering what I have let myself in for. After all, no sane person would choose to be an accountant in the ninth most corrupt country in the world... would she?

Going up to London

Why do we go 'up' to London, even though it is down from my northern home?

My day-trip to London was, travel-wise, largely uneventful.  I shared a table on the way down with a couple of ladies who clearly examine students for PE.  (I recognise that I am an inveterate eavesdropper on conversations in this manner.)  The train was merely 10 minutes late, but that resulted in mad dashes for us all to get to our meetings.  The journey back was even less eventful.

In the middle I attended a conference for chartered accountants who have had a career break and are considering returning to work.  This was interesting for a number of reasons.  Primarily, it was the first time I had been to the HQ of the ICAEW.  Quite a building!  Clearly full of Victorian architecture and no doubt thousands of pounds of my annual subscription is spent just keeping the building looking like it does.  Probably worth it, although I do sometimes question how much we, the great British public, uphold our inherited buildings at the cost of modern functionality.

The meetings themselves were excellent: all the speakers spoke well.  No-one offered me a job on the spot (not probable, but always hopeful...) Rather disheartening to hear that the best way to get a part-time job is to go full time for 6 months and then request a reduction in hours.  I guess I could do to find a CA here that would also like to work a few hours and job-share.

I then spent a delightful afternoon in the library in the building.  The free wireless internet allowed me to update the cricket score frequently on my laptop!  I did pretend to do some work: the tales from Zambia are coming along slowly... very, very slowly.

My greatest surprise of the day was how pleasant the underground was at 5.30, going back to King's Cross.  Surely this is rush hour, a mad rush as everyone clamours to get on the train back to the 'burbs?  But no: I even got a seat!  Perhaps it wouldn't be so appalling to live in London again ...