The Big Smoke

I spent the day in London yesterday, mainly to attend a reception at the Foreign Office for staff who are on secondment or unpaid leave. Apparently, I'm a valuable resource and the Office wants to put to good use the skills I have acquired during my period of unpaid leave. That's nice. I assume they will therefore promote me rather than ask me to return to my old job...

I stayed at Carrie's on Sunday night and got up early and accompanied her to work. We had a breakfast meeting and then I went for a wander around Whitehall and St James's Park just as the town was beginning to wake up. It was still quite dark, it was cloudy and raining but London was quiet and beautiful: glossy pavements, the willow trees in the park waving in the wind as the ducks and squirrels foraged for food. Part of it was all too familiar but so much has changed: the huge railings outside Downing Street reminding me that when I started working in London the only barrier to the road was a waist-high temporary railing; barriers at the end of King Charles St, home to the Treasury and Foreign Office, a far cry from the public parking meters that were there when I first joined the Office, allowing anyone to park right outside two Government departments. Yet Horse Guards Parade was still open to traffic, which I found surprising. They did try to make it a pedestrian-only street after the IRA mortar bomb attacks in the late 80s but decided that would mean Giving In To Terrorism. Part of me thinks it's time we do give in, especially as we are dealing with a completely different type of terrorist these days, as the memorials to the victims of the Istanbul and Bali bombings testify.

I had moments of nostalgia, fleeting though they were. But the FCO reception soon put paid to any of that. All the important people pretending to be down with the kids, mingling in such a professional way that they only talk to you for 2 minutes before making their excuses. Everyone assumed I was on unpaid leave to have babies and no-one showed any further interest in my reasons for taking time off ('I'm at Cambridge!', a selfish and childish part of me wanted to cry: see what untapped resources you have?). No-one from Personnel was to be found to answer our questions about grading issues. And the "Investing in People" plaque in reception made me want to scream. All Foreign Office people do when they meet other Foreign Office people is moan about the Foreign Office - this is a fact that I was alerted to when I was still at my last post but which never quite hit home until I left and then met up with old colleagues. The Foreign Office doesn't invest in people - it wears them down and makes them believe they have no other options, no transferable skills and no right to a decently-paid job in the private sector. It's time for me to draft my letter of resignation - I want to make it a good one to demonstrate the new drafting skills I have acquired during my time at Cambridge: I want to make a convincing and sustained argument as to why they should shove their job where the sun don't shine and I shall further highlight my departure from traditional Foreign Office drafting by failing to include any cricketing terms in my rhetoric! That'll show 'em!