Thursday 29th March, 2012

Thought I would spoil your Thursday afternoon with an early Bodhi Tree as I am away for the next couple of weeks. More on that later. Meantime there is something I want to get off my chest. For someone who is frequently spotted laden with shopping bags pottering along Sloane Street, Sophie has quite a cheek. Once a month I find our latest credit card statement on my desk with bold yellow highlighter pen marks circling any payments that she has failed to identify as hers. Obviously there are not many of those, but this week there was a circle around an item which read as follows....... 07/03/12 THE PLAYERS LOUNGE - ROSE STREET, EDINBURGH - £30.00 Whilst it almost goes without saying I have a completely clear conscience, I must admit I blushed like a guilty teenager at this entry. For those of you unfamiliar with Edinburgh, Rose Street used to be the red-light district. For the life of me, try as I might, I could not think what the heck I had spent that £30 on. Mystery. It would seem too that others in the Sandison family are also in need of some lessons on tracking expenditure more carefully. I got a phone call yesterday lunchtime from Hen who was at Leeds railway station, with two large suitcases, heading home for the Easter holiday. She was ringing to tell me she had discovered her bank account was empty and she was unable to buy a train ticket. What should she do? Unreal. She rang at 12pm. I spoke to my bank to transfer some money and before I knew it she was texting me aboard the 12.15pm Leeds to Stevenage train asking me how impressed I was with her for getting a train so quickly. I might be prepared to shoulder some of the blame, but another of my daughters, Jimmy, seems much more frugal and level headed. She returned last night from a Geography field trip in Barcelona (?!) with a present for me. A pile of seven perfectly shaped skipping stones, removed from the bed of a Spanish river whose course she was supposed to be plotting as part of a project, which I am to take to the Caribbean to chuck across a nice sheltered lagoon in an attempt to beat my record of 22 skips. Another slightly strange thing happened this week. A colleague asked me if I might be able to get him some used shotgun cartridge cases. Rum indeed. Apparently his daughter is going to a fancy dress party and needs them as accoutrements. Why he chose to ask me I do not know. Do I look like a hunting, fishing and shooting sort to you? Anyway as it happens I knew who to turn to and rang Bob, fresh back from school for the Easter holiday, to give him this mission. I presumed that on one of his prowls around the countryside he would be able to retrieve some empty cases left by the local shoot. He had other ideas however. At least on this occasion he had the good sense to ask Sophie's permission to get a shotgun out of the gun cabinet. On my way home I received a message from him asking me to pick up a packet of leeks from M&S and arrived to find a small pile of cartridges alongside a plate of seasoned pigeon breasts ready to be cooked to quite an elaborate recipe. The following morning I sent my colleague an email having left the shells on his desk: Mike, I hope your daughter doesn't feel too guilty about her request for 5 spent shotgun cartridges. See attached photo. Bob was instantly on the case... rgds, David Incidentally, you know I fancy myself as a bit of a gardener, but if you look carefully in the background of the photo you may pick out burnt patches on my otherwise pristine lawn. This is the very annoying consequence of having three dogs who use it to pee on. Prompted another earnest discussion of deep consequence on the desk here at the great house of CIMB. Someone claimed the answer was to put a dollop of tomato ketchup on the dog food. The logic of this I discovered on Google. It is not a complete old wive's tale however if it works it is simply because it makes the dog thirsty causing it to drink more water. As I now know "Dilution is the solution to the pollution." Talking of water, as I may have mentioned, I am off to the BVI tomorrow morning crack of sparrows. I havn't decided whether I am looking forward to the flight or not. Apart from the fact that I appear to have left my precious Kindle on the train I have also yet to reveal to the family that a quirk of the airline on-line check in process has left allocated me seat 60D whilst Sophie and the children are in 47 C, D, E, F & G. Back in the office on Monday 16th April assuming nothing worse happens than a repeat of my encounter with a coral reef. Missing you already.