Ten years ago tonight, I was gazing out of a window at the back of my flat in South-East London, watching the lunar eclipse of April 1996 through binoculars.

But my mind was elsewhere. I was thinking of my career at the Japanese bank where I worked in the City. It had been a fantastic job to begin with, but nearly two years later, it had become a real burden. Doing work which would normally be handled by three people was exciting and absorbing at first, but now, with only an inexperienced assistant manager and a contractor to help me, I was being asked to manage responsibilities which would normally be allocated to a large team: frontline support to the trading floor, systems administration, architecture engineering, financial software development. The infrastructure itself was inadequate for the increasing demands placed upon it by the bank's business needs, but asking for more resources was like begging for food at a prisoner-of-war camp.
I drew deep symbolism from the astronomical event which was unfolding as I watched. As the Earth passed between the Sun and the Moon, drawing its shadow over the Moon's surface, I decided that this moment would serve as a portent of the eclipse of my career in Japanese finance. And I suddenly noticed that, in a remarkable instance of synchronicity, Walk Away, by the Manchester Britpop band Cast, was playing on my radio.


The next morning, I surreptitiously telephoned my favourite pimp, the recruitment agent who had secured me an interview at the bank in the first place. Five weeks later, I was sitting on a Docklands Light Railway train, en route to my first day at an American investment firm at Canary Wharf.