My weekly “blog” ( hate that word ) doesn’t always flow off the pen in the way you possibly presume this drivel ought to, but should be no surprise that. After all the great Alexander Pope said:
“True ease in writing comes from art not chance
As those move easiest who have learned to dance”
9/10 when I sit down to scribble this I don’t have a clue what I am going to prattle on about. I did some dancing last weekend though. Quite the most bizarre thing. We were at a drinks party in an enormous house positioned slap bang in the middle of Newmarket. The garden stretched for miles out towards the heath and gallops. But though the invitation had said “drinks and disco” and the champagne was indeed flowing there was no sign of a tent or dance floor. Instead, admittedly when the party had thinned out a little, we were led upstairs by our host. He had lived in this house since he was a child and on the death of his mother “converted” her personal drawing room into a discotheque. By converted I mean that he installed a sound system, strobe lights and a smoke machine. Otherwise the drawing room was quite unaltered. And so we strutted our stuff to a variety of ‘80’s hits surrounded by fine antique tables covered with lace on top of which were a vast number of porcelain figurines; a couple of fine Stubbs paintings on the walls and a blazing open log fire. Bit different. It had been a while, however I’m pleased to say I havn’t lost too many of my moves.
Enough about me. I have been on a campaign to get Bob to flesh out his school work. His half term report had been uniform in that every single one of his teachers had criticised the lack of depth to his essays. As you well know I believe that attention to detail is everything. That, I suppose is why I had Mr Pope on my mind. “A little learning is a dangerous thing”.
So over half term Bob and I had a serious heart to heart and spent a good deal of time working on how to add some substance and depth to the various unsatisfactory essays he had written over the previous couple of months. I say a good deal of time. It was pretty much the entire week. Hence, as you may have noticed, little mention recently of hunting or even rudimentary pest control which normally provides me with such good ammunition for this missive and him with additional pocket money. Costly error on his part. We have a serious mole problem it so happens and he missed out on a bumper pay day which went instead to a local contractor. 9 moles cost me £105 + VAT….wtw….. If Bob had had the time he could have collected £45 as you can see from the attached schedule and pricing list.
He did manage one foray out into the countryside. He confessed to me, after a prompt 8.00am start on Sunday morning and a gruelling session assessing whether it was fair of Maecenus to say of Mark Anthony that “his taints and honours waged equal with him”, that if he wasn’t completely firing on all cylinders it was because he had had only had three hours sleep that night. It transpired that after we had all got home from a family dinner party at midnight on Sunday and dispersed to bed, Bob had had a text message from a friend inviting him over and so he had scribbled a note on the kitchen table and then, leaving the house at 1.00am, cycled two miles along country lanes in the pitch black, returning at 5.00am when he retrieved said note unnoticed. We would therefore have been none the wiser if he hadn’t decided to come clean. I know you’ll think I am a sucker. I’m quite sure it was all above board. But this boy is a nutcase frankly!
He needs that mole money. Remember his ITM Power investment…the hydrogen cell technology? Well, the lesson is “ never turn your nose up at the opportunity to take a quick profit “ as the stock doubled shortly after he bought it. Now, three years on, well, if it doesn’t get taken over soon it’s looking like it could go to zero.
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