Last National Bank of Boot Hill
(strictly commercial money lent and borrowed full telephone banking service your choice of affinity Boothillcards apply now)
Moorgate, London EC2
Sad, sad, the Overseas Bankers Club shuts, they drop the Overseas, a fatal error, I like its kinda churchy clubhouse by the back gate of the Bank of England so their guys can slip out for a drink without anyone seeing them, I get my best scuttlebutt here, and now your boy has a place in its history as the very last chairman of the sub-committee on martinis.
This is the moment of truth, for your boy and for the Last National and for Hillboot Intergalactic, our investment bank, and Holey Buckett, its head honcho, at last his corporate finance division gets something to do, finding a taker for itself, no reasonable offer refused.
The notion dawns on me when Holey rolls round to Moorgate to present his next year's budget, at first sight I figure it is an old one from the OMB that gives Newt Gingrich indigestion, the numbers are out of this world and even bigger than this year's tho' not exactly better.
Holey, I say, how long ago is it since you tell me we must spend a fortune on hiring new guys and another fortune on firing the old ones, and a third fortune on a marble mausoleum deep in Docklands, and hardware and software to fill it, and now you come asking for more?
He tells me this is a poker school and we have to keep sweetening the pot, it is no use throwing in a few red chips and hoping, we need to build a base for our next great leap forward to New York, where I hear Sallies is for sale, the optimists there are learning Dutch, the pessimists learning German, so I set my team to working up an offer.