I love Hong Kong. I would wander around the island all day in a cosy nostalgic blur if I didn't have 8 Indonesian corporates to escort from one Grand Hyatt room to another or copious requests from demanding clients to deal with all hours of the day. But Hong Kong taxi drivers are a different thing altogether. Man alive are they rude. I can only recall two taxi journeys made on this trip. There were three, but the one back to the airport on Friday afternoon completely passed me by as I slouched in the back seat comotose. Otherwise it was a 100% hit rate of abuse. I made the mistake of taking the suicide seat on both occasions and caught the full frontal when on the first trip the driver inexplicably started yelling at me 100 yards before we reached our destination that we were nearly there and practically shoved me out of the car when we arrived. Then on my next ride I asked in my fluent Cantonese for a receipt before politely trying to ascertain whether there was a more accurate word to use than the restaurant bill I had probably demanded. Well the guy just flipped. Talk about a torrent of abuse. I was called everything under the sun as I scrambled out onto the street side and with the aid of that funny contraption that only HK taxis seem to have, the driver slammed the door shut behind me. My companions and I stood on the roadside in the drizzling rain in bemused silence when the door opened again and with a clatter a blue and yellow CLSA wooden sign post we had helped ourselves to from that evenings entertainment venue was hurled onto the road at our feet. Maybe it loses something in translation. It was all just a little surreal. I love Hong Kong.
I blew it though didn't I? I had been so self disciplined. I hope you got your email summaries from me written with the utmost professionalism at all hours of the day and night. But you have yet to hear about day 4, which already seems a lifetime ago. That is because Thursday evening was taken up by an early departure for Po Toi, followed by drinks in the Armani Bar, an altercation with a taxi driver and far too many hours in various bars. It’s pathetic really. And you may say that I have should have addressed Day 4 at the start of this week, but it has been a trying one involving a brief unscheduled and unwanted visit from Hen who was sent home from school for a couple of days. ‘Nuff said really. Admittedly the distracting boyfriend is, according to Hen, going to be an internationally renowned rock star in due course and so obviously is quite a catch, but at the moment I am trying to impress on her the need to focus a little more wholeheartedly on academic matters. By way of punishment for her untoward behaviour I took her on a 45 minute cross country run, set her to work shoveling copious amounts of horse manure off two large fields and made her write a 1,000 word essay entitled “In an Ideal World”. I can’t resist including one small extract…..which is a sentence at the end of a paragraph on animals which concluded “If you wanted an animal, they would not cost anything, and their poo would evaporate as soon as it comes out.”
So where were we….?
Sunday, 21 November 2010
24th August 2007
I’ve known most of you for a reasonably long time, but I’m not sure how many of you have children who are at GCSE or A level age. It could be quite a stressy period, unless, strange though it is to concede, you’ve got one like Hen. I was up in Norfolk for a couple of days holiday this week with two old family friends of ours. One of them had to drive their daughter 70 miles at the crack of dawn back down to Cambridge because she wanted to be with her school friends when she opened her GCSE results. The other’s daughter had her on-line password lined up and planned to log in on the dot at 10.00am to get her details. Finger nails chewed to the bone. Hen, it transpired had no intention of traipsing back to Rugby, nor had she come to Norfolk equipped with her log-in password or a telephone number to call. When asked how she was going to get her results ……“Why would I be in a rush to find out?” she asked. She is a frustrating child as you may have gathered, but once you get used to her….in the overall scheme of things, interestingly stress free. OK. Not too many A*’s here, but you gotta love it.
6th July, 2007
A number of less charitable and cynical souls have been leaving abusive messages alluding to my sporadic appearance in the office this week, but in fact I have been hard at work and last Friday seems about a year and half ago. During that time I have been to a performance of Dido and Aeneas at Rugby to witness Hen as a witch chasing boys about the stage with a couple of kippers in her hands. Doesn’t get much more classical than that. Wednesday was a busy day down in Wiltshire playing with shotguns and it was only a chance remark when I was down that explained why the stunningly witty joke I had been cracking - to the effect that whilst the Americans were eating turkeys we would be shooting clay pigeons - had drawn such blank stares. I’m told the 4th July is Independence Day not Thanksgiving….and I’m meant to have a global perspective! Worrying. Then Wimbledon yesterday and a life changing recommendation given to me by one of my guests to watch channel 295 on Sky. The “Horse and Country” channel. It’s fantastic. I was up till the early hours last night watching the poultry tent and egg judging at the Royal Show. The tennis was a bit of a wash out really. The incessant rain is now becoming boring. Even my 6 year old is somewhat disenchanted with this English summer. “I thought God told Noah he would stop the rain” she complained last night. This is the same child who greeted me earlier in the week with joy all over her face and the news that we were going to have a new addition to the family…. “and I’m hoping for a boy”. This was surprising for me and I hastened into the kitchen where I found Sophie with tears rolling down her cheeks. The smell of curry hung in the air and it transpired that Lottie, an inquisitive soul, had been watching the preparation of supper and asking what the various jars of spices and herbs were. After she pointed at one particular small jar Sophie told her it contained cumin seeds. “Human seeds???” said Lottie. No doubt storing all sorts of trouble for the future, Sophie simply stood there, watching in astonishment as Lottie gleefully gathered one up and rushed off to the garden to plant the younger brother she had always hoped for.
Thursday morning we had a breakfast video conference link up with the Leader of the Thai Democrat Party, Khun Abhisit Vejjajiva and Deputy Leader, Khun Korn Chatikavanij. Hopefully you saw the invitation to “Congee or Croissants with CLSA” ( catchy eh! ) I can’t tell you how complicated it was to get a supply of congee for Thursday morning, but with the help of my brilliant colleague, May Kwong, this was achieved. Pretty interesting. To my mind the key point is that these gentlemen were prepared to give us their time, but as you may be aware, I have been arguing that the market should perform well in the run up to elections and that beyond that, assuming a Democrat led coalition government, they will quickly work to restore foreign investor interest and confidence in Thailand. During the call Khun Abhisit pledged to straightaway remove the remaining capital controls imposed by the interim government, albeit he was a little more reticent on that old chestnut of foreign ownership limits. Suffice to say they will look at the Alien Business Law, but are more inclined to act to streamline the process by which foreign businesses can obtain licences to set up in Thailand. Significant investment in education and infrastructure will be a key priority of a Democrat led administration and we could expect interest rates to be cut significantly too. All in all it was an encouraging discussion although I also came away with the view that whilst the Democrats are probably still favourites to be the largest party after the next election it is not a given. They themselves target 150 seats as an “ambitious, but acheiveable” target. “So long as we get one more seat than the second largest party we’ll be happy”. Oh, and if you are Thai, the Democrats are in fund-raising mode and need your money……some things never change!
Thursday morning we had a breakfast video conference link up with the Leader of the Thai Democrat Party, Khun Abhisit Vejjajiva and Deputy Leader, Khun Korn Chatikavanij. Hopefully you saw the invitation to “Congee or Croissants with CLSA” ( catchy eh! ) I can’t tell you how complicated it was to get a supply of congee for Thursday morning, but with the help of my brilliant colleague, May Kwong, this was achieved. Pretty interesting. To my mind the key point is that these gentlemen were prepared to give us their time, but as you may be aware, I have been arguing that the market should perform well in the run up to elections and that beyond that, assuming a Democrat led coalition government, they will quickly work to restore foreign investor interest and confidence in Thailand. During the call Khun Abhisit pledged to straightaway remove the remaining capital controls imposed by the interim government, albeit he was a little more reticent on that old chestnut of foreign ownership limits. Suffice to say they will look at the Alien Business Law, but are more inclined to act to streamline the process by which foreign businesses can obtain licences to set up in Thailand. Significant investment in education and infrastructure will be a key priority of a Democrat led administration and we could expect interest rates to be cut significantly too. All in all it was an encouraging discussion although I also came away with the view that whilst the Democrats are probably still favourites to be the largest party after the next election it is not a given. They themselves target 150 seats as an “ambitious, but acheiveable” target. “So long as we get one more seat than the second largest party we’ll be happy”. Oh, and if you are Thai, the Democrats are in fund-raising mode and need your money……some things never change!
21st June, 2007
You may have wondered what Hen was up to these days. When she went back to school at the end of April I was anticipating a rich vein of stories. Oh, believe me, the stories have flowed, but alas none of them have been printable. Let’s just put it this way. If she had been working at CLSA she would have been the first to put her hand up when someone was needed for a day at the Races. The concept of a hard days work does not enter her head. On another matter, preoccupied by issues with Hen, you can imagine that Sophie was more than a little concerned when she was pulled aside by a very stern-looking Deputy Head at our son, Bob’s school earlier this week. “I’m afraid we’ve had some trouble with Bob this morning.” he began ominously. “He was discovered by the Big Tree…. ( a lovely old oak that is the focal point of the school )…..eating ants”. Confronted with this by us Bob subsequently protested that they are absolutely delicious, sweet and a little bit sour, and that he’s got nearly everyone at the school doing it now.
8th June, 2007
8th June 2007
I arrived in Thailand at the start of 1996 to take up my job with Jardine Fleming full of enthusiasm and optimistic that after two years of underperformance the market was set to rebound strongly as the current account deficit seemed to be diminishing and interest rates were falling. How wrong can you be? To be fair on myself within six weeks of arriving, with the market rallying strongly, I had visited a load of companies and realized it was all a mirage. There was just no meat to the place. Companies raised money left right and centre borrowing cheaply overseas, ploughing the funds into ill considered investments with little regard to what return might be achieved or they just put the money they had raised into high interest bearing Baht deposits in the certain knowledge that the Baht was only going to appreciate. From that point we went on the offensive and, fending off bomb threats from irate private investors objecting to our bearish story, we pounded the table urging investors to sell sell sell……though I certainly did not anticipate that by the time I left Bangkok in April 1998 the SET would have fallen 90% in US$ terms during my tenure. It was a terrific if not particularly profitable experience.
Chris Wood, in his latest Greed & Fear, which is attached below portrays an appropriately cynical assessment of Thailand’s prospects. Appropriate in the sense that Thailand is certainly not out of the woods given all that yet has to be done to progress towards a new constitution and fresh elections. Also in the sense that even beyond that there are some enormous problems that Thailand needs to address, not least – at the risk of sounding incredibly patronizing – the enormous gap between the haves and the have nots both in economic and educational terms, things that simply have not changed a jot since my time in Thailand. But here’s my view, purely from a stock market perspective. There is not going to be any significant violence. The new constitution will be passed. Elections will proceed by the end of the year and the Democrats will end up with the Premiership ( whilst Thaksin will have to content himself with Man City…what a joke ) and a majority of Cabinet positions. All this is going to be very positive for the stock market and after that there will be another kicker when the new Ministers get on with the job of sorting out Thailand’s problems. Back in 1996 within days of arriving in Thailand, my first job was to write a speech for the then Minister of Finance, Dr. Surakiat Sathirathai, that he was due to present to potential foreign investors. It almost defies belief actually, but it is true. I wish I had kept a copy. It must have been dreadful! Yet he presented it, virtually word for word. Although I havn’t investigated this I suspect that the very doctor is one of the 111 executive committee members that has been banned from politics for five years.
The next Thai Finance Minister, I wouldn’t mind betting, will be my old boss, Korn Chatikavanij and when he and his contemparies get their mandate they will not be coming to some naïve 33 year old foreigner to write their story. He is extremely articulate and able. I’m not saying they will succeed in turning Thailand into an economic power-house, but they will give it a go and if politics can matter some times in markets, then you should be in there for the ride. I would follow Chris Wood down to Thailand, but even though he may accuse me of succumbing to spin, I would slip more than the 1% he has into your Asian regional portfolios. Banks, property and exporters.
No Bits & Pieces this week. Damian is on holidays….some people….what a life eh. I suppose I need to concede that the absence of a Bhodi Tree uttering last Friday was because that whilst I was in the office in body, I wasn’t really in spirit, the effect of a stag-party for one of my colleagues the evening before which took its toll. After that admission I can surely be allowed a little bit of self praise. For a change, I have remembered in time to be armed with a present and a card, that next Monday is my 19th wedding anniversary. The present, if I can rely on you not to spill the beans, is a lovely flowery hand shovel which Sophie will be able to use to pick up our new puppy’s messes and the card I thought was particularly apt given our rapid descent into bankruptcy following our house purchase. A picture of a happy looking couple with the caption, “Darren had decided not to report his stolen credit card since the thief was spending considerably less on it than his wife did”.
I arrived in Thailand at the start of 1996 to take up my job with Jardine Fleming full of enthusiasm and optimistic that after two years of underperformance the market was set to rebound strongly as the current account deficit seemed to be diminishing and interest rates were falling. How wrong can you be? To be fair on myself within six weeks of arriving, with the market rallying strongly, I had visited a load of companies and realized it was all a mirage. There was just no meat to the place. Companies raised money left right and centre borrowing cheaply overseas, ploughing the funds into ill considered investments with little regard to what return might be achieved or they just put the money they had raised into high interest bearing Baht deposits in the certain knowledge that the Baht was only going to appreciate. From that point we went on the offensive and, fending off bomb threats from irate private investors objecting to our bearish story, we pounded the table urging investors to sell sell sell……though I certainly did not anticipate that by the time I left Bangkok in April 1998 the SET would have fallen 90% in US$ terms during my tenure. It was a terrific if not particularly profitable experience.
Chris Wood, in his latest Greed & Fear, which is attached below portrays an appropriately cynical assessment of Thailand’s prospects. Appropriate in the sense that Thailand is certainly not out of the woods given all that yet has to be done to progress towards a new constitution and fresh elections. Also in the sense that even beyond that there are some enormous problems that Thailand needs to address, not least – at the risk of sounding incredibly patronizing – the enormous gap between the haves and the have nots both in economic and educational terms, things that simply have not changed a jot since my time in Thailand. But here’s my view, purely from a stock market perspective. There is not going to be any significant violence. The new constitution will be passed. Elections will proceed by the end of the year and the Democrats will end up with the Premiership ( whilst Thaksin will have to content himself with Man City…what a joke ) and a majority of Cabinet positions. All this is going to be very positive for the stock market and after that there will be another kicker when the new Ministers get on with the job of sorting out Thailand’s problems. Back in 1996 within days of arriving in Thailand, my first job was to write a speech for the then Minister of Finance, Dr. Surakiat Sathirathai, that he was due to present to potential foreign investors. It almost defies belief actually, but it is true. I wish I had kept a copy. It must have been dreadful! Yet he presented it, virtually word for word. Although I havn’t investigated this I suspect that the very doctor is one of the 111 executive committee members that has been banned from politics for five years.
The next Thai Finance Minister, I wouldn’t mind betting, will be my old boss, Korn Chatikavanij and when he and his contemparies get their mandate they will not be coming to some naïve 33 year old foreigner to write their story. He is extremely articulate and able. I’m not saying they will succeed in turning Thailand into an economic power-house, but they will give it a go and if politics can matter some times in markets, then you should be in there for the ride. I would follow Chris Wood down to Thailand, but even though he may accuse me of succumbing to spin, I would slip more than the 1% he has into your Asian regional portfolios. Banks, property and exporters.
No Bits & Pieces this week. Damian is on holidays….some people….what a life eh. I suppose I need to concede that the absence of a Bhodi Tree uttering last Friday was because that whilst I was in the office in body, I wasn’t really in spirit, the effect of a stag-party for one of my colleagues the evening before which took its toll. After that admission I can surely be allowed a little bit of self praise. For a change, I have remembered in time to be armed with a present and a card, that next Monday is my 19th wedding anniversary. The present, if I can rely on you not to spill the beans, is a lovely flowery hand shovel which Sophie will be able to use to pick up our new puppy’s messes and the card I thought was particularly apt given our rapid descent into bankruptcy following our house purchase. A picture of a happy looking couple with the caption, “Darren had decided not to report his stolen credit card since the thief was spending considerably less on it than his wife did”.
25th May, 2007
One of the reasons I write about Hen so often is that for the last two or three years we havn't had chickens. Long suffering readers of my weekly will possibly recall this was a previously a recurring theme of mine. Well happy happy day….We are the owners of a new flock, inherited, along with a rather mangy looking cat, when we moved into our new house. Having your own hens, some of you may know is an emotional roller coaster. Mine would invariably be picked off by foxes, or go off the lay and have to be popped into a casserole dish. We had several cockerels whose role, in part, was to defend the hens in the event of an attack. One of them was called Travis. A fine, strutting specimen, as was the pop star he was named after, he was found one morning perched shakily in a tree, his entire clutch of hens having been decimated by a fox overnight. He was rechristened, “Chicken”. Anyway, my son Bob has embraced chicken ownership, not as a source of fairly asinine stories, but as a going commercial concern. Frankly though this has been one long source of angst. From the moment his revenue projections were blown to bits by the realization that eggs sold at £1 a dozen rather than per 6, to being told that he would have to pay for chicken food, that the family would be expecting to eat a good proportion of the eggs laid and that he would have to buy the hens….he has had a harsh introduction to capitalism. And to rub salt ( and pepper ) into the wounds, yesterday evening he arrived at our back door in tears and with egg yolk and shell dripping down his legs. He had put his precious collection of 3 eggs – the entire days lay – in his trouser pockets before running back to the house to flog them at the front gate. He’ll make a stock broker.
18th May 2007
I know this reflects very badly on me but there's a guy on my train who has been really irritating me for months now. Such a pain. He conducts loud and banal telephone conversations about work all the way from Kings Cross to Cambridge. But how sad is this? On Wednesday there was obviously a storm brewing at his office that was threatening his weekend. “Well I'm sorry, but it's my daughters wedding on Saturday and my wife will kill me if I am not around.” A man with priority problems I thought to myself. Then yesterday, two days before his daughter’s big day, I find myself sitting next to him once again and notice that he's engrossed with some sheets printed off a website. Expert over the shoulder reader that I am, I discover that he is reading examples of wedding speeches from a website called Hitched obviously in a frantic, last-minute source of inspiration. I’m not making this up….the attached link will take you to the very one, at least judging from the copious highlighting of passages that he was doing, that he is basing most of his speech on…..Lucky girl. What a Dad.
http://www.hitched.co.uk/speeches/examples/sp_example.asp?id=1741&num=3
http://www.hitched.co.uk/speeches/examples/sp_example.asp?id=1741&num=3
4th May 2007
4th May 2007
I am a very relaxed person today. This is despite the fact that I am sitting waiting for our lawyer to ring to tell me that we have completed on the purchase of our house and that I am now broke. Fact is I have rarely been more stressed than I was yesterday, ahead of a charity fund-raising “X-Factor” event at our children’s school last night. Nine year old son, Bob, had cast aside an invitation to sing “We’re all going on a summer holiday” with three other boys in the auditions, preferring instead to shoot for fame on his own with a rendition of the Kaiser Chief’s hit, “Saturday”. For those of you who don’t know the song I have pasted the words at the bottom of this email. It is fast and furious, moderately inappropriate and his plan was to do it with no backing music….just little old him with a kitchen whisk in his hand in place of a microphone. Horror of horrors he was selected for the finals and so faced the prospect of performing on stage in front of a crowd of 200 or so teachers, pupils and parents. He seemed fairly calm about things. When he told his mother, after his success in the auditions, to stop talking about it, she thought it was because he was sick with nervousness. “Oh no”, he said “I don’t want people to think I’m boasting.” It was Sophie and I who were the nervous wrecks imagining him freezing up as he realized what an horrific thing he had set himself. The confidence of youth. Mind you his equanimity was somewhat challenged after his ( occasionally faltering ) act, when “Sharon Osbourne”, asked to comment on his performance, described him as cute. With a look of thunder on his face, he left the stage at speed.
I am a very relaxed person today. This is despite the fact that I am sitting waiting for our lawyer to ring to tell me that we have completed on the purchase of our house and that I am now broke. Fact is I have rarely been more stressed than I was yesterday, ahead of a charity fund-raising “X-Factor” event at our children’s school last night. Nine year old son, Bob, had cast aside an invitation to sing “We’re all going on a summer holiday” with three other boys in the auditions, preferring instead to shoot for fame on his own with a rendition of the Kaiser Chief’s hit, “Saturday”. For those of you who don’t know the song I have pasted the words at the bottom of this email. It is fast and furious, moderately inappropriate and his plan was to do it with no backing music….just little old him with a kitchen whisk in his hand in place of a microphone. Horror of horrors he was selected for the finals and so faced the prospect of performing on stage in front of a crowd of 200 or so teachers, pupils and parents. He seemed fairly calm about things. When he told his mother, after his success in the auditions, to stop talking about it, she thought it was because he was sick with nervousness. “Oh no”, he said “I don’t want people to think I’m boasting.” It was Sophie and I who were the nervous wrecks imagining him freezing up as he realized what an horrific thing he had set himself. The confidence of youth. Mind you his equanimity was somewhat challenged after his ( occasionally faltering ) act, when “Sharon Osbourne”, asked to comment on his performance, described him as cute. With a look of thunder on his face, he left the stage at speed.
15th March 2007
15th March 2007
It has been a while since I last had much excitement on the train home. It used to be a regular source of mild entertainment, albeit not always for me. There was the time I was assaulted at Tottenham Hale for example. A distant memory. The impromptu wake with the beautiful girl and the bottle whisky on the midnight train to Cambridge was almost as long ago, but remains fresh in my mind! And whilst I am regularily sought out by drunk Scotsmen on the Underground even this hadn't happened for a while. It was back to normal service on Tuesday evening though. I should have been a bit more alert really. The can of Carlsberg Extra Strong that was kicked out of the carriage onto the platform as I waited to board the train was a slight giveaway and there was a distinct whiff of beer in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, in I went, the doors closed and the singing began. "Is this the way to Amarillo" warbled a bedraggled looking old man with a distinctly Scottish accent belying the floppy green hat with a shamrock on it that he was wearing. Inevitably he chose me - of all the people in the carriage - to ask to dance with him. I was very restrained and declined resolutely. This caused him to launch into a bizarre tirade against insider dealers and as I left him at Kings Cross he was yelling "There's only one Nick Leeson" at the top of his voice as if he knew about the part I played in Barings' downfall.
Brief Hen update. She excelled herself this week missing the first part of one of her GCSE exams ( appropriately enough, a drama practical ). I can’t bring myself to tell you what caused this fairly crucial slip up. Oh, all right…..polo practice.
It has been a while since I last had much excitement on the train home. It used to be a regular source of mild entertainment, albeit not always for me. There was the time I was assaulted at Tottenham Hale for example. A distant memory. The impromptu wake with the beautiful girl and the bottle whisky on the midnight train to Cambridge was almost as long ago, but remains fresh in my mind! And whilst I am regularily sought out by drunk Scotsmen on the Underground even this hadn't happened for a while. It was back to normal service on Tuesday evening though. I should have been a bit more alert really. The can of Carlsberg Extra Strong that was kicked out of the carriage onto the platform as I waited to board the train was a slight giveaway and there was a distinct whiff of beer in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, in I went, the doors closed and the singing began. "Is this the way to Amarillo" warbled a bedraggled looking old man with a distinctly Scottish accent belying the floppy green hat with a shamrock on it that he was wearing. Inevitably he chose me - of all the people in the carriage - to ask to dance with him. I was very restrained and declined resolutely. This caused him to launch into a bizarre tirade against insider dealers and as I left him at Kings Cross he was yelling "There's only one Nick Leeson" at the top of his voice as if he knew about the part I played in Barings' downfall.
Brief Hen update. She excelled herself this week missing the first part of one of her GCSE exams ( appropriately enough, a drama practical ). I can’t bring myself to tell you what caused this fairly crucial slip up. Oh, all right…..polo practice.
23rd February, 2007
23rd Feb 2007
Spent last week in Wengen, Switzerland. Even with limited snow it was not without its excitement. Do you know anyone who’s accident prone? I thought I was till this happened…..Felix, the 9 year old son of the friends we were skiing with, is a reasonably adventurous fellow. When he was 5 he was once found underneath his father’s Mercedes having got the jack out of the boot and used it to raise the car a foot and a half off the ground. Anyway, he survived that relatively unscathed even if the car didn’t, but attempting a 360 degree turn off a jump following my son and their instructor down a slope last week he pole-axed himself and had to be helicoptered off the mountain. He spent a night in Interlaken hospital, but happily was released the following afternoon having been found to have suffered “only” severe concussion. His father was given strict instructions by the doctor that there was to be no TV or computer use, absolutely no skiing and indeed no games of any sort for three weeks. Felix could remember nothing of the accident or, much to his regret, the helicopter trip. Quietly does it was the mantra. That evening we all wandered along to the Downhill Only Club where I collected my trophy for winning the Polytechnic Touring Cup giant slalom race ( thought I would slip that in….photos available at a price on request ), but it was a tedious affair really for two 9 year old boys and when my son Bob spotted that there was an ice-hockey game going on in the ice-rink just across the way they were given permission to go over and watch on the strict understanding, no running around….quietly quietly. Ten minutes later the door of the Downhill Only Club opened and in came Bob and Felix, the latter clutching his head and sobbing furiously. He’d been hit above the right eye, where an enormous throbbing bruise now stood, by a flying puck smacked with some force, presumably, by some brute of an ice-hockey player. How ridiculous is that? Felix, appropriately named, has used up quite a few of his nine lives.
Spent last week in Wengen, Switzerland. Even with limited snow it was not without its excitement. Do you know anyone who’s accident prone? I thought I was till this happened…..Felix, the 9 year old son of the friends we were skiing with, is a reasonably adventurous fellow. When he was 5 he was once found underneath his father’s Mercedes having got the jack out of the boot and used it to raise the car a foot and a half off the ground. Anyway, he survived that relatively unscathed even if the car didn’t, but attempting a 360 degree turn off a jump following my son and their instructor down a slope last week he pole-axed himself and had to be helicoptered off the mountain. He spent a night in Interlaken hospital, but happily was released the following afternoon having been found to have suffered “only” severe concussion. His father was given strict instructions by the doctor that there was to be no TV or computer use, absolutely no skiing and indeed no games of any sort for three weeks. Felix could remember nothing of the accident or, much to his regret, the helicopter trip. Quietly does it was the mantra. That evening we all wandered along to the Downhill Only Club where I collected my trophy for winning the Polytechnic Touring Cup giant slalom race ( thought I would slip that in….photos available at a price on request ), but it was a tedious affair really for two 9 year old boys and when my son Bob spotted that there was an ice-hockey game going on in the ice-rink just across the way they were given permission to go over and watch on the strict understanding, no running around….quietly quietly. Ten minutes later the door of the Downhill Only Club opened and in came Bob and Felix, the latter clutching his head and sobbing furiously. He’d been hit above the right eye, where an enormous throbbing bruise now stood, by a flying puck smacked with some force, presumably, by some brute of an ice-hockey player. How ridiculous is that? Felix, appropriately named, has used up quite a few of his nine lives.
9th February, 2007
Friday 9th February………rings a bell. Oh sugar…it’s Sophie’s birthday. Help! Actually it’s not as bad as it seems. I had remembered and bought what I think is a really lovely present. Boys, let me know if you need any ideas. Unfortunately what I had forgotten was to buy a something for each of the children to give their mother. Hen, I have no doubt, will have fabricated some rubbish in woodwork classes. Jimmy had bought something herself. She’s the second child and very conscientious. Bob is giving Mum a Mulberry key ring in the shape of a Daschund dog that I had bought as a little extra. But Lottie, our 6 year old, had failed to come up with anything, hopeless case that she is. No worries. Talk about using your initiative. Under a pile of Decanter magazines and dressage instruction booklets, I found a virtually untouched Dick Francis novel, the inside front cover of which is now scribbled on in Lottie’s fair hand and which may just fool the old dear.
2nd February 2007
2nd Feb 2007
You havn’t had an update on Hen for a few weeks. The truth is things havn’t been running entirely smoothly in the coop – Hen’s world. Don’t get me wrong. The long term plan which features a dashing Argentinian polo-player and a blissful life on an estancia is firmly in place, but her year didn’t get off to a great start when she forgot to take her uniform back to school and I sense it has been a struggle since then. I have just received an email from her (see below) having berated her for falling foul of the authorities yet again. She returned to her house 25 minutes after curfew her excuse apparently that she had been counseling (not consoling ) a boy who had just been “dumped” by his girl-friend. Punishment for this was being “gated”. Whilst everyone else is out enjoying the delights of Rugby town centre Henrietta has to stay in her house, time that should really be spent catching up on schoolwork or reading Jane Austen novels. “Gation” is not a term I have found in the OED, but I presume it is a word invented by Hen meaning “the state of being gated”.
(gation is not good for me... ive taken to tidying peoples wardrobes, talking to myself and sorting out peoples earrings!) xxxxxxxxxx
You havn’t had an update on Hen for a few weeks. The truth is things havn’t been running entirely smoothly in the coop – Hen’s world. Don’t get me wrong. The long term plan which features a dashing Argentinian polo-player and a blissful life on an estancia is firmly in place, but her year didn’t get off to a great start when she forgot to take her uniform back to school and I sense it has been a struggle since then. I have just received an email from her (see below) having berated her for falling foul of the authorities yet again. She returned to her house 25 minutes after curfew her excuse apparently that she had been counseling (not consoling ) a boy who had just been “dumped” by his girl-friend. Punishment for this was being “gated”. Whilst everyone else is out enjoying the delights of Rugby town centre Henrietta has to stay in her house, time that should really be spent catching up on schoolwork or reading Jane Austen novels. “Gation” is not a term I have found in the OED, but I presume it is a word invented by Hen meaning “the state of being gated”.
(gation is not good for me... ive taken to tidying peoples wardrobes, talking to myself and sorting out peoples earrings!) xxxxxxxxxx
26th January 2007
26th Jan 2007
Moving swiftly on, weekends don’t quite hold the appeal they used to for me. This no-alcohol thing is getting tiresome. However, looking on the bright side the Sandison family are delighted to have a new arrival – 19 in fact - which should ensure hours of entertainment. Such was the intense excitement surrounding this latest adventure that I was forced to chase the people who were delivering the little beauties to us….see their email response below. As I said to the kind person, Bob’s godfather, who gave him Antworks, a transparent box full of strange translucent blue gel into which the ants tunnel, what is this strange world into which we have entered? “Exceptionally high demand”??? For ants????
From: ants@breezily.co.uk [mailto:ants@breezily.co.uk]
Sent: 18 January 2007 19:05
To: David Sandison, CLSA
Subject: Re: 6BM841016C937982H
Thanks for your email.
We can confirm receipt of your order which is in processing.
As stated on the website orders may take up to 10 *working* days under normal circumstances.
However, there is exceptionally high demand at the moment which is causing delays in addition to the usual delivery time.
You should receive your ants within the next week when we are able to send you enough ants to ensure you receive a good sized batch (we always try to send as many ants as possible).
We apologise for any inconvenience this temporary unforeseeable exceptionally high demand may have caused and thank you for your understanding and patience.
Thanks,
The team at Breezily.co.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
info@breezily.co.uk
http://antworks.breezily.co.uk/
P.S. The ants arrived in a test-tube through our letter box although, sad to say, 6 were DOA and one more died shortly afterwards when it got stuck trying to squeeze through a minute air hole in the Antworks box.
Moving swiftly on, weekends don’t quite hold the appeal they used to for me. This no-alcohol thing is getting tiresome. However, looking on the bright side the Sandison family are delighted to have a new arrival – 19 in fact - which should ensure hours of entertainment. Such was the intense excitement surrounding this latest adventure that I was forced to chase the people who were delivering the little beauties to us….see their email response below. As I said to the kind person, Bob’s godfather, who gave him Antworks, a transparent box full of strange translucent blue gel into which the ants tunnel, what is this strange world into which we have entered? “Exceptionally high demand”??? For ants????
From: ants@breezily.co.uk [mailto:ants@breezily.co.uk]
Sent: 18 January 2007 19:05
To: David Sandison, CLSA
Subject: Re: 6BM841016C937982H
Thanks for your email.
We can confirm receipt of your order which is in processing.
As stated on the website orders may take up to 10 *working* days under normal circumstances.
However, there is exceptionally high demand at the moment which is causing delays in addition to the usual delivery time.
You should receive your ants within the next week when we are able to send you enough ants to ensure you receive a good sized batch (we always try to send as many ants as possible).
We apologise for any inconvenience this temporary unforeseeable exceptionally high demand may have caused and thank you for your understanding and patience.
Thanks,
The team at Breezily.co.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
info@breezily.co.uk
http://antworks.breezily.co.uk/
P.S. The ants arrived in a test-tube through our letter box although, sad to say, 6 were DOA and one more died shortly afterwards when it got stuck trying to squeeze through a minute air hole in the Antworks box.
5th January 2007
5th Jan 2007
Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. Ours was not without its trying moments. Surprisingly these were not especially provided by the dreaded Hen. I was in the office between Christmas and New Year, but you probably didn’t notice. It is fair to say that I was otherwise engaged, he writes with refreshing honesty. You may find it surprising to hear that the smash hit present that any Sandison child received this Christmas was a £3.50 twig pencil catapault that Father Christmas placed in 9 year old son Bob’s stocking. Nothing anyone else received came close to registering the excitement that this rather innocuous gift provided one small boy. Sad to say the pencil lasted a day and a half before he took it round to a friend’ house and their dog chewed it to bits. Complete disaster. Quietly confident that I knew where Father Christmas had sourced this instrument I promised a replacement, but unfortunately the place I had bought it from had run out. So, manning the desk in the office, I embarked on a frantic two day search on the net before stumbling on a site managed by the appropriately named Mr. Plant who works with wood and lives in Worcester. He listened to my sorry tale and joy of joys, the very next day a package arrived with an infinitely superior pencil catapult, inscribed with Bob’s name. This one survived two days before being lost on a beach in Norfolk. Children……aaaaagh. And I can’t even resort to drink.
Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. Ours was not without its trying moments. Surprisingly these were not especially provided by the dreaded Hen. I was in the office between Christmas and New Year, but you probably didn’t notice. It is fair to say that I was otherwise engaged, he writes with refreshing honesty. You may find it surprising to hear that the smash hit present that any Sandison child received this Christmas was a £3.50 twig pencil catapault that Father Christmas placed in 9 year old son Bob’s stocking. Nothing anyone else received came close to registering the excitement that this rather innocuous gift provided one small boy. Sad to say the pencil lasted a day and a half before he took it round to a friend’ house and their dog chewed it to bits. Complete disaster. Quietly confident that I knew where Father Christmas had sourced this instrument I promised a replacement, but unfortunately the place I had bought it from had run out. So, manning the desk in the office, I embarked on a frantic two day search on the net before stumbling on a site managed by the appropriately named Mr. Plant who works with wood and lives in Worcester. He listened to my sorry tale and joy of joys, the very next day a package arrived with an infinitely superior pencil catapult, inscribed with Bob’s name. This one survived two days before being lost on a beach in Norfolk. Children……aaaaagh. And I can’t even resort to drink.
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