Benign debt paydown profile

So I was on the train home last night accompanied by the usual collection of South African accountants heading to Wimbledon and corporate brokers heading to Farnham when the woman standing next door got involved in one of those tedious high-volume one-sided mobile calls that make other commuters' lives hell. Said woman, however, was a very loud, very confident and very OK City yuppy, brimming with uber-confidence and desperate to tell the equally bumptious person on the other end of the phone how simply ghastly the weather was in New York at the weekend, and how it was absolutely dreadful that poor Jessica had just got pregnant after moving in with her boyfriend of nine months.

Then, the two blonde, tanned South African girls next to me on the other side started sniggering loudly, saying in a thick Gauteng accent "Does she know how ridiculous she sounds?" "Yah." Long live multiculturalism - your opportunity to hate people of all races equally...

Still, at least the South Africans are moving up the London social food chain

Crack on and give it our best shot

Finally signed off regional project on Friday, although not without a couple of calls in the middle of the night. Now facing the ghastly prospect of having to self-assess my performance using the 15-box 9-dimensional core competencies system as part of what I believe is called an 'interim appraisal'. Have a good week.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même run rate analysis

Here again in the spooky cold office with no-one else around and the lights going out every five minutes requiring a ridiculous dance which results in my iPod headphones getting tangled up with my mouse. Whoopee do, life in the M&A fast lane. The proverbial late night axe murderer charging hrough the darkened office could run at me, strike a lethal blow through my skull and get out of the building before the so-called firking motion-sensing lights finally blink into life.

Not sure I'm going to hang around to find out. I dream of sleep. Yet when I sleep I don't dream. Odd.

It's acceptable to punch someone who's resisting

So, it's approaching 4am, and I'm engrossed in part 8 of 'Deutsche Plus' on the BBC Learning Zone. So just who the f*ck sits at home learning German at this time of f*cking day, especially from idiot actors wearing pale brown shoes and stupid waistcoats?

It's deadline week, so I'm willing to bet that this won't be the last stupid bedtime this week.

Another gem on a conference call today:
Banker to PE guy: I'm assuming your process is running like a well-oiled sewing machine?
FD of target to no-one in particular: So which one of us is getting stitched up?

Guten nacht, alles.

Sales have increased due to increased sales

Overheard in a large all parties meeting:
"I don't think we're getting into struggling territory here - it's not as if someone turned off the purse strings."
Discuss.

Gross margins have been constant due to steady margins

Sleepwalking into mediocrity

A creeping reassessment of the trade-off between growth and inflation

Having had a rather longer-than-planned meeting with Messrs Pouilly-Fume (a niche player in the beverage space) yesterday evening, I’m not firing on all cylinders today. Luckily I’ve sought to get myself back into prime condition by eating and drinking from all of the main food groups this morning:

In a slight return to the long-forgotten ‘You’re ‘avin’ a graph mate’ feature (see example), the charts below summarise the deaths reported on Wikipedia last month:

• Using my finely honed data analysis and interpretation skills, I would give the following advice to those wishing to minimise the chances of death:
• Don’t be American – lots of them die, every day. Go for something a bit more edgy like Algerians – none of them died at all last month, apparently
• Keep a low profile on Fridays
• Avoid being in your 80s if you can help it – the grim reaper is particularly keen on this cohort.
• Don’t get cancer if you can help it

If you want something altogether more serious, I can highly recommend today’s in depth Guardian video feature, which covers the paradigm-shiftingly crucial topic of …Jamelia eating Marmite for the first time. Probably makes more comforting reading for your average Grauniad reader than the IMF hoofing Gordon Brown in the fiscal knackers in its latest report.

Yell at me again and I'll snap you like a twig

Made it to the end of the week. Only 80 hours of work after all that - don't know what the fuss is about.

A very good picture on the BBC today of Tony Blair doing an impression of Gordon Brown:

This is getting silly

Wonder if the Lotus Notes chick only has half a face.

Another night deep in Excel, although I'm in the comfort of home, watching a random Italian film on Film 4, in the vain hope that one of the actresses might get their kit off. It's the time of night when the ads are either government porn announcements, or premium rate safety announcements. Or something.

It's like being 17 again, except that I have to get up at 6am tomorrow and sort the children out, instead of lurking in bed until 1pm.

To tired to go on. Even the cat has gone to bed.

And it's still only Thursday...

Some sort of bridge pun, but can't think of one

I'm lurking in a Secret Squirrel (NB 1970s cartoon reference again) Project Room on the floor of my office where our IT Support team is based. My previous contact with these people has been limited to getting an answerphone message at 5.20pm telling me they've all gone home, and the sad news that they only support one type of home wireless router. Which I don't have. Because I bought it in 2004. Three years before I'd even heard of my current employer.

Anyways, here is a list of the top ten activities on this floor of the building:

1. Arriving at work at 10am

2. Switching on the five wide screen flat screen monitors on one's desk

3. Stopping for a coffee break with the paper

4. Doing some random Google searches (on 42" monitor screen)

5. Updating fantasy football team (")

6. Reading every article on BBC News (")

7. Stopping for a coffee break with the paper

8. Putting the answerphone on

9. Going home shortly after 4

10. Um...that's it.

A sort of metaphor for value alienation and identity confusion

Another day, another semi-Lionel - four in less than a week. My junior assistant is now really taking the piss about how old I am, and how he can barely remember the 80s.
Plenty of TUDA* for him tomorrow. You may be young, my friend, but I have the power to command you to do some spurious pie-charting of 'Other expenses' all the way back to 1H03.
Time for to trek back to the wilds of South London now.
Hope you're all asleep.

* Totally Useless Data Analysis

In the pink

Ever seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? I only ask because the junior Excel chimp currently assigned to receive muddled and infrequent orders from me had never heard of Hong Kong Phooey when I mentioned him (don’t ask) earlier, thereby undermining my entire cultural frame of reference (inasmuch as it’s possible to undermine a frame).

I digress.

You may recall that our heroes borrow Cameron’s uptight dad’s low mileage Ferrari, and leave it with a couple of lusty rogues at a valet parking lot, after which said rogues clock up 306.35 miles (don’t believe me? Check the script) on the Ferrari.

Well, it seems a bunch of clowns called Pink Meet and Greet have been pulling the same trick at London Gatwick Airport. The question is, would you do business with a firm that has “SEIZED TRADING” and will advise once “ADVICE HAS BEEN SEEKED”?

Luckily they “Excepts all major Debit/Credit card”, after which “you will recive confirmation” Wow.

“How comes Pink are so cheap?” you ask? Well, it’s because they keep their “over heads” (ceilings? umbrellas?) low.

There are some warning signs, however – the “phone lines are now back up and running” – what happened to them? Presumably they’re on Orange. The “lady in the office will gladly take your number regarding complaints” – oh dear. Watch out though, since “you may not always get a responce”

And people paid money to this outfit? Whatever happened to caveat emptor ?

Isn't there an 'o' in 'country'?

Just finished work for the day - my iPod served up the Nik Kershaw classic 'I won't let the sun go down on me' (his only classic in fact - 'The Riddle' was utter crap), which led me to vow there and then not to let the sun come up on me, and shut down Excel. The iPod is clearly on an 80s trip - 'Papa Don't Preach' was never particularly good, and hasn't improved with age, but I need both hands to type.
'Night all

What's in a name?

Blog silence for a few days - I'm clinging to the icy black run that is an imminent reporting deadline. May still plunge into a crevasse.

I read this morning that one of the descendants of the injuns who battled Custer at Little Bighorn is named 'Ron Whose Horse Is Like Thunder' - not merely a name, more a character sketch. So, readers, what would your Native American name be?

Sincerely

Chimp Whose Mortgage Is Like A Mighty Earthquake And Whose Hair Is Like The Receding Tide

Casting about for a semantic escape hatch

Overheard on the bus this morning:

Tooting undergraduate 1: When I graduate I'm gonna become a social worker, innit

Tooting undergraduate 2: Why iz dat?

TU1: Coz you get da key worker housing off da government innit

TU2: Woz dat?

TU1: Iz loads of free cash. You buy a house well cheap, sell it an make a fortune man

TU2: Then you moov to Chelsea, innit

TU1: Yeah, man.

That'll be where my 25 grand stamp duty will be going then. Key workers my arse.

Another week...

...another opportunity to (use) excel. On a lengthy conference call back in the regions - GNER redeemed themselves by managing to run a train today - well done gentlemen. Today I've learned that my current handler, when stressed (a frequent occurrence by all accounts), strides up and down the room shouting into his mobile whilst breaking wind uncontrollably. Better out than in, I suppose.

A bottle of crap wine with a picture of Hitler on it has apparently sold for four grand - maybe Fuhrerwein is a new way for Tony Blair to make ends meet when he finally leaves office. Personally, I'd prefer a glass of Margaret Thatcher Armagnac any day.

Regional rage

Back in London, thank the almighty, but not without regional problems - having spent five hours taking me back to the North on Thursday (instead of the advertised two), GNER yesterday decided to stop providing trains at all, forcing me to crouch* for an hour in a regional corridor in a very crowded regional train to regional Sheffield, after which I crossed a windswept regional station platform to board a trans-regional train South, on which I stood for a further two and a half hours listening to regional people having regional conversations on their regional mobile phones.
Maybe I should jack it all in, grow a regional moustache, put a regional pen in my regional breast pocket, and get with the regional lifestyle. Whatcha reckon?

*due to widespread malnutrition in the regions, people are shorter, resulting in trains with very low ceilings

The Queen's Delivery Entrance

Walked past the 'Queen's Delivery Entrance' sign this morning (which will allow the regional readers out there to identify where I am) - surely this is a private matter between her and Prince Philip rather than the subject matter for a public sign. That's the problem with modern society - no respect for authority.

Yes, in the regions, overlooking Satan's Inner Ring Road from my retro office. It took nearly 5 hours to get here yesterday due to something darkly referred to as 'a fatality in the Retford area'. Whereas I can fully understand the business case for the transaction (I've never actually stopped in Lincolnshire, but I've seen enough of it), the timing and execution weren't great. Have a good Friday.

A typically murky exploration of meaning and meaninglessness

Made it back to the metropolis for a few brief hours - gratefully breathing in lungfuls of sulphur dioxide from stupid bendy buses. Good to see that Coldplay's record label is swimming in nine kinds of cr*p at the moment - wonder if Chris Martin has updated his opinion about shareholders now that his own livelihood is looking a little shaky?

Back to the regions this evening...

Excel chimp's regional adventure

I was going to regale you with amusing mobile phone photos of my regional hotel (pointy loo paper, beige shower curtain, creaky ironing board, Corby trouser press, Gideons bible, room service menu, laminated advert for porn next to the ancient TV - you know the score), but unfortunately my employers neither understand nor approve of Bluetooth, nor will they let me load the right drivers on my laptop, so the photos are stuck on my phone for time being.

If you want to come round and see them, I'm in meeting room 7 of a regional office, which overlooks the ring road through both its tiny windows, is fully furbished with 1974 executive furniture, and swings wildly between boiling and freezing due to the ongoing battle between the massive radiator (which we can't switch off properly) and the air con unit (which we can't switch on properly).

I leave you with the initial samples of the Excel Chimp leisurewear range, coming soon to a data room near you. Please sign out before you leave. Regional coffee anyone?

Reliance restricted

Friends, I've been posted to a regional office for a while , and I've no idea whether the internet has made it up there yet, so there may be an extended period of account until the books are next closed.

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth

Millennium?

Good to see that the Google ad server algorithm is working - track chimpanzees in the bush whilst controlling financial risk and governance issues. Heading for 1000 hits today, with any luck...

Life is like a sewer...

... what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

London has got through its second bout of snow in as many weeks. I wonder if you can draw lessons about a nation's psyche from the way in which it responds to adversity (and yes, 1/2cm of snow represents severe adversity for us)? Based on limited data, the primary response amongst my fellow Londoners has been...to wear unusual shoes. My office colleagues were yesterday wearing a motley collection of golfing shoes, trainers, boots, and what seemed to be a pair of bowling shoes. Very rum.

Have good weekend y'all.