The subject

After leaving school I found a job with one of the country's High Street banks. I'm not entirely sure that my career choice was the best, but hey ho, it's too late to do anything about that now. I stuck at it for 25 years so maybe it wasn't too bad a choice after all. I only left because the powers that were kept moving the goalposts. Well, that's my story; the then board of directors or whomever they left to make the decisions might have a different point of view.

Every now and again I was sent on a course at one or other of the bank's schools. The first course I attended lasted four weeks and was supposed to give the "students" an insight into the world of banking as seen by our particular bank and knowledge of how to operate the accounting machines that were installed in most branches. That was of little use to me as not too long after I returned from that course I was transferred to a different branch. This was in a small village just the other side of the Downs and the machine in that branch was completely different from the one I had been taught to use. When the manager sat me at the machine, I searched everywhere for the on/off switch but eventually had to ask where it was located. It transpired that this machine was not operated by electricity but was a sort of cross between a manual typewriter and an adding machine. But that's all by the bye.

After I had attended several courses - by now quite well into my 25-year career - I applied for a posting as an instructor at the bank's school. Instructors were employed in branches of the bank to carry out normal banking work but were called into the school several times a year for a week or two. Do I need to add that there was extra remuneration? Anyway, my application was successful in that I was selected to attend a training course for potential instructors. This was perhaps the most enjoyable and most interesting of all the courses I attended and was the one that had the least to do with banking per se. It was on this course that I first came across the torture of having to talk for two minutes on the subject of a word or phrase that was only revealed when one was standing in front of the class. It might be "roast beef" or "trees" or "baseball". Of course, the quicker-witted among us (which did not include me) were able to use the word as an introduction to something they had prepared and memorised earlier. So, for example, somebody told to talk for two minutes on baseball might start by describing baseball as a team sport played with a ball and then go on to say that they played no sport themselves but found stamp collecting satisfying. Anyway, that's cheating so a goody-two-shoes like me would never dream of committing such an atrocity.

In some respects, typing a load of drivel on a blog can sometimes be a bit like having to talk for two minutes on whatever - except that in this case it's write 500 words on the subject.

(According to my word processor, there are 546 words up to the end of the previous sentence so I can sit down now.)