City Workers

If you wander around Canary Wharf during the day you would be forgiven for thinking that all the young city workers were a bunch of totally focused, unsmiling serious types, busy rushing from meeting to meeting with their mobile phones super-glued to their ears while sending very important messages on their Blackberries. But I'm delighted to tell you that after 5pm on a Thursday night they change, they metamorphose into human being. As the bars fill up and the alcohol consumption rises they start to loosen up and the noise level rises.

The young and not so young singles start flirting and the old buggers (in 21st Century City Talk that means 35 year olds) try to look cool by removing their ties and opening the top button of their Turnbull and Asher shirts. This is radical stuff! In fact this is the city culture I remember from the 70's - rush out of work - get to the pub - and unwind (or pissed)

But wait a minute something isn't quite right, yes they all have a drink in their hands, yes they are all VERY loud and yes some of them are flirting but take a step back and really look and you will see that they have been nursing that same drink for the past hour, the loud chatter is all work related and the old buggers are surreptitiously glancing at their watches wondering if they can still make the 6.30 from Charing Cross.

Bugger, it's 6 o'clock on a warm October evening in one of the world's great financial districts and I'm surrounded by a bunch of boring Bankers ..........(what is the collective noun for Bankers? - suggestions on a postcard please)