Wednesday 27th January 2021

We knew changes were coming. Big changes. But I always assumed that we would all be part of them. I mean not just the audit team, but the ladies in the compliance team as well. Maost of them I have known since I joined the company back in 2010, so they long ago became friends. The are the people who know how the business is connected and how it works, it seemed that they would be the first people to be certain of joining the ond/new owners.

But yesterday morning, I was told that the whole team, from Charlotte, my manager up to the middle of November, would be leaving. There was no place at the inn for them. Anette has 32 years experience with the company, in its previous forms. She is going too.

Even worse than that is that my friend in the Warrington Office, Teresa, an hour after we all received a mail telling us the firings had ended, she got the call to say she wasn't needed either.

It sucks.

Some with all that news, a slough of despondancy hung over me like a weight, not knowing if the next minute or hour would bring the call to say I was done. We'd survive, but our trip to NZ would have to have been scrapped. I called my colleague, Rune, and we were talking when we got an invite to an "onboarding" meeting from our new line manager in the new company.

We had survived. For now, as there will be more restucturing.

But now the trip to NZ is safe, COVID notwithstanding.

Sigh.

I actually burst out crying, I suppose the stress, though denied, coming on top of year of COVID was a bit much. I composed myself.

So that was that. Up to that point the day had been spent waiting, as we had been told to, for a phone call, that in my case never came. I could not focus on anything, and then after getting the news, I was filled with loser's guilt, guilt that I have survived while other, better people did not. It doesn't seem fair, and never will.

But life goes on, and we had a meeting with our new boss's boss. If that makes sense.

At two there is a Zoom meeting, we sit and listen and are told, well, little more than we already knew, but we are to be central to battles coming up, Eddy made each of us feel special and wanted, although her did pronounce my name "Iron". I did correct him, but said as my boss he could call me what he wanted.

My brain was frazzled, so at half three I wrap up and sit on the sofa trying to take it all in.

I am a lucky pup.

I cook burgers for dinner, mainly because at six there was an event on Zoom, where there former editors of Smash Hits talked their way through an old editon of the magazine, now some 40 years old. Hard to imagine that Adam Ant was quite the big thing back then, but he was. And he and the Ants were on their holibobs in the south of France, and Mark Ellen found them, interviewed them and took their photos, which he took into Boots to be developed before they were published.

I am finishing cooking when Jools comes home, we eat and am done just before six so I can join the virtual event.

We, the audience, we asked to bring memorobillia to show and tell, and I had a flexi given away with the magazine, so I talked for a bit.

It was all good fun.

Then over.

We had a brew, some chocolate then listen to the radio until nine, and with the rain lashing down again outside, we go to bed to be covered in cats and kittens. As it should be.