I wish I were a manager
With umpteen quid a year,
What a glorious life with a handsome wife
And never a boss to fear.
With unlimited powers and no fixed hours
And never a care to muster
(To go out and night and come back when it's light
Is an old managerial dastur).
With a bungalow like an old chateau
And a most expensive car,
A blooming toff with all day off
For that is what managers are.
Love it!
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Thursday 1st December, 2011
After a little break from this as gardening leave was a wee bit mundane I thought I would update.....sitting on a verandah of Summerville Lodge overlooking Castlereagh Lake up in the Hill Country of Sri Lanka. It is close to perfection. We flew out of Heathrow on Tuesday evening down the back of Sri Lanka Airways which was fairly grim and got straight into a car at Colombo Airport for a 4 hour journey to the Lodge. It was worth doing the journey in one go and the drive was a good way to get a feel for the place. Later in the season you can get a seaplane which wisks you here in a jiffy I suppose. Anyway, the place is idyllic. We got up this morning and after sumptuous breakfast set off on a walk through the tea plantation behind our bungalow. Totally beautiful. The temperature was heaven and we wandered round the 9 km trail in 1.5 hours. Sad old boy that I am I then went and ran the same trail much to the surprise of the ladies picking tea with whom we had exchanged greetings shortly beforehand! Quick game of croquet after lunch ( don't ask the result ) and now a title siesta before heading into Hatton to buy pepper and tea. This is the life.
Monday, 7 November 2011
Monday 7th November, 2011
Had my first days hunting for ages, but its the way to do it. Wandered down to Horseheath, picked up Murphy the horse at 10.30am, all tacked up and ready from lovely Sarah and off I went. Buzzed around Horseheath for a while doing a lot of jumps including one which may well appear in that most noted of publications, "Hound" magazine, whose photographer was following us for the day. If it does it will show me flying over a hedge, out of control, one handed and with a look of complete terror on my face. I stayed out to the bitter end - just after 4pm - and I doubt I will be able to walk the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow was meant to be my trip to Snowdon, but I think I will have to put that on hold.
Saturday, 5 November 2011
Saturday 5th November, 2011
Kings Fireworks last night were as grim as anticipated but at least over and done with quickly enough.
Talking of which, I've just come in from a 20 minute conversation with Gully, Lottie's pony, who thinks the same about fireworks as I do.
Anyway, you will want to know how I got on shooting today. My hours at the clay pigeon range helped a little albeit I had to apologise to one of the pickers up on the second drive as my language was just a bit too fruity after missing my fourth consecutive phezzie. Things improved after that though and I had the satisfaction of picking one off in front of Max's nose. V pleasing. And what's more Nigel Gambier gave me a lift up to Bosworth this morning so my lunch was washed down with copious amounts of white, red and a couple of glasses of port and I shot beautifully after that.....allowing for a little alcohol induced exageration.
Now, a strange situation this evening. Just Sophie and me, home alone on a Saturday evening. What bliss eh.
Talking of which, I've just come in from a 20 minute conversation with Gully, Lottie's pony, who thinks the same about fireworks as I do.
Anyway, you will want to know how I got on shooting today. My hours at the clay pigeon range helped a little albeit I had to apologise to one of the pickers up on the second drive as my language was just a bit too fruity after missing my fourth consecutive phezzie. Things improved after that though and I had the satisfaction of picking one off in front of Max's nose. V pleasing. And what's more Nigel Gambier gave me a lift up to Bosworth this morning so my lunch was washed down with copious amounts of white, red and a couple of glasses of port and I shot beautifully after that.....allowing for a little alcohol induced exageration.
Now, a strange situation this evening. Just Sophie and me, home alone on a Saturday evening. What bliss eh.
Friday, 4 November 2011
Friday 4th November, 2011
I think I have managed to sell our horse-walker, a large round metal and rubber monstrosity, on Ebay. How about that?! The great thing is, if the guy is true to his word and comes and collects it early next week, a space will have been cleared for me to start my gardening leave properly and create a vegetable plot. Too exciting for words.
When I set off at 10am to take Mum to Peterborough station for her train north there was a plumber, electrician, builder and gardener all parked at our house. There is a disconcerting side to gardening leave. What are all these men doing for Sophie?? Ignorance is bliss.
I have hatched a plan to drive over to Snowdon one of these days and run up to the top. When to fit it in though? So much to do. Anyway that was the incentive needed to drag myself out for a 9 mile run this afternoon followed by a 45 min dog walk. Twiggie caught a squirrel. I took a photo of the two of them and emailed it to Bob. He'll be thrilled.
If ever I wanted it to bucket with rain it is tonight. Kings College School fireworks evening. Next to Halloween close to being my worst evening of the year. Oooooh, aaaaaah and sugar crazed children running around in the dark screaming.
Tomorrow I'm off shooting so we will see if my trips to the clay pigeon centre at Lakenheath have paid off. I think I must admit to being not entirely sure that they have done much good really.
When I set off at 10am to take Mum to Peterborough station for her train north there was a plumber, electrician, builder and gardener all parked at our house. There is a disconcerting side to gardening leave. What are all these men doing for Sophie?? Ignorance is bliss.
I have hatched a plan to drive over to Snowdon one of these days and run up to the top. When to fit it in though? So much to do. Anyway that was the incentive needed to drag myself out for a 9 mile run this afternoon followed by a 45 min dog walk. Twiggie caught a squirrel. I took a photo of the two of them and emailed it to Bob. He'll be thrilled.
If ever I wanted it to bucket with rain it is tonight. Kings College School fireworks evening. Next to Halloween close to being my worst evening of the year. Oooooh, aaaaaah and sugar crazed children running around in the dark screaming.
Tomorrow I'm off shooting so we will see if my trips to the clay pigeon centre at Lakenheath have paid off. I think I must admit to being not entirely sure that they have done much good really.
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Thursday 3rd November, 2011
Shame on me two fold. Didn't write anything yesterday and today when I might have been able to tell you all about the new Mike Leigh play "Grief" that Sophie, Mum and I were intending to go and see this evening, I have to confess that we were running a little late, my home made pizza's were not quite ready and it started to rain bucket loads so we binned the idea and stayed at home.
Anyway it had been a busy day. I have booked flights to Sri Lanka for a few weeks time. Chennai is the capital of Sri Lanka isn't it?? Should be lovely.
Other than that I have got to know a funny little man in the village who walks his dog all day long. In the last four days I have passed him four times. Once I was running, once in the Polo, the third day I was in the Porsche ( roof down ) and today riding River with Gully in hand. I think he considers me a funny little man also.
Hen's photos appeared in December edition of "Tatler" alongside those of Hugo Burnand. Fame indeed.
Anyway it had been a busy day. I have booked flights to Sri Lanka for a few weeks time. Chennai is the capital of Sri Lanka isn't it?? Should be lovely.
Other than that I have got to know a funny little man in the village who walks his dog all day long. In the last four days I have passed him four times. Once I was running, once in the Polo, the third day I was in the Porsche ( roof down ) and today riding River with Gully in hand. I think he considers me a funny little man also.
Hen's photos appeared in December edition of "Tatler" alongside those of Hugo Burnand. Fame indeed.
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Tuesday 1st November, 2011
Hope not too many people are reading this pile of rubbish. Really not doing much in the way of inspiration at the moment! Don't get me wrong. Blissfully happy. My day reads as follows: up at 6.15am.....pootled about.....ran to the Post Office to hand in a parcel and then on to complete a 6 miler.....pootled a bit more...took dogs for a walk......went into Cambridge. Had lunch at Jamie's with Mum and Sophie....bought a pair of cords.....watched Lottie's tennis lesson.....came home....had a glass or two of Pinot Grigio....watched TV....went to bed.
In between all of this I noted Nomura's diabolical financial results and had a couple of text message exchanges with former colleagues who are not having a lot of fun at the moment.
In between all of this I noted Nomura's diabolical financial results and had a couple of text message exchanges with former colleagues who are not having a lot of fun at the moment.
Monday, 31 October 2011
Monday 31st October, 2011
Last day of half term. V little to report. Quiet one really. I did the school run to Rugby in the evening which involved a lot of singing - to Beyonce mainly - on the way and listening to Radio 4 on the way back.
Mum arrived from Scotland by train with lots of jars of marmalade.....which look quite runny tbh.
PS Hen has moved her blog site to : hensandisonphotography.tumblr.com
Mum arrived from Scotland by train with lots of jars of marmalade.....which look quite runny tbh.
PS Hen has moved her blog site to : hensandisonphotography.tumblr.com
Sunday, 30 October 2011
Sunday 30th October, 2011
Clocks back. Extra hour in bed but who needs that these days? I was up and about as per, and busy making two tomato and cheese tarts by 8am. They turned out to be pretty disastrous, but my bread, which I also rustled up this morning and we had for lunch, was a triumph.
Quiet old day really. Will, Bob and I dismantled a large and unsightly "jump" we had previously erected in one of the fields with yours truly contributing the brains and the other two the brawn. Otherwise we all pootled about digging out pumpkins, trying to pretend Sophie's pumpkin soup was delicious and planning what I should do in the next three months. Will thinks either climb Mt Kilimanjaro or go on a polo course to Argentina, but that kite surfing is a non starter. Prob right.
Bob and I went for a run in the afternoon and, oh joy, were spotted by Mark Johnston as we thundered up his hill. Pose value.
Darkness at 5.00pm. Bunkering down with a fire, a bottle of Jurancon Sec and for the first time ever I am looking forward to Downton Abbey at 9.00pm without the stress of needing to be in bed by 10.
Quiet old day really. Will, Bob and I dismantled a large and unsightly "jump" we had previously erected in one of the fields with yours truly contributing the brains and the other two the brawn. Otherwise we all pootled about digging out pumpkins, trying to pretend Sophie's pumpkin soup was delicious and planning what I should do in the next three months. Will thinks either climb Mt Kilimanjaro or go on a polo course to Argentina, but that kite surfing is a non starter. Prob right.
Bob and I went for a run in the afternoon and, oh joy, were spotted by Mark Johnston as we thundered up his hill. Pose value.
Darkness at 5.00pm. Bunkering down with a fire, a bottle of Jurancon Sec and for the first time ever I am looking forward to Downton Abbey at 9.00pm without the stress of needing to be in bed by 10.
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Saturday 29th October, 2011
It's late. But I set out to do this daily so a quick one to record the day. Went cub-hunting this morning. Borrowed Murphy from Sarah Burton and actually hoping I might see a bit more of him over the next few months. OK, so I needed a lead from Bob over a hedge but lovely horse and was good to be out even though cub-hunting is a dull old game really. Not worth getting up at 6.00am and running around frantically get ready for if truth be told, other than the fact that, if I hadn't told you already, I don't have an early start on Monday!
So got back from that and then went into Newmarket to pick Jimmy up from the station and give Archie a lift home.
Will, Debbie, Ella and Martha arrived and had a lovely afternoon with them and dinner of lasagne. Gorged myself with Celebrations and planned jollies including polo lessons in Argentina. Worth thinking about that.
Night night!
So got back from that and then went into Newmarket to pick Jimmy up from the station and give Archie a lift home.
Will, Debbie, Ella and Martha arrived and had a lovely afternoon with them and dinner of lasagne. Gorged myself with Celebrations and planned jollies including polo lessons in Argentina. Worth thinking about that.
Night night!
Friday, 28 October 2011
Friday 28th October, 2011
Phew. TGIF. Oh so droll.
Bob and I had hatched a plan to go for a run at 7.00am this morning so impressed was I by my performance yesterday, but it was not to be. Actually didn't manage a run at any point of the day. However, the big big news is that I can shoot - clays, at least. We went up to Lakenheath and if I tell you that Bob conceded I was pretty good, praise from a 14 year old trying to outdo me every step of the way.....well....you must know I was hot. Yeee haaa.
Apart from that, the sheep escaped from their field this morning which got me thinking it must be about time for them to go chop chop.
Our shower room and bath rooms have been finished and I am considerably lighter in the wallet. And, at long last, I have managed to secure some passport photos of Bob. Fittingly we managed to find a photo booth in Newmarket's grim shopping arcade where Bob's "bad boy cut" in his eyelid didn't cause anyone to take a second look. Personally I don't think people with such ridiculous eyebrows should be allowed a passport and I told Bob as much.
Handed over £5,000 in a brown envelope to our builder in Waitrose car park. That did get a second look.
A busy old day obviously. Cub hunting tomorrow so early night.
Bob and I had hatched a plan to go for a run at 7.00am this morning so impressed was I by my performance yesterday, but it was not to be. Actually didn't manage a run at any point of the day. However, the big big news is that I can shoot - clays, at least. We went up to Lakenheath and if I tell you that Bob conceded I was pretty good, praise from a 14 year old trying to outdo me every step of the way.....well....you must know I was hot. Yeee haaa.
Apart from that, the sheep escaped from their field this morning which got me thinking it must be about time for them to go chop chop.
Our shower room and bath rooms have been finished and I am considerably lighter in the wallet. And, at long last, I have managed to secure some passport photos of Bob. Fittingly we managed to find a photo booth in Newmarket's grim shopping arcade where Bob's "bad boy cut" in his eyelid didn't cause anyone to take a second look. Personally I don't think people with such ridiculous eyebrows should be allowed a passport and I told Bob as much.
Handed over £5,000 in a brown envelope to our builder in Waitrose car park. That did get a second look.
A busy old day obviously. Cub hunting tomorrow so early night.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Thursday 27th October, 2011
Up at 7.00am. Felt quite chuffed about that for most of the day. If I'd wanted to I could have dialled in for the morning meeting. Sophie was heading off to London to meet up with Jimmy and a major shopping expedition. My tasks for the day were:
1) book two delivery slots with Ocado over Christmas. That took an inordinate amount of time. It's not easy this housework stuff.
2) Keep plumbers supplied with tea
3) organise lunch for Bob and his friend Will. Delicious sausage rolls and baked beans.
4) Avoid getting trapped for an hour listening to Jude the builder.
5) Shift a mammoth load of soil from the greenhouse. WHO has nicked my cool gloves? Couldn't find them and now I have blisters. Pants.
6) Take chain saw in for a service. The receptionist starts laughing at me. " Sorry mate. Don't see many 911's here ". Woteva.
Took Lottie and Bob for a John Adams lesson. Havn't felt so happy for a long time. Was just bliss sitting there watching Bob bantering with John and flying over some great jumps. And then Lottie cruising round on Gully. Videoed her actually. That might find its way onto Youtube aswell.
Best news is that Nic didn't have a heart attack. His heart is strong strong apparently, but he had suffered a torn aorta. Major operation last night and I gather he is stable and doing well.
So now I'd better get on. Supper to make before Soph and Jim get back and reveal the full of horror of their shopping spree.
1) book two delivery slots with Ocado over Christmas. That took an inordinate amount of time. It's not easy this housework stuff.
2) Keep plumbers supplied with tea
3) organise lunch for Bob and his friend Will. Delicious sausage rolls and baked beans.
4) Avoid getting trapped for an hour listening to Jude the builder.
5) Shift a mammoth load of soil from the greenhouse. WHO has nicked my cool gloves? Couldn't find them and now I have blisters. Pants.
6) Take chain saw in for a service. The receptionist starts laughing at me. " Sorry mate. Don't see many 911's here ". Woteva.
Took Lottie and Bob for a John Adams lesson. Havn't felt so happy for a long time. Was just bliss sitting there watching Bob bantering with John and flying over some great jumps. And then Lottie cruising round on Gully. Videoed her actually. That might find its way onto Youtube aswell.
Best news is that Nic didn't have a heart attack. His heart is strong strong apparently, but he had suffered a torn aorta. Major operation last night and I gather he is stable and doing well.
So now I'd better get on. Supper to make before Soph and Jim get back and reveal the full of horror of their shopping spree.
Wednesday, 26 October 2011
Wednesday 26th October, 2011
Up at 7.45am. Sprinkled a bit of chicken food just far enough down the strip not to be in trouble from Soph. Made coffee. Had a couple of bits of toast with treacle marmalade. Sorted out my desk which was a mess. Chucked a lot of business cards away which was cleansing. Spent at least an hour and a half trying to organise a refund for my season ticket. An insurmountable problem at this stage. Put me in a bad mood for most of the day. Took our family Christmas photograph which meant that Jimmy missed her train from Newmarket and I therefore drove her down to Cambridge to catch the 12.15pm. Hen went off to Leeds in Beccky's cool red VW Beetle. Bob and Lottie disappeared for three and half hours on a trip and came back smelling of burnt wood and looking slightly guilty. Went for a minimal run with Twiggie. "Made" supper of baked potatoes and cold roast beef. Had a bottle of champagne and opened a Ch. Reynon 2005. Think we are going to watch Nixon and Frost tonight. Look. It hasn't been a jam packed day to be sure, but I've had lots of thoughts, a bit of stressy angst about train tickets, photos and missed trains, but also May Kwong rang me in the afternoon to tell me Nicolas Leouzon was in intensive care having suffered a suspected heart attack last night. Poor Nic and his wife and young son. Nic is a most lovely guy. One of the good ones. Thinking of him.
Tuesday 25th October, 2011
Gardening leave - today I walked into Nomura at 7am and was out at 10am having resigned. The start of three months being paid to stay at home. I couldn't stop myself...the first person I told of this joyous development, besides my family, was the plumber who was toiling away on our shower room when I got home. He looked at me with appropriate bemusement. It is a crazy thing, but I'll deny it if you try to quote me.
The sun was out. It was the most beautiful day. I drove back from Whittlesford station with the roof down. Three months. Actually a bit more. Start day at the new job is 6th February. How blinking lucky am I. I am going to make the most of this and partially to provide a bit of discipline, I have decided to keep a diary during my time off. So here we go. (Starting a sentence with So, you can get away with but can you start a sentence with the word Because??? Need to think about that.)
Well, if there wasn't enough excitement today it was Bob's birthday and we had bought tickets to go and see Noah and the Whale at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge preceded by dinner at Wagamama where I witnessed one of the most revolting things ever. Hen was sitting across the table from me when she suddenly paused in the frantic job of shovelling gyoza dumplings down her to exclaim that she had swallowed her tongue stud. A flash of inspiration crossed her face. I can recognise that when I see it....its normally dangerous. Immediately she started fiddling around with her tummy button piercing, unscrewed the stud there and screwed it onto the bolt through her tongue. Barely thirty seconds had elapsed and she was back, tackling a bit of teriyaki chicken. Gross. Totally gross.
I can't pretend that the Corn Exchange is the coolest venue ever, but I have had a thing for Noah and the Whale ever since I hatched a plan to get the whole family lined up on the deck of the yacht we had chartered in the BVI singing Five Years Time whilst I played the recorder. It was just a plan, a good one in my mind, but the crew mutineed. Never happened. Anyway, they're pretty cool. I sneaked a brief video which you can find on Youtube - Bob's birthday party. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncCzqexm12A
Quite a day then, Tuesday 25th October and not even day one of gardening leave.
The sun was out. It was the most beautiful day. I drove back from Whittlesford station with the roof down. Three months. Actually a bit more. Start day at the new job is 6th February. How blinking lucky am I. I am going to make the most of this and partially to provide a bit of discipline, I have decided to keep a diary during my time off. So here we go. (Starting a sentence with So, you can get away with but can you start a sentence with the word Because??? Need to think about that.)
Well, if there wasn't enough excitement today it was Bob's birthday and we had bought tickets to go and see Noah and the Whale at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge preceded by dinner at Wagamama where I witnessed one of the most revolting things ever. Hen was sitting across the table from me when she suddenly paused in the frantic job of shovelling gyoza dumplings down her to exclaim that she had swallowed her tongue stud. A flash of inspiration crossed her face. I can recognise that when I see it....its normally dangerous. Immediately she started fiddling around with her tummy button piercing, unscrewed the stud there and screwed it onto the bolt through her tongue. Barely thirty seconds had elapsed and she was back, tackling a bit of teriyaki chicken. Gross. Totally gross.
I can't pretend that the Corn Exchange is the coolest venue ever, but I have had a thing for Noah and the Whale ever since I hatched a plan to get the whole family lined up on the deck of the yacht we had chartered in the BVI singing Five Years Time whilst I played the recorder. It was just a plan, a good one in my mind, but the crew mutineed. Never happened. Anyway, they're pretty cool. I sneaked a brief video which you can find on Youtube - Bob's birthday party. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncCzqexm12A
Quite a day then, Tuesday 25th October and not even day one of gardening leave.
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Friday 7th October, 2011
Back from a few days trudging around the hills east of Inverness. Very much a case of the stags getting their own back. 40 mph winds and driving rain chilled to the bone. I have a bruised and cut nose after underestimating the recoil of a .270 rifle and the length of its telescopic sight. And on the first day the nearest we came to shooting a stag was in self defence as it moved in on us with some intent. No. Safe to say the highlight of my trip north was finding myself at dinner on the first evening sitting across the table from none other than young Miss N*pple Lashes. You may remember me telling you about her the other day in the context of a 21st Tarts & Vicars Birthday Party that Hen was commissioned to take photographs of. It so happens that Hen has just been asked for permission to use her photos of that event which will feature in a forthcoming edition of Tatler. Remarkably I managed to keep a straight face whilst revealing this bit of news to Miss NL and pretending ( to preserve her modesty you understand ) that I had not actually seen any of the photos! Oh well enough of that, but whilst still on the subject of country sports we had Bob back on his first leave-out last weekend. Needless to say we grilled him intently about how it was all going at school; was he finding the work difficult, being organised, making friends etc etc. All seemed to be fine, but then some way through dinner he told us that he has been christened “Pigeon Boy” by everyone in his House. I am not a pessimist. I think of myself as a realist, and here it was, my worst fears were being realised. My little darling heart was being bullied. Tentatively I probed for some more detail. The story is this.
On his way back to Sheriff House for lunch a couple of weeks ago Bob spotted a pigeon sitting on the bonnet of a car. Handing his books to a fellow pupil he sneaked round the back of the vehicle, crawled along the side and leapt up managing to grab the startled pigeon by its tail feathers. He then tucked it underneath his jacket – for which he subsequently received reprimand and a lecture on hygiene from Matron - and wandered on to his House where he found a bunch of his housemates kicking a football about in the garden. Surreptitiously he took the pigeon in both hands, called to one of the boys “Hey, Duncan.....catch” and, at this point it would help if you could picture a two-handed spin pass from a diving scrum half, lobbed the poor pigeon at the unsuspecting boy. Bob, rising to his story and by now evidently not the miserable little victimised boy I had imagined, described how the bird flew straight on past the aghast Duncan and into the safety of a nearby tree happily none the worse for its adventure. The boys who witnessed this event, betraying their solidly Anglican education, and before deciding on the more mundane “Pigeon Boy” as Bob’s new name, apparently described the incident as almost biblical. Hmmmm. Perhaps.....
P.S. It appears Pigeon Boy is taking his title to heart. Sophie received a text message from him this week asking her to send up his flat cap!
On his way back to Sheriff House for lunch a couple of weeks ago Bob spotted a pigeon sitting on the bonnet of a car. Handing his books to a fellow pupil he sneaked round the back of the vehicle, crawled along the side and leapt up managing to grab the startled pigeon by its tail feathers. He then tucked it underneath his jacket – for which he subsequently received reprimand and a lecture on hygiene from Matron - and wandered on to his House where he found a bunch of his housemates kicking a football about in the garden. Surreptitiously he took the pigeon in both hands, called to one of the boys “Hey, Duncan.....catch” and, at this point it would help if you could picture a two-handed spin pass from a diving scrum half, lobbed the poor pigeon at the unsuspecting boy. Bob, rising to his story and by now evidently not the miserable little victimised boy I had imagined, described how the bird flew straight on past the aghast Duncan and into the safety of a nearby tree happily none the worse for its adventure. The boys who witnessed this event, betraying their solidly Anglican education, and before deciding on the more mundane “Pigeon Boy” as Bob’s new name, apparently described the incident as almost biblical. Hmmmm. Perhaps.....
P.S. It appears Pigeon Boy is taking his title to heart. Sophie received a text message from him this week asking her to send up his flat cap!
Friday 30th September, 2011
Had an interesting week one way or another. You see, I met two people hard at work in the real world each of whom gave me cause for a bit of personal reflection.
The first was especially revealing. To be fair to myself, it is quite easy to be immediately dismissive when a small Thai property REIT is put across your bows. You barely give it even a cursory glance. £300m issue. Forget it. Pants. But put under enough pressure by the investment bankers even the most idle of equity salesmen can be forced into action, by which I mean simply made to think about it. Well I suppose to my credit I did so. I even got to the point under my own steam where I had decided that if this thing was to get away then maybe it would have to be priced attractively and that even though it’s small it could make a difference to someone. So I found myself two seasoned, hardy and opportunistic investors and trawled around the West End yesterday morning with the company in tow. Now, I don’t think I can put into print much more detail than I have done already about the specifics of this business because there is an added technical complication that in theory could mean one was made party to MNPI affecting a large listed UK company if one met management, but my point is this. He wasn’t even really talking to me, and I didn’t raise it with him so I may be putting words into his mouth, but I overheard one of the management team I was with yesterday saying that the thing he has never been able to understand when dealing with investors is “your” apparent inability to accept that sometimes company’s just want to get things done. The impetus and considerations for a specific proposal can come from multiple sources and mean that in the end price can really be a surprisingly minor consideration. There you have it really. This guy struck me as super bright and impressive. He has an eye for detail and a grasp of numbers. He spends one week in two travelling mainly in Asia. He works his backside off and has a proper job. Furthermore the property portfolio in Thailand I am talking about can most probably not be bettered, in its particular sector of the economy, for location or covenant quality. If you met them you will want some of the action. But are you able to??
My reflections on the second person are more complicated I suppose. Wednesday night was the occasion for an annual dinner with a group of reprobates. The venue was Brinkley’s on Holywood Road. It turns out this is a rather smarter restaurant since I was last there which was for my stag night in 1988. Oh ok....have the photograph and a bit of a laugh.
There are others but not for publication. Somehow I can’t imagine what went on there that evening being repeated under current ownership. Anyway I have been in quite nostalgic mood for the last few weeks and sad though you may think this is, I send myself to sleep each evening reading through the diaries I kept from the age of 17and reminiscing about life at Glenalmond. Where was I? Oh, well in we walk to the restaurant and there was this guy who had been at school with me, four years older and head of house. Turns out he is now super wealthy having, over the last twenty years, built an incredible commodities trading and hedge fund business. And a nice bloke also. Jealousy is such a terrible thing. Made even worse when I asked my brother if he remembered him.......this was his reply:
Absolutely...good skier, pole vaulter...and nice cowboy boots. Quite a dude.
I can’t help wondering how people remember me from school? Tell you what, if my diary is anything to go by, its more a question of if rather than how. Though I did once trade in the oboe my parents had bought me for a much cheaper clarinet; pocketed the £60 difference and bought a fine pair of cowboy boots with the money. Oh yes. Go me. That was a cool moment.
The first was especially revealing. To be fair to myself, it is quite easy to be immediately dismissive when a small Thai property REIT is put across your bows. You barely give it even a cursory glance. £300m issue. Forget it. Pants. But put under enough pressure by the investment bankers even the most idle of equity salesmen can be forced into action, by which I mean simply made to think about it. Well I suppose to my credit I did so. I even got to the point under my own steam where I had decided that if this thing was to get away then maybe it would have to be priced attractively and that even though it’s small it could make a difference to someone. So I found myself two seasoned, hardy and opportunistic investors and trawled around the West End yesterday morning with the company in tow. Now, I don’t think I can put into print much more detail than I have done already about the specifics of this business because there is an added technical complication that in theory could mean one was made party to MNPI affecting a large listed UK company if one met management, but my point is this. He wasn’t even really talking to me, and I didn’t raise it with him so I may be putting words into his mouth, but I overheard one of the management team I was with yesterday saying that the thing he has never been able to understand when dealing with investors is “your” apparent inability to accept that sometimes company’s just want to get things done. The impetus and considerations for a specific proposal can come from multiple sources and mean that in the end price can really be a surprisingly minor consideration. There you have it really. This guy struck me as super bright and impressive. He has an eye for detail and a grasp of numbers. He spends one week in two travelling mainly in Asia. He works his backside off and has a proper job. Furthermore the property portfolio in Thailand I am talking about can most probably not be bettered, in its particular sector of the economy, for location or covenant quality. If you met them you will want some of the action. But are you able to??
My reflections on the second person are more complicated I suppose. Wednesday night was the occasion for an annual dinner with a group of reprobates. The venue was Brinkley’s on Holywood Road. It turns out this is a rather smarter restaurant since I was last there which was for my stag night in 1988. Oh ok....have the photograph and a bit of a laugh.
There are others but not for publication. Somehow I can’t imagine what went on there that evening being repeated under current ownership. Anyway I have been in quite nostalgic mood for the last few weeks and sad though you may think this is, I send myself to sleep each evening reading through the diaries I kept from the age of 17and reminiscing about life at Glenalmond. Where was I? Oh, well in we walk to the restaurant and there was this guy who had been at school with me, four years older and head of house. Turns out he is now super wealthy having, over the last twenty years, built an incredible commodities trading and hedge fund business. And a nice bloke also. Jealousy is such a terrible thing. Made even worse when I asked my brother if he remembered him.......this was his reply:
Absolutely...good skier, pole vaulter...and nice cowboy boots. Quite a dude.
I can’t help wondering how people remember me from school? Tell you what, if my diary is anything to go by, its more a question of if rather than how. Though I did once trade in the oboe my parents had bought me for a much cheaper clarinet; pocketed the £60 difference and bought a fine pair of cowboy boots with the money. Oh yes. Go me. That was a cool moment.
Friday 16th September, 2011
Apologies for the radio silence. There follows even more than usual other people’s summaries of work that has caught my eye this week at Nomura. Really the main purpose of this email was to let you know I made it out east without succumbing to DVT which, being the hypochondriac that I am, I had reckoned there was a decent chance I would suffer following my marathon in Switzerland last weekend.
Oh that! Well, since you ask, it went ok. I didn’t manage to beat the 5 hour target I had set myself. To be honest, although I refer to choking in a little video clip I posted to Youtube ( search for David’s Jungfrau Marathon if you have nothing better to do this afternoon ), 5.00 hours wasn’t on the cards and I was just pleased to finish the damn thing at all. I nailed the first 15 miles in two hours, but I had underestimated quite how steep the hill was and it was hot hot hot. The next 11.2 miles took 3 hours 24 mins! Cramp set in almost as soon as I hit the hill up to Wengen and the nasty 5 hour marker man trotted past me shortly before I got into the village. Tempted as I was to trip the little so and so up I just had to let him go, put my head down and slog on for the next two and a half hours. Painful and seemingly interminable. There was absolutely nothing beautiful or exhilarating about it other than when, bizarrely, a lone bagpiper struck up the tune Flower of Scotland just as I crested the top of the hill shortly before the finish line at which point I don’t mind telling you I had to pinch my arm to stop myself from bursting into tears! I did finish with a flourish. You might even be able to pick me out as I whizz past the finishing line. http://www.migros-finisherclip.ch/en/previews/index/1006/4664/DSL/links
It’s funny how quickly you forget all the horrors though. I told my wife and daughter who were waiting for me that I would never, ever, do it again, but I find myself already planning another attempt to crack The Big 5-0 in a couple of years time, appropriately enough, sad though it is to confess, to coincide with a similarly coined anniversary in my life. Fear not....I can promise you faithfully I will not be banging on about this one! I will say this though. In a brief call home I mentioned my intentions to Sophie. One might describe the reception I got as slightly frosty.
Re-reading the above I fear my drivel is missing its normal level of zip and zest for life. I can’t quite put my finger on why that should be. Anyway, I have been in Singapore this week and visited a decent proportion of those companies with Singapore in their name.....Telecom/Exchange/Post/Genting. Riveting stuff I tell you. Remind me to tell you the one about the Russian IR lady and the iPhone. More to follow in due course.
Oh that! Well, since you ask, it went ok. I didn’t manage to beat the 5 hour target I had set myself. To be honest, although I refer to choking in a little video clip I posted to Youtube ( search for David’s Jungfrau Marathon if you have nothing better to do this afternoon ), 5.00 hours wasn’t on the cards and I was just pleased to finish the damn thing at all. I nailed the first 15 miles in two hours, but I had underestimated quite how steep the hill was and it was hot hot hot. The next 11.2 miles took 3 hours 24 mins! Cramp set in almost as soon as I hit the hill up to Wengen and the nasty 5 hour marker man trotted past me shortly before I got into the village. Tempted as I was to trip the little so and so up I just had to let him go, put my head down and slog on for the next two and a half hours. Painful and seemingly interminable. There was absolutely nothing beautiful or exhilarating about it other than when, bizarrely, a lone bagpiper struck up the tune Flower of Scotland just as I crested the top of the hill shortly before the finish line at which point I don’t mind telling you I had to pinch my arm to stop myself from bursting into tears! I did finish with a flourish. You might even be able to pick me out as I whizz past the finishing line. http://www.migros-finisherclip.ch/en/previews/index/1006/4664/DSL/links
It’s funny how quickly you forget all the horrors though. I told my wife and daughter who were waiting for me that I would never, ever, do it again, but I find myself already planning another attempt to crack The Big 5-0 in a couple of years time, appropriately enough, sad though it is to confess, to coincide with a similarly coined anniversary in my life. Fear not....I can promise you faithfully I will not be banging on about this one! I will say this though. In a brief call home I mentioned my intentions to Sophie. One might describe the reception I got as slightly frosty.
Re-reading the above I fear my drivel is missing its normal level of zip and zest for life. I can’t quite put my finger on why that should be. Anyway, I have been in Singapore this week and visited a decent proportion of those companies with Singapore in their name.....Telecom/Exchange/Post/Genting. Riveting stuff I tell you. Remind me to tell you the one about the Russian IR lady and the iPhone. More to follow in due course.
Thursday 8th September, 2011
Was going to duck around the Bodhi Tree this week, but feeling quite inspired ahead of the Jungfrau Marathon on Saturday actually so a couple of things by way of a goodbye and thank you for all the amazingly generous support I have received. P.S. I am out of the office next week in Singapore on a “Business trip”.
Fact is it is probably a good thing I am not going to be around for the next week or so. I have to admit that the spectres of Tom Brown’s Schooldays and Flashman hang over me quite heavily when I think of my little precious darling heart starting his first days at big boy’s school. His phone, as a matter of routine for the new boys, has been taken from him by his housemaster, for the first couple of weeks, but at least I have his elder sister Jemima to look after him and with whom I had the following exchange on Blackberry messenger yesterday.
ME: Meant to say if you see Bob and not too embarrassing pls will you take a photo of him in his uniform and bbm it to me??! Give him a big kiss from me too!!! Xxx
JIMMY: NO
ME: Why does that not surprise me! Oh come on....only if the opportunity arises! Did he look happy?
JIMMY: Yeh, little scared. But happy.
ME: All v daunting for him not knowing what embarrassing things his big sister is going to do...like take a photo of him
JIMMY: Daddy I am not going to u freak.
Oh well, you can but try. Anyway, he is now armed with a brand new Dell laptop bought at sickening expense on the school computer scam ( I mean scheme ) and this email has just arrived.....
From: Bob Sandison < >
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2011 13:13:56 +0000
To: david@b>
Subject: ello
Hey man got computer, it is sick, thanx.
Email me if u can be asked
??! Nah. Sorry Bob. Can’t be asked.
Fact is it is probably a good thing I am not going to be around for the next week or so. I have to admit that the spectres of Tom Brown’s Schooldays and Flashman hang over me quite heavily when I think of my little precious darling heart starting his first days at big boy’s school. His phone, as a matter of routine for the new boys, has been taken from him by his housemaster, for the first couple of weeks, but at least I have his elder sister Jemima to look after him and with whom I had the following exchange on Blackberry messenger yesterday.
ME: Meant to say if you see Bob and not too embarrassing pls will you take a photo of him in his uniform and bbm it to me??! Give him a big kiss from me too!!! Xxx
JIMMY: NO
ME: Why does that not surprise me! Oh come on....only if the opportunity arises! Did he look happy?
JIMMY: Yeh, little scared. But happy.
ME: All v daunting for him not knowing what embarrassing things his big sister is going to do...like take a photo of him
JIMMY: Daddy I am not going to u freak.
Oh well, you can but try. Anyway, he is now armed with a brand new Dell laptop bought at sickening expense on the school computer scam ( I mean scheme ) and this email has just arrived.....
From: Bob Sandison < >
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2011 13:13:56 +0000
To: david@b>
Subject: ello
Hey man got computer, it is sick, thanx.
Email me if u can be asked
??! Nah. Sorry Bob. Can’t be asked.
Friday 2nd September 2011
We are in the final few days before Bob starts at Rugby School in our attempt to civilise him. He is making the most of them. This is not a story that Sheikh Mohammed, the new owner of the neighbouring estate to ours, would be pleased to hear. I don’t have an estate by the way. By “ours” I mean “the gaff wot we live in” ...I’m learning all sorts of new phrases these days. Sophie was in over-drive taxi-mode yesterday. Critical to her schedule was that Bob, left on his own in the morning, – will we never learn? - should take all the dogs for a walk, have a shower, pack his cricket kit and be ready to leave the house immediately after lunch. She returned late morning to find him looking rather pleased with himself, despite being patently unwashed and having discovered that he had left all his cricket stuff at his old school. But lunch was already on the go. Exactly a month before the start of the shooting season he was preparing the fresh breasts of a brace of cock pheasants, despatched by Twiggie the lurcher, dipping them in a mixture of egg, flour, salt, pepper and deliberating as to whether he should add some garlic before or after placing them into a frying pan sizzling on the Aga. I find the sage words of Dr Thomas Arnold particularly poignant at this time:
“A new boy is always important. He may be an influence for good or for evil”
Good luck Rugby. We’ll see.......but I’m not overly hopeful. To be fair to Bob his sisters have blazed an interesting trail.
I too am in my final few days before heading off to Switzerland, on a mission which I am beginning to worry is akin to visiting one of their notorious clinics. As you know I have been angling for sponsorship for weeks and landed a big long one yesterday morning which was fantastically generous and means that I am now within spitting distance of the £10,000 target I set myself which to be absolutely honest I never really thought was realistic. Thanks v v much to all who have supported me. The Rainbow Trust is indeed a great cause. Actually, come to think about it, because a couple of particular malicious souls delighted in setting performance kickers, if I was prepared to run the Jungfrau Marathon naked and in under 5 hours I am near as dammit there already. But I’m not though so please, and this is the last time I am going to mention this I promise you, visit my site at www.justgiving.com/david-sandison
Right, off to yet another 50th.....this is becoming a worrying trend. Black Tie with a touch of Bling. I know just the person to ask.....
P.S. At risk of seeming sexist I saw something I have never seen before this morning.....a dustbin-woman. Strange sight it was.
“A new boy is always important. He may be an influence for good or for evil”
Good luck Rugby. We’ll see.......but I’m not overly hopeful. To be fair to Bob his sisters have blazed an interesting trail.
I too am in my final few days before heading off to Switzerland, on a mission which I am beginning to worry is akin to visiting one of their notorious clinics. As you know I have been angling for sponsorship for weeks and landed a big long one yesterday morning which was fantastically generous and means that I am now within spitting distance of the £10,000 target I set myself which to be absolutely honest I never really thought was realistic. Thanks v v much to all who have supported me. The Rainbow Trust is indeed a great cause. Actually, come to think about it, because a couple of particular malicious souls delighted in setting performance kickers, if I was prepared to run the Jungfrau Marathon naked and in under 5 hours I am near as dammit there already. But I’m not though so please, and this is the last time I am going to mention this I promise you, visit my site at www.justgiving.com/david-sandison
Right, off to yet another 50th.....this is becoming a worrying trend. Black Tie with a touch of Bling. I know just the person to ask.....
P.S. At risk of seeming sexist I saw something I have never seen before this morning.....a dustbin-woman. Strange sight it was.
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Friday 25th August, 2011
It has not all been bad news this week. GCSE results came out and I was delighted that my 16 year old daughter got an A for the Citizenship Project on “Why the Fox-hunting Ban should be Repealed” to which I think it is fair to say I had made a substantial contribution. Basically I wrote the whole damn thing. Also Hen has tapped into an attractive new revenue opportunity taking photographs at a succession of 21st birthday parties that have been going on around us for which she gets paid a tidy sum and walks away with some pretty dodgy photographs. The last party was a Tarts & Vicars fancy dress theme. Perhaps I have led a particularly sheltered life, but I had never heard of N*pple Lashes before which were apparently what some rather attractive girl in one photo I was shown, was sporting. What’s more Bob and Lottie managed the journey down from Leuchars to Peterborough by train on their own with little drama. They had to change trains in Newcastle which I thought might present a challenge. I sent Bob a text asking him if he had been able to understand a word that anyone up there was saying. This was his response...“No i was like whats the time? And they were like girlys so I said do u know Cheryl Cole???”
And what am I talking about? I almost forgot the main event. You will be dying to know how I got on in the annual family golf competition up at St Andrews last Friday. I only went and walked it. Sorry to boast but it was a breeze. A slight dampener was bogeying the last three holes of the Old Course as I had only been 5 over standing on the 16th, but I finished with an 80 for 39 Stableford points and the Big Stick was mine for another year. Go me.
And what am I talking about? I almost forgot the main event. You will be dying to know how I got on in the annual family golf competition up at St Andrews last Friday. I only went and walked it. Sorry to boast but it was a breeze. A slight dampener was bogeying the last three holes of the Old Course as I had only been 5 over standing on the 16th, but I finished with an 80 for 39 Stableford points and the Big Stick was mine for another year. Go me.
Friday 18th August, 2011
It’s amazing how quickly the benefits of a holiday wears off. In my case nothing to do with the office. It was like this. Sophie was up in Derbyshire on Tuesday with Lottie who was representing the Thurlow Pony Club, dressed up as a pirate, leading a team of eight other riders and their ponies through a complicated series of movements accompanied by the theme tune of Pirates of the Caribbean. Weeks and weeks of preparation. She c*cked it up on the very first corner and chaos ensued, but whatever. The point was Bob was left home alone which is a perilous enough state of affairs in itself, but he was also required in the afternoon to make his way on foot to the local train station ( some couple of miles from our house ) in order to get to Cambridge where he had a 7pm dental appointment to repair his teeth brace which I had snipped off with metal clippers during a drama on holiday in Mallorca. I had to resort to metal clippers after the only thing I managed to cut when trying to extract a protruding length of metal with a pair of scissors was his lower lip. I digress. Before a visit by your 13 year old son to the dentist you might suggest he brushes his teeth. How many of you would have felt the need to remind him of the need to wear shoes? It may not surprise you to know that I did. Yet despite that who should be waiting for me outside Marks & Spencers in the ticket hall of Cambridge Railway, but a shoeless Bob, mud and blood everywhere, grinning apparently with satisfaction at having made contact with me so effortlessly. He had run the two miles to the station barefoot he explained having left home somewhat later than intended as he had been distracted whilst taking Twiggie, his lurcher, for a walk. She had given chase to a 10 pointer roe deer stag though a wood and across a ploughed field with Bob hot on her heels oblivious to brambles and flint stones and clumps of earth flying about. What an absolute mess. I had no choice but to take him in this state into the dental surgery where I must say Dr Bister performed his work with casual aplomb, although his assistant did suggest booking an appointment for Bob with the hygienist.
My name is also mud. I will be up in Scotland tomorrow competing for an important trophy in our family competition on the Old Course. This is such an intense affair I had completely forgotten that the date we had fixed coincided with Hen’s birthday. To be honest I didn’t think she would mind that much, but how wrong I was. Two months ago a wish list of present requests appeared on the fridge door: a signet ring, turntable, Polaroid camera, subscription to ID Magazine and Dazed & Confused, some Vinyls ( but bear in mind this is 6th on the list so only get it if no turntable ) and COMPULSORY – Jo Malone Bath Oil and Candle. Apparently the last items are by way of me making reparation for my absence. She is in quite a humph about it.
There is another birthday on the horizon. Some of you may have the dubious pleasure of being broked to by Chris Barr at Citigroup. I have been asked to make the speech at his 50th birthday party next weekend. If you happen to have a good incriminating story do let me know!
Meantime I’m off to Scotland and to bring The Big Stick south
Friday 5th August, 2011
If you held me in little regard before then this will finish you off. I am away next week for the second leg of my summer hols continuing my odyssey of visits to places I never been to before like Corfu and Mallorca. It’s nothing to do with me. I was quite happy with the East Neuk of Fife each August as we have done for the last five years but I may have told you the girls have revolted and insisted on some sunshine this year so Mallorca it is. Every cloud has a silver lining though and I have to tell you I’m quite pleased not to be spending too much time in Fife this year. By somewhat circuitous means involving Humphrey, Hen’s miniature daschund, who has his own Facebook page, I have discovered some worrying truths about Bob and his lobster hunting tactics last summer in the waters off Lower Largo which might suggest we wouldn’t be made to feel especially welcome by the local fishermen. “Nuff said other than Groan. That boy.
Talking of unruly children Sophie made the big mistake of asking Hen to get Lottie to come in for supper the other day. Picture the scene. A pleasant warm and still evening in the little Suffolk village of Gazeley. Tranquility indeed, which no doubt our various neighbours were soaking in. That was until Hen goes outside and yells at the top of her voice......
“Lottie you ghastly little wretch come here right now or I’ll beat you senseless.”
Then strolls casually back into the kitchen and says to a slightly shocked looking Sophie.... “There. How long do you give it before we get a knock on the door from the RSPCC? You really shouldn’t talk to your children like that Soph.”
Brian McGure continues in droll fashion in the Alex cartoons this week...it’s lucky I have such a fine sense of humour and so little self esteem....
http://www.alexcartoon.com/index.cfm?cartoons_id=4015
Friday 29th July, 2011
This is always one of my most difficult weeks of the year. I think I have told you before that the one reason I would be quite interested in starting life all over again would be if it meant I could get to go to Pony Club Camp. Bob is there this week and whooping it up, one of only four 13 year old boys amongst 30 or so girls, one of whom, I discovered last night, has been bribed into plaiting his horse for today’s tack and turnout competition. What form the bribe took has not been related. In fact I don’t really want to know.
The week was going swimmingly for Hen. She has spent it, blissfully happily, hand-stitching the message “You are invited to my 21st Birthday Party” onto a card, embellishing it further with a little collage of photos cut out from fashion magazines. 45 such cards have to be prepared for which she is being paid a total of £20 by the friend who has commissioned this task. Each card, it would appear takes about a day to do. Simple command of maths will tell you she has completed 5 and so she should have finished them all by the middle of September which happens to be a couple of weeks after the party is taking place. However, today has brought disappointment for Hen although the population of Suffolk should be breathing easier. I’m not sure she approached her driving test this morning in quite the right spirit. She was pondering last night if the test examiner might allow her to put a lucky mascot on the back seat of the car as she quite wanted to take Humphrey ( ridiculous miniature daschund ) along for the ride. Sense prevailed, but sad to say, she failed her test, although she insists it was a close run thing as she only committed 13 minor errors. Apparently this would normally be sufficient to allow the examiner to have passed her, however he was unable to ignore the fact she ran a red light and nearly crashed into the back of another car.
Now. I have a bone to pick with you lot. I sneaked a message out mid week about my Jungfrau Marathon and fund raising exercise for The Rainbow Trust. This is a most worthy cause and I have set myself targets to raise £10,000 and to complete the marathon in under 5 hours. Both of these goals may be a bit of a stretch but to date only two people on this email list have stepped up to the plate. Come on folks. You are mocking me. I know times are tough, but really...... Hit the link..... Davids Jungfrau Marathon
PS Taking a couple of my most important, generous and entertaining clients to St Andrews on Monday for lunch at the R&A and a round on the Old Course. Who knows...it could be you next year!
Friday, 22 July 2011
22nd July, 2011
I wish there was a sheepish way that I could write “Hello there”. I must say I am feeling a touch guilty at the length of respite I have given you from this drivel. If by any chance you have missed it I apologise. Fact is an important client engagement a couple of Fridays ago down at Wentworth ago got in the way and last week I was in Corfu.
It was the first time for a while we have had the whole family together for a holiday, by which I mean, Hen graced us with her presence. What can I say? Holiday’s in the sun with Hen are stressful experiences largely because she insists on demanding of us, on an hourly basis, whether she is getting browner. The sad reality is she really doesn’t change colour. Pale and interesting I suppose is the phrase I am looking for. Larking about in the pool playing sharks and dolphins she was referred to as the Great White. Actually that was just one of many little witticisms I came up with last week. I was on the most terrific form though I say it myself. For example, when Hen decided to smuggle away the scallop shells ( she said they were to store her earrings but I have seen them frequently used as ashtrays ) on which had been served some Greek seafood delicacy in napkins, and stowed them away between her legs on her seat whilst we finished dinner, she wondered what would happen if she was caught. “I wouldn’t worry” I said, “they’ll just assume you have CLAMydia.” How we roared.
By the way, if you think I am occasionally a little disparaging of my eldest daughter we met up with friends in Corfu whose eldest had not come with them. “And a very good thing too” her mother said. “She’d have eaten us out of house and home. She’s as large as a villa. She looks like an Oompa Loompa tree.”
Hey ho. Well it didn’t take long for the restorative benefits of a holiday and my ebullient disposition to wear off. A chastening week one way or another. I think I have told you before about my Atco lawn mower. Bought for £800 a few years back it had sat forlornly rusting in a shed for three years having failed to effect the lovely stripes I was expecting of it. I thought I would give it one more chance so at a cost of £350 it got the mother of all services and blades finely sharpened, but yet again all it managed to do was carve great chunks out of my front garden. To be honest I would have stuck by it. It had this nice seat on the back and a roller which I am sure in time would have flattened out the bumps and created the lawn tennis court I aspired to, however it was not to be. At Mrs S’s insistence I took some fine photographs, which I think probably flattered my machine, but imagine my consternation when, badly advised on Ebay strategy by a colleague who has happily since left our desk, my beloved Atco went for the princely sum of £150. I suppose it was some consolation that it went to the vicar of some parish in St Albans, but talk about feeling pillaged.
Things have gone from bad to worse since then it has to be said, but enough of that for this forum. And anyway, you can always depend on Hen to put things into perspective. Returning on Wednesday, the low point of my week, from a day in Scotland, on a delayed Easyjet flight, I rang home to tell them I would be back at 7.40pm. It was Hen who answered. “You’re cutting it a bit fine aren’t you Dave?” “Why?” I replied with that kind of sinking feeling in my stomach that my week was going to take another lurch downwards. “Durr Dave. The Wizards of Waverly Place starts at 7.45pm. Put your bloody foot down.”
It was the first time for a while we have had the whole family together for a holiday, by which I mean, Hen graced us with her presence. What can I say? Holiday’s in the sun with Hen are stressful experiences largely because she insists on demanding of us, on an hourly basis, whether she is getting browner. The sad reality is she really doesn’t change colour. Pale and interesting I suppose is the phrase I am looking for. Larking about in the pool playing sharks and dolphins she was referred to as the Great White. Actually that was just one of many little witticisms I came up with last week. I was on the most terrific form though I say it myself. For example, when Hen decided to smuggle away the scallop shells ( she said they were to store her earrings but I have seen them frequently used as ashtrays ) on which had been served some Greek seafood delicacy in napkins, and stowed them away between her legs on her seat whilst we finished dinner, she wondered what would happen if she was caught. “I wouldn’t worry” I said, “they’ll just assume you have CLAMydia.” How we roared.
By the way, if you think I am occasionally a little disparaging of my eldest daughter we met up with friends in Corfu whose eldest had not come with them. “And a very good thing too” her mother said. “She’d have eaten us out of house and home. She’s as large as a villa. She looks like an Oompa Loompa tree.”
Hey ho. Well it didn’t take long for the restorative benefits of a holiday and my ebullient disposition to wear off. A chastening week one way or another. I think I have told you before about my Atco lawn mower. Bought for £800 a few years back it had sat forlornly rusting in a shed for three years having failed to effect the lovely stripes I was expecting of it. I thought I would give it one more chance so at a cost of £350 it got the mother of all services and blades finely sharpened, but yet again all it managed to do was carve great chunks out of my front garden. To be honest I would have stuck by it. It had this nice seat on the back and a roller which I am sure in time would have flattened out the bumps and created the lawn tennis court I aspired to, however it was not to be. At Mrs S’s insistence I took some fine photographs, which I think probably flattered my machine, but imagine my consternation when, badly advised on Ebay strategy by a colleague who has happily since left our desk, my beloved Atco went for the princely sum of £150. I suppose it was some consolation that it went to the vicar of some parish in St Albans, but talk about feeling pillaged.
Things have gone from bad to worse since then it has to be said, but enough of that for this forum. And anyway, you can always depend on Hen to put things into perspective. Returning on Wednesday, the low point of my week, from a day in Scotland, on a delayed Easyjet flight, I rang home to tell them I would be back at 7.40pm. It was Hen who answered. “You’re cutting it a bit fine aren’t you Dave?” “Why?” I replied with that kind of sinking feeling in my stomach that my week was going to take another lurch downwards. “Durr Dave. The Wizards of Waverly Place starts at 7.45pm. Put your bloody foot down.”
Monday, 4 July 2011
24th June, 2011
You probably didn’t know I had a daughter called Jimmy. Searching through past editions of this pile of babble of mine I discover I have mentioned her just once during my time at Nomura. That was when I related that all she could come up with by way of a Christmas stocking present for her mother, given a supremely generous budget and two hours to browse round John Lewis Cambridge branch, was a nasty plastic washing up brush shaped like a cat. Various people have been surprised by this revelation before you though. There was a fine example the other day when an earnest mother came up to us at a school function and said it was just terrific that her daughter had made friends with Jimmy. “She’s never had a boy-friend before you know” she told us excitedly. I quite enjoyed bursting that bubble! Anyway, Jemima has been in London this week doing work experience. Fixing that up was a saga in itself I can tell you. Fancying herself as something of a writer with a fine sense for fashion she gave me strict instructions to arrange a week or two for her in the West End at Conde Nast or Harpers & Queen. What I came up with in the end was not quite what she had in mind. A spell at “Insurance Insider” magazine based in Lime Street, EC3. Provider of insight and intelligence on the London and international insurance markets. She seems to have taken it in her stride though and I would even have said with good grace except for the terse summons received by text that I should meet her for lunch “outside my office”.
On the subject of interns I have just been informed that one is joining our team on Monday.......havn’t met him before. This was a leaving present from my former colleague Bruce. A mathematician ( oooops; speaking as someone who scraped through Maths O level on the third attempt ) who had a spell with the Austrian Army, likes dancing and does Iron Man contests. Ah.....at least we have something in common. I can talk to him about my forthcoming attempt at the Jungfrau Marathon.
Hey ho. If you are winding down for the week I have something different to ease you into the weekend. I thought you might like to have a browse through this website. My, Hen has been busy. Nothing like being broke to focus the mind. If she has not yet put down in words the sort of blog I had envisaged when she set off on her travels she will say a picture is worth a thousand. If one catches your eye let her know. She will put it in a cool frame, sign it and send it to you....at a price! An early Christmas present and perfect for the downstairs loo!
http://hensandison.blogspot.com/2011/06/south-east-asia.html
On the subject of interns I have just been informed that one is joining our team on Monday.......havn’t met him before. This was a leaving present from my former colleague Bruce. A mathematician ( oooops; speaking as someone who scraped through Maths O level on the third attempt ) who had a spell with the Austrian Army, likes dancing and does Iron Man contests. Ah.....at least we have something in common. I can talk to him about my forthcoming attempt at the Jungfrau Marathon.
Hey ho. If you are winding down for the week I have something different to ease you into the weekend. I thought you might like to have a browse through this website. My, Hen has been busy. Nothing like being broke to focus the mind. If she has not yet put down in words the sort of blog I had envisaged when she set off on her travels she will say a picture is worth a thousand. If one catches your eye let her know. She will put it in a cool frame, sign it and send it to you....at a price! An early Christmas present and perfect for the downstairs loo!
http://hensandison.blogspot.com/2011/06/south-east-asia.html
1st July, 2011
I knew it was fool hardy and quite out of character, but as I was pulling out of Harlow Town station this morning, a little disgruntled at the fat guy in paint overalls who helped himself, undoubtedly ticketless, to our First Class carriage, I decided to post what I was thinking on Facebook. Nothing to do with the carpenter. “I’ll tell you what’s on my mind.” I wrote, “Andy Murray. Why do you all hate him so much? He’s misunderstood. And he’s going to beat Nadal today without a doubt.” Nothing too controversial then, but my stupid Blackberry has barely stopped pinging all day long as yet another bigoted Englishman or woman launches one broadside after another at me. Honestly. Get a life. So anyway, although I am quite confident about my Murray prediction, I had better get my Friday email out of the way to allow me to focus on our man’s progress into the finals.
Talking of distractions I have had another major one this week in the form of a series of emails from an interesting man who, together with his daughter, is kindly hosting Jimmy ( second Friday mention in a row for her ) and six other school friends on a post GCSE jolly in Marrakesh. As you know I am quite a fan of blogs, and his emails together with a series of accompnaying photos that I'll spare the public eye, have been entertaining although I am going to be very happy to have her safely home.
"A promonard followed (attachments 011 & 012) and an early night was
> requested. Albeit with some Arabic Music with three accompanying
> belly-dancers, in our amazing digs, helped along with a little
> dressing up from souvineer purchases! (Attachment 013)."
"Fully enguageing, fully embracing the culture."
"Once kitted out by the boys from Splash (Yann and Ishmail)................. the fun starts. (see attachment 004).
Absolutely hillarious..... the girls had so much fun that it became the topic of conversation for the rest of the day."
"Having decended several kilometers of the Ourika Valley Gorge we hit an unanticipated obstacle; local loggers were also ceasing the opportunity to send logs down the gorge so I aired on the side of caution and we evacuated. Some of the logs were like engine blocks and were really travelling."
Starting with distracting and having moved on to the disconcerting, the last two nights have certainly been that. On both evenings, at around 9.30pm, having bathed ( or at least pretended to ), teeth and hair brushed ( aye right ) and kissed us all goodnight, Bob, our 13 year old, has reappeared downstairs, covered in blood and feathers, gleefully demanding the £2 that Sophie has foolishly promised him for each pigeon he shoots that had been happily roosting and cra*ping in the tree above her Toyota. What have we created?
Ok. Let’s get on with it. COME ON ANDY.
Talking of distractions I have had another major one this week in the form of a series of emails from an interesting man who, together with his daughter, is kindly hosting Jimmy ( second Friday mention in a row for her ) and six other school friends on a post GCSE jolly in Marrakesh. As you know I am quite a fan of blogs, and his emails together with a series of accompnaying photos that I'll spare the public eye, have been entertaining although I am going to be very happy to have her safely home.
"A promonard followed (attachments 011 & 012) and an early night was
> requested. Albeit with some Arabic Music with three accompanying
> belly-dancers, in our amazing digs, helped along with a little
> dressing up from souvineer purchases! (Attachment 013)."
"Fully enguageing, fully embracing the culture."
"Once kitted out by the boys from Splash (Yann and Ishmail)................. the fun starts. (see attachment 004).
Absolutely hillarious..... the girls had so much fun that it became the topic of conversation for the rest of the day."
"Having decended several kilometers of the Ourika Valley Gorge we hit an unanticipated obstacle; local loggers were also ceasing the opportunity to send logs down the gorge so I aired on the side of caution and we evacuated. Some of the logs were like engine blocks and were really travelling."
Starting with distracting and having moved on to the disconcerting, the last two nights have certainly been that. On both evenings, at around 9.30pm, having bathed ( or at least pretended to ), teeth and hair brushed ( aye right ) and kissed us all goodnight, Bob, our 13 year old, has reappeared downstairs, covered in blood and feathers, gleefully demanding the £2 that Sophie has foolishly promised him for each pigeon he shoots that had been happily roosting and cra*ping in the tree above her Toyota. What have we created?
Ok. Let’s get on with it. COME ON ANDY.
Thursday, 9 June 2011
9th June, 2011
This Common Entrance thing is a bore. The good news is it’s almost over, at least as far as Bob is concerned, but at 9.00pm last night, when you were probably settling down to a glass of wine and an episode of The Apprentice, I was deep in the world Greek mythology trying to impress on him the need to learn more than just the story of Jason slaying the Minotaur with an armoury of arrows, clubs and swords that Bob obviously coveted. He has run out of arrows for the moment but it has not stopped him terrorising the local squirrel population with a well honed length of wood onto the end of which he has taped a broken Stanley knife blade. Horrific though it is to report, he has enjoyed a certain amount of success with this makeshift weapon. I digress, but talking about a lack of concentration, the fact is if you have children doing Common Entrance don’t worry too much if your little darling wasn’t slaving away yesterday evening. I took my eyes off Bob for barely a minute and he was off, out of an upstairs window, onto a flat roof and down into the garden chasing after a pigeon before you could say Odysseus.
After “Excuse me while I kiss the sky” which is now etched a little too close to my heart, my favourite quote is “ Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage”. This appears on bottles of one of my preferred “daily drinking” clarets, Chasse Spleen. Buy the 2010. If you are at a loss for things to do this afternoon you could always come up with an English translation for this quote and let me know it because I am still searching for one which succinctly captures its evocative essence. I am not at a loss for things to do. I will be making my own voyage on Easyjet up to the East Neuk of Fife for dinner in St Monans and a round of golf at Kingsbarns tomorrow.
Can’t resist including this little gem from a “fellow” Fifer ( ok.... I’m not one really! ) –
When my girlfriend said she was leaving me because of my obsession with The Monkees, I thought she was joking.
And then I saw her face.
Ouch.
After “Excuse me while I kiss the sky” which is now etched a little too close to my heart, my favourite quote is “ Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage”. This appears on bottles of one of my preferred “daily drinking” clarets, Chasse Spleen. Buy the 2010. If you are at a loss for things to do this afternoon you could always come up with an English translation for this quote and let me know it because I am still searching for one which succinctly captures its evocative essence. I am not at a loss for things to do. I will be making my own voyage on Easyjet up to the East Neuk of Fife for dinner in St Monans and a round of golf at Kingsbarns tomorrow.
Can’t resist including this little gem from a “fellow” Fifer ( ok.... I’m not one really! ) –
When my girlfriend said she was leaving me because of my obsession with The Monkees, I thought she was joking.
And then I saw her face.
Ouch.
Thursday, 2 June 2011
2nd June, 2011
I am up in Scotland tomorrow – too late alas for a trip to Tesco’s in Greenock - with a Chinese IPP, Huaneng Power, – oh happy days - so thought I would drop an early Bodhi into the mix. Hen is back from Asia which is lovely of course, but people of Newmarket and road users in the surrounding areas should be warned. We are on a renewed campaign to teach her to drive. I say “we” I think it is fair to say I will not be allowed a particularly hands-on role in this initiative. Things didn’t go very well last time around. Despite an absolutely enormous investment in lessons she never quite made it to taking the test and it is often said amongst the family that my contribution was at least partially to blame. We only went for one short drive together, but it ended with Hen, having had enough of my panicked administrations, pulling somewhat erratically – in my view at least - onto the verge of the country lane we were on and saying “You know what Dave. I’m not that bad a driver really, but I do have a very high awareness of the dangers around me.”
Talking of dangers, her companions having already flown home, Hen was on her own in Bangkok on Monday, her last day in Thailand so, principally on grounds of safety, I decided to treat her to a night in The Sukhothai......although I enjoyed a fleeting peace of mind I havn’t yet decided whether it was a good idea or not! Certainly, she seems to have got more out of it than I did. The following are a couple of texts I received.....
OMG there are no words. This is absolutely amazing! I have a menu for pillows! WHAT!!! In-freakin-sane! Thank you!!!
Jeez dave if this how you live when your off on your business trips screw photography, I want to be a stockbroker! I feel like royalty! Just had a jo Malone bath, ran around the room in my birthday suit for about half an hour and finished it off with the last five minutes of peter pan. This is the life! So now I’m sitting by the pool with a glass of wine. Aaaah nice xxxx
Besides these effusive messages I did receive from my deluded daughter a pair of Sukhothai bedroom slippers as a gesture of appreciation, but she is keeping the “convenience kit”, a packet of mints from the mini-bar and a dressing gown.
Talking of dangers, her companions having already flown home, Hen was on her own in Bangkok on Monday, her last day in Thailand so, principally on grounds of safety, I decided to treat her to a night in The Sukhothai......although I enjoyed a fleeting peace of mind I havn’t yet decided whether it was a good idea or not! Certainly, she seems to have got more out of it than I did. The following are a couple of texts I received.....
OMG there are no words. This is absolutely amazing! I have a menu for pillows! WHAT!!! In-freakin-sane! Thank you!!!
Jeez dave if this how you live when your off on your business trips screw photography, I want to be a stockbroker! I feel like royalty! Just had a jo Malone bath, ran around the room in my birthday suit for about half an hour and finished it off with the last five minutes of peter pan. This is the life! So now I’m sitting by the pool with a glass of wine. Aaaah nice xxxx
Besides these effusive messages I did receive from my deluded daughter a pair of Sukhothai bedroom slippers as a gesture of appreciation, but she is keeping the “convenience kit”, a packet of mints from the mini-bar and a dressing gown.
Saturday, 28 May 2011
27th May, 2011
Well, Hen’s return is nigh. Ash cloud permitting she should be back early next week. And not a moment too soon. She and her travelling companion will have been shacked up in Bangkok for the last 10 days of their “adventure”. The lack of imagination was driving me mad, but it transpired after a certain amount of probing on my part – silly me for not guessing – that they are bust so took the decision to essentially bunker down. The Sitdhi Guesthouse costs Bht 250 a night ( £2.60 each ) and, in her words, “I really only need one meal a day cos we’re not particularly active” so 20 baht for food at a street stall is their only other daily expense. If you had the inclination to click on the link I provided I imagine you too would have shuddered as I did, but, thinking about it, she’ll probably pine for the place when winter winds rattle the windows of her student house in Leeds. And I suppose it is another useful lesson in life. A very lovely friend caught up with Hen and took her out to no doubt a much needed lunch this week. He tells me that all is well and she has obviously had a fantastic experience. However, I’m still not convinced that her mind has been properly engaged on soaking up all that Asia has to offer and the following email, the latest contribution to the blog I ask her to write that but which I am beginning to realise I have been keeping for her, hasn’t done much to ease my suspicions.
yo dava, one last thing for today, i was given a book by another traveller the other day and it was fantastic, apparently there is a whole series and so i looked it up, is there any chance you could possibly get them for me as i am completely obsessed ( already read the one i have like 2wice)
the series is called the rutshire series and it is by Jilly Cooper the books in the series are:
1. Riders
2. Rivals
3. Polo
4. The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous
5. Appassionata
6. Score!
7. Pandora
8. Wicked!
9. Jump!
i have rivals (the second one)
waddaya think???
Obsessed with Jilly Cooper??! How frustrated, middle aged and middle class can you get?! And this from the girl who last year told me she wanted to be Amish and three weeks ago was a Rastafarian with a nose piercing?
P.S. My tip for the 2010 Bordeaux En Primeur offering.....? Clos des Quatre Vents.......I would slip some of this into your cellar. Buy two cases and you will undoubtedly drink one for free.
yo dava, one last thing for today, i was given a book by another traveller the other day and it was fantastic, apparently there is a whole series and so i looked it up, is there any chance you could possibly get them for me as i am completely obsessed ( already read the one i have like 2wice)
the series is called the rutshire series and it is by Jilly Cooper the books in the series are:
1. Riders
2. Rivals
3. Polo
4. The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous
5. Appassionata
6. Score!
7. Pandora
8. Wicked!
9. Jump!
i have rivals (the second one)
waddaya think???
Obsessed with Jilly Cooper??! How frustrated, middle aged and middle class can you get?! And this from the girl who last year told me she wanted to be Amish and three weeks ago was a Rastafarian with a nose piercing?
P.S. My tip for the 2010 Bordeaux En Primeur offering.....? Clos des Quatre Vents.......I would slip some of this into your cellar. Buy two cases and you will undoubtedly drink one for free.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
20th May, 2011
Interesting news flagged by a colleague that a Kindergarten in Hangzhou was running a kidnapping preventive drill with its students (aged b/w 3-4). The kids were taken to a park where they were let loose to run around and actors would come in and try to lure them away. Most of the 36 kids did well to fend off strangers offering toys and sweets by saying "I have them at home too". However, 10 of the 36 students failed miserably when they were offered the iPad! Weird weird weird.
Whilst on the subject of irresponsible parenting I think I mentioned the other day Bob’s plan for turning the £5 that he and each of his Year 8 leavers had been given by the school into £10. One of the boys handed in £42 which he had earned by selling sweets. Another bought some detergent and washing up liquid and cleaned cars. Well I am happy to report that Bob’s fiver went on Slim Shady in the 2.40pm at Newmarket a couple of Saturdays ago and returned £14.50.
I remember now, the other slightly disconcerting thing I wanted to get off my chest this week was when I got home last night Bob looked at me suspiciously and asked me if I had driven into Cambridge that morning. “Of course”, I replied. I banged on in my email last Friday about the tyranny of the commute so you can imagine I was probably a touch dismissive at his inane question. However I did manage to ask “Why?” “Oh”, came the response, “it was just that we saw a dead cat on the road on our way to school and thought you probably did it.” Great. Feel really good about that.
Whilst on the subject of irresponsible parenting I think I mentioned the other day Bob’s plan for turning the £5 that he and each of his Year 8 leavers had been given by the school into £10. One of the boys handed in £42 which he had earned by selling sweets. Another bought some detergent and washing up liquid and cleaned cars. Well I am happy to report that Bob’s fiver went on Slim Shady in the 2.40pm at Newmarket a couple of Saturdays ago and returned £14.50.
I remember now, the other slightly disconcerting thing I wanted to get off my chest this week was when I got home last night Bob looked at me suspiciously and asked me if I had driven into Cambridge that morning. “Of course”, I replied. I banged on in my email last Friday about the tyranny of the commute so you can imagine I was probably a touch dismissive at his inane question. However I did manage to ask “Why?” “Oh”, came the response, “it was just that we saw a dead cat on the road on our way to school and thought you probably did it.” Great. Feel really good about that.
13th May, 2011
Our focus has been on a pair of orphaned lambs which Sophie decided to adopt– as if we don’t have enough livestock around the place – under extreme pressure from Bob and Lottie. Before you think of doing something similar let me tell you there is no commercial logic. I have had to spend £110 on two 25 kg bags of powdered milk and a pair of bottles and rubber teats. Grudgingly I have to admit it has not actually been that much effort, and of course, they are extremely cute. Steady. However for Lottie’s benefit in particular I am taking care to repeatedly ram home the message that a lamb is for eating, not just for Easter. Bob, you will not be surprised to hear, has no inhabitations. He spends weekends guarding the pair armed with a bow and arrow and a catapault from any predatory fox that might care to wander by, but he insists that come the moment he is ready to dispatch the lambs and prepare them for the freezer himself. He is so not his fathers son, but it was with some amusement that I read an email sent me by one of your number in HK.
From: A Daily Mail reader
Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 19:08:18 +0800
To: Sandison David
Subject: MailOnline :: Skin a rabbit, deliver a lamb and dance the eightsome reel: What young people should know before they leave school
David - I saw this and thought of you ( and Bob). Best wishes from HK, Alex
Skin a rabbit, deliver a lamb and dance the eightsome reel: What young people should know before they leave school
Country Life magazine, the upper class 'bible', has come up with a list of 39 skills it believes the modern youth should have - including how to handle a shotgun.
Full Story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1385783/What-young-people-know-leave-school.html
From: A Daily Mail reader
Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 19:08:18 +0800
To: Sandison David
Subject: MailOnline :: Skin a rabbit, deliver a lamb and dance the eightsome reel: What young people should know before they leave school
David - I saw this and thought of you ( and Bob). Best wishes from HK, Alex
Skin a rabbit, deliver a lamb and dance the eightsome reel: What young people should know before they leave school
Country Life magazine, the upper class 'bible', has come up with a list of 39 skills it believes the modern youth should have - including how to handle a shotgun.
Full Story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1385783/What-young-people-know-leave-school.html
28th April, 2011
For my part I suppose I should elaborate on my reference to Bob killing two birds with one stone, made earlier this week. It was like this. We went to have lunch with my brother and his family the other day. Visits by his kin have not been without incident in the past. They have a troublesome relationship with their elderly neighbour who owns an adjoining field on which my father’s spaniel once dispatched one of her prize flock of chickens. I have to say I thought my father behaved admirably. He offered her a fiver and when that was cursorily refused, returned with a replacement hen. So it was with a sense of developing shock that we sat enjoying lunch last Sunday when we saw Bob jump over a fence into the lady’s field, disappear for a few seconds before reappearing from behind a hedge, on all fours, in full view of absolutely everyone, scuttling into the middle of the field where he pounced on an unsuspecting crow. The poor bird had a broken wing, he told us in explanation of his actions, but it had a more terminal injury after Bob’s administrations.
Well, I’m glad I got that off my chest. Otherwise it has been a bit of a dull old week. I was busy yesterday afternoon though. An email arrived from one of Hen’s University friends....
Hi Dave ( you what???????!!!)
Hen gave me your email addresses to keep you up to date with all the house stuff. I'm sorry i haven't been in contact sooner but i thought i lost the addresses (just had to rummage through my conversations with Hen over facebook!) The first house we found fell through unfortunately, but we have found another one in Burley, which is just on the edge of Hyde Park.
Etc etc. Long and short of it was within an hour of receiving this email I was £1,100 poorer for the part I was required to play in helping to secure the lease on a house for Hen and her fellow Leeds students which left me wondering whether I might be better off investing in a property UP there. So I registered on a website and this is the only thing that has come through so far.....
Nomura bonus season is upon us so I probably shouldn’t be too disparaging. David Moor Estate Agents may have the last laugh.
Well, I’m glad I got that off my chest. Otherwise it has been a bit of a dull old week. I was busy yesterday afternoon though. An email arrived from one of Hen’s University friends....
Hi Dave ( you what???????!!!)
Hen gave me your email addresses to keep you up to date with all the house stuff. I'm sorry i haven't been in contact sooner but i thought i lost the addresses (just had to rummage through my conversations with Hen over facebook!) The first house we found fell through unfortunately, but we have found another one in Burley, which is just on the edge of Hyde Park.
Etc etc. Long and short of it was within an hour of receiving this email I was £1,100 poorer for the part I was required to play in helping to secure the lease on a house for Hen and her fellow Leeds students which left me wondering whether I might be better off investing in a property UP there. So I registered on a website and this is the only thing that has come through so far.....
Nomura bonus season is upon us so I probably shouldn’t be too disparaging. David Moor Estate Agents may have the last laugh.
21st April, 2011
Like clockwork, an incessant flow of gossip from the East, but this week’s snippet from Hen may come as a bit of a surprise.....whilst she is not yet demonstrating any substantial improvement in her use of punctuation, I am at least beginning to feel this GAP year malarkey could be of some use. It seems it is not just about floating down the Mekong perched on the inner tube of a lorry tyre drinking Laotian cocktails.
*** Postcard from Cambodia
ive seen some pretty horrible things these last couple of days, when we were in sihanoukville there were all these little beach girls selling bracelets and stuff on the beach they cant have been older than eleven anyway, on the last night of new year they all came out and were wearing practically nothing and dancing with all the prostitutes and the people at the bar had apparently given them drinks and so they were all absolutely smashed, so i was trying to look after this one girl who was escpecially bad and sephy was looking after another, and apparently sephy said to her little girl when they walked past a fat western man who was with a cambodian prostitute, \dont you ever go home with a man like that its disgusting/ and the girl she said it to was just like /why? its what we do/ it was just awful.... after they had gone i went and yelled at the bar for selling drinks to underage girls.
the next two things were on the way to pnhom penh we passed a terrible motorbike accident which looked pretty fatal, and then today we went to the killing fields and S-21 which has been one of the most horrific experiences of my entire life, i have never seen anything so awful, on the floor on some of the cells was blood, and there were rows and rows of photographs of the people who were kept there, and because i am into my photography i cant help looking intently at pictures and the peoples eyes in the photos made me nearly burst into tears, you can see the panic, the despair, the fear that they have no idea what they have done, what is going to happen to them and it is all just falling out of their eyes.. it was truly the most horrific place i have ever been to. there were children kept there younger than lottie, they would kill babies by smashing their heads against trees.
i felt sick and very very close to tears.
very depressing!
But as one person grows up, is there any hope for her father? This arrived yesterday from my wife.......do any of you get treated like this??
I think we should fix a date for me to come to London and help you buy some new clothes. Your chinos are all frayed at the bottom, and really not smart enough to wear to work any more. You need a couple of new suits and a new dinner jacket (Simpsons?) Thursdays are good for me, or Tuesdays, let me know, LOL xxx
If you sense I am feeling overly aware of the aging process this week it may be because of an unfortunate incident at Liverpool Street station last night when I was challenged by a ticket inspector who suspected me of using someone else’s railcard pass ( see attached photo ). Idiot. What a blinking cheek eh???
*** Postcard from Cambodia
ive seen some pretty horrible things these last couple of days, when we were in sihanoukville there were all these little beach girls selling bracelets and stuff on the beach they cant have been older than eleven anyway, on the last night of new year they all came out and were wearing practically nothing and dancing with all the prostitutes and the people at the bar had apparently given them drinks and so they were all absolutely smashed, so i was trying to look after this one girl who was escpecially bad and sephy was looking after another, and apparently sephy said to her little girl when they walked past a fat western man who was with a cambodian prostitute, \dont you ever go home with a man like that its disgusting/ and the girl she said it to was just like /why? its what we do/ it was just awful.... after they had gone i went and yelled at the bar for selling drinks to underage girls.
the next two things were on the way to pnhom penh we passed a terrible motorbike accident which looked pretty fatal, and then today we went to the killing fields and S-21 which has been one of the most horrific experiences of my entire life, i have never seen anything so awful, on the floor on some of the cells was blood, and there were rows and rows of photographs of the people who were kept there, and because i am into my photography i cant help looking intently at pictures and the peoples eyes in the photos made me nearly burst into tears, you can see the panic, the despair, the fear that they have no idea what they have done, what is going to happen to them and it is all just falling out of their eyes.. it was truly the most horrific place i have ever been to. there were children kept there younger than lottie, they would kill babies by smashing their heads against trees.
i felt sick and very very close to tears.
very depressing!
But as one person grows up, is there any hope for her father? This arrived yesterday from my wife.......do any of you get treated like this??
I think we should fix a date for me to come to London and help you buy some new clothes. Your chinos are all frayed at the bottom, and really not smart enough to wear to work any more. You need a couple of new suits and a new dinner jacket (Simpsons?) Thursdays are good for me, or Tuesdays, let me know, LOL xxx
If you sense I am feeling overly aware of the aging process this week it may be because of an unfortunate incident at Liverpool Street station last night when I was challenged by a ticket inspector who suspected me of using someone else’s railcard pass ( see attached photo ). Idiot. What a blinking cheek eh???
15th April, 2011
I received an intriguing email from one of my Japanese colleagues this week who had been told that I used to be an English teacher, asking about the use of definite and indefinite articles. Think I helped but can’t be sure. It got me thinking about languages though and of course I had lots of opportunities last week in Val ( dig me ) to exercise my command of the French. Arriving a little late for our lunch booking at Eidelweiss restaurant I still don’t know why it caused such merriment amongst the rest of my party when I excused ourselves by saying:
Pardon me, je parle pas Franski tres bien.
Je suis desolee. Nous sommes retards.
What on earth is wrong with that?
Mobile phones. Bane of my blinking life. I havn’t ranted about them for a while but this has been a trying month on that front. I finally succumbed and dispensed with my beloved iPhone switching to a Blackberry which has been a joyous, if expensive, experience. My phone bill, with Hen in Cambodia only partially to blame, spiralled out of control (£448 this month....u wot?!) but this was nothing compared to the frustrations of Bob’s phone saga last week. He lost his phone on the slopes of Val D’Isere. I sent a text pleading anyone who found it to return it. Lo and behold, just five minutes later an awfully nice sounding boy – turned out to be reading history at Nottingham – rang me. Hallelulia. Phone found, but it turned out he was staying in Tignes and his Turkish girl friend had suffered a suspected broken leg so he couldn’t get it to us immediately. A fairly convoluted series of arrangements the following day, which included me side stepping half way up a mountain to get to the rendezvous in time, eventually led to the exchange take place just above the Tommeuses chair lift. £20 – from Bob’s savings– was handed over by way of a thank you and phone and owner were gleefully reunited. No doubt what would have followed would have been a flurry of expensive texts between him and current flame, but instead he whizzed away, in celebration, with me and the boy from Nottingham watching on in horror, over a jump and fell onto an icy piste, smashing both his brand new sunglasses and his phone. It’s enough to make you weep.
Desk move over the weekend. Absolutely hate these things not least because I am going to be sitting right outside the headmasters office.
Pardon me, je parle pas Franski tres bien.
Je suis desolee. Nous sommes retards.
What on earth is wrong with that?
Mobile phones. Bane of my blinking life. I havn’t ranted about them for a while but this has been a trying month on that front. I finally succumbed and dispensed with my beloved iPhone switching to a Blackberry which has been a joyous, if expensive, experience. My phone bill, with Hen in Cambodia only partially to blame, spiralled out of control (£448 this month....u wot?!) but this was nothing compared to the frustrations of Bob’s phone saga last week. He lost his phone on the slopes of Val D’Isere. I sent a text pleading anyone who found it to return it. Lo and behold, just five minutes later an awfully nice sounding boy – turned out to be reading history at Nottingham – rang me. Hallelulia. Phone found, but it turned out he was staying in Tignes and his Turkish girl friend had suffered a suspected broken leg so he couldn’t get it to us immediately. A fairly convoluted series of arrangements the following day, which included me side stepping half way up a mountain to get to the rendezvous in time, eventually led to the exchange take place just above the Tommeuses chair lift. £20 – from Bob’s savings– was handed over by way of a thank you and phone and owner were gleefully reunited. No doubt what would have followed would have been a flurry of expensive texts between him and current flame, but instead he whizzed away, in celebration, with me and the boy from Nottingham watching on in horror, over a jump and fell onto an icy piste, smashing both his brand new sunglasses and his phone. It’s enough to make you weep.
Desk move over the weekend. Absolutely hate these things not least because I am going to be sitting right outside the headmasters office.
1st April, 2011
Great excitement. I am off skiing tomorrow. Val D’Isere....never been there before so any restaurant recommendations welcomed. I asked one of my colleagues for useful tips and he has suggested a chairlift which it is possible to jump off as it crests a ridge. I didn’t think I was that difficult a person to work with. So I will be away next week and maybe longer! In my absence please contact Jina Kim if you need anything - jina.kim@nomura.com
The break couldn’t come quickly enough really. I think it must have been all the energy I expended looking after my ELO client in Mumbai. So knackered that for the first time for as long as I can remember I didn’t play an April Fool’s trick on anyone unless you can count late last night not putting requisite £1 coin under my youngest daughters pillow, but taking the tooth she had left there.
It appears that Hen is having some technical difficulties which are compromising her commitment to maintain her GAP blog discipline. This weeks log of what she has been up to was confined to a single text message:
I’VE GOT MY NOSE PIERCED IT LOOKS AWESOME! It doesn’t even leave a mark cos i looked at em’s and there is no mark and she’s had hers for ages! I’m so hardcore it didn’t even hurt! Wooo xxxx
Do Rastafarians have a big thing about nose piercing? I didn’t think so particularly, but if anyone can shed some light on this for me and what I should be braced for next I would be grateful. Anyway, she’s now in Cambodia so who knows really. Anything could happen, and usually does.
The break couldn’t come quickly enough really. I think it must have been all the energy I expended looking after my ELO client in Mumbai. So knackered that for the first time for as long as I can remember I didn’t play an April Fool’s trick on anyone unless you can count late last night not putting requisite £1 coin under my youngest daughters pillow, but taking the tooth she had left there.
It appears that Hen is having some technical difficulties which are compromising her commitment to maintain her GAP blog discipline. This weeks log of what she has been up to was confined to a single text message:
I’VE GOT MY NOSE PIERCED IT LOOKS AWESOME! It doesn’t even leave a mark cos i looked at em’s and there is no mark and she’s had hers for ages! I’m so hardcore it didn’t even hurt! Wooo xxxx
Do Rastafarians have a big thing about nose piercing? I didn’t think so particularly, but if anyone can shed some light on this for me and what I should be braced for next I would be grateful. Anyway, she’s now in Cambodia so who knows really. Anything could happen, and usually does.
25th March, 2011
The other day I was talking to a client of mine up in Scotland who was bemoaning the lack of talented undergraduates who could write and showed a broad interest in their surroundings. It so happened that I had just met such a person and was duly very pleased when they subsequently asked to meet him. It turns out that it was less to do with their confidence in me as a judge of character and more that they had “googled” him and discovered a blog he had maintained during his GAP year when he had ridden the breadth of China on a motorbike. It was a fascinating journal full of interesting, pertinent and critical observations about China and, furthermore, it was written in impressively good English! It rendered his solid, but stereotypical CV pretty much superfluous.
So, my parting words to Hen as she left last Saturday for Bangkok on her GAP year travels was that if she did nothing else she must try to keep a Blog and that it would be invaluable for her future employment prospects. She seems to have taken my urgings on board. Here is the first instalment:
23 March 2011 at 02:00
hey there family!, you alright?? im having such an amazing time! I AM SO GAP YEAR!!! ive got a dreadlock!!! it looks sick. i havent taken very many pics yet really but when i have i'll put them up for ya. ! the first night i got here we had to take sophie to the hospital it was mega lolz cos she only just bruised her ankle but she thought she had broken it. i also have so much stuffin my hair like feathers and braids and all kinds of rasta things cos that what i am.. so raasta. lol. there are sooooooo many lady boys and pros*itutes everywhere! omg last night we manged to pursuade sophie to get a moustache henna on her face!!! its going to be there for 3 weeks!!!!! lololllllll
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My daughter’s employment’s prospects aside I am feeling quite good about myself today. I broke my target of 1 h2 20 mins for the Crick although that is no big deal really I suppose. Staged at Rugby School this is the oldest organised cross country race in the world and if I had achieved my time in the race in 1869 I would have been beaten by a 17 year old boy called Bulpett. In addition I met the President of China Life today, Mr Yang Chao. A charming gentleman. Chatting to him before a meeting with an absolutely enormous long only institutional client it just happened to slip out that that I was Scottish. My, was he not impressed. “Oh” he said, “I admire Scottish people. They are like people from Shandong. Straight shooters.” He then proceeded to conduct the meeting virtually entirely in Mandarin, but I knew better!
So, my parting words to Hen as she left last Saturday for Bangkok on her GAP year travels was that if she did nothing else she must try to keep a Blog and that it would be invaluable for her future employment prospects. She seems to have taken my urgings on board. Here is the first instalment:
23 March 2011 at 02:00
hey there family!, you alright?? im having such an amazing time! I AM SO GAP YEAR!!! ive got a dreadlock!!! it looks sick. i havent taken very many pics yet really but when i have i'll put them up for ya. ! the first night i got here we had to take sophie to the hospital it was mega lolz cos she only just bruised her ankle but she thought she had broken it. i also have so much stuffin my hair like feathers and braids and all kinds of rasta things cos that what i am.. so raasta. lol. there are sooooooo many lady boys and pros*itutes everywhere! omg last night we manged to pursuade sophie to get a moustache henna on her face!!! its going to be there for 3 weeks!!!!! lololllllll
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My daughter’s employment’s prospects aside I am feeling quite good about myself today. I broke my target of 1 h2 20 mins for the Crick although that is no big deal really I suppose. Staged at Rugby School this is the oldest organised cross country race in the world and if I had achieved my time in the race in 1869 I would have been beaten by a 17 year old boy called Bulpett. In addition I met the President of China Life today, Mr Yang Chao. A charming gentleman. Chatting to him before a meeting with an absolutely enormous long only institutional client it just happened to slip out that that I was Scottish. My, was he not impressed. “Oh” he said, “I admire Scottish people. They are like people from Shandong. Straight shooters.” He then proceeded to conduct the meeting virtually entirely in Mandarin, but I knew better!
18th March, 2011
This time last year I reported that I was heading up to Rugby to run The Crick, the oldest cross country race in the world apparently. It was more of a struggle than I had expected. 10 miles across stiles, boggy fields, railway embankments and uphill and into the wind the whole way! I set myself a target time of 1hr 20mins to get round but, as with my various attempts to beat the then world record for the 800 metres set by Georgette Lenoir in the 1922 Paris Olympics, I failed. But as Clive Woodward says, “Better never stops......” and so I am going to give it another go on Sunday.
Talking about dodgy catch phrases, whilst I may be challenged if asked to dissect a balance sheet, I do have a keen eye for corporate mission statements. You see some clangers in Asia, but rarely have I been so surprised than by the one on a slightly gnarled poster in the reassuringly shabby reception room of Godrej Consumer Product’s office on my visit to India last week. We had driven to the north end of the Mumbai into a kind of green belt and down a drive which led to the Godrej Group’s site, a large plot which seemed more like a plantation than the headquarters of one of India’s leading corporations. Nevertheless, despite the almost rural setting, the motto “ Having a goat is a state of happiness” seemed a little out of place especially for a company whose primary business is in household and personal care products. On closer inspection it may have been that the word was actually goal, but by then I was in stitches. It was almost as amusing as the moment a little earlier when my “huge, Global, long only” client fell down a water drainage ditch as he got out of the car on arriving at Godrej distracted by a signboard that proclaimed there had been no accidents on site since 10th January 2008.
Talking about dodgy catch phrases, whilst I may be challenged if asked to dissect a balance sheet, I do have a keen eye for corporate mission statements. You see some clangers in Asia, but rarely have I been so surprised than by the one on a slightly gnarled poster in the reassuringly shabby reception room of Godrej Consumer Product’s office on my visit to India last week. We had driven to the north end of the Mumbai into a kind of green belt and down a drive which led to the Godrej Group’s site, a large plot which seemed more like a plantation than the headquarters of one of India’s leading corporations. Nevertheless, despite the almost rural setting, the motto “ Having a goat is a state of happiness” seemed a little out of place especially for a company whose primary business is in household and personal care products. On closer inspection it may have been that the word was actually goal, but by then I was in stitches. It was almost as amusing as the moment a little earlier when my “huge, Global, long only” client fell down a water drainage ditch as he got out of the car on arriving at Godrej distracted by a signboard that proclaimed there had been no accidents on site since 10th January 2008.
18th February, 2011
So my back held up quite well to the week away with my wife in Wengen, but I might add the horse is now up for sale. As reported a week or so ago it has bucked me off once too often. Wow....how about that for a couple of sentences that could be misconstrued. Anyway, I have to get a large monkey off my back too. I have long been rude and scathing about Swiss wine (“life’s too short to drink this cr*p”) but it is my new passion. Enjoyed some absolutely delicious bottles last week and am now an expert. It is however virtually impossible to get hold of it outside of Switzerland. Consequently, despite exorbitant expense courtesy of sterling’s disastrous performance relative to the Swiss Franc, I am going back later in the year to participate in the Jungfrau marathon. The graph below may look like one of my stock recommendations, but it is in fact the race route profile. This is real mid-life crisis stuff albeit that my birthday earlier this week – you forgot eh?.....thanks anyway – was still the right side of the significant figure. I think you might be hearing of my preparations for the marathon in due course.
Whilst on the subject of the Alps I wonder if you remember my email about our classy Christmas Party which was held at the Turf Club? It is fair to say, and excuse the pun, that things have gone downhill since then. We had an offsite on Wednesday afternoon at which we racked our brains as to how we could possibly serve you all better. Having failed, unsurprisingly, to come up with anything substantive, we followed it up with a team spirit building dinner at an Austrian restaurant called the Tiroler Hut, located down a cellar, appropriately enough, off Westbourne Grove. Website worth a quick look tiroler hut ..omg.....it was good fun, but classy??? Not really. Featuring large was a funny old buffer playing pieces from The Sound of Music on a combination of cow bells, a saxophone and a clarinet. As I said, I had a jolly evening sitting next to my fine colleague Sven Krueger from our Frankfurt office who, interestingly, had never heard of The Sound of Music never mind seen the film. Very strange indeed.
Whilst on the subject of the Alps I wonder if you remember my email about our classy Christmas Party which was held at the Turf Club? It is fair to say, and excuse the pun, that things have gone downhill since then. We had an offsite on Wednesday afternoon at which we racked our brains as to how we could possibly serve you all better. Having failed, unsurprisingly, to come up with anything substantive, we followed it up with a team spirit building dinner at an Austrian restaurant called the Tiroler Hut, located down a cellar, appropriately enough, off Westbourne Grove. Website worth a quick look tiroler hut ..omg.....it was good fun, but classy??? Not really. Featuring large was a funny old buffer playing pieces from The Sound of Music on a combination of cow bells, a saxophone and a clarinet. As I said, I had a jolly evening sitting next to my fine colleague Sven Krueger from our Frankfurt office who, interestingly, had never heard of The Sound of Music never mind seen the film. Very strange indeed.
4th February, 2011
I sense I have been brow beating myself recently, and generally speaking this week is no exception. I have been somewhat under the weather actually having allowed my macho streak to get the better of me last Sunday afternoon when, out for a gentle family ride, I attempted to follow my son Bob over a ridiculously high fence, utterly verboten by Mrs S, but which had been tempting us both for some weeks now. Bob sailed it. My stupid horse whacked into the top shattering the wooden railing and I went head over heels landing on my back and hitting my head. It was an ignominious moment as I trudged up the field, somewhat dazed ( but not badly enough to prevent me wondering whether I would be able to get away without Sophie finding out ) to meet Bob coming the other way to fix the fence armed with a large hammer and some extra long nails. And so it was that the mantle of “top dog” in the Sandison household changed hands. Ha ha.....that’s what Bob thinks at least.
Things are not all bad. I am heading off to Wengen on Sunday for a few days skiing with Sophie. Come to think of it, she has also had her nose put somewhat out of joint this week too. I got home last night to find her rather disgruntled following a phone call from Hen who had rung home at around 6pm and the following conversation between her and Sophie ensued.....recounted verbatim:
“ Hi Mumma, can I speak to Daddy please.”
“ Nope Hen he’s on his way home from work.”
“ Oh, ok, don’t worry, I’ll get him on his mobile.”
“ I wouldn’t Hen he doesn’t like getting calls on the train.”
“ Yeah, all right....I’ll ring him when he’s in the car. Right , see you.”
“ Hang on Hen, what do you want to talk to Daddy about?”
“ Oh, you can’t help me. I’m cooking myself supper and I need to know how to do spaghetti.”
Spaghetti......for goodness sake. But anyway, go me.....stick that in your pipe and smoke it Bob.
On the subject of culinary expertise and in the absence of research I thought I would pad this missive our with a recipe that might be useful for your Chinese New Year celebrations. Being a nostalgic sort I might add that is pretty much the recipe I used, aged 14, the first time ever I cooked supper at home, Lapin a la Moutarde, the lapin having been despatched with a .410 at the bottom of my parents garden in Kirriemuir.
2 small rabbits, skinned
600ml chicken stock
150ml white wine
150ml double cream
3 tbsp mustard
1 tbsp grain mustard
1 tbsp olive oil
1 carrot
1 onion
2 celery stalks
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp chopped parsley
Things are not all bad. I am heading off to Wengen on Sunday for a few days skiing with Sophie. Come to think of it, she has also had her nose put somewhat out of joint this week too. I got home last night to find her rather disgruntled following a phone call from Hen who had rung home at around 6pm and the following conversation between her and Sophie ensued.....recounted verbatim:
“ Hi Mumma, can I speak to Daddy please.”
“ Nope Hen he’s on his way home from work.”
“ Oh, ok, don’t worry, I’ll get him on his mobile.”
“ I wouldn’t Hen he doesn’t like getting calls on the train.”
“ Yeah, all right....I’ll ring him when he’s in the car. Right , see you.”
“ Hang on Hen, what do you want to talk to Daddy about?”
“ Oh, you can’t help me. I’m cooking myself supper and I need to know how to do spaghetti.”
Spaghetti......for goodness sake. But anyway, go me.....stick that in your pipe and smoke it Bob.
On the subject of culinary expertise and in the absence of research I thought I would pad this missive our with a recipe that might be useful for your Chinese New Year celebrations. Being a nostalgic sort I might add that is pretty much the recipe I used, aged 14, the first time ever I cooked supper at home, Lapin a la Moutarde, the lapin having been despatched with a .410 at the bottom of my parents garden in Kirriemuir.
2 small rabbits, skinned
600ml chicken stock
150ml white wine
150ml double cream
3 tbsp mustard
1 tbsp grain mustard
1 tbsp olive oil
1 carrot
1 onion
2 celery stalks
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp chopped parsley
28th January, 2011
You might have been wondering where the impetus for the new me in 2011 has come from. In part it was because I felt the stars were aligned as we approach the Year of the Rabbit. But there is also bit of a story here. In search of some sort of an explanation for Bob’s latest dire school report – though I should tell you that despite the knife incident and insisting to his prospective housemaster that the student riots were justified he has been offered a place at Rugby - I have been trawling through my own old reports to see what I was like at 13 years old. Alas in no sense did it make for encouraging reading. In my final term at Clifton Hall School in Edinburgh my headmaster, and I thought he quite liked me, wrote the following valedictory scrawl:
“We must acknowledge that David is essentially idle.”
What a damn cheek eh?! Well I’m showing him up this year anyway – except he’s dead. I’m sure you have noticed how busy and proactive I have been. I have even signed up for a internal Learning and Performance course on Business Writing. See email exchange below:
_____________________________________________
From: Smith, Catherine (HR/UK) On Behalf Of Learning and Performance
Sent: 27 January 2011 16:46
To: Sandison, David (EQ/UK)
Subject: RE: Business Writing
Hi David
I have reserved you a place on this course, could you please ask your line manager to confirm that they approve your attendance.
Many thanks
Catherine
_____________________________________________
From: Sandison, David (EQ/UK)
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 04:47 PM
To: Learning and Performance; Ingram, Bruce (EQ/UK)
Subject: RE: Business Writing
Bruce pls can u approve. Wanna lern how to writ proper.
_____________________________________________
Another little confession of shame at the end of this cleansing month with one eye on the worrying news concerning “Madiba” and the other on students rioting all over the world.....it struck me that the only time I took part in any form of political activism at Leicester University was when the Trendy Lefties proposed that the Student Union Bar, named after Daniel Lambert, who in his time was the heaviest recorded human and died in 1809 at the age of 39 weighing 52 stone, should be rechristened the Mandela Bar. I fought this tooth and nail...unsuccessfully I am now glad to say.
My spell on the wagon draws to a close, although I fear this weekend is going to be a tester. Truth be told I’m a little worried at how easy it has been.....there must be something wrong with me.
“We must acknowledge that David is essentially idle.”
What a damn cheek eh?! Well I’m showing him up this year anyway – except he’s dead. I’m sure you have noticed how busy and proactive I have been. I have even signed up for a internal Learning and Performance course on Business Writing. See email exchange below:
_____________________________________________
From: Smith, Catherine (HR/UK) On Behalf Of Learning and Performance
Sent: 27 January 2011 16:46
To: Sandison, David (EQ/UK)
Subject: RE: Business Writing
Hi David
I have reserved you a place on this course, could you please ask your line manager to confirm that they approve your attendance.
Many thanks
Catherine
_____________________________________________
From: Sandison, David (EQ/UK)
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 04:47 PM
To: Learning and Performance; Ingram, Bruce (EQ/UK)
Subject: RE: Business Writing
Bruce pls can u approve. Wanna lern how to writ proper.
_____________________________________________
Another little confession of shame at the end of this cleansing month with one eye on the worrying news concerning “Madiba” and the other on students rioting all over the world.....it struck me that the only time I took part in any form of political activism at Leicester University was when the Trendy Lefties proposed that the Student Union Bar, named after Daniel Lambert, who in his time was the heaviest recorded human and died in 1809 at the age of 39 weighing 52 stone, should be rechristened the Mandela Bar. I fought this tooth and nail...unsuccessfully I am now glad to say.
My spell on the wagon draws to a close, although I fear this weekend is going to be a tester. Truth be told I’m a little worried at how easy it has been.....there must be something wrong with me.
21st January, 2011
When I wrote yesterday that I was taking a days’ holiday to do the school run I was playing my day down a little. I was indeed on a school run, but to Rugby taking Bob for an interview with his prospective housemaster. A colleague, in all seriousness, remarked to me that this must simply be a formality and that his place at the school was assured. You what?!! Nothing could be further from the truth. Longer term recipients of this email will appreciate that Bob’s elder siblings have not exactly enjoyed an unblemished record either in an academic or pastoral sense. It is not telling too many stories out of school so to speak to recall the fact that Hen once failed to turn up for the practical leg of her Drama GCSE opting instead to attend a polo practice session; got rusticated having been caught smoking on police CCTV....nope....don’t get me started on this tack. In any case it is hardly fair to blame them on the fact that Bob’s admission was no given. Hours of preparation and grooming, and £85 spent on a pair of new shoes in an emergency visit to a shop when we got to Rugby, had managed to get him looking just about presentable, but as we stood nervously in an austere, wooden floored study with the footsteps of the Housemaster announcing his imminent arrival there was a loud crash as something fell out of Bob’s pocket onto the floor. Thankfully the Housemaster, coming through the door at that very moment, presumed one of us had dropped our mobile phone. For my part I was rather proud at how skilfully and quickly I managed to stoop and retrieve a knife which, even by the demanding standards of Bob’s armoury, had to be described as substantial.
Talking about young boys, and OK I admit I am a bit of a name-dropper and never shy to let you know when I have been brushing shoulders with the rich and famous, who should I find myself sitting next to at lunch today, but Jonathan King, appropriately enough at a Chinese restaurant in Queensway.
Hurrah for Friday though I don’t mind telling you I am little nervous ahead of my first ever day cavorting over the Leicestershire countryside tomorrow. My back has barely recovered from the last time I was out on a horse. On on.......
Talking about young boys, and OK I admit I am a bit of a name-dropper and never shy to let you know when I have been brushing shoulders with the rich and famous, who should I find myself sitting next to at lunch today, but Jonathan King, appropriately enough at a Chinese restaurant in Queensway.
Hurrah for Friday though I don’t mind telling you I am little nervous ahead of my first ever day cavorting over the Leicestershire countryside tomorrow. My back has barely recovered from the last time I was out on a horse. On on.......
14th January, 2011
As I am sure you appreciate I like to bring you a varied fare in this Friday afternoon email of mine, albeit it normally revolves around Hen or Bob, but consequently I rarely know what it is I am going to serve up to you until I sit down to scribble something off. I was struggling today. Hen back at Leeds on radio silence – probably lost her phone again – and Twiggie the lurcher is off games so nothing much to report there. But then, click, an email arrived in response to one I had sent which to be honest I had forgotten about. Remember that photograph I sent towards the end of last year?
Fair to say it caused a degree of consternation not least at home, but my conscience was clear. What I was preoccupied with that evening, over dinner in Bangkok, was the most delicious T-bone steak (accompanied by a wonderful bottle of Barolo), pictured above. I subsequently sent the restaurant a request for the recipe which has only just arrived. Never let it be said I don’t look after you lot. I am very happy to share it with you. Print it off and raise a glass to me and Gianmaria when the BBQ season eventually returns:
Dear Mr ,David,
I highly appreciate your comments and apology for having missed your message.
The seasoning of our steak is most natural and simple.
Take 50ml of pure extra virgin olive oil, not over 11 months old, add a mixture of tyme, sage, rosemary and oregano (all fresh) marinate the herbs in the oil for 30 minutes.
Once the beef is cooked before cutting it, massage with a few spoon of the marinated oil applying some pressure on the barbecued meat in order to let the oil to penetrate the meat. ( the meat must be very hot just out of the fire)
as last add rock salt on the sliced meat (maldom salt preferably) to your taste . The salt MUST be added ONLY on the cooked finished meat and NEVER before.
Fresh herbs as above and optional shaved 24 months Parmesan cheese should decorate the plate along with some RUCOLA SALAD.....
I hope you can enjoy to prepare a very tasty steak at home. and I look forward to serve you again very soon.
Best regards
gianmaria zanotti
How delicious does that sound though I’m not sure I need to be reminded of things like this as I struggle my way through January. What I would give for a T-bone and a bottle off Italian red. For a brief moment yesterday I was feeling quite pleased with myself at how easily and quickly my month on the wagon was passing, but I had looked at my watch to see what date it was and misread the 3 for a 9. It was only the 13th January, not the 19th. What a pain. Sad how excited I get these days about the prospect of a Coca Cola at lunchtime. I have resisted temptation so far, despite having found myself involved in this year’s Burgundy En Primeur campaign helping a client to secure the offer of a precious case of Chambolle Musigny Gruenchers, Barthod 2009.
Fair to say it caused a degree of consternation not least at home, but my conscience was clear. What I was preoccupied with that evening, over dinner in Bangkok, was the most delicious T-bone steak (accompanied by a wonderful bottle of Barolo), pictured above. I subsequently sent the restaurant a request for the recipe which has only just arrived. Never let it be said I don’t look after you lot. I am very happy to share it with you. Print it off and raise a glass to me and Gianmaria when the BBQ season eventually returns:
Dear Mr ,David,
I highly appreciate your comments and apology for having missed your message.
The seasoning of our steak is most natural and simple.
Take 50ml of pure extra virgin olive oil, not over 11 months old, add a mixture of tyme, sage, rosemary and oregano (all fresh) marinate the herbs in the oil for 30 minutes.
Once the beef is cooked before cutting it, massage with a few spoon of the marinated oil applying some pressure on the barbecued meat in order to let the oil to penetrate the meat. ( the meat must be very hot just out of the fire)
as last add rock salt on the sliced meat (maldom salt preferably) to your taste . The salt MUST be added ONLY on the cooked finished meat and NEVER before.
Fresh herbs as above and optional shaved 24 months Parmesan cheese should decorate the plate along with some RUCOLA SALAD.....
I hope you can enjoy to prepare a very tasty steak at home. and I look forward to serve you again very soon.
Best regards
gianmaria zanotti
How delicious does that sound though I’m not sure I need to be reminded of things like this as I struggle my way through January. What I would give for a T-bone and a bottle off Italian red. For a brief moment yesterday I was feeling quite pleased with myself at how easily and quickly my month on the wagon was passing, but I had looked at my watch to see what date it was and misread the 3 for a 9. It was only the 13th January, not the 19th. What a pain. Sad how excited I get these days about the prospect of a Coca Cola at lunchtime. I have resisted temptation so far, despite having found myself involved in this year’s Burgundy En Primeur campaign helping a client to secure the offer of a precious case of Chambolle Musigny Gruenchers, Barthod 2009.
7th January, 2011
Remember me? Been a while. I left you sometime in mid December. Having had a busy time of it in Jakarta, Bangkok, Frankfurt, the Turf Club, an East End Karaoke bar and various other sojourns in the first half of the month I was somewhat behind with my Christmas shopping, but I had a brain wave on my one day off in the week before Christmas. I left Bob and Jimmy in Cambridge’s shiny new John Lewis department store with a couple of shopping baskets and, though I say it myself, a most generous budget to find presents for Sophie’s stocking while I went on a desperate search elsewhere in town for her main present. I returned some 40 minutes later having secured her a gift of three hours of treatment at a local beauty parlour expecting to find the stocking filling project completed by two enthusiastic and spendthrift kids. Alas I found my hopeless offspring had managed to put just two things into their baskets. Pathetic. A pad of post it stickers and a brown plastic bog-brush in the shape of a cat.
Remaining on the present theme Hen surpassed herself this year. “Dave” she told me on Christmas Eve, “I’m thinking I’m going to just give you a tenner this year. Hope that’s OK.” I expect my face told her what I thought of that plan and so I ended up getting a beanie hat from her.
Anyway, it was a good break and despite a slightly disconcerting resumption of my tendency to fall off horses, I should be refreshed and invigorated and raring to go but if I seem a little uninspired in the next few weeks it is because I have made the most fool-hardy resolution not to drink during January. I know most of you will feel little sympathy and indeed probably do the no-alcohol thing yourself on a regular basis, but it is a first for me and just three days into it – because my fast kicked off on the 4th – I am not finding it much fun at all. On top of which I have signed up to our desk competition to see who can lose the most weight between now and the end of Q1. 2011 has not been a bundle of laughs to date.
Remaining on the present theme Hen surpassed herself this year. “Dave” she told me on Christmas Eve, “I’m thinking I’m going to just give you a tenner this year. Hope that’s OK.” I expect my face told her what I thought of that plan and so I ended up getting a beanie hat from her.
Anyway, it was a good break and despite a slightly disconcerting resumption of my tendency to fall off horses, I should be refreshed and invigorated and raring to go but if I seem a little uninspired in the next few weeks it is because I have made the most fool-hardy resolution not to drink during January. I know most of you will feel little sympathy and indeed probably do the no-alcohol thing yourself on a regular basis, but it is a first for me and just three days into it – because my fast kicked off on the 4th – I am not finding it much fun at all. On top of which I have signed up to our desk competition to see who can lose the most weight between now and the end of Q1. 2011 has not been a bundle of laughs to date.
17th December, 2010
I negotiated my first trip to Germany ( that’s my 58th country ticked off ) this week and had a good time, sorry, I meant successful trip, the one frustration being failure to find the time for a veal chop at MutterErnst, a small bar/restaurant I was introduced briefly to just round the corner from our office. My sort of place. That, together with the fact that I was in London last night for our desk Christmas party has meant the only night I had at home this week coincided with a 16th birthday dinner party for my daughter Jimmy and 20 teenage friends who also ended up staying the night. Have yet to discover what horrors transpired after I got to bed at midnight. The fact is though that my absence means I have only managed to sneak a quick look at Bob’s latest school report but what I saw of it did not make for pretty reading. Fair to say that his attempt at humour in the accompanying personal statement the pupils are all required to write has fallen a little flat. In the section about what it was he was most keen to better in himself, in an almost illegible scrawl, he had scribbled “I must try to improve my handwriting.” Ho ho ho.....what a wag.
As for the Christmas party I would venture to suggest there are relatively few broking desks around the City who would choose the hallowed venue of the Turf Club for their seasonal festivities. This is one classy outfit that is looking after you. Followed an excellent dinner, delicious wine and couple of glasses of port, with a frame of snooker, yours truly cutting a difficult black into the centre pocket to steal an unlikely win against our head of sales trading who had claimed he was pretty much brought up in a snooker hall. And then it was off for a karaoke session. I’ve got to say I was quietly confident that I would pull off a Matt Cardle moment, but alas my rendition of Delilah was not one of my finest performances.
As it’s Christmas and food has been a repeated theme in this weeks paragraphs, although thwarted in Frankfurt I enjoyed a delicious T bone steak in Bangkok the other day. It was so good I even had a photograph taken. I leave you with that, if it gets through your firewall and, although I will be in for most of the Festive period as I shot my hand up when volunteers were called for to provide desk cover, I will take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Yup. Classy. That’s us.
As for the Christmas party I would venture to suggest there are relatively few broking desks around the City who would choose the hallowed venue of the Turf Club for their seasonal festivities. This is one classy outfit that is looking after you. Followed an excellent dinner, delicious wine and couple of glasses of port, with a frame of snooker, yours truly cutting a difficult black into the centre pocket to steal an unlikely win against our head of sales trading who had claimed he was pretty much brought up in a snooker hall. And then it was off for a karaoke session. I’ve got to say I was quietly confident that I would pull off a Matt Cardle moment, but alas my rendition of Delilah was not one of my finest performances.
As it’s Christmas and food has been a repeated theme in this weeks paragraphs, although thwarted in Frankfurt I enjoyed a delicious T bone steak in Bangkok the other day. It was so good I even had a photograph taken. I leave you with that, if it gets through your firewall and, although I will be in for most of the Festive period as I shot my hand up when volunteers were called for to provide desk cover, I will take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Yup. Classy. That’s us.
26th November, 2010
I frequently get asked if I invent the episodes I relate, which I promise you I do not, but occasionally people reading this rubbish do get the wrong end of the stick. After relating the other day the story about Bob’s mock Geography common entrance paper in which he had written that the capital of Russia was Roulette, a concerned client asked me why we sent our children to such a patently hopeless academic institution. Oh dear me no.....nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, the school featured in yesterdays Daily Telegraph. I quote:
Edward Tomanek, aged 7, began playing the piano aged 3 and then asked his parents, Lyudmilla, 34 , and Stuart, 46, who do not play themselves, to buy a violin. He studies on a scholarship at Kings College School in Cambridge. Practising for hours a day, he passed Grade 8 violin with a distinction aged 6, before achieving Grade 8 on the piano this year. His mother said “If he’s not playing then he’ll be composing, or get out his chemistry set. And he loves dipping into languages – old English, Latin, Greek.”
Although, according to my youngest daughter Lottie, he swears a lot, which is a slight let-down, I was bathed in a sense of reflected glory as I proudly strolled through the front gates of the school yesterday evening on my way to watch the Year 5 play in which Lottie was Peasant No.3 in Act II of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The description of her part should have alerted me, but there was disappointingly no sign of her for the first hour. However, when the interval mercifully arrived and I queued in the freezing cold outside the Art block waiting for a restorative glass of white wine and a sausage, the evening seemed to be brightening up judging by the sound of laughter as the people in front of me made their way along the corridor. The source of the amusement became horribly clear when one of Bob’s young friends standing in the queue behind me, tears practically rolling down his face, gestured me to look at the display of art on the wall. “Lottie did that one”, he managed to splutter.
“Happiness is a horse and a rich Daddy”.....You what? There was I thinking that with Hen having pretty much left the coop things were going to become a little more straightforward. Sadly not. If Lottie is misguided so was I. Talking of Hen, news from that other centre of academic excellence, Leeds, is that the course she is on is not exactly stretching her. She reported at the weekend that she was being kept busy, and late into the evening, tending to the pigs and crops on her virtual farm.
I am away next week. A hardship posting escorting a couple of clients round a series of company visits in Jakarta and Bangkok. I am embarrassed to say it will be my first trip to Indonesia since 1994 and I will also be returning to Bangkok for the first time since leaving Thailand where I lived from 1996 to 1998. And I have the cheek to call myself an Asian stock broker. Ridiculous. My comment earlier this week about never having used the MTR when I lived in HK went down quite badly with some of you, but I led a similarly spoilt existence in Thailand and one of the things I am most looking forward to is catching up with my old driver Sunna! Sad eh. Anyway, you know how I like to roll our my old trip reports. Here’s one from a visit I made to Indonesia in 1992. (Note that it took me a month between making the visit and putting pen to paper. No wonder I drove my then boss, David Brennan, mad.) It was a different world obviously. Indonesian deposit rates were 20%. Lending rates 25%. Non-performing loans at the state banks running at 20%+. And the country’s population has increased by 60 million since that visit! Interestingly enough though three of the companies I met then we will be seeing again on this trip. Nothing like keeping up to date with one’s portfolio holdings.
Edward Tomanek, aged 7, began playing the piano aged 3 and then asked his parents, Lyudmilla, 34 , and Stuart, 46, who do not play themselves, to buy a violin. He studies on a scholarship at Kings College School in Cambridge. Practising for hours a day, he passed Grade 8 violin with a distinction aged 6, before achieving Grade 8 on the piano this year. His mother said “If he’s not playing then he’ll be composing, or get out his chemistry set. And he loves dipping into languages – old English, Latin, Greek.”
Although, according to my youngest daughter Lottie, he swears a lot, which is a slight let-down, I was bathed in a sense of reflected glory as I proudly strolled through the front gates of the school yesterday evening on my way to watch the Year 5 play in which Lottie was Peasant No.3 in Act II of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The description of her part should have alerted me, but there was disappointingly no sign of her for the first hour. However, when the interval mercifully arrived and I queued in the freezing cold outside the Art block waiting for a restorative glass of white wine and a sausage, the evening seemed to be brightening up judging by the sound of laughter as the people in front of me made their way along the corridor. The source of the amusement became horribly clear when one of Bob’s young friends standing in the queue behind me, tears practically rolling down his face, gestured me to look at the display of art on the wall. “Lottie did that one”, he managed to splutter.
“Happiness is a horse and a rich Daddy”.....You what? There was I thinking that with Hen having pretty much left the coop things were going to become a little more straightforward. Sadly not. If Lottie is misguided so was I. Talking of Hen, news from that other centre of academic excellence, Leeds, is that the course she is on is not exactly stretching her. She reported at the weekend that she was being kept busy, and late into the evening, tending to the pigs and crops on her virtual farm.
I am away next week. A hardship posting escorting a couple of clients round a series of company visits in Jakarta and Bangkok. I am embarrassed to say it will be my first trip to Indonesia since 1994 and I will also be returning to Bangkok for the first time since leaving Thailand where I lived from 1996 to 1998. And I have the cheek to call myself an Asian stock broker. Ridiculous. My comment earlier this week about never having used the MTR when I lived in HK went down quite badly with some of you, but I led a similarly spoilt existence in Thailand and one of the things I am most looking forward to is catching up with my old driver Sunna! Sad eh. Anyway, you know how I like to roll our my old trip reports. Here’s one from a visit I made to Indonesia in 1992. (Note that it took me a month between making the visit and putting pen to paper. No wonder I drove my then boss, David Brennan, mad.) It was a different world obviously. Indonesian deposit rates were 20%. Lending rates 25%. Non-performing loans at the state banks running at 20%+. And the country’s population has increased by 60 million since that visit! Interestingly enough though three of the companies I met then we will be seeing again on this trip. Nothing like keeping up to date with one’s portfolio holdings.
12th November, 2010
Although I ended up in ended up in Denmark the other day when trying to take my wife on a surprise visit to her relatives in Sweden ( note to self : Stockholm, not Copenhagen, is the capital of Sweden ) geography has always been one of my strong points. So it was particularly disheartening to hear the following story of my son Bob in the car back from school discussing with his friend Ed, ( David Cameron’s godson as it happens ) the mock Common Entrance geography exam they had taken that afternoon.
“Ed, what is the capital of Russia by the way?”
“Don’t know Bob, sorry”
“Oh well, I wrote Roulette. Not sure it’s right but it’s the only Russian word I know.”
WRONG. In so many ways. And you can be virtually certain that he failed to spell Roulette correctly. To think that only this week someone was asking me for my views on the Cambridge school Bob attends and I used the word “academic”.
Despair. In addition I have had to do some pretty undignified begging this week to try to make sure absolutely all the companies attending our Shinka Forum here in London next week – what? I hadn’t told you about this? – have a good full schedule. I suppose I might have suggested there would be a reward for those stepping up to the plate and taking meetings with the more esoteric offerings, but really I meant that if we want a broad range of companies to continue to make the trip to the UK it’s in all our interests to give them each an effusive welcome. It is not always possible to predict how one’s email message will be received. What on earth did the person who sent this response think I was up to?
Nervous overtones of the pact between Faust and Mephistopheles here – nonetheless I am happy to meet with *************. Is this a 1on1?
PS. Talking of corporates......Christmas......can you believe my wife rang me today to ask if I would be happy to be given two teak benches for the garden as my Christmas present. To be honest, I would have been outraged if not for the fact that Sophie’s Christmas stocking has begun to fill up already. For escorting a corporate to a client meeting I was handed a parcel, beautifully wrapped in the company colours, containing, I was told, a lovely, natural dyed, allergy free, place mat. No doubt with the corporate logo inscribed.
“Ed, what is the capital of Russia by the way?”
“Don’t know Bob, sorry”
“Oh well, I wrote Roulette. Not sure it’s right but it’s the only Russian word I know.”
WRONG. In so many ways. And you can be virtually certain that he failed to spell Roulette correctly. To think that only this week someone was asking me for my views on the Cambridge school Bob attends and I used the word “academic”.
Despair. In addition I have had to do some pretty undignified begging this week to try to make sure absolutely all the companies attending our Shinka Forum here in London next week – what? I hadn’t told you about this? – have a good full schedule. I suppose I might have suggested there would be a reward for those stepping up to the plate and taking meetings with the more esoteric offerings, but really I meant that if we want a broad range of companies to continue to make the trip to the UK it’s in all our interests to give them each an effusive welcome. It is not always possible to predict how one’s email message will be received. What on earth did the person who sent this response think I was up to?
Nervous overtones of the pact between Faust and Mephistopheles here – nonetheless I am happy to meet with *************. Is this a 1on1?
PS. Talking of corporates......Christmas......can you believe my wife rang me today to ask if I would be happy to be given two teak benches for the garden as my Christmas present. To be honest, I would have been outraged if not for the fact that Sophie’s Christmas stocking has begun to fill up already. For escorting a corporate to a client meeting I was handed a parcel, beautifully wrapped in the company colours, containing, I was told, a lovely, natural dyed, allergy free, place mat. No doubt with the corporate logo inscribed.
5th November, 2010
I do have a tendency to hide my light under a bushel as you might have gathered, but there is one highlight of my sporting career that I am actually quite proud of and will probably surprise you in the telling. In 1987 I made an appearance on the bench as reserve fullback for London Scottish 1st XV in an away match against another 1st division side, Nottingham. I suspect my selection was partially due to a lack of regular team members prepared to make the trip to Nottingham that weekend and it was quite a relief not to get on the field of play since amongst the opposition team I would have found myself confronted by the likes of Brian Moore and Chris Oti, a well built winger of prodigious pace ( thank you Wikipedia ) who went on to represent England on 13 occasions. But anyway, with such a ripe history of sporting success behind me, when on Wednesday afternoon I used up 2% of my annual holiday entitlement to head off to Cambridge to watch my son and his other as yet winless team mates take on another local prep school, I suppose I could be accused of not quite being in the right frame of mind. I arrived early enough to give them some encouraging words and a bit of advice and then stood on the touchline watching their warm up routine which seemed mainly to involve taking practice kicks at and dispersing piles of leaves that had been neatly swept together by the school groundsman. Suffice to say Kings suffered yet another trouncing and Bob wandered aimlessly about the pitch with his mind clearly occupied by thoughts of squirrels and such like to be pursued at the weekend. The only diversion from the torpor into which I had sunk on that dreary, damp touchline, was a buzz on my phone signalling that a text message had arrived from Hen:
“I think I might enjoy being Amish can you arrange that for me ? X”
I digress. Talking of sport I was heartened to find Bob in front of the television last weekend. It is actually quite a rare occurance and I was even more surprised when he shouted through to me that was watching a programme called Extreme Sports. My interest pricked I wandered into the room to discover the particular event he was engrossed in involved a relay team of sprinting midgets in a 400 metre challenge against a camel.
Must tell you my life has been transformed by the fact that I no longer have to drive 70 miles back and forward from home to the office. This week I have been transfixed on the way home watching The Inbetweeners on my iPad. The most astonishing programme I have seen for long time. Well since Skins. My 15 year old daughter recommended it to me and at least I now know I don’t have to teach her anything about what preoccupies the male mind...at that age.
Bonfire night. Normally I would go on a rant about how much I hate the wastefulness and the oooohing and aaaahing, but actually a firework party last weekend was one of the highlights of the year. Our generous host, Mr PDV, a very senior Asian stockbroker in a previous life, provided huge entertainment by taking on the task of lighting the fireworks himself and began the proceedings with the most enormous rocket which the muppet stuck directly into the ground rather than placing it carefully into a launching pipe. Needless to say the firework blew to bits pretty much exactly where he had lit it. Happily he emerged a little mud on the face but other wise unscathed, a very lucky boy!
“I think I might enjoy being Amish can you arrange that for me ? X”
I digress. Talking of sport I was heartened to find Bob in front of the television last weekend. It is actually quite a rare occurance and I was even more surprised when he shouted through to me that was watching a programme called Extreme Sports. My interest pricked I wandered into the room to discover the particular event he was engrossed in involved a relay team of sprinting midgets in a 400 metre challenge against a camel.
Must tell you my life has been transformed by the fact that I no longer have to drive 70 miles back and forward from home to the office. This week I have been transfixed on the way home watching The Inbetweeners on my iPad. The most astonishing programme I have seen for long time. Well since Skins. My 15 year old daughter recommended it to me and at least I now know I don’t have to teach her anything about what preoccupies the male mind...at that age.
Bonfire night. Normally I would go on a rant about how much I hate the wastefulness and the oooohing and aaaahing, but actually a firework party last weekend was one of the highlights of the year. Our generous host, Mr PDV, a very senior Asian stockbroker in a previous life, provided huge entertainment by taking on the task of lighting the fireworks himself and began the proceedings with the most enormous rocket which the muppet stuck directly into the ground rather than placing it carefully into a launching pipe. Needless to say the firework blew to bits pretty much exactly where he had lit it. Happily he emerged a little mud on the face but other wise unscathed, a very lucky boy!
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