Sonera, Helsinki and London

This is Helsinki Cathederal, taken, I think on a June evening in 2002. Back then I was working for Sonera, the Finnish telephone company responsible for international traffic (Helsinki and many other parts of Finland have their own phone companies). Every now and then, I would be deputed to attend the monthly meeting of all the subsidiaries: London, Stockholm, Frankfurt and New York. We would meet during the day and the Finns would use it as an excuse to go drinking in the evening. Being tee-total, I would head down to the excellent Nevski restaurant by the harbour for supper. That far north, it doesn't really get dark in June, though the quality of the light changes. In the afternoon, it's a regular summer day, but by 22:30 hours it feels like three o'clock on a sunny November afternoon. My inner clock and calander was seriously confused by the whole experience.

Sonera was at the time embroiled in a series of financial and management scandels and the Finnish government sold it to Telia, the Swedish telephone company. In the summer of 2003, Telia closed the overseas subsidiaries – despite being offered over £2m for the business – and made us all redundant. Our sorrow in London was mitigated by the fact that our CEO, Cliff Derbyshire, had put very generous reduandancy settlements into our contracts. So a quick shout to Shaza Rahhal, Peter Davidson, Jessica Henley and Paul Woolley, who were the team in the London office. Cliff retired, Shaza went to work for Telia, Paul Woolley went to work for his local police as a CSI, Peter went on to run a local business for BT and Jessica went chasing City boys. It was a terrific team.