Up and Down the City Road

One of the things I love about open access courses is the mix of delegates – people from a diverse range of backgrounds, acute, mental health and community with a range of professional backgrounds, both clinical and non-clinical – who all share the same goal of improving services to patients, clients and service users. Today I’m just off the City Road in central London (star of the children’s nursery rhyme ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ (Up and down the City Road, In and out The Eagle, That’s the way the money goes, Pop goes the weasel). It’s a pleasure to have such a committed group.

One aspect of my Finance Skills workshop is that because it takes place over two days and because group numbers are kept deliberately small we are able to cover what delegates need in the priority that they need it. This is no ‘course-in-a-box’ but an entirely customised event based upon the needs of the delegates rather than the material of the trainer.

‘Weasel’ is Cockney rhyming slang for ‘Weasel and Stoat’ or ‘coat’ – the sort of Sunday best coat or suit from when people would have had only one decent set of clothes. Popping meant pawning. ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ is therefore about having no money to buy food or drink and having to go to the pawn shop to pawn your best clothes to get money to live. Let’s hope that after two days on Finance Skills none of my delegates will ever have to resort to that in order to run their departments!

‘That’s the way the money goes…’