Author: Thomas Kelly

I did this quick painting this morning. I captured this picture last week and wanted to convey the sense of his age, his unshapely cap and his pale blue eyes.

There is an old adage. One should never work with children and animals on stage. I would add the Royal Family to that list. Prince Michael had taken eight consultancy posts in British companies such as Land Rover, BT and the Post Office. How he came to us remained a mystery. However earlier in the…

The Russians sat in silence looking at the carpet occasionally switching and shifting their feet from one ankle to another. Their fingers were stained as yellow as their teeth and Olga needed to have a better diet. I had asked Chandran to copy their passports and I was filling in the application forms. It was…

The directors of the Bank of Bermuda were seduced by the Middle East. Back in 1996 there was a clear choice between Bahrain, a solid and safe developed centre for banking and then Dubai which although was slow to develop no doubt had big expansion plans. There were pros and cons of course but after…

The early morning in Bermuda is pink. Pink racing clouds across the sky, pink buildings and pink Bermuda shorts. And not to mention pink eyes from too much Goslings rum, I had decided to wear shorts and wandered down to Trimingham’s the family run shop on Front Street. Trimingham, one of the oldest families in…

The usual day flight to Hamilton Bermuda seemed full of rather well-fed bankers and executives.  They clucked and boasted to each other like fat hens, clinking their wine glasses and making surreptitious looks to the stewardess assigned to their cabin. It was like a bus to them. Tourists and hospitality workers to the island were…

The party was over. The directors of the bank had left and I was alone in Bahrain. My journey from foreign exchange dealer in Guernsey to the representative of a bank in Manama had been surprisingly easy. I had not done very much to deserve this and sitting at my desk overlooking the north shore,…

Although I was about to join the Bank of Bermuda, my journey there was full of adventures. I had arrived in London in 1974 with no qualifications but a job offer at Barclays Colonial Office in 168 Fenchurch Street. The pay was £800 a year and it became obvious to me that additional sources of…

An island so beautiful that no one deserves to live there. It is mentioned by Shakespeare in The Tempest and is the oldest Dependant Territory of the United Kingdom. The white sands on 365 beaches and colonial style buildings, a speed limit of 30 mph and a Governor in a plumed hat complete the island…

These were heady days. It was a hot London summer evening. The plane trees along the busy road opposite Victoria Station wilted and their tree trunks pushed through broken paving stones and around were littered with old beer tins and kebab wrappings. There was a dank stink of pee against some of the mottled trunks…