Being an Accountant

I haven't been blogging much lately. This is because I have entered the annual dark zone that we accountants call Year-End. This is when all other personas must die at the hands of the almighty pound. The accounting year for my organisation has reached an end and I and my colleagues have about two weeks to put the statutory accounts to bed.

Why such a tight time-scale? Because that's what we do – that's how we do it. We love this. We feel important. We work every weekend and stay late at night and eat pizza. We talk around imbalances and deferments and accruals. This makes us feel like we have a proper job with seat-of-the-pants excitement as part of the mix. I am, of course, using the 'Royal We' here. I'm not really a part of the Let's-stay-in-the-office-until-midnight-because-it's-cool brigade. I'm more of a Let's-get-the-bloody-job-done-and-out-of-the-way-quick kind of accountant. To me, Year-End is a necessary evil that keeps me away from my laptop. I suppose I could find some time to write, but it would be bad writing, and I have found that it's best to declare Year-End fortnight as a kind of involuntary holiday from writing. Holiday or jail sentence? I'll stick with holiday. This way I can recharge the writing batteries and I manage to avoid much of the stress and depression which comes from being kept away from the things I want to do against my will.

So I'm just over a week into Year-End. Then I get to do tax packs, and then The Auditors arrive and I have to be nice to them. (Actually, that's not so hard, most of them are okay, even likeable.) And to make all this extra deep-down fun, we are, in the UK, in the clutches of deep winter. Snow is on the ground for the first time in yonks and I don't even get to go out and play in it. This really sucks – it will be grey in-your-shoes slush before the accounts are done.

Hey ho. Tea break's over. Back on your heads.