The Ascendant

Chapter Ten

Soldiering on in the face of severe dehydration, nausea and a Class A migraine, I get straight down to business this morning. Things are beginning to really happen now, in truth much quicker than I would like.

I rang Tracey Rice in London first thing to tell her that I'd managed to negotiate an early finish date with my current employer, and that I would need to provide just one week's notice. All she said was that Mr Hobbs will be delighted and we agreed I would start straight after Christmas. No questions asked, no problem. She even gave me a tip of the best website to visit to find a place to live.

Now the dreaming is over and the stark reality is setting in: I start my new life and career in ten days' time and there's much to do in the meantime. New problems are materialising already, most of them financial, but up to now I think I've managed to cover most of the angles.

After speaking to Ms Rice, I was lucky enough to enjoy a hastily arranged and unusually promising meeting with my bank manager, during which I enquired about arranging a loan of a thousand pounds. To say he was shocked when I showed him my job offer letter would be something of an understatement, but thereafter he could not have been friendlier or indeed more helpful. Our relationship seemed to be magically transformed, definitely for the better and hopefully for good. In addition to this I also have just over a thousand pounds in my savings account, the fruits of over a year's frugality, and a three hundred pound overdraft facility which I must surely exploit fully.

At 6am tomorrow I catch a train from Cardiff Central to London Paddington on a mission to find some living accommodation. I'll get into London for about eight, which will allow me a full day to find something suitable. Checking out that website this afternoon, there's a vast amount of property, at an equally vast range of prices, most still out of my league. At this stage I do not really have a budget to spend on my accommodation but given my currently restricted finances I hope to find something reasonably cheap and preferably within a short distance from work. Reasonably cheap in Camden seems to be from £350 to £550 per calender month, and I've arranged six viewings in that price range, which will hopefully be more than enough.

I also need to allocate some funds for new clothing; unfortunately my current wardrobe has become a little tired looking to say the least.

In spite of all the excitement these changes have brought I must admit to becoming increasingly nervous, even fearful of the risk I'm taking. Although it will undoubtedly be worth it if it comes off, I dread the prospect of being found out as a charlatan, or even worse not being up to the task. Using the correct techniques in an interview and actually doing the job are two entirely different things, and as each hour passes I feel increasingly unprepared for what lies ahead.  

Reading through the comprehensive job description has been a daunting experience. The skills and experience which I spoke of during my interview: high level client and supplier liaison, man-management, budget management and excellent IT skills are all listed not in general terms but rather as matters of specific day-to-day application. Not for nothing is the job worth fifty grand a year before bonuses, whatever they may be. At this stage I really would rather not know.

 It is all so difficult to comprehend, but to summarise: it would seem I will be "managing the process and costs of buildings insurance claims on behalf of a large portfolio of national and multi-national insurance companies". The area I will be covering will be north and east London, and as I already knew, I will be based in the company head office in Camden Town, North London. The projected annual turnover for the department is somewhere in the region of three hundred million pounds, and I will be responsible for roughly a fifth of that sum. I will be responsible for approximately sixty million pounds of business per annum. That works out at over a million pounds a week.

Do I know what I'm doing? Of course not, but I've passed the point of no return and there's no way back now.