My Word Was My Bond

Before compliance departments grew larger than trading desks, before algorithms replaced instinct, and before lunches became something squeezed between meetings, there existed another City.

A louder City. A sharper City. A wonderfully absurd City.

A world of shouted prices, spoof on escalators, Friday afternoons at Sweetings, Brick Lane Thursdays, trainee coffee disasters, analyst dinners that drifted gloriously off-course, and lunches so vast they effectively ended the working day.

Deals were struck with a handshake. Reputations mattered. And somewhere beneath the bravado, noise, wine, humour, and occasional chaos, there existed genuine loyalty and camaraderie.

These poems are reflections from that vanished world - affectionate, humorous, occasionally outrageous, and entirely written from the perspective of a market man fortunate enough to have lived through it.

For all its flaws, excesses, and questionable judgement, the old Square Mile possessed a spirit that those who stood beneath its trading lights still remember fondly: "My word 'was' my bond."

My Word Was My Bond is the sequel to The Making of a Fiscal Market Man