all star banker

'Workers in the city are being advised to dress down and postpone non-essential meetings amid fears that they will be forced to run the gauntlet of protesters'

The above is an extract from an email sent to employees of a London bank last week, prior to the G20 summit and organised protests taking place from today. Do not yee worry, I'm not here to discuss politics, lets leave that for another day. 

I'm privy to the above because a banking friend happened to forward the message, I didn't think twice about the email. My place of work is on the outskirts of nowhere in West London, and we tend dress down. However, at approximately 7:42 this chilly spring morning, I was reminded of the aforementioned warning. Commuters know well the routine of the journey they make, and are used to seeing many of the same faces day in and day out and more to the point, many of the same suits. Imagine my amusement when a few of the faces turned up, with their suits nowhere to be seen. 

One of my favourite suits, because he bears a resemblance to a certain sex and the city character, looked like he had fallen straight out of bed into Topman, where he was swiftly spat back out onto Platform 1. He stood there, lit from above by a stretch of sunlight, looking down at his mobile phone. The effect was quite endearing really. The sunlight obviously didn't make looking at the phone easy, but made it look like it was the first time he had encountered this particular piece of technology. Either that or he had abandoned his blackberry for the day, and the retro Nokia was part of the 'I'm normal like you' disguise? The rest of the outfit consisted of casual corduroys and some fresh-from-the-box converse all stars. 

I'm also curious about this 'gauntlet' they'll be running. If you've ever been down to London's financial abyss, you'll know there is little there, apart from some quite nice architecture, some rather big banks and I think The Independent newspaper office is knocking about too. Personally I think it's a lot of hype about a lot of nothing, other than the gauntlet it will be interesting to see how the G20 miraculously solve all our current crises with their overpriced discussions. I'm inclined to think that the protests and summit are unlikely to achieve anything. A number of 'stop the war' protests are taking place, while at the same time troops being removed from Iraq - a marginally futile exercise. I don't need to ask what the real cost of the summit is, I expect an intern at one of the nationals is furiously doing sums on my behalf.

After all I didn't see Obama or Sarkozy in their all stars this morning.