Friday 30th April, 2021

 In order to explain why I didn't drop you a line last Friday I have to let you into a secret, but promise not to tell anyone ok?  Well...it was like this.....On Thursday we took our youngest daughter, Lottie, back up to Newcastle University where she is "studying" English Literature.  She'd been at home for a while.  Home, if you don't count long sessions at the Affleck, our local pub, which reopened earlier this month.  You may think, referring to the inverted commas surrounding the word studying that I am being unduly cynical.  I noted a copy of "The Nature of Things" by Lucretius which was on the kitchen table for the duration and  reassured me for a while, but I'm pretty sure it never budged.   Talking of the pub, I joined her there for a sharpener early one evening.  I'd had a pretty full day at work, though I did manage an hour off at lunch time lying in the sun. She was with a bunch of her friends so I didn't hang around.  When she came home she was cackling like a wrong 'un.  "My friend Lucie asked me if you use fake tan" she said gleefully. 

I digress.  Here's the thing.  Just don't tell Nicola, but I got lucky in the ballot for the Old Course at St Andrews so we drove on straight past Newcastle and I managed a quick socially distanced 18 holes with my father on the Friday.   I was on a course right?  (4&3 by the way.)

And here is the big news this week.  For any of you who have followed this rubbish from the outset you might recall Hen.  She and her lovely boyfriend Hubert have just announced they are engaged!   How about that then?  Too exciting.  More to follow.  Pip pip.  Got to dash. 

Friday 16th April, 2021

 I've got a confession to make.  I think I told you my blog had never previously been publicised.  This is not strictly true, but in my defence it was an honest mistake and not of my doing.  

I was enjoying lunch and a glass of rose yesterday in the slightly chilly, albeit sunny garden of a friend who lives down the road.  The occasion was a reunion of three old Rowe & Pitman stockbrokers and I was invited along as I had known them all in Hong Kong.  I'm not allowed to say this according to the powers that be as it is apparently an instant turn off to anyone I am trying to lure onto my client list, but I used to work for Barings as a fund manager.  I was continually bombarded by at least two of these present today as a soft touch for a chunky order in Cheung Kong or other more esoteric Asian securities.  

I digress.  One of them said how happy he was to see the re-emergence of the Bodhi Tree.  I felt a slight shiver down my spine.  It wasn't the brisk north easterly.  It was the troubling recollection that many years ago my blog was brought into the public glare by a headhunter who, as part of the due diligence he was doing to check the suitability of the very man I was sitting opposite for a role as non-executive director of a China investment trust, had typed in the guys name and hey presto....up had popped a story I had written about him in Under the Bodhi Tree.  I hadn't been looking for fame, but I had to admit I was rather proud when my friend told me that my blog had been found.  Alas I was very quickly brought down to earth.  I will not recount the whole thing all over again, but it was a story about how we had gone duck shooting in Inner Mongolia and on the way home had stopped in for the night in Harbin.  Groups of young British men carrying shotguns across north east China were rare in those days and for dinner we were joined by the Chief of Police of Heilongjiang Province and the Mayor of Harbin himself.  The Mayor, if I recall correctly, later fell foul of the authorities himself, but that night he was in fine form and between rounds of Tsingtao and shots of mao-tai became rather taken by my friend.  They both shared similar physiques.  Short and perhaps they could also be described as rather portly.  Every now and again the Mayor would put his arm round my friend and give him big smacking kisses on the cheek.  

You wouldn't think there was anything particularly untoward about this story, but this potential NED role was very important and my friend ( I'd love to use his name, but once bitten twice shy ) was excised by the thought the board of the investment trust might consider his daliances at all controversial if my blog got any further prominence.  I removed his name immediately, but the old version stayed on line for some weeks after and his repeated searches to see if it had gone shot the Bodhi Tree right up to the top of the rankings at least for a few weeks, which truth be told I suppose I was rather pleased with.  Keep clicking and have a good one   

Friday 9th April, 2021

 I’ve just got back from doing my Covid Good Samaritan thing which takes the form of a tour round Newmarket Waitrose shopping for an elderly couple.  This was probably the last one as it happens.  They've had both their jabs.  I'm going to miss it funnily enough.  So interesting what other people put on their shopping lists.  It's like reading someones diary.  You feel you are really getting to know them inside out when you find yourself putting peach slices and Ginster chicken and mushroom pasties in the trolley.

My aged friend has created a small golf course in one of his fields and so he and I played a few holes after I'd offloaded their shopping.  Very competitive stuff.  He is 85 and an amazing golfer and before I knew it I was three down as he rattled the upturned flower pots marking the hole on each green with unerring accuracy.  I rallied a bit clawing him in to be just one down, but then the sun came out and I'm afraid I became rather distracted by the thought I had left four lovely looking fresh bream on the passenger seat of my car and five petrol canisters in the boot.  Fair to say my comeback faltered.  Twenty minutes later, beaten three and two, I got back to my car which smelt like Pittenweem harbour in the height of summer.

Through the fumes I heard that Prince Philip had died.  Jimmy was musing on her computer when I got back and though I was rushing to my office she had time to tell me that a friend of hers had a story about the Duke.  He had visited her friends school...Eton I suspect....to watch a play that the friend had produced.  "Well", said Jimmy's friend,  "I got to speak to him afterwards and I said that I was really grateful to him for coming to watch the performance because if it hadn't been for him I'd have never been able to get people to remember their lines.  "Oh" said the Duke, "what a frightful show off you are" stepped back and knocked over a huge plate of sandwiches."

RIP DoE.  One of a kind.

Thursday 1st April, 2021

I normally do these things on a Friday so I hope this doesn't unsettle your week too much.  It's a holiday tomorrow of course.  Talking of which the golf course is back open and, whisper it ever so quietly, I've managed to sneak on a couple of times this week.  The first time was Monday evening.  You know me.  I'm not one to brag, but I was only 2 over par standing on the 9th.  Hadn't hit a bad shot all round.  Of course I blocked my drive right out of bounds.  So annoying.  

I managed another outing too and this was interesting.  I was paired in a foursome match with a German guy.  Really good bloke and only the second German I've ever played golf with.   I was continuing my rich vein of form, but slightly tweaked a long iron pin high left of the 8th green ( stop me if I'm losing you ) and he had a decision to make.  He could either attempt a very tricky chip over a bunker directly at the pin which was just a couple of yards onto the green or the safer, dare I say, dull option was a putt onto the front edge but leaving us a long way from the hole.  He chose the latter and though he had executed the shot well enough apologised for his temerity.  "And that's why we lost the war" he added ruefully!  

The other time I played with a German was in Bangkok on a golf course near the airport.  Planes lumbered overhead in a steady queue so that in the end one barely noticed them.  My German friend was lining a putt up, quite an important one actually, on the fourteenth I think it was, when he stopped to look at another jet coming into land and then checked his watch.  "Lufthansa", he said, "Right on time".  And stroked the ball into the centre of the hole.

I love April Fools jokes.  Our Managing Partner Jon Macintosh played a classic this morning.  Look out for it on my earlier LinkedIn posting.  So good!

Otherwise have a great Easter.

Friday 26th March, 2021

Little over three years on....ahoy there! Doesn't time fly? I kept this blog up pretty faithfully once a week for fifteen years, but it was easy enough to do sitting at my desk in a job I couldn't stand! Woo...that's good. Maybe I havn't quite lost my touch. 

The Bodhi Tree kept me busy on a Friday afternoon, amused a few people, it may even have kept me in my job for a bit longer than was strictly justified, but mostly it was a butterfly net. Capturing fleeting gems that would otherwise just have fluttered on by. 

These last three years though.  Well I have kept a diary faithfully every single day, but looking at it, to be kind it's a useful reminder of when we turned the central heating on for the first time each autumn or was it in March or early April that my asparagus spears popped out to say hello.  Fleeting gems.....not so much! 

If you're new to this forgive me if I bore you at the outset with a brief catch up. When I left you Hen was living in the back of her van with Myrtle, the Spanish glago dog she had rescued from just outside Granada, working in vineyards in the southwest of France. Tiring of "Uncle" Robert's lewd intentions she upped sticks and drove east to the Drome valley finding work in the grape fields on the slopes of Les Trois Becs. It is an incredibly beautiful spot.  She fell in love with Hubert, who owns the fields and she's been there ever since.  Our youngest, Lottie, aka Miss Perse Upperself, has left school and started at Newcastle University with a bout of Covid.  Her GAP year was meant to have been working on a riding safari in Kenya.  Instead it was mostly spent doing Sudoku puzzles at our kitchen table.  Number two daughter, Jimmy.  She's cool.  And then there's Bob.  The local wildlife population around Gazeley has had little to worry about this last year.  Bob's been in New Zealand since January 2020 currently working on a boat in the Milford Sound and there's little indication that he will be coming back here any time soon. 

As for me?  Well I pootled about for a bit on leaving Nomura, but then I was introduced to a private wealth management firm called Saltus.  I liked the cut of their gib, so I put some of my own money into the business, moved my pension fund onto their DFM platform and took a series of exams to qualify with a diploma in Regulated Financial Planning.  I've got lots of capacity and full of passion about what I do which is a joy after holding down such a gruesomely pointless job for so long!  Brace yourself.  I will not be shy asking you to introduce me to people I might be able to help.  In fact why not be proactive and point them my way??!  Thanks xxx

Apart from that well I suppose there must have been some other stuff going on, but talking about the cut of their gib got me thinking about sailing in Norway.  It happened like this.  Some thirteen years ago I was at the bar of the golf club I had just joined and to which I had taken a guest to play.  Feeling a little bit like a fish out of water I was ordering a couple of glasses of port with which to wash down a large plate of egg and anchovy sandwiches when an elderly gentleman, a complete stranger to boot, came up to me and said he knew from the look of me that I was a "good sort".   "And the fact you're having a large port at lunch absolutely confirms it" he said to me.  "Do you sail, by any chance?" he continued.  I said that I did, somewhat bemused by the course this encounter had taken. "Well" he replied, "I have a boat in Norway and it would be just marvellous if you ever felt like coming over. It's a beautiful yacht and the sailing is cracking. I'm sure you would love it." He wandered off across the clubroom floor calling back over his shoulder, "Please just let me know, but you're welcome anytime".  Just a bit weird don't you think? 

The years went by and as you might imagine a sailing holiday with a virtual stranger, albeit I would bump into him from time to time playing golf and the invitation was oft repeated, was not high on my wish list. But then the summer of 2018 arrived and with it a certain freedom of time.   My elderly acquaintance, now on the other side of 80 years of age, approached me with fresh intent. He explained that he and his wife ( some relief there ) were planning a sailing trip in late August, but being much less mobile than they used to be, he really needed someone who could "jump around the boat a bit".  I would be doing them a huge favour if I would join them. I hummed and harred, but eventually, decided to throw caution to the wind and accepted the invitation.  I was going to write a blog and had even come up with a title.  The Adventures of Roger the Cabin Boy. I never did though.  Whilst I may have had some trepidation and certainly went feeling I was doing them a favour it was actually wonderful!  I had such a good time that I went the next year with them aswell.  My liver is still recuperating.  

Throw caution to the wind.  That's the moral of this one absent much of a conclusion otherwise and even it is very at odds with my new life in which planning is everything.  If I still have you maybe you'll find our latest posting about retirement planning of interest.....three slightly offbeat questions your answers to which do feel free to send me.

https://www.saltus.co.uk/news/3-questions-to-help-you-rethink-retirement/

Friday 2nd March, 2018

Someone told me the other day that after wine, stamps have been the second best performing asset class over the last ten years. Rummaging around a couple of trunks which Sophie was getting me to lug about from room to room in the never ending search for interior design perfection I’d stumbled across a stamp album that I’d compiled at whilst at prep school in Scotland.  Well that was more than 40 years ago so I suppose, packed as it is with all sorts of classics from countries including the Gold Coast, Ceylon and a load of them behind the Iron Curtain, my album is probably worth a small fortune by now.  And I need the cash.

 

What happened was this.  It’ll sound like I’m showing off, but I was invited to dinner last night at J&B to meet the owners of Chateau Lafleur.  Oh wow.  Such a treat.  I had a nice chat at the start of the evening with Baptiste Guinaudeau.  He has a pony tail and calls himself a farmer.  I discussed vine pruning techniques with him at length, and although it may smack a little of nepotism, there’s a job at Lafleur for Hen if she wants it.  Oh drat.  I should have told him I’ve just planted a Black Hamburgh vine at home in my greenhouse.  That would have been good.  Sorry.  I’m rambling.  At the risk of boring you further, after starting the evening with a glass or two of Krug we drank two different vintages of the Chateau’s “second” wine, Pensees de LaFleur.  The 2009 was astonishing.  Then on we went to drink Lafleur 2007 ( a cool year ) comparing it with the 2003 ( a hot one ) and finally, the hugely acclaimed 1995 vintage and the spectacular 1989.  I know.  I’m a spoilt brat.  The highlight of the evening though was a white wine which was served right at the outset of dinner to go with the crab and gruyere gratin.  It’s called Les Champs Libres and made by my new best friend Baptiste and his wife Julie.  It’s a complete side line and not what Lafleur is about at all, but it blew me away.  Do you know that poem about Stout Cortez and his chappies discovering the Pacific and looking at each other with a wild surmise?  Well, that’s what I felt when I tasted this.  If I could stock my cellar up with this I’d happily never drink a different white wine for the rest of my life.  Alas, I thought to myself, side line though it might be, it was bound to be well out of my price range.

 

Much too late in the evening, bearing in mind I had all you lot to look after this morning, I headed out of J&B onto St James’s Street, slipped a guy sleeping on the pavement a tenner out of a total sense of guilt, and headed up to Kings Cross and round to Old Street where a TravelLodge room at the princely sum of £69 awaited me.  £69!!   20 minutes walk from the office.  Much more my league.  Unfortunately, as I perused my emails, trudging down Moorgate there was one from J&B and I vaguely recalled browsing their website before I’d turned the lights out.  It informed me that I’d bought a magnum of Les Champs and you don’t even want to know what that set me back.  My frugality in the choice of hotel, coupled with an excess of claret, had clearly given me a rush of bravado.  I’ve spent the day thinking how am I going to look Mrs S in the eyes this evening. 

 

The stamp album has to go.  Photo attached.  Any bidders??

 

 

 

Happy days they were.  Anyway, I’m going to beat the Beast and head off sharpish today if that’s OK with you.  Snow bucketing down in Newmarket apparently.

 

Friday 23rd February, 2018

If I was to tell you that, apart from raising my eyebrows this morning at a headline news item on the BBC which read “Naked Man on tracks causes Edinburgh rail disruption,” reminding me that we’ve got the Calcutta Cup tomorrow and to fleetingly muse that it might be my father given his past record at such occasions, the thing I’ve mostly been focussed on today is by the time I get home my birthday present should have been delivered.  The box chest freezer.  What excitement.

 

The week as a whole has been a bit of quiet one I’m sorry to say.  It wasn’t entirely post CNY market blues.  I don’t seem to recover as quickly as I did in the past from late night high jinx.  I didn’t tell you, but we had a bit of a hoolie last weekend.  It was quite sweet actually.  Sophie arranged the whole thing and even said she’d do the cooking for a change.  Delicious it all was too, even though she forgot, at the last minute, to put the mushrooms into the boeuf bourguignon.  

 

It’s something I want to get off my chest, but I had been grappling with what wine to serve that night.  Many years ago, when MiFID2 was but a twinkle in Paul Myners’ eye and times were relatively rosy, I bought a case of La Mission Haut Brion en primeur, and that is what I thought I might mark my move into the mid 50’s with.  But as the evening approached I’m ashamed to say I had cold feet, returned the eight bottles I’d brought up to their case in the cellar and replaced them with Clos des Quatre Vents 2010 which is a nice enough drop and a fraction of the current market value.  I think it was the right decision.  I’m not sure the assembled crowd would have cared too much what I gave them.  It was obviously preying on my mind though.  In the morning nursing a touch of a hangover I recalled that I had lost the power of speech as the last couple headed home at 3 in the morning, noted that I had pin pricks on the palm of my hands presumably from when a few of us had gone out to see what the hedgehogs were up to, and, when I finally made it down to the kitchen in desperate need of some black coffee and a glass of water, there on the sideboard I found an empty bottle of La Mission.  What the heck???  It would have been chilled and a bit shook up when we drank it.  That’s as maybe though.  I have no recollection of it at all.  What a muppet I am.

 

C’mon Scotland.  This year we’re going to have them.