Email-free Christmas

I'm under something of a black cloud.

Going back to work yesterday, expecting a relatively easy week, I found myself being summoned by the Boss the moment I stepped into the office. It was clear something was wrong, and I had one of those dread headmaster's office moments that one never really leaves behind, made worse by the fact the Boss is younger than me.

It seems a client of mine, a rather successful barrister with a splendid line in consumer product prosecutions, took it into his head over Christmas to buy a house in Dubai. He was out there with family, sunning himself on the beach, when someone suggested acquiring a piece of one of those huge palm islands they're building. Some clever salesman convinced him that if he didn't put the money down there and then, there would never be another house available at such a reasonable price, ever. So this anxious barrister picks up the phone to our office, expecting to find me at my desk on Boxing Day apparently, with an order to liquidate a chunk of his portfolio and speed the winnings to the UAE.

Now feasibly we could have done this for him when the market opened on the 27th. Except that no one who knew anything about his account was in the office until the new year. And what's more, no one could find a home address or phone number for me. As our house is in a valley with absolutely no mobile reception, those diligent worker bees whom my barrister managed to reach on the 26th resorted to email.

This is where the black cloud comes in. No one here, it seems, can credit my protestation that I simply don't check email over the Christmas break. Ever more urgent messages were piling up in my inbox, with me blissfully unaware and attending instead to the fowl drama taking place in the woodburner chimney and the even fouler drama of my children around the Christmas tree. By the 29th, the barrister - who is not a client with whom I can claim to have much rapport - had escalated the matter to a board director who, regrettably, he happens to know. This particular seagull did what all seagulls do from their great height, and unfortunately the Boss caught most of the consequence - at home, on New Year's Eve, just as he was about to go out to some fabulous Notting Hill party.

I spoilt his evening, apparently. Oh yes, and I've lost a client. Luckily he's agreed to remain with the bank, so I'm not in too much trouble, but there's still a certain disbelief all round that I could make it through nine days without email. When I explain to my various colleagues that I don't regard sifting through advertisements for viagra a particularly festive way to spend Christmas, they say things like But what if there's an important message? I would have had a stronger riposte before this debacle.

Anyhow, it will blow over. But I do seem to have cemented the perception in my younger colleagues' minds that I belong to some technological stone age where bankers went about their business in coffee houses and knocked off at a quarter past three. I don't mind being seen as an old-fashioned type - I'm rather proud to be the only banker I know without a Blackberry - but it will become a problem if they start to doubt my competence in assessing, say, hi-tech or media stocks. And I'm going to have to work a bit harder at demonstrating I'm right up to date on the latest funds and instruments (which I fear I'm not, but that's a different matter).

Moral of the story: be prepared to wade through viagra at least every other day.