Friday 10th August, 2012

It has been such an astounding week or so for Team GB you have probably had enough of impossible stories, but there has also been some sporting action to report away from the Olympics. I am often asked whether I make up the stories about Bob. I don't. I really don't. Anyway, it would take quite an imagination to come up with his exploits last weekend. If it wasn't for the pile of feathers by the sink I spotted when I came down for breakfast suggesting he might have been up and about I suppose I would have been a little irritated that Bob didn't show till some time after 10am. It transpired that he had got up at 3.30am, wandered to the bottom of our paddock and sat, .410 shotgun in hand, for four hours, hoping that a rabbit would emerge from a burrow. When, by 7.30am, it became apparent that the rabbit community was wise to his prescence, and a pigeon wandered lazily overhead, he popped that, plucked it, put it in the fridge and a slightly disgruntled Bob pottered back to bed. It was a shame he explained to me. He had been very keen to get a rabbit as he had found a nice recipe for Lapin a la Moutarde. The local wildlife had one up on him the next day too. He had been asked to take the dogs for a quick walk. We were going out for the day and they would have to spend a few hours locked in the dog house so they just needed a little run about. He came back forty minutes later. Twiggie, his lurcher, was a muddy mess. Humphrey, our miniature smooth haired daschund had a cut on his side and squealed when you so much as touched him. And Bob's wellies - my Le Chameau's to be precise - had been been sliced open. As I said, we had just sent him for a quiet Sunday morning walk and he had turned it into a bloodbath. He calmly explained to me they had had an encounter ( I'll spare you all the details ) with a male muntjac ( photo attached so you know what to look out for next time you go for a wander in the countryside). Some muntjac this. Feeling slightly threatened admittedly, it had turned on Bob and Humphrey and bitten them both! Humphrey has had a lucky escape safe to say, but my wellies are a write off. I had to take the dog to the vet so that'll be a £100 bill at least plus £160 for a new pair of Chameau's. Blinking boy. Drives you mad. We are off on holiday to Sweden tomorrow morning, my wife's first ever visit to her fathers homeland. We have tried to go there before as I may have told you but ended up that time in Denmark as I had booked flights to Copenhagen believing it to be Sweden's capital city. So away next week and in my absence please contact my colleague Matt Brown (0207 201 3540) who will be happy to help if you need anything from us......

Friday 26th July, 2012

As you know, I am quite fixated about tallying the number of countries I have been to. I think I have told you before that if you see me scribbling away furiously during a particularly boring analyst meeting I am most likely writing out a list of countries I have visited. Actually these days I might be jotting down something else. After a bit of practice I can now recall and write out the names of all 50 states in the USA in 2mins 10 seconds flat. Test me sometime. Nationalism is a bit of a bug bear of mine actually. Hate it. Really brings the worst out in people. Nevertheless on the eve of the Olympics it is hard to avoid the subject of countries and sport. I suppose I started on the theme yesterday. Now, of course, I happen to be Scottish, but speaking as a Brit I must say we didn't give Scotland much to do in the Olympics. Women's soccer I think was about it. And they only go and mess it up. I helpfully sent my Scottish clients sent a picture of the correct North Korean flag which prompted this response from a friend in Edinburgh. This is the flag they almost put up Anyway, to put the hapless Hampden officials into perspective, it wasn't as crass an error as the one made during the medal ceremony at a Kuwaiti shooting event earlier this year won by a Kazakh, Maria Dmitrienko. Click on the following link. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17494812 I have mentioned before how many people you spot wandering around London in whites and carrying tennis racquets when Wimbledon is on. On Monday and Tuesday this week the thing I noted was the number of cyclists - I even seen one on a Boris bike - wearing yellow jerseys. Bradley Wiggins is a legend, don't get me wrong. First words on winning the Tour de France and facing the crowds with microphone in hand? "We're gonna draw the raffle tickets now!". So English. Anyway, as you know I am reasonably sporty myself and have a fairly diligent regime involving running round Hyde Park at lunch time. I was out there again yesterday. Surprise surprise, blinking thousands of would be Olympians had suddenly appeared. Perhaps I am being unduly cynical. There was a great atmosphere and they all seemed to be having a lovely time. I say I go running. It's a bit more than that of course. I mix it up with stragically chosen moments of sprinting, star jumps and squats, depending on who's watching. I digress. I was meant to be writing about my bug-bear.... nationalism. London is a multi-cultural place, but the Olympics have brought it to a different level. The city is heaving with different nationalities wandering around the West End, trying to put off the moment they have to head over to Hackney. Getting to the point, I was wearing my acrylic purple T shirt proclaiming that I had completed the 2011 Jungfrau Marathon, but almost everyone else seemed to be running around hair or eyebrows paints funny colours, carrying flags or with the names of their countries emblazoned across their chests. I don't know. Just seems strange to me. The only interesting thing was the number of runners I spotted from countries begining with C. China, Cameroon, Chile. I even passed someone claiming to come from a place called CANADA, wherever that is. I paid my second ever visit to Germany this week which was very exciting. My British Airways flights was inevitably delayed - well over an hour. Would never have happened if I'd flown Lufthansa. So I had to cancel my client dinner, and landed in Frankfurt at 9.00pm suspecting it was too late even for an impromptu rendevous with a good German friend of mine and to grab a bite to eat. Oh ye of little faith. Never underestimate German efficiency. Whisked in seconds through passport control putting Heathrow to shame, moments later I was in a taxi doing 110 mph down the road into town. The last time I'd been driven that fast by a taxi-driver I was on the way from Macau to Chungshan Hot Springs Golf Course and we nearly died. Within about half an hour of landing in Germany I was sitting in the garden of a charming restaurant eating the most enormous Wienerschnitzel and drinking a large glass of ice cold apple wine. So you see, stock broking has its moments.

Friday 13th July, 2012

Bob got back from Rugby last Friday for the summer holidays and much as I was looking forward to seeing him again the joy did not last long. An hour at most. It had been a long and stressy week as I think I told you. After supper I slumped in front of the TV. Moments later Bob arrived looking uncharacteristically frazzled to tell me that our next door neighbour, with whom I had had no contact whatsoever in the five years we have lived at our house, wanted to see me, adding that he had shot a pigeon with an air-rifle which had then fluttered over the substantial dividing wall into the neighbours garden. Talk about irate. The guy was apoplectic and ordered me into his house for a serious dressing down. Apparently he had been sitting in his conservatory enjoying the peace and tranquility of our Suffolk village when a bird landed on his lawn followed immediately by a boy wearing camouflage trousers, vaulting the wall and proceeding to dive on the hapless pigeon. I could see from the large pile of feathers strewn over the guys garden that he was probably telling the truth. I apologised profusely of course. His point that if his wife had been home alone she would have been terrified by this intrusion was well made. But funnily enough the thing he seemed most preoccupied by was the fact, he told me, that Bob had been barefooted. I think he considered this was a signal of some much more malicious motive beyond putting a poor bird out of its misery. I assured him - as you already know - that this was completely normal behaviour. Recall that he once ran two miles to the local railway station, caught a train to Cambridge and onto an appointment with his orthodontist with no shoes on. Fair play to the neighbour, though slightly to my surprise, he calmed down, even seeming to view me with some sympathy I felt. PS Otherwise engaged, Bob had missed supper so whilst I patched things up with the neighbour he rattled off a bite to eat for himself. The pigeon having been left behind in the furore next door, he settled instead on "poaching" an egg in the sauce of a can of baked beans which he emptied into a saucepan. Haute cuisine. PPS Went to a friends 40th birthday party last night. How cool am I to have friends that young?

Friday 6th July, 2012

I have had my second curtailed week in a row so I feel the need to explain myself. Whilst it may not have surprised you, my repeated absences probably havn't shown me in the best light to our new colleagues who have joined us from RBS. Being serious for a moment though, everyone here has been fantastically supportive and helpful. My mother was taken ill as she was travelling down south with my father to visit my brother in Wiltshire. They were staying in a hotel just north of Birmingham when she developed chest pains early on Tuesday morning. Perhaps you havn't met my mother, but she is quite a piece of work. In considerable pain, she was being looked after by an understandably slightly frazzled, young hotel receptionist while they waited for the ambulance to arrive. "Don't worry, don't worry" my mother tells me the girl said to her. "Take slow deep breaths. Like this..... Breath in.......breath out......breath in......Now bring your legs up a bit dear" At which point my mother apparently couldn't resist retorting, through gritted teeth "I'm having a heart attack you know, not giving birth!" Very fortuitously one of England's newest hospitals was close to hand and having been taken there in an ambulance, within minutes she was being attended to and, fingers crossed, all is now well thank goodness. She'll be leaving this morning and heading home to Elie, Fife. Wolverhampton. Now there's a place I had not been to before and at the risk of alienating myself with the large number of my clients who will now no doubt reveal that's where they come from, it's not a place I need to visit again. You know when you go somewhere for the first time and it's rainy and grey? You kind of feel you should give it the benefit of the doubt and only judge it when the sun comes out. No need to bother with that when it comes to Wolverhampton. What a dump. Mind you, our opinion of the place was not helped by the Ely House Hotel which I booked my father and I into on Tuesday night. I liked the name obviously and it had looked pretty smart on the website, but as Hen likes to say....Never judge a book by its cover. To be fair to me, I suspect there were probably worse hotels about and it did have a reasonable selection of malt whisky. Anyway, if you were in hospital in Wolverhampton, feeling a touch under the weather, I suspect this would perk you up......written on the back of the home made get well card that my mother received, a message from our 11 year old daughter. Dear Grannie, I hope you are not to badly ill, poor you!! And not even in your own comforting surroundings. I don't feel perfect to, although I'm sure your ailment is a bit worse than a cold. Please get better soon and come to see us. Lots of love, Lottie xxx OK...she can't spell but quite sweet! Changing the subject Hen is in France for yet another holiday at the parents-in-law pad in Gascony. This time, rather than lounging about the pool in what inevitably proves to be a futile attempt to get a suntan, the highlight she tells me is the prospect of a visit to Disneyland Paris on the return trip. Hen absolutely hates scary, "fun" rides. Wild horses could not drag her to Big Thunder Mountain. But she has agreed to go to Disneyland, can't wait actually, on the promise that she is allowed to dress up as a real live sparkly, pink Princess in order to cavort on equal terms with Mickey and Minnie Mouse. It's a worry. The girl is going to be 20 in a few weeks time.

Friday 29th June, 2012

You may not have noticed it, but I have been a little under the weather this week. I have had a rather nasty cold. More to the point though the effect of this is that it has been almost a week since I last had a glass of wine. This is virtually unprecedented for me. I read somewhere that a Greek philosopher, Plato or Socrates - perhaps you can help me out here - advocated regular and substantial wine consumption for men upon reaching the age of 40 to ward off the grumpiness of middle age. He wasn't wrong. If I am a little stressy at the moment though it is most likely for another reason, truth be told. The fact is I now have not one, but two children learning to drive. I have told you before about Hen's previous efforts. She took her test about a year and a half ago, after I had spent roughly £1,000 on driving lessons for her. Much to my relief and, I might add, the general safety of the roads in Suffolk, she failed. As she blithely explained she would almost have passed given she committed 13 minor errors, only two more than the permitted number. The problem, she magnanimously conceded, was the red light she had run and the fact that the instructor had had to apply the emergency brakes to avoid their crashing into the back of a white van. So much time has elapsed since her last attempt that she is now required to re-sit her theory test so we are all ok for a while yet. However second daughter Jimmy is an altogether different proposition. She has passed her theory test, spent hours driving a clapped out Jeep around a field perfecting her gear shifting, a basic skill which eludes Hen, and has had a series of lessons in Rugby and around Bury St Edmunds. Her test is scheduled for 18th July at 2.30pm. I am a worried man. She might just pass. Which brings me to an email I received from my brother yesterday, who was concerned by the quote he had received to insure his son, who has passed his US driving test, to drive in the UK this summer: From: "Jamie Sandison" Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:10:52 +0100 To:

Friday 8th June, 2012

I think you know that I am not one to brag about my family's various talents, although I probably have allowed myself a little bit of crowing about Hen's artistry. It is not just photography, her claim to fame there being a one page spread of her photos of a 21st birthday party which appeared in Tatler a few months ago. OK....she didn't manage to complete her Foundation course at Leeds last year, but with an A* in Art A level and a few months of that course behind her she can sketch and draw pretty competently and now she tells me that she has landed a job which involves another artistic discipline. She is spending the next couple of weeks painting show jumps for the Olympics Equestrian events. Marvellous. Takes after her father that girl. In my year off I travelled round the world working on a Stolt-Neilsen chemical tanker. The intention was I would see lots of countries - or at least their ports - whereas in fact what happened was I spent three months, head down, chipping rust off and slapping paint on. I got a glowing reference which I will furnish you with in due course, but to this day I shudder at the thought of my departure from MV Stolt Osprey. I had been given the job of painting the superstructure and had been congratulated on the super job I had done as the front of the living quarters glistened with a fine coat of fresh cream. Happily I completed what was, truth be told, a rather slip shod job on the day before departure, having been quite incapable of preparing the surface as I was meant to. Alas, a heavy storm and strong winds the night before we arrived in Marseilles began to lay me bare even as I said my goodbyes and thank you for having me. Happily only I noticed the tell tale signs of peeling that signalled the whole face of the boat was going to require a second coat at the very least. And somehow I have a feeling that horses and riders at the London Olympics will not want to have too close a look at the fences and poles, at least come the second week. Back to me..... I was quite jammy eh?! Talking of which, and this is a rum one, I was at a loss for something to tell you today - as you might have gathered - so I was going to report that I have at last concluded that I am indeed a lucky boy. Twice now, in the space of just over a week, I have been given the opportunity to buy a gold ring that some Eastern European has found on the pavement just in front of me not far from our office on Knightsbridge. How fortuitous is that? The second time this happened was only an hour or so ago and I had literally just decided to tell you about this as I made my way back to my desk when I was approached by an Indian gentleman as I paused to look at the cars in the Ferrari garage next door to us who said to me " My god, you are a lucky man. You have a lucky face. Shall I tell you why your face is lucky? " Well I didn't stop to find out. It could only end in anti-climax, but I do feel better about myself, I must say. And whats more, I still have a job, I think......so that's good.

Friday 15th June, 2012

A friend of mine wrote on her Facebook page the other evening that "You know you're past middle age when your memories mean more than your dreams". Oh dear me. How depressing is that? I was about to let rip and give her a kick up the backside, but just in time I recognised the irony given how I had spent the morning that day. If you fly into Edinburgh Airport from the south west and are sitting on the right side of the plane looking out of the window, just moments before you land, you might have noticed a castle next to the Glasgow motorway, but otherwise surrounded by huge trees, a river, the Grand Union Canal and a lot of non descript shacks which, for your information, happens to be a chicken farm. The "castle" is in fact a mid 19th century baronial style building, occupied for the last 80 years or so by Clifton Hall School, my alma mater. The tower on the right, at the top of which was my dorm when I first arrived, is still apparently occupied by the ghost of the Green Lady. I caught sight of the place flying in on Easyjet at the crack of sparrows on Wednesday morning and as I had a couple of hours to kill before a hectic series of meetings I decided to go and have a look round. I had not been back since I left the school in July 1976! THIRTY SIX YEARS AGO. The mental scars of having been sent away to boarding school aged 6 and a bit obviously run deep. By the way perhaps don't mention to the powers that be what I get up to on my trips to Scotland, but in my defence I was shown round the school by a very chatty 15 year old girl who was interested Formula One so I her talked her through the proposed IPO. I had such a lovely time wandering around reliving these halcyon days of the early 1970's until the headmaster announced that they had recently stumbled across some archived records within which he might well be able to find my old Common Entrance results. Retrieve them he did together with those of my younger brother. I have a reasonably well developed ability to laugh at myself, but I was not amused in the slightest to find that Jamie's results were infinitely superior to mine and indeed that I had only just managed to scrape into Glenalmond. Here is a sample of my results and the somewhat extraordinary comments. 54% in English I - " Comprehension showed no obvious talent " 52% in Maths II - "Q6 was not done and his main weakness was in Q2 " ( that implies to me I would have been better off omitting to answer Q2 aswell ). 55% in History - "One question well answered, otherwise knowledge often inaccurate." 39% in Latin - " Very weak and should't have attempted part B " ( common theme there! ) 33% in Maths III - " Insufficient knowledge " 50% in French Oral - the comment on this one really annoyed me - " Rather like Morrison, though a bit better in Q.4 " What do they think they are doing comparing me to him? Morrison played rugby for Scotland. Started at Barings the same day as me. He couldn't speak French to save his life and when he tried his accent was horrendous. I am told I sound like Prince Charles when I speak French but I'm quite proud of that. Oh well. There is one positive aspect from roaming around in the past. It makes my own children's efforts seem quite encouraging.