Friday 14th July, 2017

Futilely trawling through some back issues of the Bodhi Tree for inspiration after a quiet week, which included a tough day entertaining clients at the races, I note that it was four years ago this weekend, on a strange whim, that I “ran” 62 miles down the Ridgeway from just outside Oxford to the stone ring at Avebury.  16 hours of torture.  Madness.  Talking of which our summer holiday this year is a cycling trip to the Carpathian Mountains in Romania.  Wasn’t my idea.  This is all Sophie’s doing.  I really don’t know what came over her.  She hasn’t ridden a bike since university days.  Anyway last weekend we went to Halfords and she is now the proud owner of a Carrera Crossfire 2.  We’ve had one training ride together and it went moderately well, but for the next couple of months I’d maybe give the quiet country lanes of Suffolk around Gazeley a miss if I were you.  I think this could get quite messy. 

 

On the road, before Hen set off in her van for a tour of the European continent, we agreed that, just as a precaution, we would set her phone up on my Find My Phone app.  It was meant to be used in the event of an emergency so I could see where she was if we hadn’t heard from her for a while, but with the best will in the world I havn’t been able to resist tracking her movements over these early days of her adventure.  On day 1 she landed in Dieppe and drove some 300 miles ending up at around midnightin what I could see on Google Earth was a small car park in the middle of a wood half a mile or so from one of these enormous, long Atlantic beaches.  A day or two later and her phone showed she was in Nantes.  In my defence she hadn’t responded to a couple of messages I’d sent over the weekend so I was monitoring her movements all the more intently and, as the phone moved around the centre of the town, I grew ever more convinced that someone must have stolen it at the very least.  My attempts to call her, Whatsapp or text her were all being ignored till I tracked her to a Total filling station.  I was about to call the petrol station directly to ask if they could see a decrepit old green van in the forecourt – if my French was up to that – when I had one last go at ringing her.  This time she answered, her voice slightly hushed and echoing.  “Daveed” she said “….for goodness sake can you leave me alone….I’m trying to have a pee!”  Quel relief.

 

So anyway, all’s good it seems and attached is a photo she sent me of the back of Mowgli.  By the way if anyone has a good idea for the title of a blog she is writing about art and travelling through Europe living in a van would you let me know.

 

Friday 7th July, 2017

One of my friends has just announced the birth of his sixth child.  How fantastic is that and wishing him and his family all the best of luck.  He is made of sterner stuff than me clearly.  Four is quite a sufficient handful.  However with Hen now beachcombing on the Atlantic coast just south of Nantes, Jimmy in Spain and Bob back at work, normal order has been restored at home with just our youngest and, as everyone no doubt realises, our favourite and most easily manageable child, Lottie, pootling about in post GCSE wind down mode. 

 

So I headed back earlier this week looking forward to a quiet, relaxing evening.  It would have been the first for a long time it felt like.  I thought perhaps I would waddle round my four mile circuit before supper and then settle in front of the TV to watch the Wimbledon highlights.  Alas it was not to be. Here’s how my Wednesday evening panned out.

 

First off my train was half an hour late so truth be told my humour was being tested and my resolve to go for a run wavering somewhat even before I got home.  But anyway a run, it transpired, was out of the question.   Sophie’s pained look made it clear my presence was required.  Lottie was standing alongside three of her girl-friends.  Incidentally, it appeared Bob was also somewhere about, evidenced by that tell-tale pile of feathers where a pigeon has hit the deck, and indeed he was, albeit he disappeared pretty sharpish after, moments later, the rickety green wooden gates scraped open, the dogs started barking furiously and four boys on bikes appeared.  Unbeknownst to me Sophie had agreed to Lottie having a little camping party in the bottom field.  Sweet.  The boys had come on the train from Cambridge and cycled a couple of miles from the local station, one of them with a completely flat tyre.  For some reason, a lame attempt to show off probably, - I don’t believe I have ever successfully repaired a puncture before - I decided I ought to try to fix it.  I spent the next half hour grappling with the wheel before eventually succeeding in prising the inner tube out and using super glue to stick a rather suspect old patch over the hole.  Then another half hour putting the inner tube back.  I love the Tour de France, but fixing bikes is not my forte.    

 

At that point – 8.30pm I imagine – it suddenly dawned on one of the more perceptive of the young, sitting around a couple of barbeque trays and cans of beer, that although they were all planning to camp overnight they hadn’t actually got a tent.  So that was another 45 minutes.  Finding the thing and lugging it down to the field where, to give them their due, the teenagers set about erecting it.  I’m getting bored writing this stuff so I can’t imagine you’re still with me, but if you are, well the point is that I think it was about 9.20pm when I finally slumped on the sofa hoping to watch the last ten minutes of Wimbledon and perhaps catch the highlights of Andy’s match against Dustin Brown.  ‘Cmon Andy!!

 

Almost immediately there was a polite, yet determined knock on the door and two girls poked their head into the sitting room.  “Sorry to bother you David, but Lottie said you might be able to rustle us up a jug of Pimms.”  How ironic is that I thought to myself as I trudged dutifully through to the kitchen only to discover we didn’t have any lemonade.  However I was quite pleased with the respectable attempt I made to compensate for that using a bottle of sparkling Highland Spring water and a good slug of some lime and lemongrass cordial I found in the back of the larder.  A few slices of apple and a ton of ice and really you could have served it up at Wimbledon and I don’t think anyone would be any the wiser.  Dammit though.  I forgot the mint.

 

Whatever.  The Day at Wimbledon was over by then so I took one last sip of a, by now, rather warm can of Calsberg and retired to bed where, to the intermittent sound of dogs barking and teenagers shouting and the persistent thudding drum beat of some grungy music, I drifted off to a fitful sleep thinking “Oh Jacob…what have you done!?”

 

Early today aren’t I….I’m off to Lords.  Rooooooooot!

 

Friday 30th June, 2017

Safely back from a week sailing in the Ionian Sea and, though this might disappoint and surprise you, there was barely one scary moment.  Go me Cap’n Davey.  A minor contretemps in Kioni harbour involving a Portugese gentleman who reacted furiously to being called selfish, but that was as near to a scrape as we got despite testing winds and some challenging anchoring conditions.  Anyway traveling is very much on my mind as I sit down to get a few lines of blurb off my chest.

 

Lottie has just been on a canoeing and camping adventure in Central Sweden.  Talking of scrapes, besides blistered hands, she revealed the most enormous bruise on her left arm although this, she explained, had nothing to do with canoeing.  She fell, as she put it, “into a tree”.  Yup.  Bit weird.  I think there is a story there and perhaps one day it will be revealed.  Other than that, admittedly she was almost comatose on her return home on Wednesday evening, the only other thing this child genius of ours had to share with us was the fact that she slept the entire bus journey from Ed to Gothenberg save for about 30 seconds during which time she counted 15 consecutive Volvos driving alongside them.

 

Bob has gone travelling again.  Slightly less esoteric.  This time to join two friends of his on a boys trip for a long weekend in Amsterdam.  That’s a worry, though not quite as concerning as what Hen is about to get up to. 

 

I think I’ve mentioned Mowgli, her 17 year old Daihatsu van, before to you.  Early next week she sets off in it, brake pads, suspension and rear lights replaced after its latest brush with the MOT officer, on a trip to Spain for how long we know not. Could be a while.   Amongst other things she has a mission to help save a galgo which, in all seriousness, is a noble cause, though I am not sure how she and her Spanish greyhound will fit in her tiny vehicle.  Over lunch at El Pastor yesterday, I was discussing my nervousness with Jimmy, who freshly graduated from Bristol, was in London for an internship interview.  I mentioned to her that I had ordered a personal alarm and a can of pepper spray for Hen, just in case.  But, and here is the joy of El Pastor where you can end up sitting cheek by jowl, a young couple was lunching at the table next to us and the guy leaned over to me to tell me that I really shouldn’t worry.  A friend of his had gone to Spain in a van two years ago.  She was having the most fantastic time, meeting wonderful people and had adopted a dog.  So there you go.  Sorted.  I tripped home that evening very much the happier for this encounter and ran 4 miles at almost my pre-injury pace.  ( By the way I was there again today and transpires that my friend Jon, the manager, was the very man who chucked chairs and glasses at the assailants that awful evening.  Got to say I’m a wee bit in awe about that, but it is a terrific place. ) 

 

Talking of running I spotted an article about speed golf on the BBC website.  What a cheek.  I mean to say my brothers and I invented that game way back when only we called it “zulu-golf” because it involved running down the fairway in a particular gait which lessened the rattling of the clubs in the bag on your back.  In Zulu warriors case these would have been spears of course.  My record was an 81 ( holing out on every hole ) in 79 minutes around the New Course in St Andrews. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-birmingham-40260449/speedgolf-comes-to-the-fore-to-attract-more-players

 

So back to the business in hand.  The week before last I told you how I had miraculously snatched a pint-glass of Tiger out of mid-air.  How ironic that whilst I was away on holiday drinking a lot of Mythos ( photo for you attached ) I missed an initiation on Tsingtao.

 

 

Friday 16th June, 2017

As you will probably recall I was away in Singapore last week at our Nomura Investment Forum Asia 2017.  Runs off the tongue that one eh.  Great event though and an enjoyable and successful trip with a great bunch of clients despite, from a personal perspective, an inauspicious start.  I always look forward to a long haul flight, and the prospect of flying SIA ( on a newly configured Boeing 777-300ER for the aficionados’ amongst you ) for the first time for many a year meant I was even more excited than usual as I headed to Heathrow the other evening. 

 

On arriving at Terminal 2 I made my way to the Business Class lounge, resisting the temptation which it seems so many of my friends succumb to, of posting my location on Facebook.  Unfortunately my resolve not to drink any alcohol on this leg of the journey was not quite so commendable.  In fact it crumbled the instant I spotted a rather nice bottle of champagne on a bar which also served Tiger on tap.  Furthermore the plane was a touch delayed so it was a reasonably well oiled David who skipped eagerly aboard when the time eventually came to depart.  I practically laughed out loud when I saw my enormous seat and the surrounding space not to mention a bigger TV screen than the one we have at home.  I had another few glasses of champagne and some very passable Rully with dinner followed by a couple of glasses of decent claret, watched Hacksaw Ridge, and then, feeling just a touch woozy, decided I needed some shut-eye. 

 

The moment I had been waiting for truth be told.  I pressed the button to turn my arm chair into a flat bed and down it went.  The thought crossed my head that there had also been the promise of a mattress and a duvet, but these seemed to be missing.  As there was no one about at the critical moment, and even though the bed was not quite as flat as all that, I clambered onto it and nestled my legs and feet as deeply into the bottom of the alcove as they could go.  By bending the upper part of my body sharply to the left I was able to get most of my body was prone, if not completely horizontal.

 

I didn’t sleep at all well and I recall drafting a letter of complaint to SIA in my waking moments, but you’d be proud of me.  I stifled my disappointment forcing myself to consider myself lucky just to be on this flight and determined to relax as best I could given the level of my discomfort, a dry old mouth and an increasingly nagging headache.  Finally, after four or five hours, I forget how long really, I got up to find a glass of water and a Paracetemol and that is when I noticed that others on the Business Class deck seemed to be stretched out very comfortably.  It dawned on me that I might be missing a trick or two and indeed on summoning the assistance of an SIA stewardess I found I was.  She reached behind the back rest and pulled a lever which folded the seat down revealing a very well cushioned mattress, the elusive duvet and creating the largest and most comfortable flat bed I have ever had on a plane.  Four hours of unbroken sleep followed.  What a muppet.

 

Anyway, as I said it was a good trip and I think clients enjoyed it too.  When I got home the following weekend Bob was missing.  He and a friend had decided to take their dogs, both lurchers, to a dog show in Newmarket.  Bob is a modest enough sort of guy, but he is very proud of his dog and his face was a picture of disappointment when I caught up with them in the Affleck pub ( I get invited along by him and his friends partially out of sympathy, but also because they know I am good for a round ) later that day.  There was not a rosette in sight.   Oh it was a disaster they moaned.  All the prizes were won by French bull dogs or staffies and to make matters worse, Bob’s friend Freddie’s dog had gone up to a man sitting on the grass eating a sausage roll and cocked his leg on the guy’s back.  A bit of a scene had ensued.

 

Oh I know what I wanted to say.  I may have struggled with the complexities of a seat in an aeroplane so I am not one to talk, but really that General Election campaign was about as hapless as it comes.  We saw it coming though didn’t we.  Remember this snippet I relayed the other day:

 

“We had my parents staying all week which was perfect once everyone got over their somewhat fraught arrival.  I had told you just the other day about the additions to our chicken flock.  Alas one of them is no more.  This was nothing to do with Bob.  Theresa May, a grey and very bossy hen, was snaffled by my parent’s black and white springer spaniel Tess who had taken the opportunity to give her legs a stretch after a long car journey.  Poignantly, though I note this with a certain sense of satisfaction, the hen’s demise coincided with her namesake’s declining fortunes in the opinion polls.”

 

I’m off sailing next week so will leave you in peace.  Sail Ionian have upgraded us and rang to tell me they were giving us a bigger yacht than we had last year and had booked again.  I hope they don’t live to regret their generosity and that I remember we’re three feet longer and one foot wider as I edge my way nervously into our berth in Fiskardo which I managed only by the skin of my teeth last time.

 

I know you probably think I’m overly modest and should blow my trumpet a bit more often.  Well let me tell you.  It was late in the evening and we were in a bar in Singapore having a final few cleansing beers standing round a table when one of our party, moving to stub out a cigarette I seem to recall, clipped a pint glass full of beer which literally flew off the table on a trajectory to certain disaster.  Except that I saw everything happening in slow motion.  Cool as you like I reached casually out, though it must have been in the blink of an eye-lid, and caught the Tiger left handed mid-air spilling virtually not a drop.  I was so in the moment it just happened but when I saw the awe-struck look on my companions faces it dawned on me I had done something utterly remarkable.  Go me.

 

PS.  Talking about remarkable, remember I told you a few months ago about a Mexican restaurant in Borough Market I had found and promised to take you to one of these days?  I spotted this article in Wednesday’s Evening Standard about the market which had opened for its first day of business since the horrible event.  How fantastic is this?!

 

 

 

Paltry pre-holiday offering for you.  Forgive my distraction.  My mind is buzzing having found a spare moment this afternoon to refresh myself on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea.  Which side is starboard again?

 

Friday 26th May, 2017

Apologies for radio silence last week.  Deeply unprofessional and shame on me. The thing is I took a half day on the Tuesday to nip down to Gatwick to greet Bob and his hair returning from four months in South America.  That was fair enough really.  Anyway, he had been home all of three hours when I looked out the kitchen window to see him standing proudly alongside a panting dog and a bedraggled looking rabbit.   That was of course just the start of it.  On Wednesday evening this week I was served fried Suffolk pigeon breasts on toast, sprinkled with rocket leaves alongside a cranberry sauce and yesterday I got home to find a dead squirrel, tail hanging forlornly over the roof of our back door shed.  That hasn’t been turned into supper quite yet.  Yup.  Normal service is restored in Gazeley and the local wild life has good cause to be anxious.

 

And then I had another day off on the Friday to play golf with my father.  I lost.  We had my parents staying all week which was perfect once everyone got over their somewhat fraught arrival.  I had told you just the other day about the additions to our chicken flock.  Alas one of them is no more.  This was nothing to do with Bob.  Theresa May, a grey and very bossy hen, was snaffled by my parent’s black and white springer spaniel Tess who had taken the opportunity to give her legs a stretch after a long car journey.  Poignantly, though I note this with a certain sense of satisfaction, the hen’s demise coincided with her namesake’s declining fortunes in the opinion polls ( on which subject a prescient note from our Global Markets team attached below is worth a read ). 

 

Talking of stressy things I’m sure several of you, if not in the midst of CFAs, are grappling as I am with the demands of the ongoing GCSE exam schedule.  Gruelling stuff.  Yet it appears Lottie is taking it all in her stride.  I sent her a good luck message before her first one.  Attached the ensuing conversation.  I wonder if you can guess which subject it was.  “Nailed it” indeed.  Time will tell.

 

This week, unlike many of my colleagues judging from the deserted desks around me, I have been glued to the work station though I have to admit things are a wee bit quiet all week.  I need to earn a crust though.  Not least because we took delivery of a replacement for the stricken VW Polo I told you about the other day.  This latest version, another Polo, is dark blue, seven years old and has 53,000 miles on the clock, albeit, for the moment at least, it doesn’t have too many dents in it.  Last of the big spenders.  That’s me.

 

Oh well, dear reader, have a lovely long weekend and the good news is I have a trip to Singapore the week after next which will surely liven things up.

Friday 12th May, 2017

Ssssshhhh, but I’ve been in a wee spot of bother with the authorities this week.  Nothing major, but I thought it was worth recording the moment and always helpful to remember that Big Brother is watching.  I imagine you’ve on occasion written a Bloomberg message which triggered the warning message a word you’ve typed is “inappropriate in a business context”.  You then get the opportunity to replace the offending word though, if you are feeling particularly devil may care, you are also given the option to throw caution to the wind and send it anyway. 

 

What happened was we had had our morning meeting and I was in a discussion with a colleague overseas about a particular research report that had been presented.  There I was thinking of using a word like “balderdash” but which begins with B and rhymes with things you use alongside oars on a rowing boat.  Patently I wasn’t telling the friend I was communicating with that I was going to kick him there.  I can understand that might have been, well, inappropriate.  Regardless, being a cautious sort, I changed my choice to “rubbish” and off the message went. 

 

Would you believe it?  Later that day I received an internal email noting that I had triggered a Bloomberg warning message and reminding me of the importance that appropriate language is used on Bloomberg at all times.  I hadn’t considered my language inappropriate in the circumstance, but I am a stickler for compliance and good behaviour in all walks of life, so fair play to our excellent systems which are obviously doing their job.  However I was a little disgruntled as, of course, I hadn’t actually sent the “offensive” word.   “That may be” came the response.  The fact that I had considered it all justified the reminder.  I decided not to protract the conversation tempted as I was to make the point that if our front office supervision controller was to send me an email every time I thought or indeed spouted “a load of, lets call it for the sake of argument, rubbish” she’d be a very busy woman indeed.

 

Talking of which I spotted the following on the BBC website. Such fun.  It’s all the rage in Finland it appears, but you might be interested to know that the sport was actually invented 12 years ago by Hen and Jimmy in the garden of a house we were living in at the time in Cambridge.  If I can lay my hands on the video in due course I might wing it over to you, you lucky things.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-39853880/the-unusual-sport-girls-in-finland-love

 

So, one way or another, glad its Friday.  And just wanted to say that the pigeons and squirrels of Gazeley, not to mention a colony of crows, may not know it, but they are enjoying their last largely untroubled weekend.  Bob returns on Tuesday next week, a couple of months earlier than planned.  He was meant to be heading straight from South America to go surfing in Indonesia, but has run out of money.   Know the feeling, especially this week.

 

Friday 5th May, 2017

Early one today.  Out and about this afternoon on various matters.  I’ve been on a couple of other less important missions during this abbreviated week.  Both ended disappointingly.  One can, but try.

 

For want of anything better to tune into on the radio I tend to listen to “Wake Up to Money” as I wend my way along quiet Suffolk roads on route to the station every morning.  It’s a pretty rubbish programme truth be told, but every now and again one or other of my clients comes on to discuss their views on markets which can be illuminating, and the other thing that makes me chuckle is when one of the reporters, Mickey Clark it is more often than not, tells us what a particular Asian market appears to have done overnight failing to spot that it was in fact shut for a holiday and he is reporting the previous days action.  Little things please little minds. 

 

For some reason I took it upon myself on Wednesday, as I settled into my train seat prior to perusing the morning’s flow of research reports, to send a cheeky little text (85058 is the number just so you know) to the programme pointing out the error of their ways.  Mickey had told us that the Nikkei had risen 135 points to 19,445.  However, I knew that the market was shut.  It was the start of Golden Week of course.  I listened the next morning eagerly anticipating that the smart Alec David would get some acknowledgment.  But no, would you believe it?  Mickey blithely relayed the news that the Japanese stock market was strong again, up 135 points to 19,445.  I sent another text informing them that the market was still closed on holiday, but I’m afraid it was to no avail.  Astonishingly this morning with Japan enjoying its third day off, Mickey was at it again.  It’s almost as if he is mocking me now.

 

My second hapless moment came along as I ratcheted up my return to running after my near career ending posterior cruciate ligament injury.  A friend of mine had reported an astonishingly fast time on Strava and with the competitive juices flowing I decided on Tuesday evening when I got home that having a few runs under my belt the time was right to let off a bit of steam.  It wasn’t the knee, but my calf muscle wasn’t up to it and though I chuntered downhill at a commendable 7.03 minutes per mile, I came to a crunching halt after a couple of miles and ended walking 1.5 miles back home feeling quite sorry for myself.  The point of this boring little story I am coming to.  I’ve had enough of physiotherapy so I decided to try acupuncture.  Very brave I thought too.  

 

The “physician” was a slightly eccentric bloke.  He immediately sensed I was not great with needles.  I think it was the way I leapt for the couch before the floor came into play.  So, I appreciate the fact that he diverted me with all sorts of banter about spiritualism, channels and the role that different organs have to play on ones mood as he stuck pins into the back of my leg.  People tell me they feel a kind of tingling sensation.  It was a bit more than that as far as I’m concerned which made the fact that when he got me to turn over he started sticking needles in the wrong leg all the more upsetting. Pointless too….ho ho.  Despite that I have to tell you I limped into his clinic and amazing though it is to relate I walked out feeling so much better, albeit £90 lighter.  My new best friend said he would email me his bank account details and I could pay him online.  I don’t know, but I felt I should warn Sophie, who, it may not surprise you, does scour the bank account transactions with a keen eye, what my payment to “Heavens Gate” involved just in case she should get the wrong idea about what I’ve been up to.

 

Talking of calf muscles, if you have access to Youtube, this is a classic:  Guido Hatzis and the Electric bugaloo….   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz2zYsuCPCQ

 

Off to the 2,000 Guineas tomorrow and hoping Eminent will deliver.

 

 

Friday 28th April, 2017

 

A man in a gorilla suit is expected to finally complete his crawl around the London Marathon route at some point today.  My favourite story from last Sunday’s event though concerns a friend of my daughter Jimmy who decided to skip round the marathon ( I mean skipping like a child, not with a rope like Rocky Balboa ).   I’m not sure if I have told you that I’m back on games and so I broke my stride on a run last weekend to have a go at skipping.  Let me assure you.  NOT EASY!  Give it a go yourself if you don’t believe me.  Jimmy’s friend was not, it seems, an habitual skipper around the grounds of the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester which he is currently attending.  He said the idea of skipping round the marathon came to him as a means to boost publicity and raise as much money as he could for his chosen charities ( Heart and Stroke and research into Downs Syndrome ).  As he looked into the proposition he had set himself he discovered to his dismay that someone had done it before.  Don’t you hate Google??  There’s nothing original any more. 

An intriguing fellow called Ashrita Furman did it in Canada in 2003 and in fact lays claim to holding the world record time of 5 hours 55 mins .  And if you hold your nose and Google the man you will find he has his own website    https://www.ashrita.com/ .  After the merest of glances you will probably share with Jimmy’s friend, Sam, a sense of irritation at this nutcase who also maintains that he holds the most Guinness World Records of any human on the planet.  In fact Sam confessed that as he trained and honed his skipping technique through the grey and cold winter months he increasingly grew to loathe Mr Furman and his copious list of ludicrous records.  As he stood on the start line he wasn’t just going to complete the Marathon.  He had the world record on his mind.  Happy to say he smashed it skipping flawlessly round in 5 hours 24 mins.  Take a bow, the new Guinness World Record holder for skipping like a child round a Marathon…and appropriately enough Jimmy’s friend’s name is……Sam Guinness!  Love it.  But Sam is not stopping here.  He has decided that he is going to have a bash at quite a few of Ashrita’s list.  Any thoughts as to what he should try next???! https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Sam-Guinness

 

Bank Holiday plans folks?  Mrs S has been feeling a bit homebound and asked me to take her on an expedition at some point over the weekend. The romantic that I am I have booked lunch in a pub over-looking the River Orwell.  It’s a fairly ropey looking place, but it serves Adnams and I sold it to Sophie with a plan that we would take the dogs for a walk and harvest samphire beforehand.  Alack and alas I discover that dogs aren’t allowed along the river walk and samphire doesn’t come into season until late June.  Think of me on Sunday will you?

 

 

Friday 21st April, 2017

 

I have found myself this week musing about the fact that Bob has now been away in South America for over a quarter.  Admittedly we havn’t had as many detailed reports from him as we might have hoped for – although I do know he got badly sunburnt and slept in a hammock on a beach in Colombia for the last three nights - and you might think I am just being a soppy old boy, but two specific things have brought this contemplative mood on. 

 

Firstly the Polo, which I told you about last week, has given up the ghost.  During the summer Bob got the poor car stuck in a field countless times on various hunting excursions and cowped it fully into a ditch once.  By the time he left I suspected it was living on dangerous ground, but Hen it was who was driving when the gear box started to make a wretched noise and car came to a screeching halt.  The RAC retrieved it for us and brought it home and the diagnosis from the local garage is dire.  It needs a new gear box which would cost substantially more than this wreck of a car is worth.  So that was wretched news and churlish though it may seem I cursed him roundly. 

 

And then Jimmy, deep in the final throes of a dissertation on the subject, coincidentally enough with the Polo in mind, of antiquity destruction, started to complain that pigeon cooing incessantly outside her work place were distracting her dreadfully.  A protracted family discussion ensued over dinner the conclusion of which, it seemed to me at least, was that since the man of the house had left, the local wildlife had settled on our patch as a surprising haven of tranquillity after years in which it had progressively become a no-go zone for rabbits, squirrels, crows and pigeons alike.  You may remember the deal that Bob had struck with Sophie regarding vermin control and the picture I sent you of chart on the fridge door plotting all the various hapless creatures he had despatched considerably supplementing his meagre pocket money allowance.  You know me.  I will rise to a challenge.  I found the keys to the gun cabinet, helped myself to Bob’s silenced .410 and some cartridges and this week I have jumped from the dinner table on four separate occasions and stalked pigeons with close to 100% success.  I get a kiss for each pigeon I shoot which is a sweet incentive too.

 

Friday 7th April, 2017

Life is a wee bit dull at the moment.  When I get home these days I find the house uncharacteristically quiet and a haven of academic focus and study. Most disconcerting.  For some excitement, I go out to the vegetable garden and count how many more spears of asparagus have popped up.  Jimmy is back and plugging away at the final strokes of her university career in the shape of her Arch & Anth dissertation.  Irony of ironies she has found she works best at the desk in Bob’s bedroom, away from any distractions at the top of the house.  I can’t say it did much for Bob.  I remember telling you about a phone conversation I had with Lottie a few years ago when Bob was supposedly all intent and application and in the middle of what was meant to be a solid hours physics GCSE revision:

 

“Hi Lottie…alright?? I had a thought.  I wondered if you could have a chat with Bob and then let me know whether you and he would like to go with Mummy and me to Latitude Festival this summer”

 

“OK Daddy I will, but oh hang on a minute……….that’s Bob shouting from upstairs.  He wants you to know he has just killed a fly with a rubber band.”

 

Talking of physics, three years on and now it’s Lottie cramming before GCSE’s start next month.  She tucks herself away for hours on end, but emerged from her particular work-station the other day just before we sat down to supper with a towering stack of note cards on each of which was an equation covering all the various principles of physics and asked me to test her.  As you imagine this was not a task that I would have entered into for any of my other baby darlings with any great relish.  But sensing there was a chance I could be pleasantly surprised I gritted my teeth, mixed the cards up and off we set.  Frictional force, Kirchoff’s Laws, Torque,  Translational motion, Current and Resistance.  I lost count how many different equations there were, but she rattled them off one after another without missing a beat.  100%.  How about that eh?!

 

But it’s best not to allow oneself to bask in glory for very long is it?   We sat down to dinner ( quinoa salad for goodness sake ) and for some extraordinary reason Jimmy asked me to test their general knowledge.  We didn’t get far.  “How long is the equator” was the first question I asked.  I don’t think I’m telling stories out of school, but I was faced with three completely blank faces.  Neither Sophie, Jimmy or Lottie had a clue.  When finally forced to make a wild guess Lottie, the genius child, came up with 8,000,000 miles.

 

She could tell how appalled I was, so, I suppose in an attempt to make me feel happier with my lot, Sophie quickly related a story from her book-club earlier in the weekend about the daughter of one of the members who, appearing on some TV quiz show and asked what Hg represented in the periodic table had replied “Haagen-Daz”.  Later in the same programme, searching valiantly for the name of the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral she came up with “Christopher Robin”.  “Oh” she’d apparently said in her defence “I knew it was some sort of bird.”   

 

PS Tell me, no Googling and no calculator…just a bit of mental gymnastics, how long do YOU think it would take a snail to crawl round the world?   (Our world…not Lottie’s.) 

 

Friday 31st March, 2017

 

I am something of a creature of habit I will admit and I rarely go to any restaurant other than Café St Honore when up in Edinburgh with an analyst or a company.  And sure enough there I was yet again at lunch  earlier this week ready to enjoy some excellent locally sourced Scottish produce, but it was a first for me when the Chinese analyst in tow looked quizzically at the menu, an extract of which I copy below.  I thought perhaps I was going to have to explain to him what crowdie was or phantassie kale and fair enough.  However, and I promise I’m not making this up, he chewed his lip a little before asking in all seriousness, “Do I have to wait till 5.50 before the duck is ready?”

 

 

Talking of getting your budget as well as your timings wrong Bob and his gang decided that although they were determined to get to Macchu Pichu they could not afford the exorbitant train fare from Ollantaytanbo to the staging point village of Aguas Carrientes.  Someone had told them however about the possibility of walking along the rail-track which, whilst probably illegal and certainly dangerous ( it involves passing through eight tunnels ), would save them over $100 each. 

 

Not to be sniffed it, except that it seems they didn’t much consider quite how far it was or how long it might take them, nor that they would end up paying for a train ticket anyway on the return leg.  But they set off optimistically enough, carrying the bare necessities, at 9.00am.  

 

 

To cut a long story short they got to their destination at 10.30pm.  13.5 hours!  It transpired they had walked 26 miles and so whilst this goes down as the slowest marathon ever, it is worth bearing in mind they were at 9,000 feet above sea-level, had to cope with fact that some 30 trains passed them during the course of their trek, and that they had to cover the last 6 miles in the pitch black with only the occasional burst of light from a mobile phone, not exactly showing them the way, but reassuring them that the pack of wild dogs that had been trailing them for hours was not getting any bolder or closer.  They were blistered and exhausted and there were a few tears shed apparently, but it was fine, Bob told me.  When they got to their hostel in Aguas they had the best beef-burger ever dripping with blue cheese.  At 10.50 presumably.

 

Given this week’s foodie theme, never let it be said I don’t come up with useful ideas in this email.  If not stock recommendations this is a good one, at least for those of you approaching the end of Lent who might have given up Chocolate for the period.  You can very easily make your own with some cacao butter obtainable from: 

 

https://www.indigo-herbs.co.uk/shop/buy/organic-cacao-butter

 

you will also need to order:

 

Cacao powder

Vanilla powder

Agave Syrup

 

My preferred mixture would include a handful each of roughly chopped roasted Pistachios and some chopped dried cranberries

 

And finally, you’ll want a mould.  I’ve got one that punches out in the shape of little hearts, but really the one below is much the more sensible proposition:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008DV4VOE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Good luck and let me know.

 

Talking of which, I heard  a sad story this week from a friend of mine whose mother, sadly, suffers from dementia.  My friend received a general email sent to all relatives of the residents of the home her mother is in requesting that in future flowers should not be sent there.  We suspect there had been an influx over Mothers Day, but anyway, apparently the old dears had taken to eating the arrangements.  It reminded me of when Sophie was taken aside by the Deputy Headmistress of Bob’s prep school.  “Your son Bob has started an unacceptable craze which I would appreciate your help in bringing to a stop Mrs Sandison” she was told.  “He discovered an ant nest at the foot of Big Tree, demonstrated how to pop ants into your mouth without getting bitten yourself and claimed they tasted of chocolate.  Now half the school queues up at break-time to give it a go.” 

 

PS Harvested my first crop ( well four spears ) of asparagus last night.  This is almost a month earlier than last year.  Freaky times we live in.

 

Friday 24th March, 2017

It was three years ago almost to the day, I read in my diary, that we last had to revert to the market to top up our flock of chickens.  Don’t bother saying it.  I’ve got no pretentions to be Pepys.  

 

They’d done well.  I can’t recall any being lost to a fox since we got the lost lot and our lurcher hasn’t gone anywhere near them after I caught her with one in her mouth.  An altercation ensued, I confess, that led to me being reported to the RSPCA.  A long and ludicrous story.  Admittedly two summers ago our flock was temporarily bolstered by the successful hatching of a large clutch of eggs.  Alas however, all but two of the chicks proved to be cockerels, who, as I have previously told you, don’t lay eggs.  Apart from keeping the hens happy, which requires just the one, they just squabble with each other or jump on the smooth calves of passing Argentinian au pairs.  They are essentially good for nothing, but coq au vin.  

 

The unfortunate cockerels aside, by and large our hens have had a happy and generally unmolested time.  Latterly a scrawny red one has had cause to feel a bit disgruntled at the fact she met her maker because Sophie pinpointed her as the one that was laying the soggy shelled eggs which made a sticky smelly mess of the hen house.  But for the most part it has been the natural passage of time that meant we were down to three hens and we

 

Something had to be done, albeit that hens are not cheap these days.  £13.50 a bird which I calculate, if you include the cost of the occasional bag of corn, means each has to lay about 100 eggs before her value is re-couped ( I love this pun ).  Throwing caution to the wind we have added four new members this week.  We have carefully introduced them to the incumbent population, tucked them into bed at night, and christened the white one Snowball, another fluffy grey one Barbara ( after Cartland ), Demelza ( a ginger flamed beauty ) and Beyonce who is a darker one and a groovy mover.

 

Update from South America.    Bob is currently in Puno, described by him as “Not the nicest of places but it’s friendly”.  On the banks of Lake Titicata he has spent the last couple of days casting fruitlessly for brown trout and has had his hair plaited.  He tells me he is blissfully happy and all is good.  Don’t really get more detail than that. 

 

A few years back the daughters of friends of ours did the GAP year thing and maintained an hysterical blog account of their trip.  I thought I’d see if they’d been to Puno.  They had.  This is how they described the place…..

 

 

Bob has a turn of phrase.  Really he does.  But he’s yet to fully bring it to bear on this trip!

 

I’ve probably already sickened you with reference to the unfortunate battery hen (….the red one….), but on a properly sad ornithological note I wandered out of the office at lunch earlier this week to find a woodcock dead on the pavement. I’m ashamed to say I took a photo of it which I’ll spare you, but I presume it had flown into our building’s window.  Beautiful bird the woodcock.  It is said that it can fly with its chicks tucked under one of its wings.  Woteva.  It is totally out of place on Upper Thames Street.  At least so I thought having never seen one outside of Norfolk or Leicestershire.  It never fails to amaze me what you can find on the net….

https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/rspb-news/news/432941-danger-low-flying-woodcock

 

 

 

Friday 17th March, 2017

Last weekend didn’t work out quite as I intended.  Firstly you may recall how excited I was at the prospect of a return to the Berkshire for 18 holes and a good lunch.  Well when I got home on Friday evening I had a call from my friend to tell me that he had apparently forgotten to inform his wife of our plan who insisted he was required for parenting duty in the morning.  This meant he was being dragged along to watch his daughter in a netball match.  As you know I’m no chauvinist, but really??  He needs to get a grip.  In consolation, I thought to myself, at least it meant I would get a bit of a lie in. 

 

Alas no.  I was kicked out of bed at before 7 and, with Lottie away for the weekend on some Perse Upperself Expedition, was ordered to take her horse for a ride. Off I dutifully, if a little grumpily, trotted and whilst I might grudgingly concede that it was for the most part pleasant enough that was only up to the point I arrived at the entrance to cut through a farm yard at the same time as three police cars, blue lights flashing, came speeding up the country lane.  It turned out someone had just found a poor tractor driver dead in the cab of his Massey Ferguson.

 

Other than a bit of huffing and puffing and one spin off his hocks Bertie took all the commotion in his stride and whilst a slight diversion was required we got home safe and sound and with enough time, I was informed/ordered, to bake a loaf of bread and plant some potatoes before being allowed to head off for what was left of the day and catch a lift to Twickenham.

 

I suppose I had bigged our chances up a bit in the pub beforehand, but so quickly did those hopes evaporate I never had the chance, at least so I thought, to reveal my colours during the game.  You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I hadn’t gone in my kilt, nor was I wearing a Scotland rugby jersey or one of these orange Jimmy wigs. However, when not only the complete stranger sitting in front of me who had turned, condescendingly, to shake my hand every time England scored a try, but indeed the whole rank of English supporters alongside him turned to jeer and laugh at me as England hit the 50 point mark, I asked my friend how they all knew I was Scottish.  “David” he said, “You’ve spent pretty much the whole match with your head in your hands and groaning”.  What a fun sponge I am.

 

And sure, I know worse things happen in life, but all in all a pretty wretched day was neatly rounded off by a stone chipping my windscreen on the way home later that evening.

 

I remembered about that yesterday actually and, having arranged a visit from Autoglass, rang home to get the appointment scribbled into the diary.  Hen answered the phone.  “ A chip, “ she said, “ on your shoulder I imagine?  Sorry, Dave,  Autoglass won’t be able to fix that for you.”  Many a true word spoken in jest.  Anyway looking on the bright side….I didn’t have to have fish and chips at the desk today and instead had a terrific lunch with a sustainable investor.  Missed a trick though.  I forgot to tell him a haddock had been spared as a result.

 

 

Friday 10th March, 2017

When I noticed a headline flash up on the BBC website earlier this week that a flight from Scotland had been diverted due to a pair of unruly passengers on board I just knew that it had been bound originally for Lanzarote.  Duly, and not without some sense of foreboding, when I clicked on the link to see the story in detail, I found indeed it had been.  Fortunately, because I wouldn’t have put it past them – have I ever told you the story about when my mother was thrown out of a Lan Kwai Fong karaoke bar -  the errant pair proved not to have been my parents.  They had an untroubled journey to that charming resort in the Canary Islands and have spent a pleasant enough week “we won’t be going back though” enjoying a walk to see the volcanos and otherwise soaking up the sun and, I suspect, a decent amount of Tia Maria and Pernod.  Of course I’m only joking really.  I knew it couldn’t have been them.  The flight concerned had left from Glasgow.  Obviously.   My parents flew from Edinburgh of course.  Just saying.

 

I don’t normally bore you with my weekend plans, but I’m quite excited about this one.  I’m so full of anticipation in fact that I was able to deal with being let down at lunch today, having very much looked forward to introducing someone to the delights of El Pastor in Borough Market, with a degree of equanimity.  You know what I did?  After a quick and fruitless search for some orzo in the nearby Waitrose I returned to my work station and read a book for half an hour.  Didn’t even have fish and chips.

 

The thing is I’m being taken to Twickenham tomorrow.  My host has invited me to a round at the Berkshire ( I was standing on the first tee of the Blue course, appropriately enough, when I heard that Maggie had resigned ) followed by lunch in the clubhouse and then off to the game.   Whilst on the subject of my father’s behaviour the last match I went to was Scotland v Ireland in Dublin some eleven years ago.  It was a chastening experience having to lead a parent out of a beer hall at two in the morning as he pleaded to be allowed to stay for another recital of “Living Next door to Alice” and one more pint of Guinness.  I’ve got a bottle of Pomerol on Scotland to win and furthermore am delighted to say all four of my children are supporting the right team, much to Sophie’s chagrin.

 

Friday 3rd March, 2017

There’s a bit of the hypochondriac in me if you weren’t already aware of that.  I got home the night before last and Sophie, somewhat churlishly I thought, remarked on what a particularly jolly mood I seemed to be in.  It wasn’t that I had landed a thumping large order.  Indeed my biggest progress with getting people to vote for our research team in II had come the day before.  It could only be, we concluded after some reflection, because I had been to see a doctor that morning.  

 

I have to admit I do love doctors.  I told you the other day about the last one I met, with whom I had a marvellous natter about the Rosetta Stone and who introduced me to a programme on the radio called the Museum of Antiquities.  By the way I listened to another lovely series on Radio 4 this week and downloaded it on the IPlayer Radio, which I can thoroughly recommend to you, although it may be a bit close to the bone for my Edinburgh friends.  Mind you it does lay into Weegies.  It came hot on the heels of a report I spotted concerning the Advocate General, Lord Keen of Elie, who has been fined £1,000 for leaving his 12 bore shotgun unsecured – and uncleaned incidentally, a cardinal sin in my books - in the basement of his Airlie Place house, indiscretions which were only discovered because the poor fellow’s house was burgled when he went away on his holidays.  I digress.  The radio programme is called 15 Minute Drama and was a series of 5 episodes from 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall-Smith.  Joyous.  Oh dear.  I’m rambling again.

 

The doctor.  Well, do you know what he said to me which made me so chirpy?  First off he told me I have remarkably good articular cartilage in the tibiofemoral joint.  So that was pretty cool I thought.  He continued “If you were a professional footballer”, as he examined the MRI scan of my injured knee, “this would be a season ending injury.” I am a sad boy I know, but I think it was this that that continued to buoy my mood by the time I got home. 

 

But in the cold light of day this was bad news really.  I am off games, well at least running for three to six months – so Mr Akhtar, my orthopaedic surgeon tells me, but we’ll see about that! -   by which time, I mused ruefully, I would be the size of house.  Something needed to be done.  The doc had mentioned that swimming might be good alternative.  I’m not that keen on swimming truth be told.  These public swimming pools full of urine and I hate getting water in my ears.  But needs must and anyway it was an opportunity to buy some more kit.  So I went on line to Sophie’s Amazon Prime account and bought some swimming googles and a pair of luxurious Speedos.  Yaaaay!!!!   So excited.  Which made her reaction on receiving the order confirmation, which I must admit I had not anticipated,  all the more disappointing:

 

 

 

 

Talking about having your bubble burst, the other day I was browsing through a slightly dated edition of The Nikkei Asian Review from which a glowing restaurant review leapt out at me like a wild salmon.  The author was raving about the very place I had such a memorable dinner with some clients several years back.  A link to the article is here:  http://asia.nikkei.com/Life-Arts/Life/Andy-s-New-Rising-Sun-bows-to-Japan-s-izakaya-tradition   And my review of the place, I hesitate to call it a restaurant, is attached in the form of a previous Bodhi Tree email, which also refers to my athletic aspirations bringing us, as I like to do here, full circle.

 

Friday 24th February, 2017

Don’t know about you, but I am still feeling a bit windswept after Doris Day.  It took me five hours to get home yesterday.  Quite the adventure to be honest.  Sensing things were going to be problematical I snuck off uncharacteristically early.  On finding that no trains were leaving Liverpool Street I went up to Kings Cross where there was even more of a bun-fight going on.  So I went back to Liverpool Street.  Still nothing doing.  At that point the sainted Mrs S offered to drive down to Epping at the end of the Central Line to collect me.  A mere 2 hour round trip for her given a fair wind.  I got the tube into deepest darkest Essex only to hear that Sophie was stuck in gridlocked traffic just short of the M11.  She had been stationary for 40 minutes and there appeared to be little prospect of getting anywhere anytime soon.  What a to do.  What to do indeed?

 

Wandering about the outskirts of Epping I stumbled upon three strangers and an opportunistic taxi driver who were heading north to a little place called  Stansted Mountfitchet.  This was broadly speaking in the right direction so once I established there was a pub in the village, I asked if I could join them and we set off.  An hour later we arrived by which time we were bezzas.  One of them, a lady, invited me home with her, but Sophie was now at least making some progress across country so I politely declined, went into the pub, ordered a pint of Greene King IPA and a packet of ox-flavoured crisps and settled down to watch the Spurs/Ghent match.  I was halfway down my second pint and Spurs were one-nil up when Sophie arrived, my disappointment at having to leave heightened by the fact that the bar man was also setting the place up for Quiz Night.  Could have been such a good evening!

 

It was best I left when I did I suppose.  Spurs went on to lose the tie and by the time we got home it was very late, the euphoria of my journey was wearing off and I was tired.  Furthermore Doris had played havoc with my hair – not good for the self esteem –,  my dodgy knee ached after all the roaming I had done and I was feeling additionally sensitive one of my teeth having crumbled the day before.  A visit to the dentist and some deep drilling was another highlight yesterday and I am on the way to one more crown in my mouth and one less grand in my pocket.  I don’t mind telling you a slight sense of melancholy was closing in on me as I went to bed.  

 

It was in this somewhat introspective, reflective mood that found myself reaching for the comfort of an old diary.  I opened it at 14th November 1982.  Anyone heard of the band Teardrop Explodes?  It appears I missed the opportunity of seeing them and adding to the sum total of just two concerts ( the Jam and the Corries ) I had been to at that point in my life.

 

In my defence the band had never really hit the heights of, say, the Corries, and were approaching the end of their existence when they came to play at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester that year, but my diary reads that although my room mate and his girlfriend had bought me a ticket and nagged me to come with them I declined and stayed in my room watching the Horse of the Year Show on TV instead.  Re-reading one’s diary can be a salutary experience.  Mine is a frequent reminder that I was not your normal teenager.  I didn’t even ride for goodness sake.   

 

Talking of teeth and abnormal teenagers, things have been ratcheting up somewhat in South America.  After the picture of the dove he had knocked out of the sky with a well aimed stone last week, yesterday morning an uncommonly detailed email arrived from Bob talking about his latest adventures and with photos of a piranha he’d caught and some caymanny/crocodile looking thing, both with razor teeth bared and which were in a lake he’d been swimming in a little earlier.  

 

Friday 17th February, 2017

Partly out of coyness, but chiefly because I object to the cost and hassle of having to buy cake for everyone on the desk, I tend to keep these things quiet, especially when they fall during the working week, so I am happy that my birthday sneaked through unnoticed.  An MRI scan of my dodgy knee first thing on Wednesday morning was the main highlight of the day although on returning home I found Lottie had baked me a chocolate raisin cake and Jimmy had lined up MacSween haggis, neeps, tatties, baked beans and cabbage for a celebratory supper.  If I couldn’t have haggis on the bards birthday why not indeed on my own?

 

The thoughtful supper, an amusing card with a long heartfelt message and a present of a bottle of Adnams and a hunk of cheese.  I was very much at the forefront of Jimmy’s thoughts which was sweet.  However, the following evening she revealed that she had tried to ring me in the office.  She wanted to ask if I would pay for her computer to have a new hard drive installed.  Humphf.  Anyway, be that as it may, she had dialled the office number she found on the front cover of the address book we keep by the phone in the kitchen.  “Oh morning” she’d said to the person who answered the phone, “could I speak to David Sandison please.  It’s his daughter Jimmy.”  The sense of bemusement was palpable apparently.  Amazingly enough the guy had heard of me, but as I left CIMB in early 2013 he must be wondering what sort of domestic arrangement I keep if my very daughter doesn’t know what I’ve been doing with myself these last four years.

 

My MRI scan followed an earlier appointment with an osteopathic surgeon who investigated my right knee which I may have mentioned I injured when out for a run slipping into an icy muddy puddle.  It would appear its nothing too serious, but my ears pricked up when he said “Just make sure when you get home you put your feet up”.  I asked for that in writing.  This was providing me with a fine opportunity to sit and watch some sport on the telly, but he hasn’t met Sophie. 

 

Talking about putting your feet up reminds me that once before have I had a brush with death.  Way back when, Sophie ordered me to the doctor on the other side of Parsons Green tired of my moaning about an agonisingly sore stomach.  When I got there Dr McMichen gave me a cursory inspection and called the Cromwell to book me in for an emergency appendectomy.  He asked me if I had someone who could drive me up there and let me use his phone when I told him my girlfriend had a car.  “Sorry I can’t.  I’ve just painted my toenails”  was the terse response when I rang home.  So I stumbled back down the Kings Road, and drove myself up to the hospital with Sophie sitting in the passenger seat, bare feet ( gorgeous toes btw ) on the dashboard of her little yellow Mini.  Twenty minutes after arriving I was under the knife.  And, if I still have you though this may not surprise, when I was released from hospital a couple of days later, I went away up to Scotland for a bit of R&R under the caring eye of my mother.  Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Soph I thought then…and occasionally still do.