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