When bubbles burst

I'm writing fewer posts than I used to. Earlier this year, this was due to a heavy freelance workload. But recently, it has become much more than that. I'm finding it very difficult to write, because I no longer trust my own ability. I have a crisis of confidence.

My confidence crisis started about six months ago, in the sequence of events that led to my resignation from Pieria. In March, I was asked to write six posts of a 10-post series of "think pieces" for the Design Council, which would be published on Pieria and Medium. I was at the time sole editor of original content on Pieria, but this series was to be separate from the main site and would therefore be under the control of the Design Council's appointed editor.

I'm not going to go into details about exactly what went wrong. Suffice it to say, that I only completed one of the six pieces. The first draft was sent back for changes and further research, and I produced a second draft a few days before going to Washington for the INET conference on 6th May. The initial feedback from the Design Council editor was "It's GREAT". So off I went to Washington believing that the piece was complete.

On 6th May, while sitting in the IMF conference hall listening to Christine Lagarde, I received an email from the commercial director at Pieria. The email informed me that the Design Council editor had rejected the completed piece, on the grounds that it did not match the style of other pieces in the series that had already been completed by another journalist. He had also killed the second piece that I was in the process of writing, and had demanded that I be removed from the project.

To say this was a shock was an understatement. I desperately needed reassurance, so I sent the rejected piece for independent editorial evaluation. The response was amazingly positive. I also sent it to my co-editor at Pieria, who was also positive. On that basis I took the decision to publish the piece on Pieria on the main part of the site (unconnected with the Design Council series), under my own by-line and with a different title.

Unfortunately that decision turned out to be disastrous. The commercial director, presumably concerned that the Design Council would object to the piece being published when they had rejected it, refused to publish it. It remained hidden in the editorial section of the site. Not only that, but all my other work was wiped from the front page of the site, including guest posts I had published on behalf of others on my own profile. This was the action that caused me to resign. I no longer had confidence that any work I did would be published. My position was untenable.

Pieria was a terrible loss. However, I expected that my freelance work would continue. But it didn't. Over the summer months, it all but dried up. Publications for which I had done a lot of work over the previous year stopped commissioning me to write for them. At first I thought this was just a seasonal slowdown, and things would pick up in the autumn. But summer turned to autumn, and no more work appeared.....

Fortunately, a friend of mine recommended me to work with an agency on a content development campaign for a well-known financial services company. I submitted a portfolio of my work to them, which the senior managing editor said was "outstanding". On the strength of that and my editorial experience, I was interviewed for the editorship of the campaign. Unfortuately I was passed over in favour of someone who knew the platform better. But I happily agreed to write for the campaign.

To start with, things appeared to go well. I was assigned my first piece at the beginning of September and completed it on time. Other pieces followed.

But then the edits started....

I discovered that every piece I wrote was being substantially revised or rewritten by the editor. When I asked why, I was told that my writing was "dry and pointless". Apparently I was the worst writer on the campaign. Just as I had been on the Design Council campaign for Pieria.

I don't know what to believe any more. I thought I was a good writer. But the feedback I've been getting in the last few months says otherwise. Maybe I've been misleading myself about my ability.

I started writing because I believed I had something useful to contribute. But perhaps I don't. Perhaps this has all just been a bubble, and now the bubble has burst....

When bubbles burst, they cause widespread confusion and chaos. My bubble is no different from any other bubble. So I am confused, and my mind is in chaos. I no longer trust my judgment about my writing, or anyone else's for that matter. How can I, when pieces that I think are good are heavily revised, rewritten or rejected?

I don't know what I'm doing any more. I don't know where I'm going. I reduced my singing teaching substantially, partly for health reasons but partly to make room for writing. The writing seems to be leaving me, and the singing teaching is not returning - not that I really want it to, but at least it paid the bills. I have no idea how I will survive.

 It all seems so unfair. I've worked so hard, but working hard is not good enough.

Constantly in the back of my mind is a comment I read once about bloggers, that they stop blogging when they run out of things to say. Have I run out of things to say? No, but I seem to have run out of the means to say them.

I never expected to reach this point. But does anyone ever expect a bubble to burst?

Hypocrisy

In my Coppola Comment post "The Twelfth Commandment" I observed that government attempts to make us "happy" are bound to fail if they do not translate into real actions to improve well-being. 

Someone who is unemployed doesn't need therapy, they need a job. Someone who isn't earning enough to pay their bills doesn't need advice on how to stop worrying about money, they need more money. If you don't have enough money, or you don't have a secure job, worrying about money and security is rational. Trying to change people's rational feelings about their circumstances is insulting. It is the circumstances themselves that need to be changed. 

There is nothing new about the tendency to offer well-meaning advice and emotional "support" rather than addressing people's real needs. Here is St. James having a go at people who offered prayer instead of practical help to the needy in the early Christian community:

"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."

James 2:14-17

We have a terrible tendency to "spiritualise" the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, so that Jesus's harsh words about storing up material wealth, for example, don't have to hurt our wallets. Much is said by the well-meaning about the power of prayer. And yes, as a Christian I too believe in the power of prayer. But for prayer to succeed, there must also be action. The marvellously down-to-earth Teresa of Avila wrote the following poem:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ's compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.

When people pray instead of doing, prayer is impotent. When governments try to "make people happy" while doing nothing to relieve unemployment and poverty, they waste money. When those with money tell those without money to stop worrying about money, their advice is ignored. But these mealy-mouthed interventions can be certain to have one effect - and that is to cause anger among the needy.

Jesus is critical of those who do nothing practical to help those in need:

“Then [the King] will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Matthew 25:41-46

Where in this list do praying for people, giving them advice and providing them with therapy feature? I can just imagine what Jesus would have to say about the well-off who preach to the needy while doing nothing  practical to meet their needs. Such hypocrisy. 

Related reading:

The Twelfth Commandment - Coppola Comment

The problem of debt - Still Life With Paradox

How to worry less about money - Brain Pickings (book review)

A very nasty "nudge"

The BBC reports that mothers are to be given a financial incentive to breastfeed their babies. £120 worth of vouchers will be given to mothers who are still breastfeeding at 6 weeks, and this will be topped up to £200 for mothers still breastfeeding at 6 months.

I'm afraid I think this is an appalling idea. It's the worst kind of "nudge" economics. Instead of addressing the reasons why women stop breastfeeding early, or don't breastfeed at all, it's a clumsy attempt at bribery. It is targeted at lower-income areas: but in reality it is a handout to better-off mothers and those in secure employment, and will benefit the poor and those in insecure employment not at all.

Firstly, let's look at the reasons why women don't breastfeed, or stop breastfeeding before the baby is six weeks old. This study identifies a number of factors affecting breastfeeding initiation and continuation. Their summary findings are as follows.

The key interventions influencing mothers’ likelihood to initiate breastfeeding were being helped to put the baby to the breast in the first few days after the birth and having skin-to-skin contact within 24 hours. 

In terms of other characteristics, the key factors were ethnicity and how the mother herself was fed as a baby. Mothers from a White ethnic background and those who had been fed entirely with infant formula as a baby were less likely than other mothers to initiate breastfeeding. 

Mothers of full term babies who initiated breastfeeding were more likely to be breastfeeding still at two weeks if they:
- were breastfeeding exclusively at one week;
- were from a non-White background;
- had breastfed a previous child for six weeks or more;
- had received help or information on breastfeeding from a breastfeeding support group, peer
supporter, voluntary organisation or community group.  

The key factors affecting mothers’ likelihood to still be breastfeeding when their baby was six
weeks old (among those who were doing so at two weeks) were similar. Exclusive breastfeeding at five weeks, being from a non-White background and being aged 30 or over were particularly associated with breastfeeding at six weeks. Mothers of second or later babies who had breastfed their previous child for only a short period or not at all were less likely to be breastfeeding their new baby at six weeks. 

Elsewhere in the report, socio-economic class is also mentioned as a predictor of breastfeeding: professional and managerial women are more likely to breastfeed. Though nowhere in this list is financial stress mentioned as a cause of premature cessation of breastfeeding. And nowhere is there any indication that bribing women to breastfeed with shopping vouchers is likely to work. 

However, the study only looks at breastfeeding up to 6 weeks. But the research envisages bribing women to breastfeed exclusively (i.e. the baby is given no other nutrition) for up to 6 months. What are the principal obstacles to exclusive breastfeeding for that length of time?

The first, and most obvious, is that £200 in shopping vouchers is no compensation for the loss of earnings that women suffer when they take longer than 6 weeks off after the birth of a child. Maternity pay in the UK is 90% of average weekly earnings for the first 6 weeks and then drops to £136.78 per week for the next 33 weeks. Admittedly, some women earn less than this - but for those that don't, especially the growing number who are their family's principal earner, this drop in income can be crippling. And the remainder of the leave entitlement (52 weeks) is unpaid. Clearly, the only women who can afford to take more than six weeks off after the birth of a child are those whose partners earn enough for the loss of their incomes not to cause serious financial distress. Maternity leave is the privilege of relatively well-off women in stable relationships, it seems. And that might explain the class problem identified in the NHS's study. Because of assortative mating, professional and managerial women are likely to have professional and managerial partners. They can afford to take extended leave: no wonder breastfeeding is more prevalent among this group. They are probably also more aware of the health benefits - but we should not ignore the simple financial logistics. 

Among women in insecure employment, even maternity leave and pay can be a luxury. Temporary agency workers don't necessarily qualify for maternity leave at all. And women employees who fall pregnant within six months of starting a new job don't qualify for maternity pay, though they do now get full maternity leave (this is an improvement - when I had my children, women had to work for the same employer for 2 years to qualify for full maternity leave and pay). Women in insecure employment are among the poorest women in the country - and they only qualify for 2 weeks leave after the birth of a child (4 weeks if they are factory workers). Returning to work after 2 weeks is not enough time for breastfeeding to be established. It would be extremely difficult for a woman to breastfeed if she is returning to work this early - yet many women in insecure or temporary employment have to do exactly that.

Study after study (eight papers cited in this piece of Australian research alone) show that one of the commonest reasons for women ending breastfeeding early is returning to work. Employers are not universally supportive of breastfeeding mothers, and the babies don't always cooperate either: my daughter refused to drink expressed milk from a bottle, preferring to wait until I got home then feed all night. Needless to say, being effective in a full-time job was simply not possible due to lack of sleep. I didn't last very long. 

The fact of the matter is that the UK's maternity legislation does not support extended breastfeeding. In fact for the poorest women it does not support breastfeeding at all. Breastfeeding comes very far down the priority list for women who are forced to return to full-time work soon after the birth of their children, or who already have several children and no help at home because the extended family is broken, or who are isolated teenage mums with no social support and unsupportive boyfriends. No amount of shopping vouchers will compensate women for these problems. 

But an even more important reason for women ending breastfeeding within 6 weeks of birth is lack of support and advice. This study from the USA found the following:

"We found that 32% of women did not initiate breastfeeding, 4% started but stopped within the first week, 13% stopped within the first month, and 51% continued for > 4 weeks. Younger women and those with limited socioeconomic resources were more likely to stop breastfeeding within the first month. Reasons for cessation included sore nipples, inadequate milk supply, infant having difficulties, and the perception that the infant was not satiated. Women who intended to breastfeed, thought they might breastfeed, or had ambivalent feelings about breastfeeding were more likely to initiate breastfeeding and to continue through the vulnerable periods of early infancy than were those who did not plan to breastfeed."

Again, no mention of financial difficulties. Where on earth has this idea come from that bribing women to breastfeed will help them to do so? Would this money not be better spent providing breastfeeding support and advice to younger and poorer women - the ones most likely to give up?

The study's authors certainly think so. They conclude:

"Our findings indicate a need to provide extensive breastfeeding support after delivery, particularly to women who may experience difficulties in breastfeeding."

They are so right. This discussion thread from Netmums contains a large number of - sometimes harrowing - personal anecdotes. If there is one thing that stands out for me from that discussion thread, it is that for many women breastfeeding is DIFFICULT. It is painful, exhausting, time-consuming and - when it doesn't work, as for many of the women on that thread it did not - depressing. And there is nowhere near enough support for breastfeeding from health professionals. Indeed, unhelpful advice and intervention by health visitors and midwives resulting in breastfeeding failure is a frequent complaint. 

Giving up breastfeeding is not something women necessarily want to do. Some do, but many women desperately want to breastfeed, to the extent of making both themselves and their babies ill: the number of women on the Netmums thread who talk about their babies losing weight because they could not breastfeed them properly is truly horrifying. And women are often devastated when they are forced to give up. One woman observed that the combination of breastfeeding failure with a traumatic birth experience was a major contributory factor to her post-natal depression.  I certainly recognise that: breastfeeding failure following the traumatic birth of my son sent me spiralling down into what I now remember as "the horror". 

And this brings me to what I consider the really nasty part of this appalling attempt at bribery. Women are unable to breastfeed for a variety of reasons, not just the reasons outlined in the study above and described on the Netmums thread, but also legitimate medical reasons such as HIV/Aids, long-term medication e.g. for schizophrenia, drug addiction, reconstructive surgery (e.g. after breast cancer) and hormonal problems. Are these women to be denied these vouchers because they are legitimately unable to breastfeed? What about the mothers of very premature babies, who lack a sucking reflex so are unable to breastfeed? Many of these women attempt to express milk for their babies, sometimes for weeks - but women's bodies don't always react very well to pumps: are women who fail to express milk for premature babies going to be denied these vouchers too? What about the many, many women who are forced to give up breastfeeding on medical advice because their babies are failing to thrive? Yes, with more support they probably could have fed their babies successfully, but the medical profession prefers to intervene to avert a catastrophe rather than provide necessary advice and support early on so there is no likelihood of catastrophe. Many of these women are devastated by what they see as their "failure". Are they to be financially penalised as well? It amounts to kicking them while they are down.

Spare a thought for the health professionals involved, too. Apparently midwives and health visitors are to be responsible for confirming that women are breastfeeding. Imagine what it will be like for a midwife or health visitor dealing with a woman who desperately wants to feed her baby but has to stop because of severe mastitis. That midwife knows that when she takes that woman off the list of women who are breastfeeding, that woman will lose £200 of vouchers that she could have spent on things for her baby - the baby she already thinks she is failing. Is that midwife or health visitor really going to do that? Surely there would be a huge temptation to keep her on the list of breastfeeding women, just so she doesn't lose out because of health problems beyond her control? 

Really, this is a terrible idea. It potentially has some very unpleasant unintended consequences. And it does not begin to address the real causes of premature cessation of breastfeeding. It's a complete waste of money.

"Loneliness in a crowd": patterns and learning

It is interesting how unhappy experiences repeat themselves. Patterns repeat......and there are a number of repeating patterns in my history.

• Repeated attempts to make impossible projects work, and then being blamed when it all goes wrong.

• Repeated patterns of overworking leading to a crash, followed by either underwork (boredom) or no work (unemployment). The "underwork" phase becomes longer each time the overwork phase is repeated.

• Repeated examples of blindness to underhand, manipulative, devious and deceptive behaviour by others. Put another way - I am vulnerable to exploitation. In Slow Burnout II, this will be a major theme. 

• Repeated episodes of psychological distress manifesting itself as disrupted relationships. I don't have physical symptoms (or I didn't then, at any rate - though when I write Slow Burnout II, about my singing teaching "career", then we will be talking about physical symptoms). I unload my distress on to others, who may themselves exhibit physical symptoms of stress - as my husband did in response to my postnatal depression. He was not the only one. There have always been disrupted relationships around me - I am something of a storm - but my time at SBC Warburg was particularly bad. These days I am not so sure that it was all my fault as they claimed: the whole environment was unhealthy. But I now know that I act as a focal point, catalyst and amplifier for emotions, particularly when I am occupying a central role such as a project office - a lens, if you like. When I am collecting and concentrating unpleasant emotions, it is not just others who suffer: I get badly hurt myself.  SBC Warburg was a poisonous environment with a lot of negative emotions, and I occupied a central role. A central role where I can all too easily become the "lens" is a very dangerous place for me to be.

• Repeatedly attracted to places or circumstances of work that reflect or reinforce difficulties in my personal life. We do not know enough about why people are selected for particular jobs - what attracts them to the job, and what attracts the employer to them. But looking back over my life, I am struck by how often misery at home is reinforced by misery at work, and vice versa, even when the causes are apparently unrelated. It is almost as if the circumstances of my personal life, and my emotional response to them, uniquely fit me for certain roles within organisational games. "Scapegoat" turns up rather too often for comfort.

• Disrupted core relationships and neglect of friends and family. This is usually worse in the "overwork" phase than the "underwork". When I am working too hard, I "disappear". But when it all goes wrong, my neglect of friends and family leaves me terribly alone. Hence the loneliness theme that runs throughout this story. I think the theme of my life is "loneliness in a crowd".  

The legacy: Nat West/RBS 2000-2002

The uncharitable charity: CAF March-August 1999

I joined Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) in March 1999 as IT Development Manager, taking over from an interim manager who - weirdly - had been my boss in OSS at Midland. It was a welcome opportunity to work more locally (CAF is based at King's Hill, in Kent), and I thought that working for a small charitable bank would mean less of the vicious politics I had encountered when working for larger institutions. How wrong I was.

When I joined, CAF was developing and implementing a new Treasury system. The Development team were doing extensive bespoke enhancements to a package that had been bought at the behest of Sylvia, the IT Director, a Board member. The package did not fit user requirements particularly well and perhaps more importantly did not include interfaces to the principal UK payments systems CHAPS and BACS. So we had to build them. By the time I joined, the project was already running well behind schedule and the users were very unhappy with the functionality they were being offered: substantial parts of the functionality they needed had been de-scoped from the project on the promise of a second phase to follow, but there were as yet no  plans for that phase, the timescale was unrealistic and it was unclear how it would be resourced.

I felt uncomfortable at CAF from the word go. The senior management went on about how "unusual" their culture was, and in particular how "open" it was. Open it was not. I quickly found out that saying what I really thought was not welcome. My regular meeting with Sylvia was not so much a meeting of minds as an opportunity for me to say "yes, I agree" at regular intervals while she gave me chapter and verse on how the system should be designed and how the project should be managed. And the HR Director took exception to something I said in an email, which she regarded as too blunt: from that moment on she disliked me.

But more worryingly, given my experience at Midland with unclear reporting lines, was the fact that both my team leaders, and even some of the development staff, had frequent formal and informal meetings with Sylvia at which she would tell them what they should be doing, regardless of whatever instructions I had given them. This situation created enormous confusion, and just as at Midland I had been blamed for the ensuing distress, so too at CAF. Only a couple of weeks after I joined I was hauled into a meeting with Sylvia at which she told me that I was upsetting my staff and must back off. This would come back to haunt me.

What was a feature at CAF, though, was backbiting and gossip, which I found thoroughly unpleasant. And worse, some people were the targets of what amounted to smear campaigns. The Head of Internal Audit, with whom I developed a good relationship, was the target of such a campaign. She told me that she was concerned that her view of the role of Internal Audit was at variance with that of some members of the Board. In particular she did not think that Internal Audit staff should be treated as free resources for user testing of the new Treasury System, as it compromised their independence as auditors. She said that she would make this clear to the IT Director and stand her ground regarding user testing. Soon after she told me this, the IT Director's secretary started criticising her behind her back - for petty things, even including the way she dressed. I was concerned about this, because I thought it was unprofessional, but I didn't realise what was really going on. Not long afterwards, the Head of Internal Audit abruptly left, apparently because of "inadequate performance". It was the harbinger of what was to come.

The Treasury department were not happy. There had been continual delays to the system, it wasn't going to do what they wanted and tight IT resourcing meant that Phase II was probably going to be delayed. The IT Director had promised them that Phase II would be completed within 6 months of Phase I. Unfortunately she had also committed the IT department to a lot of other developments. I knew we could not achieve them all, and said so repeatedly. I would have redirected staff from other developments to Phase II to enable us to deliver it on time, but there were hard deadlines on other projects too which made this impossible. I could not bring in additional staff to do the work because of budget constraints and CAF's general policy of paying less than the market rate for IT staff "because it was a charity", and I could not pay staff overtime because of Board rules limiting overtime payments to very exceptional circumstances. Overtime rules were relaxed at my request for the Phase I final user testing and implementation, when both IT and user staff (mainly Internal Audit) were working silly hours. But no-one wanted to relax overtime or recruitment rules for Phase II. It was an impossible situation. But that wasn't what Sylvia was telling the users.

Phase I of the new Treasury system was implemented in August 1999. Although the implementation went smoothly, the aftermath was a disaster. The system simply did not do what the users wanted: the lack of functionality due to de-scoping caused them serious problems and they refused point blank to stop using their existing system until they got what they wanted, which meant that IT staff had to be diverted from Phase II development to support a parallel run. This sounds like cutting off their noses to spite their faces, since they needed Phase II to be delivered, but from their point of view the IT department's resourcing difficulties were not their problem: they had a business to run. Unknown to me, the fallout from this went up to Board level.

A couple of weeks after the implementation, on my way into the office, I spoke briefly with a senior Treasury staff member. She had a new hairstyle, and I made a comment about it. Normally this would have been greeted with a bit of a laugh, but not this time. I got a terse slapdown. It was evident something was very wrong: she was angry and stressed, and did not wish to speak to me. I wondered what I had done to offend her. It never dawned on me that I was being personally blamed for the system's shortcomings. But I was.

Later that day one of my team members took a phone call. He looked over to me and said, "Sylvia's waiting for you in her office". I had anticipated this call, as Sylvia had just returned from holiday and I expected she would want an update (yes, the IT Director was on holiday during the implementation of a major new system needed for FSA compliance!). So I went up to the office expecting a discussion about the Phase I parallel run, the planning of Phase II and the other projects, and what we were going to do about resourcing.

It's funny how little details stand out. As I went into the room I remember seeing three coffee cups on the table by the door....I knew then. A normal meeting with Sylvia would not have three people present. I looked over and saw her sitting with the HR Director.

I knew what was coming, but the shock was still terrible. It wasn't "dismissal", as such, as I had been on a 6-month trial period. But it made no difference. As she said "We are not confirming you in post", my head started to spin, and there was a roaring in my ears. I barely heard what she said after that. The only things I remember clearly are that she blamed me for the fact that Phase II had not been planned, and said the staff were all complaining about me.

They would not allow me even to go back to the department and clear my desk. They expressed some concern about whether I was fit to drive, but I just wanted to get away as fast as I could. Sylvia's secretary retrieved my handbag and briefcase from the department, and said any personal items from my desk would be delivered to my home. Then I was escorted off the premises.

Heaven knows what my driving was like on the way home. I was blinded by tears and kept going over and over the meeting in my head, trying to remember exactly what had been said....but I kept coming back to the same thing. The staff hated me. The wound had opened up again, deeper and more painful than ever.

I could not make myself look for another job after that. It hurt too much. So I withdrew into my tiny house with my children, and for best part of a year I became an ordinary mum. Except that I wasn't. I found it hard to cope even with being an ordinary mum.  I was insomniac (I still am), brittle and anxious. What I had been told at my dismissal nagged at me all the time: I felt worthless and hopeless. I found practical things to do, which distracted me: but the dull ache of loneliness, and the sharp pain of knowing that everyone hated me, underlay everything. As I write this, I can feel that pain again, and I know that fourteen years later, I am still not really healed. Maybe I never will be.

The loss of my earnings was financially disastrous. I knew I would have to find some kind of paid work eventually, so we kept on the childminder, even though it meant using up my scanty savings. But as time went on, and I still couldn't force myself to look for a job, I started to get into debt: my husband and I had continual rows about money and the tiny house we lived in felt like a prison. I dreaded both the job search and the possibility - or indeed probability - that I would fail at the next job, too. I looked back over the pattern of the last few years, and realised that each job lasted a shorter time, and each time I lost a job, the emotional pain I experienced was greater and the time I needed to recover enough to force myself back into the market again was longer.

 I was already doing some professional singing and a small amount of private teaching at my singing teacher's suggestion. A chance encounter with a friend who I knew worked for Kent Music School as a singing teacher offered me the possibility of a way out. Maybe, just maybe, I would not have to force myself to find another banking project management job and risk being hurt again.....

But the CAF story is not quite ended.

Nearly a year after I left CAF, I went to a performance of "A Winter's Tale" by the Detling Players, in which a friend of mine was performing. At the end of the performance, I hung around to meet my friend. As I waited, I saw two people I knew......two members of my former staff at CAF.

I had to speak to them, though I was terrified - I didn't know what they would say. I wasn't sure if they would even speak to me: if they really hated me as I had been told, they might turn away when they saw me. But the pain was eating me up. I had to try to find out whether what I had been told was true.

I went up to them and nervously said "Hello". To my astonishment they were delighted to see me. We talked for a while about the play. But eventually I brought the subject round to CAF. I told them about the circumstances of my departure. I said that I had been told the reason was that the staff were all complaining about me, and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I needed to know if it was true.

Mick looked pityingly at me. "It's not true", he said. "We had no problems with you."

"But the HR Director said it too! She confirmed what Sylvia said!" I cried.

"Two very poisonous ladies", he said.

It seemed that I had been sacrificed to preserve Sylvia's position.....for a while. The users were demanding retribution for what they saw as the monumental failure of the IT department to deliver what they wanted. They wanted blood. Really they wanted Sylvia's blood, but she pacified them by sacking me. It didn't last, though. Six months later Phase II failed, as I knew it would, and Sylvia was forced to resign.

Mick's remarks helped to lifted me out of my depression. The wound started to heal. I started to believe that maybe I was not the ogre that I had been painted.

I applied for a job as a singing teacher at Kent Music School and was accepted, starting in September 2000. Childcare arrangements were complicated: by this time Dominic was at primary school and Nadia at pre-school, but some of the Kent Music School work was in the after-school period and did not finish until an hour after my childminder's finish time. My husband, by then working in London, was not going to get home in time to pick them up. So I organised a variety of friends to collect my children from school and look after them until I got home. My amazingly resilient children tolerated an incredible amount of disruption and inconsistency for the next two years. It took a major international disaster to open my eyes to the risks I was taking with such tenuous arrangements for their care - especially after I went back into banking.

For I did, of course. In September 2000, just as I was starting part-time work at Kent Music School, Nat West rang up.

A time to laugh: Save & Prosper April-October 1998

After I had been made redundant, UBS HR provided outplacement services both to me and, as a concession because they knew of his continuing unemployment, my husband. Predictably, I found a job long before he did - in fact he did not find a job through UBS's outplacement service at all, though he found them helpful. In contrast, I was back at work only a month after my redundancy. I went to work for Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).

CSC had recently taken over the IT function at Save & Prosper in Romford. They were running a large Year 2000 project, organised into three "high performing teams" (HPTs). I was to run the Corporate HPT.

High performing, my team was not. And some members were directly obstructive. Rather as I had been resented by SMI, so I was resented by ex-S&P staff. I was CSC, and they hated CSC.

Nonetheless, the S&P project was fun. Not because what we were doing was fun - it was at times mind-numbingly boring - but because people made it fun. From senior management down to junior team members, there was a sprinkling of people who liked to laugh and who made us laugh. I think I laughed more in six months at S&P than during two whole years at SBC Warburg. Although it had black moments, I remember my time at S&P as a bright spot.

But it ended badly, and to this day I don't know why. In September 1998 the "investigation and correction" part of the project had been competed, and we were about to embark on user testing. Despite a poor appraisal (which I felt was a bit unfair but accepted), I was offered the job of user testing project manager. But I thought about what that would entail - long hours, weekend working, never seeing my two small children. I had been horribly burned by my experience of user testing at SBC Warburg, and I suppose I feared a repetition. I couldn't do that either to myself or to my children. So I turned it down.

This left my manager with something of a problem. I was the most senior project manager there - and the most expensive. But I had turned down the most senior project management role. The alternative was a much smaller project - and it quickly became apparent that that project was not going to fly. I was in serious danger of becoming a "redundant but employed" project manager yet again.

I don't know what discussions there were behind the scenes. But eventually I was asked to resign. What puzzled me then - and still puzzles me - is that as I worked for CSC, not S&P, I could simply have been redeployed: yes, it would probably have meant moving house, but that was not the end of the world.

I have heard that there were complaints about me, but from whom, and what the substance of those complaints was, I don't know.

What sticks in my mind though was being described as "General COBOL" by a junior team member who had a degree in psychology. She said General COBOL led from the front, and defended his team to the last: when things went wrong, he would be the first to fall on his sword.

I suppose, in agreeing to resign, I fell on my sword.

Being asked to resign hurt. A lot. The old wounds reopened: I felt worthless, a failure - yet again. I hated myself.  But even more, this time, I felt the loss of the people. There had been such camaraderie. I really missed them.

I retreated back home to lick my wounds. It was several months before I felt able to look for another job.