A couple of weeks ago I was in Sydney, and found myself in the delightful suburb of Manly. I’d had an ice-cream, sat on the beach for a while, and fancied a challenge, so I set off on the ‘10k’ (little did I know that Australian signage was rarely to be believed) Manly Scenic Walk.
Now, being a foolish pom – I failed to take any water or supplies with me, thinking I could probably knock-off the 10k (which was actually about 12k) in maybe 3 hours tops. And that would probably have been quite easy, had the terrain not consisted mostly of cliffs, sand, jungle and spiders.
I got about half-way, before the 35 deg sun really started to kick in, and I started contemplating the (relatively few) merits of trying to drink sea-water. I was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but just on the horizon I could make out a couple of houses at the top of a cliff – so decided to deviate from the trail and commence my ascent. I got on to a road which had some rather large houses on it, and started staggering around looking for a shop of some kind. There was none. I did however see a chap outside in his garden tending to some roses – and decided to ask him for directions. He immediately saw my situation and invited me into his house for a drink of water as I was rather hoping he would.
Anyway, we got chatting and over a cup of tea and some left-over cakes from ‘Australia Day’, I discovered that he had previously worked in the UK financial services sector. Delving deeper, it turned out that the person who’s sofa I was sweating profusely into, was no-less than one of the founders of First Direct (a member of the HSBC group alongside M&S Money).
At first, I couldn’t help thinking what an incredibly small world we must live in, for me to have stumbled upon this exact house at this exact time – to have ended up meeting someone who had worked for the same company as myself. But later on that day as I was sitting trying to justify my stupidity to a bunch of Australians in a bar – it hit me that the more accurate explanation of what occurred, was not due to the fact that we live in a very small world…but rather the fact that I just work for a bloody big company…
Hi Tom, U have to fill your blog minimum twice per mounth. Come on!!!