Hello! To celebrate our 20th birthday, AWEB is currently putting a very smart AWEB20 book together about the last 20 years of accountancy. We've got a question for you - tell us what you were doing in 1997? We'll print the best and post a link to a PDF so you can see who made the cut!
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1997 ?
Surely 20 years ago was 1998 ....
20 years ago yesterday, I was strolling round Wembley with £100k of antique silverware. We had the reunion last night at the Skyrack in Headingley.
All reflected glory, of course, but I didn't care.
Oh no did none of these make the book then?!
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/any-answers/accountingweb-20th-birthday-...
Yes, quite a few made it – but it's a big book with a lot of pages to fill!
Thanks to all for their comments - we'll be giving hard copies away at Accountex and a free PDF download after the show.
I was a fresh faced, twenty-something account manager at Pegasus Software, driving around the country, extolling the virtues of internet-enabled accounting software.
When internet enabled meant adding an email address field to the customer contact record.
Gary Turner
Managing Director, Xero
@garyturner
Pegasus software ... I used that in the late 1980s. I seem to recall a lot of file corruption occurring regularly.
I had the removed the day before my 16th birthday. One of my (unfortunate) friends had them out on the week before she left for uni!
Braces?! Eeh in my day the dentist just took out a couple of teeth to give the others more room. No braces. True story.
Braces ?
We call them gallusses round here. Better than a belt for holding your trousers up.
Laughing at all the accountants predicting the end of the world with the first SA returns "clients will never cope!" sound familiar? - plus ça change
Also, having broken away from another practice, setting up a new practice/office with a colleague determined that every desk would have a PC as part of a network (whatever that meant).
starting as a tax junior having decided upon a career change....together with a pay cut of 70%....gulp!
I was 7 and still in the "wee end" at school.
If I could go back to my 7 year old self and tell him where I was now... I'd probably make my younger self cry.
Standing up for a colleague and getting sacked for it (from a job I didn't enjoy, working for people I didn't like). Turned out to be a great career move as I had two weeks off and then started in a better paid, more senior role with the new tax and accountancy arm of the BMA which was a great job working with lovely people. The icing on the cake was that I received an out of court settlement in the amount I had brazenly asked for assuming they would knock me down. It was way more than I would have got in court as I had zero loss of earnings - in fact I was considerably better off. I also conceived my first child in 1997 so it was a good year!
1997: Transitioning from second to third year at university... and passing my driving test!
1998: Graduating and starting my career as an accountant at Whitbread - and getting dumped by my boyfriend!
I was still working for the Revenue, though had recently been diagnosed with diabetes, which resulted in my being let go on health grounds less than two years later (with a maximum payout).
Couple of changes of treatment later, and here I am.
I was still working for the Revenue, though had recently been diagnosed with diabetes, which resulted in my being let go on health grounds less than two years later (with a maximum payout).
Couple of changes of treatment later, and here I am.
Is that a reflection of how far the treatment has come on or a reflection of HMRC?
My daughter was diagnosed with Type I at 5 and it hasn't stopped her doing anything.
I was terrible with MDI, and just couldn't get decent control. I was in and out of hospital more often than the staff were.
After my last incarceration in what was the local hospital, where I found that they had me on the wrong insulin and were slowly overdosing me, I got a referral to Manchester Royal Infirmary, which was also one of the pioneering pump clinics in the UK.
Six months later, I was on pump therapy, and less than 12 months later back in work full time.
I still have the odd bad day, but it's given me a new lease of life generally.
Studying for my ACCA finals in June 1997 and December 1997.
Working as a temp at a few places at the start of the year (after leaving my job the previous November) and getting a permanent job at a small accounting practice around March.
I wonder if there are any AWeb members that weren't even born then? A young AAT trainee or similar?
I genuinely think that an ability to count is a prerequisite for a career in accountancy.
20 years ago I was working in an engineering company and responsible for preparing the business to resist the Millenium Bug. Quarterly board meetings used overhead transparencies because the UK MD was a luddite who mistrusted Powerpoint but at least I got to travel to London first class.
It was around this time I was invited to a meeting of their “Top 100” (Directors and FCs of all UK subsidiaries) where I was the only woman in the room apart from the secretary taking the minutes.
I had no plans to have children, run my own business or to write a book and I’d never heard of an Ironman triathlon.
How times change
I was about to unexpectedly make a fortune and then lose a fortune in the 1990s dot com bubble, mostly all thanks to Hemmington Scott's dot com online discussion forum - anyone remember AndyH (ramper of Baltimore Technology that went from about £1 (as Zergo) to about £140 and then back down to zero in about 18 months) and all that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Technologies
Was it, to paraphrase Ringo Starr, like Butlins? Or maybe more like The Guilty Remnant in The Leftovers?
You can't leave us like that.
Was it, to paraphrase Ringo Starr, like Butlins? Or maybe more like The Guilty Remnant is The Leftovers?
You can't leave us like that.
Yeh, what he said. Come on JC. Did you watch the Netflix documentary?
Worked at HMRC. Daughter born and ended up in intensive care. HMRC were heartless and demanded to know my overtime plans for the next three months immediately. Handed my notice in and left after 9 years.
Lightweight. I did 18 years before I left, by mutual agreement and provided they gave me a chunk of money (which they did) :)
Bank Holiday weekend 20 years ago.
Pretty sure I was on a stag-do in Whitley Bay/Newcastle.
As Glennzy and Redfive will confirm Whitley Bay on a Bank Holiday weekend is like the Wild West.
Oh aye
Whitley Bay on a bank holiday was a lethal day out back in 90’s
I went there for my 21st with about 30 pals, most drunk I have ever been and bus had to get police escort out of town as nearly caused .
When I did my level 2 power boat licence I had to the practical off Tynemouth and Whitle Bay
When we’were out there was some Black Sea birds diving
The skipper said do you know what they are?
Me: either cormorants or s hags
Skipper: do you know how to tell the difference.
Me: No, How
Skipper : You cannot get a cormorant in Whitley Bay
Cannot beat a boating/fishing gag