Buck Stops Here

Until recently Jim Parton worked as a stockbroker, becoming disillusioned with not being the success he thought he ought to have been. Now, when money and potential employers are thin on the ground, Jim is forced to re-evaluate his relationships with work, his family and life in general

By most people's standards, Jim Parton was being paid vast sums of money for doing nothing very much in the City. But stockbrokers are not most people, and by their standards Jim felt he was merely comfortable instead of obscenely rich. He was also rather bored. Surely there was more to life for a Japanese-speaking ski enthusiast with a latent talent for gardening and a passion for car-boot sales.

There was. His boss, unaware that the 1990s were all about caring and sharing, cadged a skiing holiday off him and fired him the day they got back. Suddenly Jim was on the other side of the fence and the grass, in mid-recession, wasn't looking greener.

This is Jim's story of 'before and after'; of Maseratis and designer clothes; of dim people earning disgusting salaries; of fashionable redundancy becoming feared unemployment - and of what really happens when you spend more time with your wife and family.