This is a story about a split personality...

This is 1 Churchill Place and this is Nick: the schoolboy who leads an exciting double life. For when Nick eats a banana, an amazing transformation takes place. Nick is BANANAMAN, ever alert for the call to action.

I'm not actually Bananaman, but I do eat porridge and a banana every morning. I'm also ever alert for the call to action. I wasn't born to follow.

In Silicon Valley, and with the top people in banks, there is an arms race. But it's not with weapons, it's with smart people. If you let good people go to your competitors, they will beat you. It's that simple. High performance teams make stuff happen.

There's no point in being part of a race to the bottom. I was really impressed by the way that Barclays have embraced the modern software development paradigm. They hired bright young people and allowed them to get on and make some damn high quality software. They let them run their projects with a risk-based approach and using Agile best practices.

I got a bit cross with a couple of people at Barclays, who were straddling the line. They were neither demanding quality and an old-school attention to detail, nor were they very talented or quick. However, the bulk of the developers were amazing and a pleasure to work with. There is always dead wood in any organisation. The problem comes when somebody gets promoted to a position of incompetency.

There's no sense in bluffing your way into a role you can't handle. If your skills aren't up to it, you can't handle the pressure or you just don't have relevant experience, stay away... you're just going to land you, your team and your company in trouble. I've never stepped away from a role in a particularly elegant way, but I haven't dug myself a hole either. I hate people who make themselves into a key man dependency when they're incompetent.

Fail fast. Move fast and break things. There's no sense in spending years and years doing something you're not very good at. I hate the way that we all need to push for promotions in order to get a pay rise and not be on the breadline, but people end up being promoted to positions they're hopelessly unqualified for, because all they're good at doing is kissing ass to clamber up the greasy pole.

Yes, if I had an hour to do some actual work or an hour to make myself more indispensable, or improve my promotion prospects, you can guess which one I'm more economically incentivised to do.

The way that corporations are run encourages people to delegate the things that they're supposed to do, and concentrate on things that only further their personal objectives, which are in direct conflict with the organisational needs. The most junior team members do all the work, while their managers concentrate on making themselves look good, and scrapping over the few promotions.

This adversarial system is flawed from the outset.

Look at how compliant these suit wearing office workers are, patiently queuing to get on a packed tube train to take them back to their miserable tiny home that they hardly spend any time in. They spend all their time pushing paper around in order to service the mortgage, which is a millstone around their neck.

God forbid that you end up procreating. Then your nuts really are in the vice. You will be having to sprint along on that treadmill to service all your debt, working to worship angry bawling midgets that are hungry and have relentless needs for clothes that they will soon outgrow or be ruined by this decadent practice of 'playing'. Ha! F**k those little sh1ts! They get to 'play' all day... how nice for them. Bastards.

Well, there's a way to punish those little sh1ts for being born. Yes, they should have a taste of what it's like to have not kept your cock in your trousers. Yes, they should be forced to go to an office like environment. No play for them. I have to sit at a desk all day, bored out of my mind, so the fruit of my loins has to too.

That'll teach the kids for being so stupid as to give birth to themselves, without a care in the world for how they're going to pay the mortgage, dress themselves or feed themselves. There's a rumour that babies can't even forage for food or kill an antelope. Who the hell do this race of midgets think they are? Arrogantly expecting to be wheeled around in carriages, and getting to gorge themselves on milk swelled breasts all day. That looks like a jolly nice life to me. I don't get to suckle on any breasts at all in the office. Yes, I was sacked last time I did that.

I'm rather patiently waiting for the day that I'm big enough to go to school. Mummy says that when I'm all grown up I will get to go and study with the other children. I will get to read books all day, and write poems and sh1t. Yes, that sounds like good fun. I would like to do that all day. At the moment all I do is follow grown ups around and get told off when they make mistakes. I do tests that they know the answers to, but they don't like my answers.

I see that the grown ups like to drink coffee and alcohol. I'm too young to have those things, but they look like a lot of fun. I would like to have those things. It looks like the coffee allows you to concentrate on doing your job, rather than having to deal with the existential angst of executing pointless tasks. It looks like the alcohol allows you to deal with the anxiety of never quite being able to break free from a system that is engineered to break the will of the sheep-like people, and force them into a system of meek compliance.

Yes, I think I will like it when I become a student, and I will get to lie around drinking booze and coffee, and pontificating about life the universe and everything. Reading books and writing is a lot more fun than being told what to do by grown ups. Mummy says I'm smart so I deserve to get to sit around and be complemented for coming up with the same answers to questions as the grown ups.

I can see now that the master plan is working very well. I can see now that studying history, politics and having mastery of the English language, has led us to this point of great enlightenment. Yes, I can see how amazing society has become since we started getting everybody to read the same books and work in the same offices doing the same kinds of things. I can see now that this kind of groupthink has been a very successful experiment. Life is so amazing now.

I'm so disappointed that I didn't come up with the very clever idea of studying other people's mistakes in order to be able to be an expert on mistakes. I'm clearly not very clever, because I'm not very good at making mistakes. Except the mistake of accidentally doing successful stuff. Yes, I should be like the grown ups who study mistakes and then copy them. I'm not very good at following their example. I'm not a very good student of failure.

I stupidly keep building stuff that works. I stupidly keep making a profit. I stupidly keep succeeding. How silly of me. Yes, that's clearly not the way the world works. We need to have failure. We need to have fighting. We need to have war. Success is not an option in the modern, enlightened world.

Let's not listen to the successful people who are proven and are making things work without violence and conflict. No, let's glorify the bullies and the warmongers instead. We should definitely have a society run by failures, run by those who can't make things work, harbour ideas of violence and vengeance to compensate for their inadequacies. Those are the kinds of leaders I want.

I see now that we are choosing just the very kinds of leaders that we really need. The kinds of people who want to go into positions of authority, responsibility... they are invariably the kinds who are not on a total ego-trip and grinding an axe, have a chip on their shoulder. They definitely don't have micropenises and some kind of small-man syndrome.

Yes, all the warmongering. Getting your willies out, I mean getting your guns out. Yes, it's very macho. It's definitely not overcompensation for your inadequacies. I'm definitely full of much more admiration for leaders who advocate violence. I'm definitely in favour of a global society based on bashing each other over the head with clubs. I'm definitely not in favour of diplomacy and peace. War is the answer, but I've been too stupid to see it before.

How foolish of me not to see the brilliance in the idea that we can all have pointy sticks and we can just attack each other and take whatever we want. I'm really looking forward to living in a cave again and foraging for nuts and berries and trying not to be eaten by a tiger. It sounds a lot more exciting than working in an office.

Yes, working in an office is pretty boring. I'd much rather be bullying somebody with my pointy stick. Especially if I have a pointy stick but they don't. Yes if I get to poke them with my pointy stick with no fear them being able to poke me back, because I'm the only one with a pointy stick, then I'll feel like the king of the world, which is the whole reason for the existence of the Earth and humanity, right? The whole reason the entire planet and the human race was created was as a massive entertainment system for me, right? I'm entitled to go out poking whoever I want with my pointy stick because it's fun.

The whole reason the world exists is so that I can have fun. It's a playground, and I'm allowed to play. I'm bored in my job and I want the attention of the other children and I like playing games, so I'm going to sharpen a stick and go and poke the most vulnerable weak person I can find. That will make me feel good.

I have no words to describe just how boring it is moving money around for pointy stick manufacturers. I have no words to describe just how boring it is never getting to play with those pointy sticks. I have no words to describe just how boring it is to never get to poke anybody with a pointy stick.

I've studied the history of poking people with pointy sticks and it sounds like a lot of fun. There's a lot of hope & glory in poking people with pointy sticks. It sounds like a barrel of laughs. It sounds like a game of soldiers.

So what the hell am I doing flying a desk when I could be flying a drone. I'm good with computers. I used to like computer games. Poking people with pointy sticks makes you feel better about yourself. What's not to like? I think I've found my perfect career.

It must take a lot of bravery to sit behind a screen, pressing buttons, in the full knowledge that the remote system that you are controlling that is poking people with pointy sticks, completely protects you from any physical pain or risk of injury or death. Yes, that's a really brave thing, I think, to sit playing war games on a computer.

Whether the people being poked by your pointy stick are real or they're simulated, that doesn't really matter. It's just that the graphics are probably more realistic in the simulator. I like the way the heads explode when you shoot them in the simulator. I don't like the physics of reality. They say that the simulated people don't even have families. Where's the fun in killing some computer simulated person who doesn't even have a family?

It gets boring after a while, killing simulated people. Time to drop some real bombs. The physics in reality isn't as good, but at least you're killing real people with real families. At least there is real human suffering. We haven't figured out how to simulate human suffering yet, or maybe nobody is particularly interested in experiencing simulated human suffering. Maybe there's no money in simulated human suffering. Maybe there is only money in real human suffering, for the manufacturers of pointy sticks.

That is all.

Frankie is well trained. Look at him doing his filing. It's a File-o-Frank (April 2007)

Tags: #frankie #politics #computing #banking #career #london

This is a story about the doors of perception...

So I radically altered my appearance for over a month. I went from being the suit wearing IT Consultant working on the number one project in the biggest bank in Europe (HSBC) to being the crazy suicidal mental patient guy with a moustache and a tattoo. That how I roll [on the floor laughing].

Self sabotage and self mutilation are strange things to do, but then so is suicide. They are symptoms of a very sick society. It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a broken system. There can be no pride or honour in being able to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing.

I knew what I was doing. I could have held back. I could have buried my feelings and kept my mouth shut. I could have bitten my tongue. However, things have been eating away inside of me, like acid dissolving the container it's kept in. It was time to vent some toxic gas.

This is all a rather extreme form of bridge burning. I'm really pretty sickened by what global banking and corporate culture is doing to the world and I want to do the right thing. I want to whistleblow on all the life-wrecking and economy destroying corrupt bullshit that I have had to endure.

It's not going to do me any favours, it's not going to make me any friends, it's not going to make me rich, famous or popular, but it has to be done. Somebody has to stand up, be counted, and do the damn right thing. It's going to hurt me, a lot.

Is this some personal grievance? Well I wouldn't be so passionate if it wasn't personal, but it's not personal in the way that you probably assume that it is. I was a Griffin Saver with Midland Bank since I was a little boy, and I've always loved HSBC and I was so proud to start work for them, age 21. Later, in 2003, I was amongst the first 8,000 people to work in the prestigious 8 Canada Square... headquarters of the HSBC Group Plc, which employs 245,000 people worldwide.

If you look after me, I will look after you. Actually I tend to do things the other way around. I will look after you on the assumption that once I have proven to you - beyond all reasonable doubt - that I am adding value to your organisation, you will look after me, to some extent. Sadly, the way the system works is to try and get blood out of the proverbial stone.

Yes, the employees of global banks are driven very hard indeed, but they share so little of the reward, in terms of the wealth that they generate for their masters. The customers of global banking pay huge sums of money for financial services, but it's them who still toil all hours to service their debts, rather than being enriched by the products they are sold.

Consumers are being sold a lie. They are being told that products and services will make them happier, richer, more attractive, more successful. The truth is that the only people who will get rich are those who own and operate the pyramid schemes. There simply aren't enough pay rises and promotions for you to be able to reach the rungs on the ladder where you will be able to see your kids and sleep at night... you're going to be stuck on that treadmill for the rest of your life, sorry.

It's not market economics that is broken. The markets really are efficient. However, they are not free from political influence. They are also not immune from manipulation by exceedingly wealthy individuals and institutions. Here's how it works...

Imagine if I were to buy all the insulin producing factories. Building a factory takes quite a long time. During the time that I own and operate a monopoly on insulin production, and the time that a competitor could enter the market that I have monopolised, the demand for insulin is going to remain constant, because diabetics don't want to die. So, if I am in control of the supply, and I know that demand is constant, then I can demand practically whatever price I want. That's market economics.

We see artificial scarcity created through cartels in many industries. Diamonds are only worth as much as they are on the markets because the De Beers family has such a large monopoly that they can control the amount of diamonds supplied to the market. Oil is only worth as much as it is because the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) can artificially control supply in order to maintain high prices. They are quite open about their monopoly, their cartel.

So you can't eat diamonds or money, but we do need energy. Money is the way that energy is swapped for goods and services, like food. It's easier to grow more food or make more goods, using energy that has been generated from a power station, rather than by manpower. Welcome to the industrial revolution.

Technology has made vast efficiency gains in terms of being able to move money around to get it to where it can work most effectively, but it doesn't mean that the system can't be gamed. In fact the whole financial system is a giant game. We need to remember that it's simply a way of keeping score and deciding who - as a person - is somehow 'worth' more than another, using some arbitrary measure.

That's right isn't it? The people in the West are 'worth' a lot more than the people in the developing world. Because they have more zeros on the end of a computer system that is keeping score, they get to have all the food, shelter, medicine, education, transport etc. and everybody else is a worthless slave. The human lives in the developing world are clearly not worth anything because their electronic bank balance is as good as zero, if not negative.

You can quite clearly see from the image above, who the superior being is. Yes, it's the one with the biggest bank balance in the global casino. They're the winner. Gold medal for them, hurrah!

Actually, huge numbers of people in the developing world have been saddled with debt that they didn't even agree to. Their nation's leaders signed away their natural resources, signed huge loan agreements to pay for some multinational to come and bleed the wealth, and then mortgaged every man, woman and child to pay for it all. That's really not acceptable.

When the people inside that country get a bit p1ssed off that their leaders have sold them down the river, then the developed nations can sell a bunch of guns, tanks, artillery and warplanes to keep their people in check. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Oh, and when the people have really had enough, then it's time to bomb all the roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, power stations, sewerage plants, factories etc. etc. so that they have to have the developed nations come and rebuild it all again using yet more lovely lovely loans.

Yes, economic slavery is the New World Order. Yes, you might not see people in physical chains toiling in the plantations in your actual country, but somebody still has to grow your sugar, wheat, cotton, coffee etc. etc. Did you grow it yourself? Did you see where it was grown? Do you know anything about the life of the people who grew your food?

We're all rather busy in our wanky make-work jobs, feeling all high powered in a suit in a swanky glass & steel office, pressing buttons in the lift and doing the photocopying... great, but how many meals does it put on the table? Has it stopped war and human suffering? Has it stopped the spread of preventable disease? Has it saved the life of sick people?

I'm fed up of being shouted down by people with vested interests. I just wanted to do the right thing at HSBC and I got muscled out for escalating my concerns in line with my moral duty and legal responsibility to the shareholders and customers. I actually wanted to try and save jobs too.

So this is a call to action that is not some viral marketing, psychologically A-B tested, clickbait horseshit spam scam. This is not some pump and dump. This is not me grinding an axe because of a personal grievance. This is about the big picture and a sickness on all our souls, if you are part of the perpetration of the economic enslavement of the developing world.

In actual fact, the wrongdoing extends to your own doorstep. Somebody you know is in distress because of consumer lending. Their life and livelihood is under threat because they were told to borrow, borrow, borrow! Buy now, pay later! 12 months interest free credit! Low rates! Consume consume consume!

The whole ponzi scheme is set up to get people paid out by suckering other people in. Sure, my life looks fantastic with my riverside apartment, and of course I've had cars and boats and luxury holidays and hot tubs and flat screen TVs and Macbooks and iPhones and gadgets and technology galore. It doesn't make you happy, and eventually you realise the human cost. You wake up and smell the coffee.

So, as Nicholas "Mr Ethical" Wilson (@nw_nicholas) says:

I have been radicalised by HSBC/Tory fraud & corruption

Yup, I woke up one day and realised I couldn't carry on being part of something I knew was wrong, from the depths of my experience in my 19 year career as an IT consultant to global banks. It made me very sick to be living with such internal conflict. It made me upset to see talented professionals being completely ignored.

You can't buy me. You can pay for my opinion, but you don't get to choose what my opinion is. I will give you my opinion based on my experience and an objective analysis of all the evidence that I can gather. If you don't like that opinion, it's not up for debate, unless you are qualified to contest what I'm saying.

So my approach is very unorthodox, but the orthodoxy led us to the brink of economic armageddon, so why should I conduct myself in a manner which is clearly misconduct? Only an idiot expects to see different results each time they do the same thing. The only reason to play by the old rules is to protect the old system, but that system has failed.

Thankfully, there are all these motivational posters around HSBC telling you what to do if your manager isn't listening and the number one project is going down the shitter. If you're a consultant, you're specifically paid for your expert opinion... and very highly paid too. Lots and lots of shareholder money is being spent on the number one project in the biggest bank in Europe (HSBC) unsurprisingly.

So, what happens if you do speak up? Well, I'm not giving out any prizes for correct guesses.

But maybe my contribution just wasn't valued? Maybe I wasn't pulling my weight in the team? Maybe I have too much of a high opinion of my expertise?

The email from the HSBC CIO in charge of the number one project in the biggest bank in Europe reads as follows:

"I cannot thank you enough for the work you have put into this and for your commitment"

So, I'm a little bit confused. The Programme Director also told me, in front of loads of people, that he was really happy with my work... shortly before I was sacked. Curious, oh so very curious.

Anyway, I've got no mandate, no authority to communicate these things, so I'm just going to wait and see what happens. Let's see what happens with the Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) and whether the US Department of Justice is satisfied with the naughty banks who have managed to allegedly commit crimes but not been prosecuted for them.

Good luck, I say to them. Like I say, I've been a Griffin Saver with Midland Bank/HSBC since I was a little boy. I'm very loyal.

Merry Christmas!

Tags: #banking #career #london #it #capitalism #politics #hsbc

This is a story about home...

I always wanted to live at the water's edge. Now I do. If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

Getting myself off the streets and into a flat was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back though. It wasn't even my idea. Working 12 to 14 hours a day 7 days a week was not really possible while homeless, but equally I don't need such a great place to live. I have been living to work, so all I really need is a bed, somewhere I can prepare food and a shower.

When an aeroplane cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will automatically be deployed. If you have ever listened to the safety briefing that the cabin crew give, you will know that you should put on your own mask before helping others. I haven't really applied that advice in day to day living.

I did a Hack-a-John where I spent a couple of weeks training a friend who is an idle gambling addict, to be able to get a job. I then got him an interview at the biggest bank in Europe, for a position on the #1 project. He messed it up. The reputational damage that I personally sustained kinda sealed my fate on that particular contract. I was a marked man for doing something so audacious. John, however, doesn't seem to see things in the wider context, and has gone back to sitting on a couch, gambling. That's ingratitude for you. I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it drink.

I then went to a Hackathon to try and help with the refugee crisis. There I met an extremely capable and lovely guy called Klaus. I wanted to get involved helping refugees. I ended up helping Klaus - the tidy Kiwi - who urgently needed a place to stay. He now sleeps on my couch, enjoying the above views.

Life in London is pretty hard. You might think that I sit around swilling champagne and eating in expensive restaurants, taking taxis and wringing my hands as I read The Guardian but in actual fact I'm far too busy trying not to die.

My life is minimal beyond belief. All the clothes that I own in the world are in my floordrobe (the pink and grey boxes on the floor) plus I have a single suit, single overcoat and a single pair of dress shoes. I do also own 10 smart work shirts - 5 at the dry cleaners and 5 ready to be worn for the working week... which doesn't quite work when you are in the office 7 days a week.

For years, I've been trying to tell my friend Posh Will that investment banking hours are unsustainable and not productive. However, I had to do yet another horrible banking project in order to try and save my own life. I needed the overtime to get myself off the streets and into a home.

Bizarrely, I kind of regret it. I was surviving quite well as a homeless person. I think I was given about a 30% chance of surviving one particularly bad hospital admission, but I pulled through. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Life is much easier when you're just concentrating on staying alive, rather than worrying about any dependents.

I'm not really sure how I ended up with dependents. Why did my friend John end up relying on me - the suicidal homeless guy with mental health issues - to get him a job? Why does my friend Klaus get to go to the gym, and yoga and spend all his time talking to his friends & family, when I'm the one paying for the roof over his head?

Yes, I really need to learn to look after #1... and I don't mean the #1 project in the biggest bank in Europe. I need to learn that it's important to put on the oxygen mask before helping others.

So I'm really at the end of my tether. I'm at my wits end. I've got nothing left to give. However, if I'm going to be a better leader, there's no sense in getting angry with the people who I have carried - they were just smarter about being selfish, looking after themselves at the expense of others. That's the way to win the rat race.

London and our adversarial culture really does encourage us to trample on each other. I think absolutely nothing of clattering into some thoughtless person who would rather that I stepped into the road, into the path of a bus or a truck, in order to get out of their way. I really don't bother with good manners if somebody is standing on the left hand side of the escalator, or decides to stop and have a chat with their companions in a really inconsiderate location.

We have run out of patience and we don't have time for asshats in London. This sprawling metropolis is already creaking and groaning at the seams, and Londoners really don't have time for gawping tourists who left their own sense of good manners at home. Perhaps I should come to where you live and just stand in the road causing a traffic jam because I want to admire something interesting without having to think whether it's appropriate in the wider context.

I would say that London is not dehumanising, as many people believe. It's actually the complete opposite. It's overwhelmingly humanising. You see all of humanity's very worst traits in evidence. You see people starving on the street while people pay £6 for a coffee and croissant, barely a few metres away. You see people shouting and fighting, but you pretend that you didn't, and you just scurry down a dark hole, underground, to go and be forced to invade each other's personal space in the interests of getting home a little quicker.

The calm serenity of living by the Thames is really unsettling for me. It feels like I have left London. I can feel my body, my soul, mourning the loss of humanity. It's really fake here in Canary Wharf. There are no beggars, no homeless people. This rich enclave has excluded the undesirable members of society from the private estate.

It might look enviable, and perhaps you are even enraged that I have become depressed in my current situation, but I'm not going to lie to you. I was happier living with homeless people and at the moment I feel like I'd rather go back to living on the streets. I just can't handle the pressure of those who think I'm a hypocrite, and those who want to ride my back.

I don't feel very true to myself at the moment, true to my values. I always believed that when you have surplus, you should give it away, but it's never enough for some people. I'd rather just be responsible for myself again. My life felt much less in danger when I wasn't carrying any ungrateful fools and dealing with jealousy and accusations of hypocrisy.

If I'm going to continue my journey with authenticity, and without hypocrisy, I may have to give up the material distractions that other people struggle to see beyond. People probably see my home as a status symbol, rather than simply a place that I can eat, sleep and wash.

"Been there, done that" is what many travellers do, when they're racking up pins on the globe or any other kind of stamp collecting. People can be very boastful about the experiences they have racked up. They have cultivated an entire personality, their whole self-esteem system around their travel tales and photographs. Perhaps I'm the same, but it's literally life and death for me, rather than simply a means of impressing dinner party guests.

I love cooking and I love hosting friends. I used to throw huge garden parties for loads of people. I used to thrive on it. Has it really helped me today? No, not really. Everybody else just moved on with their lives, and a single guy who's still living like a bachelor I don't really fit into the rhythm of my old friends lives now they have wives and kids. Lots of my friends left London to get sprogged up.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes, and London seems to be so much about drinking. Drink all your wages, and spend whatever you have left on meals out and foreign holidays. I don't really do that. I haven't been drinking for 62 days and I haven't had a holiday since October last year. Even my meals out have a business purpose. What you see is not what you get with me... my brain is always in work mode. Even my flat is basically a co-working space.

The line is being blurred between work & life to the point where I literally never stop working, even to the point that my dreams are filled with work stuff. I'm a total workaholic, but what else am I supposed to be living for? You tell me if I can afford to take my foot of the accelerator. I don't think I can... the world is too highly leveraged. We haven't made allowances for people who need to stop and catch their breath.

So I desperately need to go to Ireland again. I desperately need to decompress. I desperately need to get away from the relentless pressure to provide for everybody, to prop them up and help them keep their dreams alive. I need some time out for me.

Not sure if I'm going to get that time, because I need to make hay while the sun shines. There is work available, and my bank balance could sure do with a boost to make sure that Klaus has a couch to sleep on while he's doing his gym and yoga and stuff.

One day I'd like to do yoga. Maybe when I'm dead.

That is all.

I need to go back to Ireland and be a culchie for a little bit, as I'm not getting to be much of a culture vulture in London (February 2015)

Tags: #london #career #ireland #homeless #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #friends

This is a story about loyalty...

Midland Bank was taken over by HSBC (Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation) in 1992 and in June this year, HSBC announced that they were going to bury the Midland brand. I think that's a real shame.

I have family connections with both Sheffield, UK and Hong Kong, SAR, China. I have a very personal connection with The Bank as it's affectionately known in Hong Kong. I even learnt to speak Chinese, with the intention of furthering my career with HSBC, in the Far East.

HSBC had the 'prime' years of my life, and they taught me a hell of a lot. Not just how to drink like a fish, and prop yourself up with vast quantities of strong coffee. It might not have come across with a few of my previous blog posts, but I really do love Midland Bank and HSBC.

That's a snippet of an email I personally got from the CIO who is in charge of the #1 project in the biggest bank in Europe, which did $6bn of profit in the last quarter... I'm talking about HSBC of course.

So, I rather burnt myself out trying to get the #1 project back on track. Of course, heroics are never good. Projects are a team effort, and my actions were just as one tiny member of a very talented and dedicated team.

Did I make a difference? Did I make a noteworthy contribution? Emails like the one above remind me that I was pulling my weight in a big team, helping to get the #1 project over the line in time for the timetable imposed by the Department of Justice, to avoid the Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) which could mean a fine of $5bn, or worse.

So, I'm sure if the project was going wrong, was running late or there were any concerns, that things would be escalated. It's really important that public companies are very careful to tell their shareholders how things are going, and be honest. Those shareholders own that company, and they need the facts in order to make their decisions about how their company should be run.

If you're a HSBC shareholder, you do attend the AGM don't you? You do ask the board some really hard, cutting questions, and demand that your company is run to the very highest standards, don't you? You do demand that your C-suite executives - the CEO etc - are all doing their job effectively and are keeping you, the owner (limited by shares) informed of everything that you need to know.

It's actually a legal requirement, and part of the role of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to keep public companies honest. If a group of people knew that there was a problem in a company before the public did, they would be able to sell their shares before that news became general knowledge, and as such they would be able to profit at the public's expense.

Insider dealing is a serious crime, as is knowingly withholding information from shareholders, when issues are being escalated.

For me, a clear desk is not a clear conscience. If I know that some wrongdoing is being perpetrated, the fact that it is a well guarded secret does not make it OK, for me. If you've taken the public's money, when you floated a company on the stock exchange, then you have duties to those shareholders. It's an issue of morality.

Very few white-collar criminals go to jail and I'm really not OK with that. Many people's life savings and pensions have been obliterated by white-collar criminals, who think that the law doesn't apply to them.

Cases brought against companies are incredibly hard to fight. Big companies have big legal teams, and the cases are so hard to prosecute. Plus white-collar criminals are extremely adept at covering their arses. They will make sure they have a fabricated paper-trail that supposedly exonerates them from any personal responsibility. They will make sure that the water is sufficiently muddy that they are really hard to prosecute.

Technology is helping. We can now mine millions of emails and use data visualisation to understand the connection between keywords and people and start to build up a picture of what really went on during the run-up to the eventual downfall of an organisation.

At HSBC on the #1 project in the bank, we started to use a hashtag in our email subject line. That hashtag was #RED. Yes, I saw a lot of that hashtag during my time working on the #1 project in the biggest bank in Europe. I didn't see a lot of #AMBER, and I'm not sure if I saw any #GREEN at all, but that's just from memory. I'm sure hoping that somebody tells the shareholders if there's a problem with the #1 project.

It's not my job to communicate to the shareholders. It's somebody else's. The guy in charge of communication left shortly before me. Not sure who's in charge now. I wouldn't really want that job. Jeeps! That'd be a lot of pressure to do the right thing.

I like doing the right thing though. It means I can sleep at night, when there are 245,000 jobs, 220,000 shareholders and a bank that's too big to fail on the line.

Do the right thing.

That is all.

I lied on my timesheets. I was actually working every hour that I was awake. I didn't sleep very much, but not because of a guilty conscience, but because of the importance of the project (September 2015)

Tags: #banking #career #hsbc

This is a story about chronic fatigue...

Smart bosses have figured out that happy employees are more productive. If you don't have the right culture in your organisation, you will make people very sick. You will be burning people out in order to achieve your unrealistic targets.

Forward thinking organisations are letting people have dogs at work. They are promoting more flexible working arrangements. They are seeing their employees as people and not just numbers in a spreadsheet.

I wrote an IT Roadmap for a company which had just been spun off by its parent company, and sold. I took one look around the little company, and I knew immediately that they had got the culture spot on. I wrote my roadmap with this culture as the guiding principle.

I urged the new CEO of the spin-off company to preserve the culture, in order to maintain the high productivity and excellent morale of the staff. I tried my best to pursuade him of the benefits of investing in technology that would support the staff, that would preserve the brilliant working environment. He ignored my advice.

I quit that job, because my opinion wasn't valued. You can't pay me enough to rubberstamp the wrong decisions. If you're looking for a "yes" man, a sycophant, then you've got the wrong guy.

So, after I left, the culture was destroyed, money was burnt on stupid vanity projects, all the good people left. The profits dropped 90% and naturally, the CEO was fired. I take no pride, only sadness, in saying "I told you so".

But one cool thing happened. At a conference a little over a year later, the CEO of the parent company presented my ideas. They had implemented them. Ideas are worthless, and the implementation must have been very hard - although I had done a proof of concept with my team - so I can take no credit. But it was so nice to be vindicated that I had to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming.

I've been bumping along like this for quite a few years now. The problem is, that I'm exhausted. I've got enough energy to do the job, but not enough energy to endure the idiots. I tend to get the important stuff done, and then I have to bow out and allow the sacking of the egotistical dead wood to happen.

Fundamentally, I burnt out in 2008, working on JPMorgan's #1 project. Instead of going off work sick, I decided that I needed to change jobs and as soon as I did the wall of exhaustion that I had been holding back hit me like a steamroller.

I was so flattened by it, that my doctors thought I might have AIDS. We tried every test under the sun, but fundamentally, I now believe that I was simply overworked. I had worked hard and played hard for far too long. My body & brain just couldn't cope anymore.

I was a bit of 'swan'... looked very serene and calm on the surface, but my legs were going like crazy beneath the surface of the water. During some 'time out' I remember playing golf, trying to putt with my phone jammed to my ear while I attempted to resolve some issue a team member was having.

I am so passionate about my work that I tend to dream about it. I even have 'eureka' moments sometimes and wake up and start writing code or an email. There is no switching off when I'm in the 'on' position.

My commute to the office (September 2007)

It's not very healthy, but my parents, school, partners, lazy friends, bosses, society and the surrounding culture has driven me to this unsustainable level. People say 'take it easy, slow down' but as soon as I do back off the gas, they soon start complaining. People get used to a certain level of contribution. They start taking you for granted.

What am I living for, if it's not for work? Nothing is ever good enough for my parents. I haven't had a nice caring kind girlfriend for far too long. I haven't got any kids. What's the point of life if it's not to make some kind of epic contribution?

It's not about heroics, and I really don't expect anybody to get the violins out and say "ooh, poor you". It's literally that work fills an otherwise empty void in my existence. Without work to dedicate myself to, do I really exist? My day to experiences would suggest not.

Yes, I know that work is a dangerous addiction that is damaging my health, but it's the only place that I ever hear "well done" or "thank you". My parents and ex-girlfriend/ex-wife would never sink so low as to actually show me any respect. It's expensive, apparently, to show somebody some appreciation.

During seemingly interminable periods of fatigue, depression, you can obviously reflect and see that you are repeating the same vicious cycle. It doesn't mean that you can beat it though. Nobody stops the world so that you can get off the rollercoaster.

So, everybody will be very relieved when I'm 'recovered' from a crash, but the fact of the matter is that recovery actually only starts when the exhaustion and depression have passed. All that time in bed is not recovery... it's staying alive. It's surviving, not thriving.

Yes, I'm surviving, but I'm not thriving. Nobody will let me get that far. When I have an opportunity to thrive, everybody says "Oh, you're fine now. We don't need to help you, we can go back to taking from you" not that I really receive help anyway.

My friend Klaus brought me a bag of stuff in hospital. That was one of the kindest things that anybody has ever done for me in a couple of years. Does that mean I owe him a favour? Well, he was already living rent free on my couch so I guess we can call it quits!

I do keep a very careful eye on my karma balance. I have paid it forward big time, and I always want to run a net karma surplus. If you do your accounting with some surpluses, with contingency, then you don't have to sweat the small stuff.

There are some people who feel hard done by at my hands. My friend John who thought it was OK to use me for free rent, spending money and as a personal life coach to help him over his gambling addiction and general idleness, for example. When life became unmanageable, I chucked him off my back to save myself. Am I supposed to be sorry about that? Why was I carrying him in the first place?

I don't really understand why I attract klingons. I guess it's because I'm a kind and generous person who gives off an aura of success and I make what I do look quite easy, so other people think there's not much effort required to achieve the same things. That's the thing about being good at what you do. You make it look easy.

I certainly have suffered from the "I could do your job" mistake. When CxOs and managers have been fired because they didn't listen to my expert advice, I certainly wouldn't want to take their place. I'm not trying to steal anybody's job. When I was younger, for sure I thought I could do my manager's job, and do it better. The fact that I have proved it, does not actually mean anything... I hated doing those managerial jobs!

Yes, management really is not for me. Somebody else can have the pressure and stress and responsibility. I think it's a vocation, not a job title. I think it's a demotion not a promotion. Those who can, do. Those who can't, must depend on others to do for them, and must be more organised themselves to compensate for the fact that they can't both be both organised and productive.

So, I'm exhausted by having to design, build, lead, argue with idiots who don't know what they're talking about and make dead wood losers look good.

I'm laid low with depression, fatigue.

Sorry about that, klingons.

That is all.

Frankie loves being tucked up warm in bed. We all do during winter. Fatigue and depression are much more serious. I'm suicidal and I can barely get out of bed (November 2007)

Tags: #career #banking #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #frankie

This is a story about cat & mouse...

Catch me if you can. But why are you chasing me? I'm not a bad guy. Trying to prove someone guilty who is innocent is a bit ridiculous. Perhaps you should consider your own guilty conscience.

So, I'm well aware that I have rattled some cages pretty hard. I'm also aware that the slow, lumbering and dimwitted sleeping beasts that I have awakened, will take a while to kick into gear and mobilise against me. I'm aware that my privacy is being infringed (using back doors) in the name of so-called justice.

What the hell am I talking about? Well, as a matter of professionalism, I told my end-client - HSBC - some hard truths that they didn't want to hear, about the fate of their #1 project. Plausible deniability is rather hard to maintain if a highly paid consultant is giving you their expert opinion. Also, my ex-wife, who said that she'd rather that I was dead, has recently received the rather disappointing news that I'm still alive.

I don't actually wish either my ex-wife or HSBC any ill will. I want the biggest bank in Europe to succeed with their #1 project and retain value for the shareholders, and remain as a profitable entity that employs 245,000 people. Those jobs are important: many families are depending on the income from those employees. I want my ex-wife and me to be able to both move on with our lives.

My occupational health doctor at JPMorgan urged me to try and make an ally out of my ex-wife. Sadly, she said that she would divorce me if I accepted life-saving hospital treatment. It's a bit hard to make an alliance with such a person. She marked my suicide note in red pen, with many abusive remarks written in capitals all over it. I'm a good diplomat, but that's kinda hard to deal with.

So, my ex wrote to me and said that she wanted to deny all knowledge that we had ever had a relationship. That's going to be a bit impossible, given that the record of our marriage is in the public domain, and so is our divorce. Anybody can look those things up in the register of marriages, and the court records.

Denying history, like pretending there was no holocaust in World War 2, is not going to work. Pretending that things didn't happen, is not going to lead anywhere good. Her guilty conscience will always follow her around, and there's nothing I can do about that. It's not my fault that she acted in an immoral way. I can't absolve her of her sins, although I do forgive her.

Fundamentally, this is about forgiveness. I always turned the other cheek. I have absolutely no idea why she is violent and aggressive and abusive, but I forgive her. I have no idea why she wants me dead and buried so badly, but I feel sorry for her. I pity her.

So am I bitter? Am I hanging onto things that I should just let go of? Am I agonising over things that were said and done so long ago, that my feelings are invalid?

Actually, it can take a long time to surface things, when you have been abused for a long time. She will claim that she is the abuse victim. Yeah, that makes sense... when I'm the one who was self harming, suicidal, couldn't work, was totally isolated from my friends and family.

She used to boast about hitting ex boyfriends. When she started hitting me, I didn't know how to deal with it. I trashed our flat. Then I started cutting myself. I was going to kill myself. It didn't really fix things.

She has been very quick to forgive herself, to excuse herself.

Frankly, there is no excuse for perpetrating violence and abuse against somebody. I feel very guilty about the times when I have lashed out. It's driven me to the brink of suicide. For her, it seems to have made her cultivate a holier-than-thou fake self image. I don't buy it. Start with kindness and go from there. If you're not kind, you're not a good person, in my opinion.

Every part of me feels like not publishing this. Every instinct tells me not to share these inner demons. That's why I'm going to do it. I'm going to keep pushing myself to share more and more of my inner turmoil.

Obviously it would be really easy for me to just bring out the big guns. It would be really easy to lay out all the evidence that I have collected of the years of abuse that I endured. That kind of character assassination would just be sinking to the same level as my persecutor though. I don't think that's the right thing to do.

Fundamentally, I could just say that I was victimised, and use that as an excuse for what happened later. I didn't do anything to defend myself for a very long time. I got battered but I turned the other cheek. It was beaten into me, to expect violence and abuse to be perpetrated against me, as a passive and kind, soft, caring, innocent confused and trapped victim.

However, my reaction was wrong. I should have been stronger. I should have walked away. I didn't. That makes me an accomplice. That makes me complicit. I helped to perpetuate what was going on, by not removing myself from the vicious cycle.

So, guilty people can be pretty sneaky. They will collect 'evidence' that will support their warped worldview. They will prepare their ammunition for the day that karma catches up with them. They will try and build a base of support, and cultivate an image of guilt-free innocence.

I'm guilty. I'm guilty of sticking around and trying to fix things. I'm guilty of caring too much. I'm guilty of not protecting myself. I'm guilty of letting my defences down. I'm guilty of making mistakes. I'm guilty of hitting back.

Don't let anyone tell you that I'm an abuser. Don't let anyone tell you that I'm out to control anybody. I'm a kind person. I'm a caring person. I'm a loving person. If somebody is telling you a negative narrative about me, you need to consider what their ulterior motive is. You need to consider what guilty conscience is being covered up.

Yes, I'm no saint at all. I'm guilty, not innocent. I'm exposing my conscience to the world. I'm very disappointed with myself about the way I've acted, in a whole bunch of ways. I could tell you all the reasons why I am who I am and why I acted the way that I did, but it's probably better if I just say that I accept responsibility for my actions. I know that there were better ways of going about dealing with things. I know that I would do things differently today. I feel guilty about a bunch of mistakes, even though I know that it was impossible for me to act differently in the circumstances at the time.

If anybody wants to blame me for things, be my guest. I'll even help you. I am going to provide the world with all the evidence and an open account of my wrongdoing. My gut instinct is to start with the rationale behind things, the reasons, the circumstances, the pressures and the stresses. However, that might seem like I'm trying to justify my actions.

Hurting somebody is always wrong. I'm sorry if I've ever hurt you, whoever you are. I really didn't mean to, and I do feel guilt and empathy. You can come and take your pound of flesh if you think it will help. I'm beating myself up, but if you want to inflict even more blows against me, be my guest... I'm used to being a punching bag.

So, is this self-pitying drivel? I have no idea. It's the beginning of a journey for me. Either there will be liberation or there will be death.

That is all.

Frankie the cat lives with my parents. He's pretty much the only living reminder that their son is still surviving, somewhere in the world. Please don't take that away from them (November 2012)

Tags: #divorce #career #banking #suicide #privacy

This is a story about being an activist...

The streets of London are home to a huge population of runaways, refugees and other homeless people who have been marginalised by society. We tend to ignore them and their struggles. There are so many, we can't help them all, right?

I'm not OK with people freezing to death on the streets, right under the noses of the wealthy. I'm not OK with just walking past human suffering on a daily basis, on the commute to the office. There are people huddling in shop doorways for a little shelter from the elements. It's brutal out there, and things are getting worse.

There are no words to describe just how cold it is, sleeping rough. I have slept on a glacier. Millions of tonnes of creaking ice. That's cold, even with a decent sleeping bag, sleeping mat, and a tent. Sleeping out on the streets is just as tough - most homeless people don't have equipment that cost hundreds of pounds. The most vulnerable people in our society don't even have enough money for food, clothes and other basics that they depend upon.

Normally charities will expect you to reach for your wallet. Normally charities will expect you to donate money. The whole fundraise & spend model of charity has failed, sadly. People and corporations are just not giving enough. People and corporations are treating charitable giving as a way to absolve themselves of personal responsibility for the wrongdoing in a society that they belong to.

Let's start with some empathy, instead.

If you haven't roughed it ever in your life, or it's been a very long time since you were truly soaked to the skin, freezing cold, shivering, and with chattering teeth... then you have lost touch with what some of your fellow human beings are going through. There are people freezing to death, here, in a supposedly civilised advanced Western econonmy. I'm not OK with that.

Please, try and make it to West India Quay with some warm clothes and a good sleeping bag, and sleep out with us. 7pm to 7am on Thursday 12th November 2015. It's incredible that this can take place when Canary Wharf Estate don't really want a whole tent army right under the noses of rich bankers!

The Centrepoint charity has worked incredibly hard to make this possible, and only by agreeing to do things in the most unbelievably controlled way. There is private security for the event, as well as Canary Wharf's own private security force, making sure that the wrong sort of people are not protesting about the abhorrent situation of young people being left freezing to death on the streets of London.

Sadly, in the 3 years that this event has been happening in Canary Wharf, my ex-employer JPMorgan Chase & Co has donated a paltry £70,000. That's a disgustingly small amount of money considering how this bank has wrecked lives. One of my colleagues was driven to #suicide by the insanity of what Global Banking is doing to the world.

I absolutely do not want to see this event lose credibility, so please sign up for an official ticket and donate whatever you can afford: https://www.centrepoint.org.uk/news-events/events/sleep-out/west-india-quay

Whatever happens, please please please tell everyone you know about the plight of the homeless and support this event.

7pm to 7am, Thursday 12th November, 2015.

So, last week, I was working for HSBC on their number one project. The biggest bank in Europe at the moment is HSBC. They just declared quarterly profits have risen 33% to $6bn. That's a substantial amount of cash that they have extracted from the world's pockets!

So, how much do HSBC care about the homeless? Well they employed a homeless person (me) but their due diligence should have prevented me from getting that job and working my way out of poverty and debt. I should have been trapped into living on the streets.

We can't have the wrong sort of people getting ahead in life, can we? It's all about the rich getting richer, at the expense of the destruction of society by people who already have more than they need.

I made sure I got this email from the HSBC Group so that nobody is going to get sued! Hurrah!

I've got a bunch of other emails that prove that Corporate and Social Responsibility is a joke. These companies pay a pittance in order to try and cover up wrongdoing on an unimaginable scale. The institutional corruption is disgusting.

I'm being warned by journalist friends to flee for my life for whistleblowing. You'll be able to find me... sleeping rough somewhere in London. If the Safer Streets teams can't find people, then good luck to the banks with their teams of lawyers out to gag me!

Come and sleep rough with us!

That is all.

 Tags: #homeless #frankie #london #banking #capitalism #notanonymous

This is a story about goodbyes...

Oh, Megabank Plc. I would go to the ends of the Earth for you. Shame the feeling wasn't mutual and you grew tired of my unique style. Oh well. Best of luck with the #1 project and looking after your 213,000 shareholders in 131 countries, 48 million customers and 245,000 employees in 72 countries.

Here is a picture of a random homeless guy.

Tags: #banking #career #homeless #london #frankie #capitalism #notanonymous

This is a story about turning a blind eye...

I have a moral dilemma. Do I whistle blow or go public with the things I know, tomorrow, when I lose my contract at HSBC.

How do I know I'm going to lose my contract? Well, I've rattled the cage pretty hard. The problem is that I care more about the shareholders, customers and employees, plus the stability of the global financial system, than I do about some idiots playing silly political games.

Fundamentally, I do believe that markets are efficient if they are free from political influence. Also, markets only really work if there is free trade and a single currency. Trade tarriffs, sanctions and so-called 'hard' currencies are the new way that wars are waged and nations enslaved, and I'm not OK with that.

It's pretty clear that a crash is inevitable now, but I don't want to see the baby thrown out with the bath water. The laws, financial instruments, systems and infrastructure that allow capital to flow, should not be swept away.

Anti-capitalism is wrong. It's the perversion of capitalism by 'rigging the system' like Bretton Woods, that is wrong. It's the insanity of having financial instruments that are not underwritten with collatteral, like Credit Default Swaps, that is wrong. It's the institutional investors who buy every company of a certain market cap, thus creating a market for junk stock, provided its valuation can be pumped up unrealistically with ridiculous Profit:Equity (P:E) ratios (a.k.a Price:Earnings).

If we expel the money lenders from their temples, we only set back our civilisation. There will be chaos and greater inequality as a result. Just look at how the oligarchs monopolised everything after the fall of the USSR.

I'm really cut up right now by the strong desire to do the right thing, and I know that it will probably hurt me most of all. However, I'm not out to hurt anybody. I just couldn't live with myself knowing I stood by and didn't do anything when evil deeds are afoot.

Even if they're not totally evil deeds. People are still sleepwalking right into another major crisis. This one doesn't even seem to have an elegant central system designed to help things unwind with at least a little preplanning. It's all about that lack of joined-up-thinking that will cause an unpredictable domino-effect.

So, wish me luck in the morning.

I wish I was a cat and I didn't know any better. Ignorance is bliss (October 2014)

Tags: #banking #career #london #frankie #politics #capitalism #hsbc

This is a story about social engineering...

The first rule of bus stop club is: you don't talk about bus stop club. The second rule of bus stop club is: you don't talk about bus stop club. The third rule of bus stop club is: don't jump off the bus stop... it's quite high.

I work on the Customer Due Diligence project for HSBC. We are expected to do due diligence on 48 million customers in 61 countries worldwide. HSBC is not very good at due diligence, mainly because they won't listen to the experts.

When I was employed - as a disguised employee - by HSBC to work on the project, I was no fixed abode (homeless) and I was at the limit of my overdraft and credit cards. I had no income. I guess that technically made me bankrupt... except that it took me 4 days to get the job. That's a record... it normally takes me less.

When you are honest, hard working, dedicated, an expert, passionate and have integrity, you don't tend to have a lot of problems finding work. My main problem is finding anything that I'm interested in doing. Making the lives of 48 million customers a little better, and trying to save 245,000 jobs and create 13,000 new jobs is interesting to me. That's why I got up and went to the interview with HSBC.

So, this sounds super arrogant. Yes, sorry. There's absolutely no doubt that I'm only a very small cog in a very big machine. However, try buying a Rolex watch and removing one of the little cogs and see if it still works.

Teamwork is what gets stuff done, but every member of the team needs to be valued equally. Equality is important. Valuing people is important. Everything is awesome when we are part of a team. Everything is better when we stick together.

Here's me going to my interview... just opposite the bus stop where me and my other homeless friends hung out. I actually wasn't going to go... there were far more interesting projects at Meganews Corporation, Mega Credit Card, Mega TV Station, Mega Investment Bank(s), Mega Petroleum Company... London is not short of roles for software engineers. The agent convinced me to get up, have a shower, get dressed and go to the damn interview. I was glad that I did.

The way the whole system is set up with economic incentives, meant that rules were probably bent in terms of background checks. Nobody cared that my credit score was probably terrible - living on your credit card because society has abandoned you, is not great for your computer credit score. Nobody cared that I was no fixed abode (homeless) because the whole thing was arranged via email and mobile phone.

I guess this was an experiment in social mobility. I can tell you where all the 'gates' are that will prevent the 'wrong sort' of people from getting ahead. I did nothing illegal or fraudulent. I was just trying to get myself off the streets. I was just trying to move from surviving to thriving. I was barely surviving. I had countless hospital admissions in 2014 and 2015. Living on the streets and in hostels is hard.

Imagine being in a 14-bed dormitory with your one suit. Imagine how many people there are snoring in that room. Imagine how many people want to use the one bathroom in the morning. Imagine people knocking your ironed shirt off the bunk bed where it was hanging up, onto the dirty floor. Just put it in the washing machine, right? Oh... you share that washing machine with 120 people? Oh dear.

I used to go and sleep in Royal Kensington Park Gardens or on Hampstead Heath just to get some damn peaceful sleep. The sound of snoring and smell of sweaty bodies just gets too much to bear at times. Yes, sleeping under the stars and waking up to beautiful views like the one above is kinda sh1ts and giggles... when the weather permits.

Yes, you have to be very in tune with nature, with the weather and the seasons, if you want to survive. You also need some really high quality gear. The only reason why I was able to cope through a pretty rough patch is that I'm well trained and disciplined. I have the Dorset Expeditionary Society to thank for that.

I can live small and neat. Take only photographs, leave only footprints. Park rangers used to leave me alone because I would be camping out with nothing but respect for my environment and mindful of the fact that I'm just one of millions of Londoners using the incredible green spaces.

Fundamentally, we are animals. We are animals that need to sleep and eat. We need to be warm and feel comforted by the presence of each other... we are social animals after all. We were not supposed to be isolated in a concrete jungle, surrounded by glass and steel and right-angles that would never appear in a natural setting.

I am also seasonally affected. I think it's bad enough to say that it qualifies as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). When the clocks go back and the days get shorter, I feel the need to hibernate. I get tired & depressed. Especially if my employer is not particularly supportive about me taking time out to top up the sunshine that I need to live. I'm literally solar powered... we all are.

Frankie the cat in his natural habitat. He loved his garden. So did I (June 2007)

Tags: #homeless #frankie #banking #career #london #computing #mentalhealth #hsbc