The Bankers' Tale

I wrote the piece below three years ago and it needed very little modification to suit the start of 2012 rather than 2009.

Definitions from the Birmingham-compiled Cobuild dictionary:

Hangover:

1 If someone wakes up with a hangover, they feel sick and have a headache because they have drunk a lot of alcohol the night before.

2 Something that is a hangover from the past is an idea or way of behaving which people used to have in the past but which people no longer generally have

As the grey dawn of another New Year broke I recalled, while progressing towards Canterbury some years ago, finding an apparently centuries-old but timeless manuscript. Taking the form of a coarse lament and dedicated to a friend named Geoffrey, it seems that the writer is still disinclined to mend his errant ways in the New Year:

Abed at noon,
ill-slept and indisposed
to rising yet.
And yet ten hours have passed
since last
my reddened eyes saw light.
Pulsating head indeed exceeds the beat of racing heart.
Oh me! And how
my troubled bowels
do vent their airs of grace devoid
(and needs must I avoid their pungent path!)
And as to work,
upon my soul I shall not shirk
one day of toil,
lest I forfeit a quenching cup
of grape’s intoxicating oil.


My researches suggest that this verse may have been written by someone in a much reduced, distinctly sub-prime condition, used to extravagant living on ill-gotten bonuses from casino capitalism and reckless money lending. In the spirit of a New Year let’s hope nonetheless that he completed his journey and, however reluctantly, gained enlightenment and reset his moral compass in a Damascene transformation from which the other 99% of society would benefit.
And let’s hope as well that in 2012 we shall all suffer fewer economic headaches and live in times of declining austerity.