Friday 4th May, 2012

Here's a strange one. A couple of days after being asked by his old University if they could give my father's telephone number out to someone who wanted to make contact with him, my mother answered the phone to a lady calling herself Moira asking to speak to Ian ( my father ). My parents have been happily married for 50 years, but my mother's hackles were raised. She knew immediately that this was the very Moira, my father's first serious girlfriend, and who had dumped him apparently on the grounds that he was unlikely to convert to Catholicism. You probably havn't met my mother, but she is not to be taken lightly, especially when her hackles are on end. Nonetheless my father took the phone and despite not being the sort to linger on calls ( "have you seen this blinking phone bill" he used to shout at us ) 45 minutes later was still nattering away, reminiscing happily to this lady who, 56 years after they had last talked to each other, had suddenly decided the time was right for a reconciliation. Moira is not the only one susceptible to a bad dose of nostalgia. Just last weekend I was standing in the kitchen listening transfixed to a programme on the radio called Reunion about the handover of Hong Kong back in 1997. It was quite entertaining stuff. Emily Lau hasn't softened a jot. But when they played a recording of the ceremony itself I suddenly found, much to the amusement of Hen who was looking on, that I had tears running down my cheeks! How sad is that. In my defence it was a very emotional event and even Lord Patten admitted that he had to suck polo-mints in an attempt to hold back the tears! And that brings me to Dirk the penguin. This is a story I spotted this week about a pair of tourists in Australia, Rhys Owen Jones, 21, and Keri Mules, 20, from Wales, funnily enough, who admitted the theft of Dirk from Sea World on Queensland's Gold Coast, when they appeared before Brisbane magistrates. The pair broke into Sea World, swam with dolphins and let off a fire extinguisher in a shark enclosure before setting off back to their hotel with Dirk, a fairy penguin, under their arms. Wacky. Happily Dirk was rescued and returned to Sea World unharmed and reunited with his little partner, Peaches. But what has this got to do with my focus on nostalgia? Sadly I never managed to visit Sea World as it does sound like a fun place, but all those years ago when I was a fund manager and ran the Baring Australia Fund - consistently number 1 in the South China Morning Post fund rankings btw - I owned a substantial stake in the marine park which was then listed as a property trust. I never expected too much from my stock picks so you can imagine I was delighted one morning to wander into my office to find the company had reported and the stock was up some 9%. I rang an Ozzie broker - I think it was Simon Poidevin - to find out what in the results had prompted this move. "Mate", came the reply, quick as you like, " havn't you heard? Flipper the dolphin had twins!" Enjoy the Bank Holiday. We have my mother, who needs time to think about things away from Dad, to stay for the weekend. I jest. In fact it is all very exciting. She is bringing down 20 asparagus crowns, a belated birthday present, which hopefully I will be able to plant if the rain ever stops.