Back to work

Work for me consists of getting up horribly early on a Monday morning - soon after four - leaving the house about a quarter past five to drive to Taunton to catch the 0617 to Paddington, then a tube to the office.  From getting up to arriving at the office takes around five hours, which is about the same as it used to take me to get there from Bordeaux.  It costs about the same too.  The difference is though, that there are many more trains from Taunton to London and back each day than there are planes from Bordeaux, and whilst my previous routine started a little later on a Monday morning, I couldn't get to the office until lunchtime.  I "only" work four days a week, lucky me.  Back in the Bordeaux days, my day off was spent travelling to and fro from home, so in effect I left the house on Monday morning and got home on Friday evening like everyone else.  Moving back to England, albeit far from London, means I can work from Monday morning to Thursday afternoon, and have a three day weekend.

After working in this fashion for the last nine years, I can't really imagine going back to working five days or more a week.  I probably could if I wanted to - I work on a team alongside fifteen other people who are all full-time, five days a week, but I think it would be a one-way street and there would be no way back if I found it to be too much.  Whilst flexible working is something which has been adopted by a good number of women in the City, it seems to remain the preserve of the fairer sex and that makes me something of an anomaly.  The arrangement seems to work alright - I probably have 20% fewer clients than my colleagues, to reflect my reduced hours, and obviously my compensation (Cityspeak for pay) is reduced by a similar-ish amount, although with the lack of structure and transparency in pay in the finance industry, you can never be quite sure about how that works.

This Monday morning, after a week spent at home on leave, I have the luxury of a meeting closer to home, and so I'm still sat in front of my laptop here at the kitchen table at 6.45am, rather than dozing against a backdrop of the Somerset / Wiltshire borders flashing past at 100mph. 

My four days of work mean that I have to spend on average three nights a week away from home, normally in a hotel in London where I've been a regular guest for about seven years now.  As with everything in London it seems though, prices have risen faster than inflation over the past few years.  The cost of working just keeps going up.  Sadly the overall rewards from it are now coming down, but after the nightmares of 2008, that's not too surprising.  With luck the point where the two lines cross each other is still some way off...

In any case, lazy Monday morning over - time to get myself to work.