This summer marked a personal watershed as I packed up my home in London and moved back to Rome. It’s a homecoming that has been more than a year in the making, and increasingly resembles one of my family’s favourite movies, The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, a cult animation from the 1970s. Comparing my progress to the plot of the movie, I am currently at a standstill in the middle of task number eight, where Asterix and Obelix are stuck
Throughout history there have always been observations humans can’t explain. In the ancient world, unexplainable events were often attributed to the all-encompassing brush of 'fate'. The Roman goddess Fortuna, goddess of luck and fate, was often depicted standing on a ball, indicating her uncertainty, and blindfolded to show her lack of bias. Romans could conveniently stop worrying about understanding things that, as far they knew, were out of their hands. Today, we rarely credit fate; but does it still influence
I rarely come across anyone who doesn’t know some part of this story. For some, it's the cunning trick that brought an unnecessary war to an end. Others will talk about the lost man, who cleverly won the war but now can’t get home. Still others remember the faithful woman who waits for him, staving off suitors with her own gentle ruse. Many can quote the names as well as the incidents, which is to say that the story lives
Everyone loves a rogue. Think Han Solo in Star Wars, Jack in Titanic, Hilts in The Great Escape, and the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist. And the popularity of silver screen rogues hasn’t gone unnoticed in the world of politics, where in recent years we’ve seen comedian Beppe Grillo, leather-clad Yannis Varoufakis and scruffy-haired Boris Johnson all array themselves in the mantle of anti-establishment rule-breakers (some more convincingly than others) in their bid for high office. Sooner or later, all
Smallest violin in the world alert: delayed planning and pent-up demand from other would-be travellers meant that I faced a potentially eyewatering cost to spend a week by the Mediterranean. With flights to Italy coming in at $1000, car rental at $2000 and Airbnb at $3000, I opted instead for a staycation in London. This #firstworldproblem is one example of substitution. At the moment, the price of almost everything is rising, but some prices are rising by more than others.
Nine of the Fathom team (myself included) recently spent the best part of a week at Brantrake House in the Lake District, discussing our strategy (after the COVID-induced pause) for Fathom USA. We spent a day at High Ground Farm on Birker Moor where we learned how to move a huge pile of wood, how to get in the way while the professionals (the wonderful John and Gaby) sheared and sorted sheep, and how to yell incoherently before jumping off
Tired of paying extortionate exchange commission on foreign currency when you go on holiday? Annoyed that there is nothing you can do about it? Read on to understand how and why the Bureau de Change does it to us. It might help ease the pain. Changing money is the ultimate holiday challenge. What currency do they use there? And how many of those can I get for £1? Where to change it? How much to change? What if I don’t
One of my favourite black-and-white movies is the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life. It is probably just the monetary economist in me, but I particularly like the scene with the bank run on Bailey Bros Building and Loan Association. With just his honeymoon money left, George Bailey reasons with the depositors to temper their withdrawal demands, kissing Miss Davis when she asks for just $17.50! At the end of the day, the bank has $2 left and he and
As I sat in the poorly insulated shed at the bottom of my garden that I use as a home office, on Tuesday of this week — the hottest day ever recorded in the UK, when temperatures exceeded 40°C in parts of the country — I was reminded of my colleague’s blog from 24 June. Andrew (the other Andrew, not me) wrote about the perceived impact on individual levels of productivity across the company of one particularly warm Friday, when
Thank Fathom it’s Friday! No doubt, our regular readers eagerly await this blog as a watershed moment in their working week. I can hear the sound of pens dropping, keyboards stopping mid-sentence and the occasional gasp of excitement punctuating the silence of the open-plan office as the weekly TFIF email drops in your inboxes. At Fathom, sending off TFIF also coincides with the beginning of ‘beer o’clock’, our customary post-work Friday drinks. To us, TFIF represents the joint celebration of