Friday 2nd March, 2018

Someone told me the other day that after wine, stamps have been the second best performing asset class over the last ten years. Rummaging around a couple of trunks which Sophie was getting me to lug about from room to room in the never ending search for interior design perfection I’d stumbled across a stamp album that I’d compiled at whilst at prep school in Scotland.  Well that was more than 40 years ago so I suppose, packed as it is with all sorts of classics from countries including the Gold Coast, Ceylon and a load of them behind the Iron Curtain, my album is probably worth a small fortune by now.  And I need the cash.

 

What happened was this.  It’ll sound like I’m showing off, but I was invited to dinner last night at J&B to meet the owners of Chateau Lafleur.  Oh wow.  Such a treat.  I had a nice chat at the start of the evening with Baptiste Guinaudeau.  He has a pony tail and calls himself a farmer.  I discussed vine pruning techniques with him at length, and although it may smack a little of nepotism, there’s a job at Lafleur for Hen if she wants it.  Oh drat.  I should have told him I’ve just planted a Black Hamburgh vine at home in my greenhouse.  That would have been good.  Sorry.  I’m rambling.  At the risk of boring you further, after starting the evening with a glass or two of Krug we drank two different vintages of the Chateau’s “second” wine, Pensees de LaFleur.  The 2009 was astonishing.  Then on we went to drink Lafleur 2007 ( a cool year ) comparing it with the 2003 ( a hot one ) and finally, the hugely acclaimed 1995 vintage and the spectacular 1989.  I know.  I’m a spoilt brat.  The highlight of the evening though was a white wine which was served right at the outset of dinner to go with the crab and gruyere gratin.  It’s called Les Champs Libres and made by my new best friend Baptiste and his wife Julie.  It’s a complete side line and not what Lafleur is about at all, but it blew me away.  Do you know that poem about Stout Cortez and his chappies discovering the Pacific and looking at each other with a wild surmise?  Well, that’s what I felt when I tasted this.  If I could stock my cellar up with this I’d happily never drink a different white wine for the rest of my life.  Alas, I thought to myself, side line though it might be, it was bound to be well out of my price range.

 

Much too late in the evening, bearing in mind I had all you lot to look after this morning, I headed out of J&B onto St James’s Street, slipped a guy sleeping on the pavement a tenner out of a total sense of guilt, and headed up to Kings Cross and round to Old Street where a TravelLodge room at the princely sum of £69 awaited me.  £69!!   20 minutes walk from the office.  Much more my league.  Unfortunately, as I perused my emails, trudging down Moorgate there was one from J&B and I vaguely recalled browsing their website before I’d turned the lights out.  It informed me that I’d bought a magnum of Les Champs and you don’t even want to know what that set me back.  My frugality in the choice of hotel, coupled with an excess of claret, had clearly given me a rush of bravado.  I’ve spent the day thinking how am I going to look Mrs S in the eyes this evening. 

 

The stamp album has to go.  Photo attached.  Any bidders??

 

 

 

Happy days they were.  Anyway, I’m going to beat the Beast and head off sharpish today if that’s OK with you.  Snow bucketing down in Newmarket apparently.

 

Friday 23rd February, 2018

If I was to tell you that, apart from raising my eyebrows this morning at a headline news item on the BBC which read “Naked Man on tracks causes Edinburgh rail disruption,” reminding me that we’ve got the Calcutta Cup tomorrow and to fleetingly muse that it might be my father given his past record at such occasions, the thing I’ve mostly been focussed on today is by the time I get home my birthday present should have been delivered.  The box chest freezer.  What excitement.

 

The week as a whole has been a bit of quiet one I’m sorry to say.  It wasn’t entirely post CNY market blues.  I don’t seem to recover as quickly as I did in the past from late night high jinx.  I didn’t tell you, but we had a bit of a hoolie last weekend.  It was quite sweet actually.  Sophie arranged the whole thing and even said she’d do the cooking for a change.  Delicious it all was too, even though she forgot, at the last minute, to put the mushrooms into the boeuf bourguignon.  

 

It’s something I want to get off my chest, but I had been grappling with what wine to serve that night.  Many years ago, when MiFID2 was but a twinkle in Paul Myners’ eye and times were relatively rosy, I bought a case of La Mission Haut Brion en primeur, and that is what I thought I might mark my move into the mid 50’s with.  But as the evening approached I’m ashamed to say I had cold feet, returned the eight bottles I’d brought up to their case in the cellar and replaced them with Clos des Quatre Vents 2010 which is a nice enough drop and a fraction of the current market value.  I think it was the right decision.  I’m not sure the assembled crowd would have cared too much what I gave them.  It was obviously preying on my mind though.  In the morning nursing a touch of a hangover I recalled that I had lost the power of speech as the last couple headed home at 3 in the morning, noted that I had pin pricks on the palm of my hands presumably from when a few of us had gone out to see what the hedgehogs were up to, and, when I finally made it down to the kitchen in desperate need of some black coffee and a glass of water, there on the sideboard I found an empty bottle of La Mission.  What the heck???  It would have been chilled and a bit shook up when we drank it.  That’s as maybe though.  I have no recollection of it at all.  What a muppet I am.

 

C’mon Scotland.  This year we’re going to have them.

 

Friday 16th February, 2018

I have to concede that the posture improvement gadget I gave her last week didn’t go down well.  It was placed perfunctorily and unopened on my desk and the air was a little frosty as we all got into the car and went out for dinner at a nearby pub.  Note to self for next year though you would think I should have learnt this by now.  It never pays to underwhelm Sophie with her birthday present.  The point is my birthday follows quickly after hers.  It was yesterday since you ask.  She gave me a box chest freezer and half a side of a pig.

 

Hey ho.  Do you find a visit to Dublin brings out the worst in you?  It took my mother, when I was telling her that Lottie had been in Ireland earlier this week, to point out that it seems to do something to us Sandisons.  I might have told you before about the weekend my brothers and I spent there some years back when we went with our father – I think he was 73 give or take a year or two - to play a couple of rounds of golf and watch Scotland v. Ireland at Lansdowne Road.  It was tempting to leave him there, in a beer hall after the rugby match, at 2.00 in the morning dancing and singing raucously along to “Living next door to Alice” which was blaring out of the loud speakers.  A couple of hours later, after we had managed to find our hotel and the four of us crammed into our shared room, I wished I had.  Instead, I spent the few hours sleeping time available to us, repeatedly stretching out of bed to rap him on the head with my Titleist driver, in a futile attempt to stop him snoring.  

 

As I was saying, our youngest, Lottie, ( Miss Perse Upperself ) has just returned from Dublin where she’d been on an English literature field trip arranged by the school.  I remember wincing at the cost of this one when we agreed to sign her up for it towards the end of last year, but she wants to read English at University and persuaded us there was an interesting and full schedule including visits to museums, libraries, the James Joyce Centre and two theatrical performances.  It would be an invaluable educational experience she insisted.

 

She blew into the house late the other night in terrific form apart from the bags under her eyes.  “I had the most fantastic time.”  That’s as maybe say I, but did you learn anything?  “I learnt a couple of things actually Daddy.  3 million pints of Guinness are brewed in Ireland every day and 3.5 billion pints of Guinness are drank around the world each year.  And I had three pints one evening, but to be honest I prefer Harry Sparrow.”

 

Kung Hei Fat Chow and although we’re heading into the Year of the Dog I have to ask could life get any better for our pack of hounds??

 

 

 

 

 

Friday 9th February, 2018

Time will tell, but I can’t be absolutely certain Sophie is going to be ecstatic about the birthday present I’ll give her this evening.  I’m reasonably optimistic though.  The Fitbit she got for Christmas has been a surprising success.  Perhaps I was resting on my laurels, but I hadn’t been able to think of anything to match that until last Saturday morning when Sophie started moaning about a sore back sustained in the course of a protracted phone conversation with Hen whilst doing the ironing.  

 

I was feigning interest although in fact somewhat more engrossed by the challenge of trying to break my all time record of 12 correct answers out of 20 in the Saturday Telegraph family general knowledge quiz.  Having failed in that task what should I read about, elsewhere in the section, but an article about a marvellous little invention, designed to help improve your posture.  Obviously one shouldn’t do the ironing whilst attempting to hold the phone in the crook of your neck.  But the idea of this gadget is that you stick it on your back, between the shoulder blades, and it gives you a gentle electric shock or some form of vibration possibly whenever it senses that you are slouching.  Clever eh?  Just in case though I’ve hedged myself with the additional purchase of an amber and bay leaf scented candle from Jo Malone ( just a small one ), and we’re going out to the local pub for supper.  I know.  I spoil that girl.

 

If I can continue with the theme of “ways to maintain a successful marriage” it is obviously important not to take each other for granted.  Nonetheless Jimmy’s reaction to the fact that Sophie came downstairs last Monday wearing make up, whilst intensely loyal, was also a little disconcerting.  Of course I was here in the office looking after you lot, but back at the ranch Sophie was on a mission to sell Lottie’s horse.  I could learn a thing or two from her with regard to the attention to detail required to clinch a deal.  A lady was coming round for a second look at Bertie.  Sophie had had me sweep the stable yard and move all the accumulated clutter out of sight before I was allowed to settle down to watch the Liverpool-Spurs match on Sunday afternoon.  First thing the following morning Sophie groomed the horse to perfection after which she went upstairs to apply the finishing touches to her own appearance.  It was back in the kitchen when she was waiting for the prospective purchaser to arrive and taking the opportunity to brew some coffee that she noticed Jimmy eyeing her up and down rather suspiciously.  Jimmy doesn’t miss a trick.  “Why are you wearing make up Mummy” she said in a somewhat accusatory yet anxious tone.  Sophie explained the lengths she was prepared to go to make a sale.  “Oh, phew,” said Jimmy, according to Sophie, sincerely relieved, “I thought it was because Gavin the electrician is coming.  I was a bit worried for Daddy.”

Friday 2nd February, 2018

 

Don’t read too much into the fact I’m emailing you a bit earlier today.  It’s mainly to give you time to jump into action.  Anyway, there I was thinking last week was the low point of the year, and certainly I’ve noticed it’s lighter for longer in the afternoons now which is good news at least I suppose, but otherwise this had been a quiet old week.  Still, at least Hen rang me this morning.

 

She began by telling me she had a cold which was an inauspicious start, but we are talking about Hen.  Never a dull moment in her life.  “It’s alright though, I’ve eaten a whole bulb of garlic so I’ll be fine soon enough”.  New one on me I must admit.  Good job she’s in France and its only her and a dog in a van.  She nattered on.  “All’s fine otherwise thanks Daddy. It’s rainy and the wind’s blowing 90kmph today so I’m bunkered down in the van.  I love it here.  Loads of work and I’ve met such brilliant people doing vine pruning.  There’s a nice guy who has built himself a log cabin in the middle of a small citrus orchard and surrounded by vineyards.  And a lovely young couple who are expecting a baby and live in a tepee.  Now Uncle Robert’s gone – thank ****  - I’m working for Eric the alcoholic, the one who looks like Dobby the house elf, who owns a lot of vines but really doesn’t like doing much to them himself.  He’s always insisting that we head off on adventures.  Well that’s what he calls them.  Usually I tell him to go on his own as I’ve got the pruning to do and need the money, but sometimes I go with him.  Yesterday we ended up at a petanque game.  The men playing it were so old most of them couldn’t bend down to pick the boules up so they had a magnetic contraption on the end of a stick which did the job.  The day before that he took me to a bar in a neighbouring village.  It was wonderful. We went in and there was absolute dead silence apart from the sound of cards being laid on a table.  Five old boys were sitting playing a game called Tarot, surrounded by about twenty others watching intently over the proceedings uttering not a sound.  When the game finished about ten minutes later the whole place literally erupted with banter and relief that the pressure was off.  I’ve never seen so much smoke and Pernod.”  

 

So, hardly earth shattering stuff, but one minute I had been at my desk thinking about the re-rating possibilities of the Chinese life insurance sector, the next I was in a wind-swept village in the south west of France.  Quite a skill, the story telling, and she’s got it that girl.

 

Talking of clouds I set up Family Sharing on my Apple account a couple of days ago.  I’d been mulling it for a while.  You can share the Cloud space between you; and calendars and all that good stuff.  Handy I thought.  I’m not a total eejit.  I knew very well it meant that all iTunes purchases now go onto my card, but, I thought to myself, no one pays for music anymore do they?  I’m not making this up.  The very next morning, the very next morning I tell you, ping….£13.99 onto my credit card for an iTunes purchase.  The new Beyonce album, Lemonade.  JIMMY!  She’ll be paying me back, don’t you worry.

Friday 25th January, 2018

I was away for a couple of days at the end of last week so maybe you missed me.  Nipped off for a sneaky three days skiing with two of the bambinos.  Important to start these post MiFID2 days and to brace myself for what is, I understand, the grimmest week of the year by pampering oneself. 

 

The 23^rd January is specifically the day that the “blues are at their bluest” I read.  I made a big mistake that day actually.  Travelling in to work I tapped into Spotify on my phone and decided to listen to an 80’s hit list radio stream.  By the time I got to the office I was a nostalgic wreck only getting consolation from the fact that I’d been able to remember the words to almost every song that had come, so at least, I concluded,  Alzheimers is being warded off.

 

On that subject and perhaps to demonstrate that I’m not really the glass half empty sort of guy I think many of you believe me to be, something incredible happened this week.  I decided that I would like to understand better some of the driving forces behind SRI funds and ESG investing and so I paid some of my own hard earned mullah to enrol on an online course.  Is there no end to the lengths I will go for my clients I hear you ask?  It took a few hours over a couple of evenings to work my way through this before I reached the denouement which took the form of an extensive and challenging series of multiple choice questions.  I only went and nailed it!  95%.  Go me.  But what’s so incredible about this I hear the more cynical amongst you saying?  Well, unless you count my success in getting my Day Skipper qualification, which was more a practical test and in all honesty I only scraped through the theoretical side because Sophie was mouthing the answers to me behind the instructor’s back, this is the only exam I have taken since my Finals at Leicester University whenever that was.  I know.  I’m very proud.

 

Small aside.  I feel you’re due an update on Hen.  She’s on good form earning money pruning vines in the South West of France particularly as her boss, “Uncle Robert” she has to call him to get round the restrictive French employment regulations, has left her to it and gone back to the UK for a few weeks.  She is not a fan of Robert, despite the fact he has provided her with a job.  He is 60, a gossip and a snob according to her and resistant to the various attempts she has made to moderate his behaviour.  The message in the attached photo adorning the inside of her van is directed at him.

 

Last night my journey home was delayed as I had a quick desk dinner after work with a visiting high heidyin.  It was Burns Night so I can call him that I think.  And oh yes, didn’t we just have to go to the same old joint our desk head always chooses?  I’ve lost count of the number of times he’s dragged us all there these last five year or so.  It’s convenient enough, but a bit of a dive, The Don Bistro.  We didn’t hold back.  The whole desk in fact was giving him grief about the venue until I asked for some mustard to go with the famous Don Burger I’d ordered in lieu of haggis.  The waitress came back with a slightly sheepish look on her face and apologised for the fact she hadn’t been able to find any.  “We’re running out of a lot stuff like that” she explained. “The restaurant is closing down on Monday”.  There is a God!

 

After being reassured by the waitress that she was quite happy to be looking for a new job we celebrated wildly and I only caught my train home by a whisker.  Then just before we arrived at Whittlesford I noticed an iPhone left on a seat across the carriage from me so I picked it up and took it home. Interesting story actually because its owner, bizarrely I thought, didn’t ring it.  As I contemplated how I could possibly reunite them in the absence of them contacting me I recalled an episode of Silent Witness in which Jack picks up an unknown victims phone, presses the home button and asks Siri whose phone it is.  I did just that.  Siri was essentially stomped unfortunately.  “Thank you Angela, that’s an interesting question” was the response.  So at least I knew the owner was called Angela.  This morning, still no call, but, although the phone was locked, various messages popped up on the home screen, including one from Strava suggesting she send kudos to someone, presumably a friend of hers.  Being a Strava “athlete” myself I searched the guys name, scrolled through his list of friends, and there was Angie So and So of Saffron Walden which is in our vicinity.  From that point all I needed to do was a cursory Google search and hey presto I had her work details, a firm of architects in the City, sent an email to reception, and, sorry about this, but you know how I like to tie my little stories together, Bob’s your father’s brother.  Angie and I are now bezza’s and the phone is wending its way, Special Delivery, to North Essex.  Really, no patting myself on the back for a good deed done.  Considering the number of times I’ve ( or more precisely the baby darlings ) been reunited with lost phones, this was pay back time.

 

Oh yes also this week I watched one of the most remarkable programmes I’ve seen in a very long time.  If you have Netflix you really must see this: 

 

Chef’s Table, Season 1, Episode 3. It is absolutely wonderful.

 

So all in all the most miserable week of the year has been quite good fun actually.  Still, glad it’s Friday.

Friday 12th January, 2018

Happy New Year to you and yours.  I’ve given up crisps for 2018.  What’s your New Year resolution?

 

Now I don’t want you to think we’re getting soft and tree huggerish, but there have already this year been some strange developments at home.

 

I hadn’t really thought so much of this particular story until I went to get a newspaper from the shop in the next door village last weekend.  “I hear your wife did a very brave thing the other day” Mike the store keeper ( who used to play for Spurs incidentally ) said to me.  I was a bit slow on the uptake, but fortunately he elaborated.  “Taking on the gypsies.  Next time tell her to ring me and I’ll help” he added, feigning boxing punches.  Ah. With ya.

 

Regardless of whether or not it was appropriate for Mike to use that word to describe the men who, two days earlier, had been careering over fields in a battered blue Volvo estate ( almost certainly stolen ) in hot pursuit of two dogs and a hare it was indeed the case that Sophie had interrupted her walk to ring the police and report them for trespass and illegal coursing. The Newmarket constabulary sprang into action with commendable speed.  Sad to say, however, three police cars and a helicopter, not to mention Sophie’s directions and on the ground intelligence, proved inadequate and the men nonchalantly evaded capture and drove off at some speed, no doubt on their way back to Essex, directly past Sophie who was standing at the side of a field and still on the phone to HQ.  The two gents in the back seat leaned out the window cursing at her roundly and promising dire reprisals.  Sophie doesn’t seem unduly worried thank you very much.  The irony of this story perhaps will not be lost on those of you who have read my emails over the years, but of course Bob was much younger than he is now and didn’t use a car.  Most of the time he spent crossing the very fields these guys were damaging he wasn’t even wearing shoes!

 

The other thing to report is that although, what with Bob and the pikeys, our house and surrounding fields couldn’t generally be considered the safest places for local wildlife we’ve set up a hedgehog sanctuary.  I know!  What are we like?!  It started when Bob and his girlfriend found a poor little baby one shivering under a car and in a very sorry state.  We tracked down a lady living just a few miles away who has a fully fledged rescue centre for the creatures.  She took the orphan under her care and named it Sophie.  It was touch and go, but she finally managed to get Sophie to take some liquid at about 2.00am ( some people are amazing aren’t they ) and the hedgehog was on the road to recovery. 

 

The centre is full to over-flowing however and so we decided we had better try to help.  It happens we have a couple of old pigsties so we spent a morning clearing them out of the useless clutter that had accumulated there and threw in a few piles of straw.  Hey presto…the perfect environment for a hibernating hedgehog.  We now have eight males in one shed and seven females in the other and there they will stay until spring comes along.  It involves a little more work than you might imagine though not that much really.  Water and food and mucking out their den.  That’s about it.  Which is fine because it’s not like you can bond with a hedgehog particularly.  They tuck themselves up, invisible under their bedding, and sleep all day.  At night-time if you put your head torch on, tip toe across the gravel and open the top part of the door quickly enough you will see them scuttling back into the corners which is kind of sweet.

 

But hey….is there someone in your family who is the gullible one?  Ours is Jimmy.  Living in London at the moment she asked after the hedgehogs on the family WhatsApp chat earlier this week.

 

“Are they happy?” she wrote. 

“Yup.  Partying like crazy every night.  Neighbours are complaining about the noise” one slightly impish group member replied.

 And we all just knew she would fall for it. 

“Really?  (worried concerned face)” came her immediate response. “What is the noise like?” 

 

Hook, line and sinker.  Maybe I’m being unfair.  If you too are unsure how noisy hedgehogs can be and have access to Youtube click on the link below, but be sure to have the volume turned down or you could seriously damage your hearing.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sgw-achKVM