Any Other Business | 11 July 2009

When the solemn temples are dissolving, why are they still offering giant salaries?

I had the pleasure of giving a prize-giving speech on Saturday, at a lovely school called Fyling Hall which looks out over the North Sea near Whitby. I have developed a theme which seems to go down well on these occasions: treasure your long-term friendships, I advise the leavers, because the people with whom you walk life’s path will turn out to be far more reliable than the institutions along the way, which look so permanent but turn out not to be: cue quote from The Tempest about gorgeous palaces and solemn temples dissolving. By way of illustration, I tell them that my own 15-year City career literally left not a rack behind: not only have all the companies I worked for ceased to exist, but every City building I ever worked in has been obliterated. The last to go was Ebbgate House, an early-Eighties horror beside the Thames west of London Bridge; I let out a spontaneous yodel of joy in a taxi the other day when I realised it had been reduced to dust.