Opportunity knocks and I don't answer the door.


It has been taken as read in our office that in February 2011 when one of my more senior colleagues retires I would become our practices 'audit supremo,' the title makes it sound like a pizza, "I'll have the audit supremo but without the extra legislation please love."

Alternatively it sounds like a load of bollocks!

Anyway last Friday I informed my boss that I didn't want the job. It wasn't an instant decision I'd thought long and hard about it, spent a lot of hours in the French sunshine in July (Paris) and August (Southern Brittany) thinking about it and decided that my heart wasn't really in it. I could tell from his reaction that my boss wasn't expecting it and it threw him slightly and it also leaves the practice in a bit of a quandary as well. The alternative person for the job, not that there was an alternative until I turned it down, is somebody who is universally disliked with a passion I have never experienced in thirty two years of working in the profession. This isn't a Marmite situation this is dislike and in one case, so I have been told by another colleague, loathing!

So why have I said 'no' when really there shouldn't be a reason I shouldn't say 'yes'? Well I'm looking at the short term rather than a long term plan. Next year our mortgage will be paid off, we will celebrate twenty five years of marriage and I will be fifty. Apart from the holidays, and the three school summer holidays when I worked in factories/canteens I would have spent nearly forty five years of my life sitting at a desk, from school through to thirty three years of employment in the accountancy profession. I would like to take a break, either cut down on my hours or try something different, and no I don't have a clue about what.

to be continued...............