Friday 20th October, 2017

Whenever I walk past Sweetings I think of Tate & Lyle, but not for the reasons you possibly assume.  Got to warn you, this is real scary stuff.  It is 30 years ago almost to the day I was taken for an excellent lunch there by a broker through whom just a couple of weeks earlier I had been buying quite a slug of Tate & Lyle stock on a story concerning the potential offered by the development of its artificial sweetener Sucralose.  It was a Tuesday and the second day of the global stock market crash.  What else to do on such a day other than to go for a big lunch?

 

Fortified by a bottle or two of Chablis and a couple of large glasses of port I returned to the office and calmly perusing the carnage around me it felt like a splendid idea to pay for lunch by averaging down with the stock now at the bargain basement price of c. £5.  I forget the precise numbers, but I think I had paid around £8 per share for the initial position.  The stock price continued to plunge to £4 shortly thereafter and whilst I’d like to claim it was all fine in the end I’m not sure Sucralose really caught on for another decade or so and the shares languished miserably across the breadth of the UK pension funds I was “managing”.  MiFID2…..I was asking for it I suppose.

 

I’m feeling a bit under the weather actually today so this will be short and …..sweet ( sorry ).  Whilst I’m having a bit of a moan I might as well tell you I was up in Scotland and had a bit of a shocker really.  My Easyjet flight was three hours delayed on the way up and an hour and half coming back.  Serves me right I suppose as I failed to wear the lucky OG boxer shorts I normally don for my trips up North.  Still, I was cheered by a story from someone I had meant to meet on Tuesday evening, but regretfully had to cancel.  He was very understanding responding ruefully by recounting that he had been in London on business the day before.  He had got to Euston in fine time to catch the sleeper up to Edinburgh.  Clambered into his bed and went out like a light.  Not passing aspersions, but I suspect he was probably quite well oiled.  Anyway, when he woke up the following morning he found to his complete surprise that the train had never left the station and he was still in London.   Too good.

Friday 13th October, 2017

Humph.  I got told this morning by my regular travelling companion on the 5.37am train from Whittlesford Parkway that I ought to have a session or two of cognitive behaviour therapy.  I’m not entirely sure what he meant by this and I really wasn’t doing very much at all to merit any particular comment from him so early in the morning.  We have basically agreed upon a comfortable silence at least until Tottenham Hale.  I suppose he might have been reacting to the sound of me sighing as the tannoy in our carriage reverberated with an announcement which had just been repeated for the third time on our journey into town. 

 

If you were in my shoes I’m quite sure it would irritate you too.  I can recite the whole message verbatim.  “You must have a valid ticket to travel on one of our trains.  If you do not have a valid ticket you may be liable to a penalty fare.”  How utterly banal and condescending don’t you agree?

 

This was not the first time I’d heard this.   It has been going on now for about three months.  In an early attempt to bring them to an end I emailed customer relations and was informed it was for the benefit of blind customers who were unable to read signs posted around the carriage bearing similar warnings.  This struck me as ridiculous.  What about people who are deaf and blind?  I rang them and they briefly appeased me by saying they were planning to reduce the number of times they made announcement.  Next, when it seemed to me that the recording was being played with even greater frequency I resumed my railing and engaged in a Twitter exchange with one of their team members who said it was not GreatAnglia’s fault, but was required of them in the terms of the franchise agreement awarded by the Department of Transport. 

 

Well that was that…..talk about a nanny state…..and from a Conservative administration what’s more.  I wrote a searing – though polite – letter to my MP.  Coincidentally his reply was waiting for me when I got home on Wednesday evening after a particularly tortuous journey, over one hour late, having had to stand all the way to Bishops Stortford on the stopping train and listen to the hateful recording on no fewer than eight occasions.

 

 

 

 

This cheered me up a little I suppose.  So yes, perhaps I do have a bee in my bonnet and maybe CBT is the answer, but I’m hoping my new best friend Matt comes up trumps before I sign up for the treatment.  PS I’ve promised him two days of my time canvassing at the next General Election if he does.

 

Talking of one’s state of mind, people always say when you’ve come back from holiday the best thing for you is to immediately book the next one.  So I’ve only gone and done it!  A Ryanair flight to Carcassonne in a couple of weeks’ time for a long weekend catch up with Hen, her Galgos, Myrtile and her Daihatsu Jet van Mowgli which is parked illegally by a river somewhere in the wilds of Roussillon.  Boy I feel good!

 

PPS A book recommendation for you:   Cycling to the Ashes: A Cricketing Odyssey From London to Brisbane by Oli Broom.

Friday 6th October, 2017

Once in a while, I think you will agree, I come up with some pretty handy ideas for you lot.  Oh yes I do.  Todays is an absolute cracker though I say so myself. 

 

When you find yourself some dark evening this winter mulling over your holiday plans for next year please make a bee-line to  The Slow Cyclist website if only to get their contact details.  

 

Waste no time trawling through their admittedly very interesting blog, looking at the pretty photos or reading other customer’s testimonials.  Just trust me.  Get a group of you together and book a cycling holiday in Transylvania.  You don’t need lycra or shaved legs.  You won’t get eaten by a bear or bitten by a bat. The cycling is not especially challenging though you will enjoy yourself all the more for getting into a bit of shape and sitting light in the saddle. Sophie, if this is not a bit disloyal of me, was awarded a prize for being the most improved cyclist, but also the slowest.   You’ll come back refreshed and fitter having spent hours in the clear air traversing the most wonderful unspoilt countryside with astounding wide sweeping views reminiscent of Africa.  You’ll stay in charming hostels eating simple, but perfectly delicious food and drinking adequate Romanian wine.  You will sleep well.  You’ll learn loads of stuff.  The Slow Cyclist team make it incredibly easy for you with their slick organisation and relaxed good humour.  You will have a ball.

 

In the spirit of providing you a balanced picture if for whatever reason you decide to do a cursory bit of your own investigation, you may find reference to the fact that Prince Charles owns a guest house in Transylvania, in a village called Zalanpatak.  You might well be tempted to go there…as we did.  I even packed a smart pair of trousers and a natty shirt for our evenings there just in case I bumped into his nibs.  It’s a lovely enough spot, but it provided me with the one disappointing moment of the week and a possible brush-up with the authorities.

 

Whilst most of our group travelled there by bus, three of us cycled 45 miles into a head wind on mountain bikes including a 2 mile hill at 6% just before the end which finished us off.  We arrived gasping for a cup of Earl Grey and a biscuit.  They had Earl Grey right enough, but as for biscuits there were none.  Not even a Duchy Original.  It was probably the sugar deficiency, but this crisis assumed immense proportions.   There was nothing for it other than to get tucked into many beers whilst playing a few hands of a bridge sitting by a fire in a shed overlooking the central courtyard.  Dinner followed.  This, in the context of all the other good stuff I have raved about, was nothing very special if I’m honest.  Yellow pea soup which we suspected came out of a can and a Romanian version of scotch eggs.  I didn’t eat very much as the red slipped easily enough down.

 

Anyway, at some point that evening I wandered up the stairs to a gallery overlooking the small dining room and there I spotted hanging on the wall an oil painting, a portrait of HRH Prince Charles.  We had been told that he comes each spring with a party of friends to walk in the hills and to paint the spectacular display of wild flowers in the meadows above the house.  So I eyed the painting critically, imagining one of his friends had asked him to sit for this on a rainy day perhaps, or possibly even it was a self-portrait.  I don’t have a particularly good eye for these things but I thought it a very passable likeness and even took a photo of it to show those downstairs.

 

 

It was only then we noticed, that although there were liberal stains of brown paint used to capture shadows above his eyebrowns, there was an incongruous dark spot on the Prince’s forehead.  I went back upstairs and took the painting off the wall to have a closer look.  It may have been our location, more likely the fact I’d been drinking on a disappointingly empty stomach over many hours, but there was something of the cavalier in me that evening.  I’m ashamed to say I had a wee pick at the patch on his forehead.  This didn’t seem to work so I licked my forefinger and tentatively rubbed at the blemish.  To my joy, with the application of a good deal more saliva and an increasingly vigorous motion, miraculous was the result…..

 

 

 

In the cold light of day, rather than a slip from the artist’s palette, I’m inclined to think it was bat poo that had splattered his Highness’s portrait and so I may get away with this bit of impromptu restoration, but given the lack of biscuits and the possibility I might have defaced the Royal image, an act of high treason, I think I’ll steer clear of Zalanpatak for a while.

 

 

Friday 22nd September, 2017

Under the Bodhi Tree indeed.  Under the weather more like this morning.  I arranged a dinner at J&B last night along with a collection of other brokers to mark the retirement of an enormous long only client of ours who was there as our guest.  I could bore you with the list of wines we drank ( we finished with D’Yquem 89 and Taylors 85 ).  The highlight however was when one of our number read out comments our client had written about him in various broker reviews over the years.  The wines may have been expensive, but these are priceless:

 

·          "Has got bored as the market has collapsed"

·         "Almost appears to care about the account"

·         "Has dwindled rather like his company’s share price"

 

Oh yes.  Perking up a little.  I meant to tell you about a funny thing that happened this week.  A cousin set in motion the most ridiculous chain of Facebook posts I have seen in a long time when she asked her friends for help identifying a song that she was hoping to use for some project she was engaged in at work.  There was little to go on.  “It’s quite tinkly and has men and women singing ‘badabadabadabada’ overlapping each other.  It has a 70’s, fuzzy, soft focus feel to it”.  It was a wild goose chase to all intent and purposes except that she also said the song had been the subject of discussion between Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan in an episode of The Trip.  Well, there was only one thing for it really:

 

 

 

 

Anyway, back to matters of health.  I’m in the office on Monday however away after that for 8 days cycling through the Carpathian Mountains of Romania so you’ll get a welcome break from this ridiculous missive next week.  I admit I have done a bit of training and took myself off last Sunday for a 30 mile burn on the mountain bike.  All was going well till mile 20 when, enjoying a whizz downhill, I came round a corner where to my surprise a substantial ford presented itself.  Throwing caution to the wind I free-wheeled in legs akimbo, but the water was deeper than I had expected and the ground an inch thick with algae and weed. The bike went from under me and I hit the deck.  I was soaked to the skin and suffered a VERY nasty wound on the front of my left knee.  I thought, better than calling Sophie to the rescue, cycling the remaining 10 miles home with blood pouring down my leg was much the less painful option.   The rest of the afternoon was spent hanging around for a plaster and a packet of antibiotics in Bury St Edmunds A&E….shame on me.

 

I got quite excited albeit a little surprised when I found online that typically the weather at this time of year in Transylvania is sunny and temperatures in the range of 28-30oC.  That was until it was pointed out to me I had googled Transylvania, Louisiana.  Anyway if a mountain bike holiday wasn’t a daunting enough proposition after this brush with death Bob has sent our whole party into a spin by sending a video clip of Romanian shepherds tackling a marauding brown bear.  I hesitate to share this with you because a friend who reads this email coincidentally is also going cycling in Romania next week and I don’t want to ruin her holiday too.  I’m thinking she’s probably already on her way so hopefully she’ll never see this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYfwvBWAzVs

 

 

 

Friday 15th September, 2017

I told you the other day about reports that came through to me that our youngest, Lottie, was having her hair dyed purple.  It transpired she didn’t and it was just a rather puerile attempt to wind me up, but the worm is definitely now turning.  I regret to say she has started life in the Perse sixth form with a bit of attitude in evidence.  Her skirt on the first day back was just a little too short; the black trousers she wore the following day cut illegally above the ankle, whilst her top was a florid black and brown shirt bought when she was at Reading Festival.  There has also been just a suggestion of some lippiness.  She related over supper that she had corrected a young English teacher who had spoken grammatically incorrectly in one of their lessons.  Then on Friday she surpassed herself for the chutzpah of it.

 

I arrived home to discover she was up in her room supposedly knocking out some prep.  At the risk of interrupting her finely honed academic focus I tentatively knocked on her door as I called to say that I was back, but I need not have worried about disturbing her train of thought.  She shoved her i-phone to one side and looked up with a self-satisfied and mischievous grin on her face cocking her head to reveal a freshly pierced ear.  A small gold stud now adorned her pinna, if I’m to be anatomically correct, just up from the ring in her lobe which has  been there since her 15^th birthday. 

 

“What ho!”,  I exclaimed to myself, holding onto my sense of equilibrium which had survived a relatively unchallenging commute back from the office that evening.  There’s a lot of that sort of thing about these days isn’t there.  I’ve even noticed some of Sophie’s friends have multiple ear piercings.  “Looking good Lottie! When did you get then done?”  “Oh, long story” she said gleefully.

 

It’s not massively interesting to be honest so I’ll spare you every bit of detail. Suffice to say, she had discovered that she had been unilaterally signed up for a session of orienteering during Friday afternoon’s “activities” slot.  If that was not unappealing enough, it involved a trip to the outskirts of Cambridge to traipse around the Magog Hills.  No, up with this she would not put.  She and a friend decided they’d never be missed if they didn’t actually get on the bus.  Instead they settling down in a classroom for a peaceful afternoon on Snapchat but shortly they were discovered by a teacher who, whilst not knowing which activity they were meant to be doing, at least was aware they were not meant to be sitting around in a classroom and so duly despatched them.  With the afternoon now stretching idly ahead they settled on a wander along Hills Road to Costa and there, sipping a soy latte or whatever, they agreed that they might as well make the time count.  So they walked a little further down the road to a tattoo and piercing parlour where the job was done.  Chutzpah….yes, that’s the word for it at this point.  Don’t worry.  I’m watching her like a hawk now I can tell you.