Silver bullet: Difference between revisions

no edit summary
No edit summary
No edit summary
Line 8: Line 8:
In financial services we have  silver bullets, too. They are just as effective at warding off evil, but they are a certain caste of fellow employee. Hard to categorise, but easy to recognise when you see them: the [[weak gazelle]]s.
In financial services we have  silver bullets, too. They are just as effective at warding off evil, but they are a certain caste of fellow employee. Hard to categorise, but easy to recognise when you see them: the [[weak gazelle]]s.


They are (frail) flesh and blood; they are [[survivor|survivors]], the bullshit artists, those who, in twenty-five years managing securities financing operations, have never quite got to grips with  the idea that a [[stock loan]] is [[title transfer]] — who manage somehow to hang-on clutching dogged lichen to any rock on which they can anchor their mortal coil in the most inhospitable climes. He — who shall remain nameless, because I really don’t want to hex him — is my succour and my prayer for relief: as long as he is here, may own days may yet be without number, and my grim comfort is the belief that there is at least one warm body between me and the wall I will eventually be lined up and shot against.  
They are (frail) flesh and blood; they are [[survivor|survivors]], the bullshit artists, those who, in twenty-five years managing securities financing operations, have never quite got to grips with  the idea that a [[stock loan]] is [[title transfer]] — [[credit officer]]s who don’t quite apprehend that a bank account involves credit risk, because your [[money]] isn’t just kept in a special jar with your name on it somewhere at the bank of a huge vault, who manage somehow, doggedly, to hang-on to their job, like lichen to any rock on which they can anchor their mortal coil in the most inhospitable climes.  


Yet the fact that this chap — the one that says “[[due dilly]]” with a straight face, and throws around hymnal [[metaphor|metaphors]] — that he is still here while so many better mean and women have slid limply down that whitewashed wall, leaving a coppery stain behind them, gives the lie to my belief, of course.
He — who shall remain nameless, because I really don’t want to hex him, and he is in a way an unknown warrior, inexplicably not yet in his tomb — is my succour and my prayer for relief: as long as ''he'' is here, may my own days may yet be without number, for he is my grim comfort, that there is, still, at least one warm body between me and the wall I will eventually be lined up and shot against.
 
Yet the fact that this chap — the one that says “[[due dilly]]” with a straight face, and throws around hymnal [[metaphor|metaphors]] — that he is still here while so many better men and women have slid limply down that wall, leaving a coppery stain behind them on the whitewash, gives the lie to my belief, of course.


But still I have my [[silver bullet]].
But still I have my [[silver bullet]].