I can't remember much of my first day at the London Stock Exchange. My team was a lovely group of people and the managers were friendly and socially laid back, but serious when it came to the business. I was answering calls and emails from traders and their technical support teams when they experienced issues with the pricing and trading systems. I was lucky in that I had used the pricing systems before, but only superficially, and the Order Management System was completely new to me, as were the more technical aspects of the trading business, and the complicated mechanics of the London Stock Exchange. I asked a lot of questions of my mostly only slightly more experienced colleagues, which were usually met with helpful assistance, but one girl felt it necessary to complain to my manager D that I was asking too many. This was the girl who sat next to me, a good looking girl who was friendly lot of the time, but sometimes a little moody and abrupt. I was taken aside after a few short weeks and pulled up on my 'excessive question-asking'. I was not remorseful in my response:
"The way I see it, every time I answer that telephone I am representing one of the most well known and reputable companies in the world, and I want to reflect that. There is an enormous amount to take in, and I want to give correct and professional responses to clients, and to do that I need to ask questions of my more experienced colleagues to expand my knowledge. I'm not going to stop doing that until I feel more comfortable in my role. I've only been here a few weeks, and to be honest I'm pretty surprised that I have been pulled aside for this."
I spoke very honestly and calmly and D was completely understanding and professional as ever. The matter ended there. The girl in question ended up quitting a couple of months later. I don't think I was the only one who would not miss her.
As well as our day-to-day client support roles, we were each given additional 'projects' to work on, with Sales, Development, Administration, etc. I was assigned a couple of tasks by the head of Development. A very cool guy a couple of years younger than myself, I learned that he had dropped out of university to find a role at the LSE, going on to excel and find himself in a very responsible position indeed. It seemed that he thought a lot of himself, but I could not blame him. He was cocky but friendly, quite a joker, a nice guy. The tasks he gave me involved fairly repetitive data entry, so I analysed them to find the quickest way of completing them and flew through. He gave me another task and I did the same. I was thoroughly enjoying myself in the challenges of my new job, even the repetitive tasks.
After a couple of months I was settled into my role, and had laid the groundwork for some great friendships among my colleagues. A girl who joined the company with me was particularly down-to-Earth, and we had many interesting talks. She was educated in a Steiner School in Germany, but had moved around a good bit. Steiner Schools do not push children into academic disciplines until a little later in life; 6 or 7; allowing children more freedom to explore their creative side. In my experience this allows children to develop their individuality more than in the standard school systems of today, and this is often very apparent in their creativity and enthusiasm for life. She was very animated in her exclamations and very excitable, and had an awful lot of energy, running Zumba classes many nights after work. I wondered how she managed it.
The other guy in my team was a younger lad from Essex, a good looking guy who I expect the girls flocked to. He was very softly spoken with a calm temperament, very friendly and often very funny. He was quite reserved and seemed to be very thoughtful in the way he conducted himself, and there was not really anything to dislike about him. We didn't ever really get the chance to chat properly, just the odd few words here and there, but I knew from the little contact we had that he was a really nice guy.
Other than the girl who hated my questions, there was one other girl on support, a stunning blonde girl from Essex, but not your stereotypical TV Essex girl. She was very sweet and friendly, very helpful to me when I started, and clearly very intelligent. She struck me as the kind of girl who would do well for herself in the business world, and not just for her looks. She was engaged to be married, to my disappointment, not that I think I would have had any chance with her! Well, maybe I would, I don't know, but my out-of-this-world philosophies and crazy life would be hard to reconcile with her love of clothes and shopping.
The admin girl was lovely. A petite girl who worked hard and played hard; vodka was her drink of choice, on the rocks. She had a lovely smile and infectious laugh. She was a socialite with a down-to-earth attitude which seemed to be born out of a good bit of party experience. We got on very well and developed a great friendship in my time there.
Aside from my immediate team there were the product managers and the sales girls. They were all of different ages and all lovely, but very different people to myself. There were two ops guys, an intelligent younger lad who seemed a little uncomfortable in his shoes sometimes, but had a great sense of humour and was great fun to be around, and the head of operations, a very intelligent guy who had a good heart and a philosophical mind, but was obviously troubled by the stresses in his life. Just before my departure he took time off to sort out personal issues. We got on very well in my time there, and I was sad that I left before he returned to work.
After 8 weeks with the company I was asked into a meeting with D and one of the Product Managers, and told that they needed someone to take over the day-to-day management of a new business area the company was taking over, which was a telecommunications hub for brokers. They said that they thought I would be great for the role, which I accepted with pleasure. I tried to play it down in my mind at the time, not wanting to think more of it that it was, but it was quite a responsibility given the short time I had been working there. I would be first point of call for the technical support teams of banks and brokers around the world, to resolve connectivity issues, help with onboarding queries and liaise with the second line technical support at the LSE. I started the new role in the new year 2012, but spent December learning the ropes with a lovely girl from Greece who was there on a graduate scheme, and had been helping to prepare the management shift that the hub was undergoing. We came to be quite close, despite a couple of minor disagreements. I fancied her quite a bit and I think she might have liked me too, but like so often in my life I didn't do anything about it because of my crazy nature. People I work with see one side of me; a heavily filtered me, a me who puts on a smart costume every morning and acts out a role that I am payed to play. Friends and family outside of work know a completely different me; a more complete me; who some call 'Trig'. Trig is renowned for being, much more so in the past now, a heavy-drinking drug-taking wreck-head. I doubt that many people in the office would be as comfortable around 'Trig', let alone his much crazier friends. This thought has stopped me from asking many girls out over the years. My friends are very important to me, and I would not give them up for anyone, so any girl I choose to spend time with could not be at all judgmental, and be able to handle people who are out of the ordinary. All of my friends are extraordinary to say the very least.
A week after I started the job the 'Occupy London Stock Exchange' movement attempted to...occupy the London Stock Exchange. Police and private security barricaded the area, so 'Occupy' set up camp in the courtyard of St Pauls Cathedral and we in Paternoster Square were besieged by police and barricaded behind rows of security fencing, which was later to be constructed in lattice to fill the entire square. We received group emails saying that we should not engage the protesters, and that we should not talk to the press. I was not stupid enough to talk to the press, but no-one was telling me not to talk to people protesting on behalf of causes that I in my heart believed in. I enjoyed walking through at lunch and mingling with the crowd. I would go and sit on the steps of St. Pauls and listen to them conduct their daily briefings, at which they would discuss funds, tasks that needed completing, with every decision requiring confirmation by show of hands from participants.
I had an amazing chat with a guy from somewhere in Eastern Europe on the steps of St Pauls one day while having my lunch. We began talking about the politics, but ascended to the philosophical, the miracle of the experience of life and the lack of appreciation of it in the world. As we conversed he came to tell me that he had once been a bad man, that he had killed people, but that he had seen the beauty in life and the futility of negative emotions; fear, anger, hatred. He told me that he was once consumed by these emotions, and that he had been living in a self-imposed hell. He told me that he had ascended to Heaven on Earth through the realisation of the miraculous beauty of existence; just being alive; in the moment of reality; and as I observed his scarred face smiling up to the sky, I believed every word he said. The words resonated with my own feelings, and I told him so. It was a wonderful chat, a beautiful rolling moment of life. We exchanged names and I left to go back to work. I did not see him again.
I saw Charlie Veitch and Danny from the 'Love Police' on one occasion as I left work. They mingled with the Occupy protesters, but there was some kind of dispute going on when I arrived. 'Rich people are more important' read Charlie's sign, with a smiley face below it. An older guy who I could have sworn was Tony Benn was asking him why he thought the wealthy Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi was more important than the philosophical leader Mahatma Gandhi. A couple of rough-looking guys in Anonymous masks were acting quite aggressively and seemed as though they might attack Danny, but Charlie Veitch's tall figure might have helped to prevent that, and Danny ended up reporting that he was being harrassed to nearby police. Then Charlie gathered a few people and began to speak.
"Rich people are more important!" he said, "Rich people are more important, because they arrange the infrastructure that we all rely upon. They tax us to pay for the services we need."
There was no sarcasm in his voice, no hint of the irony that had come to be one of his trademark characteristics. But then what is sarcasm? Sarcasm is saying one thing but meaning the opposite. Orwell called this 'double-speak'.
"Who agrees with me?" He asked the small crowd around him.
"Yeah." - "Yes." - "Me." They replied halfheartedly.
"Who disagrees?" He asked. I put my hand up. "I disagree." Too quiet.
"You agree?" He asked.
"I disagree." I replied.
"But why?" He asked, simultaneously directing his attention away from me to indicate that the question was rhetorical. I had previously been a fan of his and supported what he was doing with 'The Love Police', but after seeing him sell himself out on the BBC documentary '9/11 Conspiracy Road Trip', I could take the man seriously no longer. His words sounded hollow and empty. He seemed to be playing psychological tricks on people at the behest of someone with a lot of money and power. He lost a lot of supporters from that documentary.
The Occupy protesters seemed on the most part to be intelligent middle class individuals, slightly tainted by a small number of angry disillusioned individuals and a couple of what appeared to be alcoholics with nowhere else to go. Nevertheless, they were well organised, setting up a 'university tent' full of couches and well stacked book shelves, a kitchen tent which cooked meals for the people there, waste disposal and recycling, and their numbers were initially quite impressive, but they decreased as winter approached. They caused disagreements within the church from their presence, leading to the resignation of at least one of the church officials in protest against the possibility of violence being used by the police to remove the protesters from the cathedral courtyard. On the first day the protesters arrived, I think it was a Saturday, the bishop of St Pauls asked the police to leave after they barricaded the cathedral entrance. The protesters were then addressed by Julian Assange, who gave an inspirational speech in support of all those there and the cause of Truth. I met a lovely girl at St Pauls for a date that day, as I wanted to check it all out. We then headed off to a restaurant for dinner after observing the protesters and ridiculously large police numbers.
While I was enjoying working at the LSE, a shadow was cast over me reminding me of the important role they play in the corrupt corporate system. One day we arrived at work to see a protest against the private security company G4S outside, highlighting their involvement in the imprisoning of Palestinian children in Israel, and their inhumane treatment of all kinds of people in their global dominance of the 'security industry'. I chatted to one or two briefly and took a couple of their leaflets, while our own private security guards and the sleepless eye-in-the-sky looked on.
I often wondered whether I was being monitored. I decided it was ridiculous to assume that I wasn't on some level. The LSE is a high risk target for 'terrorism', and someone like myself, with an outspoken and controversial online footprint, was sure to raise a few alarms. I was surprised that I had even got the job in spite of this to be honest. I would expect serious vetting for anyone who walks through those doors, and anyone with so much as a smartphone can find out a lot about me just by typing my name into Google.
I settled into my new role very quickly, and impressed the managers with my work. I liaised with the technical support teams of financial institutions around the world on a daily basis, assessing their technical requirements and helping them to set themselves up on our network and establish new connections. I updated technical guides, took on the responsibility for invoicing, reorganized the email system, produced reports on the Gateway activity and revenues, visited clients, attended two trade shows, I was a busy man!
My initial 6 month contract came to an end and I was informed that this was being extended another 3 months, as they had quotas for how many staff they could take on and had to justify taking on more staff permanently, which I found confusing as the reason the hub had been passed to us was because it had been neglected in recent times. My managers told me that they wanted me on permanently, but it was up to the guys upstairs. Perhaps they had searched my name on Google, I don't know, but my good work still earned me a very nice payrise with my contract extension.
As summer approached, my grandmother grew increasingly ill. Her Alzheimer's had reduced her to a shadow of her former self, and a couple of emergency trips to hospital drained what little of her energy was left. I remember getting up one morning to hear my mum screaming in despair that her mum had stopped breathing. She rushed off with my dad to her house, but the carer had managed to get her breathing again before they arrived. As her ability to eat and drink diminished, we knew it would not be long. My brother spent three months in India around this time, but we daren't tell him how close she was to death, just hoping that he would make it home to see her before she passed away.
My mum spent most of her time by her bedside towards the end, lifting her up to get water and nutrition drinks in her mouth, but the distress it caused her was too much for either of them. She slept most of the time, but occasionally she would wake up and say a few words, and then, the exertion of those few words exhausting her to fatigue, she would be asleep again.
The last time I saw her alive I went round after work. She happened to be awake, but her eyes looked straight through me and straight through the wall behind me. I held her frail hand and talked to her, and I thought I saw some recognition, and she started speaking softly, barely a whisper. I could not understand what she said, so I called my mum. She held her up and leaned in to hear her.
"You want some water mum?" She asked.
She called the carer in, who held my grandmother upright in the bed while my mum put a small surgical sponge soaked with water to her lips for her to drink. She drank, spluttered, coughed and cried out in despair; she could hardly swallow any more, and choked on the tiniest bit of food or water. I bit my lip to stop the tears and left her in my mother's care.
It was a Wednesday morning that she died. That morning when I got to work I told my manager that my grandmother was close to death, and that I might have to leave at short notice to be with my family. She was sympathetic and supportive, and said that if there was anything she could do, I should let her know. Within two hours I received a call from my dad to say that she did not have long, that she was hardly breathing, and they were certain she was about to pass away. I was glad to hear that my mum was by her side. I grabbed my things and told my manager I had to go, that I would be in touch later.
It is a strange feeling to get on a train with people going about their daily business, knowing that you are on your way to say goodbye to a loved one for the last time. Breath comes difficult. Thoughts come thick and fast in no rational order. Prominent memories are enhanced in their power over your emotions. Happy or sad, they choke and squeeze water from the eyes. I hold back tears with deep breaths. Remind myself that most tears are nothing but self-pity. The most valuable tears are those that cannot be prevented.
I get off at the station and my dad calls to tell me that nanna has passed away. Emptiness. He comes to pick me up and we give each other a big hug. We don't speak much. Silence in the car. Trees passing by the window look surreal. The whole world looks surreal. Unreal. We are at her house very soon. I embrace my mum and hold her tight. The last of her parents has passed. She needs us. I try to be strong but a mother's emotion is powerfully important to a child, even one that has grown into a man. The tears I have been saving fall down my cheeks quietly.
I go in to say goodbye to my nanna, but she is not there. All that is left is the body that carried her for the last 90 years. The body doesn't mean too much to me. Looking at the body does not evoke emotion. What evokes emotion are the living breathing memories in my mind. I think of when I lived with her. I remember when she would wake up in the night in a panic, calling out for help because she did not know where she was. I remember sitting with her and reminding her once again the story of how she came to live in that house nearly 30 years ago. Through the tears she apologises, and I softly tell her off for apologising. When she has calmed down, I put her to bed and she is soon asleep. The next day she has no memory of it. She tells me about her father. "He was such a wonderful man. The most wonderful man I ever met, aside from my dear Sammy."
She stares off into space and smiles. I feel the moment she realises he is gone as the smile begins to fade slowly. This is all I have left of nanna. The body in front of me is not my nanna. My nanna was a life, a soul, a spirit, whatever you prefer to call it. That body carried her life, but no longer. She resides in our hearts and minds now.
My mum's family arrives shortly after her mother's passing. It is a beautiful day, the sun shining down on the garden, glowing with the colourful life my grandmother took care to nurture throughout her own life. It was beautiful.
I send a message to my manager to say that I won't be in until Monday. Nanna's body is taken away and the funeral is scheduled for Sunday. Thursday my brother and I help my mother prepare her house for the wake. She is to be buried alongside my grandfather Sam, who was laid to rest almost 20 years previously.
Friday morning I get a call from my agent to say that my contract at the London Stock Exchange has been terminated with immediate effect. I am shocked, but not that shocked.
"You sound as if you expected it?" He asks me.
"No, it's quite a surprise, especially since they have chosen to do so 48 hours after the death of my grandmother, while I am mourning and helping my family to prepare for her funeral. I'm pretty shocked that they have done it with such lack of consideration. It would have been decent of them to wait until Monday and do it face-to-face."
"Yes, I heard that your grandmother had passed. I'm very sorry for your loss."
"Thank you."
"Did they say why?"
"They haven't given me any more information."
"I received my contract extension yesterday!"
"Yes I know, it is a bit strange. I think you'll have to speak to D to find out more."
"Well, I guess I need to find a job! Do you have any positions open at the moment?"
"You'll have to find out the reasons for your contract being terminated first."
"I understand. I'll let you know once I've spoken to them."
I call D but he is not available, and my manager K cannot give me any information as to why my contract has been cancelled so suddenly.
"Well K, it has been an absolute pleasure working with you, I wish you all the best for the future."
"And you Sam. Take care."
A few weeks earlier I had
published a blog post about Barclays' and Glaxosmithkline's sponsorship of the 'Guardian International Development Journalism Competition'. I referenced a few articles I had found online about the recent fines they had received for such crimes as trading with brutal dictatorships and killing babies with illegal drug trials. This quickly became my highest hitting post, and remains so today. Within a few days I saw on LinkedIn that my profile had been viewed by a guy who was, if I remember correctly, 'Head of Internet Security for Barclays Plc'. This made me smile. Nice to know someone's listening! Very soon after I saw that my profile had been viewed by someone working for a large financial law firm in Washington DC. This made me smile, but I was also aware that this could put my job at risk. Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, I got the call I describe above. A couple of weeks after this, Barclays was shamed by the LIBOR scandal, possibly the biggest and longest-running financial fraud ever. No-one has been held responsible.
I believe this is the reason my contract was terminated, although other factors could have contributed. I often get into heated debates with zionists about the ethics of the apartheid-slash-ethnic-cleansing situation in Israel-slash-Palestine, and had received what I considered to be a threat from one person, who said to me, "do your clients know your opinions on this?" I gave a rather heated response.
I was disappointed at having lost my job, but confident that I would not have trouble finding another. I waited for the call from D to explain the reasons for my contract being terminated, and after a couple of calls to chase this, he called me. He expressed his sympathy for the loss of my grandmother, and apologised for the delay in his call. He went on to explain that my contract had been terminated for 'business reasons from above'. I told him that I thought this was strange, especially since they had chosen to inform me through my agent rather than in person, and while I was mourning the loss of my grandmother as icing on the cake. He again apologised, saying that they got the word 'from above' that my contract was to be terminated immediately, and that was what had to happen. I pushed for more information, and told him that I believed it was due to my online activity; blogs, Twitter, etc; but he denied this, saying, in a hesitant manner that raised my suspicions, that he didn't know anything about Twitter or blogs, that it was 'purely for business reasons'. At this point I accepted that I was not going to get anything further from him, wondering whether there was anyone else listening in on the call. I thanked him for giving me the opportunity and experience of working at the London Stock Exchange, told him that I had thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and wished him all the best for the future. He did likewise and we said goodbye.
And so I put my CV online and started looking at jobs. Sure enough, I found one quickly enough and started my new job a month or so later. On my second day I was devastated to learn that my good friend Liam had died. I'll tell you about Liam sometime.
I got a message from one of my ex-colleagues shortly after I lost my job saying they were sorry I had left and that we should meet up for a drink. I messaged back that I would be happy to meet up, but got a message the following day saying that we would have to postpone 'until things had calmed down'. I bumped into another ex-colleague after I started my new job who confirmed that they had all been warned against having any contact with me. It didn't stop them from coming out for drinks though. We chatted about what was going on in our lives and what we had been up to, and barely spoke about the London Stock Exchange. We still keep in touch.
Forty First Blog Of Trig, Signing Off.
