THE PROFIT
to the faceless masses than the ranks of the movers and shakers, does not many an accountant boast an even more lavish and enviable lifestyle than those whose books he lovingly nurtures? So know you that whilst in his outer trappings the accountant is the soul of anonymity, he is rarely what he seems. Show me a pofaced paper-pusher and I will show you a swaggering hero, a William Wallace of the boardroom, a Lancelot of the commercial battlefield, jousting fearlessly against the armies of the taxman and the VAT inspector. And though the world appears to pass him by as he sits single-mindedly at his desk, the epitome of soulless passivity, in his carefully-ordered strivings he is as deadly as the cobra, silent yet poised to strike with lethal swiftness. For the accountant, too, dreams mighty dreams of greatness; he, too, seeks to write his name large in letters of gold on the eternal balance sheet of the cosmos. And though your mind seeks the vainglorious high of selfpromotion, deep inside you yearn to be as he of the sober suit and boring tie, unseen but always seeing, impassive yet burning with inner passion, bereft of glamour and magnetism yet filled to overflowing with single-minded dynamism. For does not control of the yearly accounts and audits confer ultimate power on he who undertakes them? Does he not have the fate of even the most consummate master of corporate strategy in the palm of his hand, knowing that in his artful juggling of the company’s books he can either lift his paymaster to unprecedented new levels of profit and approbation or plunge him into oblivion? 43