It’s not that I’m feeling flush. Actually, as a sign of how tough times are, we are on a mission to convert the old Hen House into a very desirable AirBNB spot for anyone looking for a weekend up in Suffolk. I’ll let you know when you can sign up. That’ll be a weird weekend! Anyway needs must as MiFID2 looms. By the way, on that subject, I’ve been pondering what I can do to in order to keep in touch with you in the unlikely event you decide not to sign up to pay for Nomura Research. My reading of the guidelines, and I’d be very interested to hear your take on this, is that I will still be email you without causing any undue problems with the authorities, so long as my email can’t be construed as providing “intellectual rigour using original thought, analysis or information”. Pondering this briefly I conclude I don’t need to change much, if anything at all.
Hmmm. Oh yes, I know what I was trying to tell you. As its Black Friday we’ve decided to buy a new telly. Well actually, if I’m revealing all, I should confess Sophie informs me she’s also ordered a new bed and a Dyson hoover. Yeehaaa. But anyway, our current TV is over ten years old. So what we thought we’d do is move it over to where you’ll be staying and get ourselves a brand new one for the big hoose. Well, not really big, but whatever, where we settle down in these long, dark evenings, to watch Masterchef, Strictly Come Dancing and, of course, Peaky Blinders is a lovely old room. When I sit there I feel I am in the Captain’s Cabin on HMS Surprise, the boat in “Master and Commander”. Without the decanters of port. Oh dear I’ rambling this week.
I didn’t want Soph to think I was being impulsive so I asked her to measure our television and send me the dimensions which she duly did, somewhat reluctantly I might say. Nevertheless I received measurements from her of both the screen and the TV set as a whole, but it was only when I set out upon a bit of research that I realised I needed the measurement across the diagonal to get a proper sense of how much larger our replacement was to be. I don’t know about you, but these days across a slightly dark room, log fire a-crackling, I can barely see Tommy Shelby, never mind make out what he’s saying in that Brummie accent of his.
Well, when I Whatsapped Sophie to ask her for the additional measurement did I not get it in the neck. “Ffs. Will be an hour or so x” was the cursory response. I quaked in my boots.
And then I had a brainwave. I had the width and the height. I could do something with this. I had heard about that fellow Pythagoras. I imagine the first time was ahead of sitting my common entrance exam which I scraped through and then more specifically for my Maths O level which I only passed on the third attempt, but hadn’t he had something to say about this? Admittedly I had to Google it just for a refresher purposes, but oh what satisfaction!!! 27.5” wide x 15.5” high = the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides……. 32” on the diagonal!!! I can’t tell you, when I popped into Richer Sounds, on my way to lunch at Wright Bros, to have a look at various models it was all I could do to stop myself relating this story to the guy helping me choose the 49” Sony over the Samsung.
So how’s that for research and analysis? And am I still MiFID2 compliant??? Heck no!
PS. Recall my adventures when I was looking for a taxi in East London last week? Well I was walking to Liverpool Street last night when I passed a guy shouting repeatedly down his phone “5 Old Bro’ Street”…. I puzzled on this for a while as I wandered on and then it dawned on me. He was French, needed a taxi and at least he had the wherewithal to try to order an Uber. But I wondered how long it would be before they realised it was Old Broad Street, not Bro’. (I know. It loses something in the telling but it made me chuckle at the time.)
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