11th March, 2005

You will not recognise me this time next week. I'm off to spend four days in our NY office. I am reminded of CCF Camp when I was at school. It was something that everyone had to attend once. I avoided it for four years, but I was nabbed in the end - pretty much in my last term - and spent the obligatory week trudging around Salisbury Plain being bullied by RSM's and spending nights in the open lying miserably on a bed of pine needles with the rain dripping through a makeshift cover of interwoven branches. Still, at the end of the week I was a proper soldier. So the powers that be at Bernstein have been at me to get over to the States to see how things really should be done. I resisted manfully for three years, however finally I have succumbed. Apparently I will not feel a thing, but a transformation will occur. I will resist the temptation to spell out what it's called. It begins with l and ends in y.