There are 30 blank days in my diary during November. It really was quite unmemorable. There was a week in college at the start of the month followed by evening revision. It’s wasn’t particularly interesting but it didn’t leave any free time.

I did start clearing the backlog of friends that I had seen far too rarely in the last two years. I start to make serious plans to go to Nottingham but no weekend ever becomes available. It looks like March 2009 will be the earliest chance I get.

At some point I question the wisdom of blogging when I have so little to write about. Oh well.

The stress really kicked in October. But I started in the Kensington Day centre on a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) day. We were asked to re-paint the main rooms. Being one of the shorter auditors, I take one of only two ladders for personal use.

This was followed by bowling, where I talked a big game and ended up scoring 40. The new joiners sang a beautiful rendition of Take That’s "Back for Good". Never again.

I revise like crazy for my first two accountancy exams. Then I flee back to Liverpool for a short break before I start my first engagement.

The Client

Auditors don’t like being in the office. They prefer to go where the action is – straight to the client. I was assigned to my first client after the exams were over. It was difficult -  high stress, long hours I was never 100% about what I was doing. However, the team were good fun and I got through it. Job done (yes, I will use a cliche here).

I completed my first month of work without any acts of gross incompetence and wondered what I did to deserve my first paycheque. The first two weeks were spent in college learning about accountancy and audit. I lose track of what’s going on and I don’t recover until a minute before the exams were taken (a month later). Debits and credits really are like a language. But once it is understood there is a satisfaction in using it correctly. I convert my personal finance tracking to use double entry.

Then The Firm send us to Athens to meet up with other new joiners for a training conference.  There’s time for sight-seeing in between learning about audit.

Armageddon

The new joiners don’t realise how important they are until they leave the country and the financial world collapses. Lehman Brothers disappears. AIG tries to follow but gets rescued. The stock markets nose-dive. Crazy stuff.

Then there are two uneventful weeks in the office doing odd jobs. Some more stuff happens in the financial world but it’s not worth writing about.