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::— <small>''Trench Art: A Brief History and Guide, 1914-1939'', Nicholas J Saunders.</small> | ::— <small>''Trench Art: A Brief History and Guide, 1914-1939'', Nicholas J Saunders.</small> | ||
It is said that combat troops would often carry with them a single bullet with their own name engraved on it. A superstitious amulet; a warder-offer of the | It is said that combat troops would often carry with them a single bullet with their own name engraved on it. A superstitious amulet; a warder-offer of the soldier’s deepest fear: ''“the bullet with my name on it can’t hurt me, because I’ve got it”.'' | ||
In financial services we have silver bullets, too, and they are just as good at warding off evil: not very. | In financial services we have silver bullets, too, and they are just as good at warding off evil: not very. | ||
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The [[silver bullet]] is a certain type of fellow employee. Hard to describe in the abstract, but you know him when you see him: the [[weak gazelle]]. | The [[silver bullet]] is a certain type of fellow employee. Hard to describe in the abstract, but you know him when you see him: the [[weak gazelle]]. | ||
He is (frail) flesh and blood; he is the [[survivor]], the bullshit artist, the fellow who, in twenty-five years managing securities financing operations, has never quite got to grips with the idea that a [[stock loan]] is [[title transfer]] — the [[credit officer]] who doesn’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 | He is (frail) flesh and blood; he is the [[survivor]], the bullshit artist, the fellow who, in twenty-five years managing securities financing operations, has never quite got to grips with the idea that a [[stock loan]] is [[title transfer]] — the [[credit officer]] who doesn’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 back of a huge vault — he who somehow, doggedly, hangs on to his job, like lichen, anchoring his mortal coil to cold inhospitable rock as Hurrican Right-sizing rages about him. | ||
This chap — who shall remain nameless, because I really don’t want to hex him | This chap — who shall remain nameless, because I really don’t want to hex him: he is in his own way an unknown warrior, inexplicably not yet in his tomb — is my succour and my prayer for relief: as long as ''he'' survives, may my own days yet be without number, for my grim comfort is that there remains 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]] — the fact that he is still here while so many better men and women have ''already'' limply slid down that wall, leaving a copper stain behind them on the whitewash, gives the lie to this conviction. | Yet the fact that this chap — the one that says “[[due dilly]]” with a straight face, and throws around hymnal [[metaphor|metaphors]] — the fact that he is still here while so many better men and women have ''already'' limply slid down that wall, leaving a copper stain behind them on the whitewash, gives the lie to this conviction. | ||