Friday 6th November, 2015

That Strava App I was telling you about the other day, which has got me chasing my demons, nearly landed me in big trouble last Sunday.  There’s a guy called Karl Procter.  I’ve never met him, but he has held the record for a 1.1 mile segment, known by my fellow Strava “athletes” as the Woodland Gallop, for the last four years.  Noone had got near his time in fact.  So I thought I would have a proper crack at it.  I say proper.  Maybe I shouldn’t have had that third bit of toast for breakfast ( smothered with my homemade raspberry jam), but out I went with my only intent being to show Karl, whoever he is, what I was made of. 

It was a bit of a cheat to be honest.  Karl had clocked his stellar time in the course of a 6 mile run.  I however jogged gently to the start of the section and only then put the afterburners on. Just over a mile of undulating, slippery, root-ridden hell ensued, but I made it to the end without breaking an ankle though very much the worse for wear.  The indication that I might have overdone it a bit came when, doubled over and gasping for breath, I was found by three elderly folk.  They had heard, they told me, something akin to a steam engine, puffing and screeching, shattering the otherwise peaceful silence of a Suffolk wood and so concerned were they, they had diverted their walk to check things out.  Nice of them really even if I was a little offended at the time.  

For my part it was all worth it though.  When I got home and synced my watch I found my time of 7 mins 38 seconds had shattered Karl’s record by a full 1 second.  Also that my heart rate had hit 196 in the process.  By all rights I should be deid.  I’ve really got to stop this nonsense and start acting my age. 

Speaking of which I had a rendezvous arranged outside the Scottish Parliament at 6.54am ( dawn up north )  this coming Monday morning with my 21 year old nephew, Angus, who’s reading economics at Edinburgh Uni.  Plan was a quick lap of Holyrood Park and a shimmy up Arthur’s Seat before kippers for breakfast, but he’s chickened out. 

Friday 30th October, 2015

You probably wouldn’t realise it, but to be honest I am slightly twiddling my fingers this afternoon.  I had kept the day reasonably clear as I had hoped to be out of the office on a marsh in Suffolk wild-fowling with Bob.  This was his birthday present bought in an auction to raise money for the Thurlow Hunt, a fine and charitable gesture I made when somewhat under the influence and without the moderating presence of Mrs S. 

 

As it happens I don’t much like the idea of shooting duck.  I may have told you about before about a trip I made back in 1992 when a group of us went to the steppes of Inner Mongolia having collected our shotguns in Beijing which had been flown in circuitously from Paris because a UK/Sino arms embargo existed at the time.  We then travelled by train from Harbin to Qiqihar, a journey made slightly less gruelling by a bottle of malt and a large bar of Toblerone that one of our group had had the foresight to bring along.  I digress.  The point I was trying to get to was that on the very first evening I shot my first ( and only ) duck which, held in the headlight of a rickety Chinese jeep, was revealed as the most beautiful bird I had ever seen.  “Merdre, an elegant silver teal”, our French guide exclaimed.  “I’ve only ever seen three of these in China” ‘e said.  So now there were only two I thought to myself ruefully and, determining not to shoot anymore rare and lovely ducks, spent the rest of the trip playing cards with the locals, smoking dodgy Chinese cigarettes and getting drunk on some pretty rancid beer.  But time moves on and Bob’s enthusiasm for the chase is quite infectious so I thought I would give wildfowling another go.  We’ll see, but for now, the guy who was meant to be taking us on this latest jolly tells me the water levels are still too low and the ducks havn’t arrived,  hence I’m here at the work station and Bob is at home supposedly catching up on his Iliad reading. 

 

Anyway, it doesn’t do one any harm to have the occasional quieter day and it has been a particularly gruelling and busy week.  I am quite exhausted.  Nevertheless I still found the time on Tuesday to come to the rescue of an unfortunate analyst who had flown in the day before on the red eye from HK to Helsinki only to find, when she went to freshen up and put her work clothes on, that her five year old son had changed the combination of her suitcase. 

 

The poor lady failed to find any locksmith in either Finland or Stockholm ( Sweden?? ) who could open it.  Nor was the hotel, when she got to London, able to help.  So it was she turned up for her first meeting with one of my clients on Tuesday morning still in casual clothes and the offending bag in tow.  Clearly increasingly desperate, she was still equally determined not to resort to my suggestion, the obvious one, of forcing the damn thing open.  It was a much treasured and expensive Rimowa.  Her own investigations had identified an outlet in Stratford where, she told me, there was a chance a technician could sort it out.  I didn’t hold up a lot of hope for that.  More to the point I didn’t much fancy the trip.  I occasionally end up in Stratford when I fall asleep on the way into work and miss my stop at Tottenham Hale.  So I determined on a different strategy.  I wheeled the bag back to the office and in between making calls to clients and fielding complicated requests I turned the numbers of the combination lock to 0 0 0 and started meticulously twisting the dial and clicking on a journey through, if it were necessary, to 9 9 9.  A little while later….I don’t really want to say how long in case the boss is reading, suffice to say a blister was starting to form on my thumb….BINGO! The lock sprung open.  What unbridled joy.  I re-set the combination to 8 8 8 which seemed appropriate in the circumstances and emailed my analyst with the happy news.  Got to say my children looked at me askance when I relayed this story to them.  They have their suspicions about what I get up to in the office, but I tell you what, talk about bang for your buck.  Later that day my super generous analyst rolled up with a bottle of Pontet Canet 1998 for my troubles!  One of my favourite wines and how amazingly generous is that?  You lot could take a lesson or two from her.

 

I think I’ll drink it tonight when we get back from watching the Bond film.  Now that is a good idea.

Friday 9th October, 2015

I hate to swank, but I’m now a qualified day skipper.  Go me, though it was by the skin of my teeth I will admit.  My inability to identify vessels by their light configurations at night nearly scuppered me, but luckily Sophie was a bit more au fait in that aspect and at various critical moments was able to mouth to me, behind the teacher’s back, just enough correct answers to lend some credibility to my dubious claims I had covered all the necessary theory work before getting down to the practical.  I was also helped by the fact the other guy on the course knew even less than me and annoyed the instructor by repeatedly heading below in his dripping wet trunks. 

 

Actually that was the least of his problems.  In the space of just twenty minutes when I handed the helm to him, whilst I was desperately trying to identify which lighthouse was which during our night sail, he managed to steer so far off the extremely conservative course I had set that when I came up from the chart table it was pointed out to me that we were heading straight into a cape that we should have been miles clear of.  Fair to say I was kind of implicated in this too, but I redeemed myself “demonstrating great presence of mind and seamanship” (my words) the following night when we were “sheltering” in Port Mahon Marina from the worst storm to hit Menorca in years.  With the boat heeling dramatically from one side to another the 55 MPH winds unzipped the sail cover and when I happened to get up in the middle of the night for a pee, I noticed the mainsail had billowed out of the lazyjacks all over the deck.  I was a sorry sight indeed as I grappled frantically to restore the situation at 2.30am in the driving rain wearing nothing other than a scratchy pair of boxer shorts which the wind was doing its best to further shred.   Nice thought eh? 

 

Changing the subject, the other evening who was I sitting next to at dinner, but the founder and CEO of Hotel Chocolat.  As I often tell you it is life styles of the rich and famous up in Newmarket.  Incidentally, an eagle eyed client sent me a letter published in the FT today which sums it up very well I think. 

 

An idyllic diversion

From Geoffrey Francis, Auckland, New Zealand

 

Sir, Over in England from New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup (October 5), for the first time in 20 years, I ventured to Newmarket for a day at the bloodstock auction sales.

 

People with immaculate manners, tweed caps, purposeful calm, the freedom to smoke, no officials telling anyone where not to go, bonhomie at bars a plenty, not an unshaven face, tattoo, drip-dry white shirt and cheap suit in sight. why isn’t the rest of your country still like this?

 

Geoffrey Francis 

 

Geoffrey obviously hasn’t driven down Newmarket High Street on a Saturday night.  He’d be back to Auckland like a shot with no regret.  Anyway this Chocolat man was a nice guy and the following morning as I wandered round to the stable to see how Lottie, who was meant to be tacking her horse up to go for a ride, was getting on, I thought to myself actually he was probably the best father in the world.  A Dad with his own chain of chocolate shops?  Can it get any better than that?!  I know you would all have enjoyed that same little frisson of pride as I did however, when venturing this opinion to my 14 year old daughter, she replied, “Nope….you’re the best Daddy in the world”.  I modestly demurred.  But she insisted.  “Oh, no, you definitely are, because, Daddy, you’re going to go back round to the house and get my saddle. Off you go now.”

 

And talking of hobnobbing it and disrespectful children I went to an art exhibition on Wednesday.  The snap I took below was the cheapest work on offer and one of very few in which the subject had any clothes on.  Even though I’d had a few glasses of Prosecco and the artist was giving half the sale proceeds to charity my close shave bidding for four NZ v Namibia RWC tickets meant I had the presence of mind to send a message home to the powers that be for their opinion before splashing out the largesse. I’m not sure the artist would be too pleased with Hen’s response so mums the word.

 

 

 

PS.  The weekend before last, just hours after he had arrived home for a leave out weekend, Bob sent me a picture of him with his dog standing proudly in front of three grey squirrels laid out on the field.  Intriguingly he told me he had dispatched these nasty vermins using a traditional San tribe hunting technique.  If you were the squeamish sort you would have abandoned this email many moons ago, but even so I can’t really bring myself to spell out on paper what precisely was involved.  Suffice to say it didn’t involve guns or spears and the dogs role was somewhat peripheral.  I defy you to work this thorny conundrum out for yourselves.  Never in a month of Sundays.

Friday 25th September, 2015

You probably don’t think of me as a particularly competitive sort do you?  But some serious madness has taken hold of me this week.  I bought a Garmin watch and downloaded Strava onto my phone and I’ve turned into a beast.  Whereas I used to occasionally drag myself out for a run, these were relatively gentle affairs, even if sometimes reasonably long, but now…quite different.  This little gizmo tracks what you are doing, measures your heart beat, beeps urgently at you and compares sections of your run with what all the other nutters in the vicinity have achieved on a public leaderboard with the person at the top of the list getting a little gold crown to wear.  Thus ( I know I sound like Chris Wood ) I am now charging around the countryside like a man possessed.  I nearly killed myself on Wednesday evening when I managed to get into 2^nd place on a “segment” appropriately named the Woodland Gallop.  Karl Procter, whoever you are, I’m coming for you first thing tomorrow morning.  

 

It doesn’t stop there though.   Rekindled is my ambition to hit that 2 mins 30 secs target for the 800m which I set myself all those years back.  Remember I had hoped to have a crack at it with Seb Coe in Japan at our conference a couple of years back, but that didn’t work out so I’ve lined up a 22 year old from our Mumbai office who tells me he can run a 400m in 61 secs to act as pacemaker.  Oh, and, even though I had promised my mother I wouldn’t,  I’ve signed up to run the Race to the Stones ultramarathon again next year.  Madness. 

 

So, as I told you, I am away next week doing my Day Skipper Practical course.  I really hope they don’t probe too much on whether I have already tackled the theory bit of it.  I tried, I really did, these last few weeks, but it’s hard, managing the intellectual challenge of my day-job with the requirement of learning, just to pick one small example, how to differentiate 35 different light configurations on a variety of different vessels.  Along with a pair of nautical socks, a green one for the left foot and a red one for the right, my parents also sent me a rather sweet little photograph of us three brothers sailing out into in the Arabian Ocean off the coast of Oman.  I suppose it might have been sent helpfully to be used if proof were needed that I sailed from an early age.  Alas, taken in 1974, it shows a fine disregard for health and safety, and the other problem is I’m the one sitting uselessly in the middle of the boat.  Evidence only, that even then, despite being the eldest so I should at least have insisted we all wore life jackets, I was just there for the ride.  Fair to say heading down to Menorca tomorrow my cup brimmeth not over with confidence!

 

PS Just had a phone call from Bob heading home for the weekend.  “Quick.  Put a tenner on Lavender Lane on the 1.55 at Newmarket.  We’re giving the owner’s kids a lift.”  Rocked in last.  See what I’m dealing with??

Friday 18th September, 2015

So I was in Shanghai last week. See below.  Although pulling a 2.00am-er on the first night was a punchy start to proceedings for an old boy, after that I behaved quite well I felt.  Furthermore after a long barren spell I managed to select one decent restaurant, albeit sandwiched between two moderate choices on Tuesday and Thursday.  My new favourite food is Yunnan.  The restaurant’s name, Lost Heaven, not to mention the size of the bill, has caused eyebrows of senior management to rise as I have submitted my expenses, but it was all above board needless to say.

 

I say I behaved responsibly.  Perhaps I let myself down a bit on the Thursday night.  I seem to recall a strange point late that evening when, embarrassingly, I didn’t quite manage to do the 40 press ups I had said I could do on the floor of some bar we found ourselves in.   And wow I had a close shave the following morning sleeping through my alarm.  A ray of sunshine sneaking through the blinds stirred me and then, miraculously, a phone call from reception shocked me frantically into action.  The taxi driver taking me to the airport caught the mood of the moment and our drive was a considerably bigger adrenaline rush than the Maglev which a client and I had used to get into town on arrival.  I wasn’t feeling 100%, but I imagine we travelling pretty much the same speed as the bullet train too.  Consequently I got to the airport in fine time and even had the wherewithal of mind to photograph a dustbin in the departure lounge which I attach.  The obviously literal labelling on the bin caused me to ponder a while what it was actually meant for till a dry witted client settled the issue by suggesting it would be a handy place in which to deposit IPO documentation from the locality.

 

And so the first weekend of normality for a while approaches with just three of us at home.  Hen has gone back down to the Ardeche camping illegally on a secluded bank by the river periodically sending WhatsApp messages reassuring us she is safe and well, including in one a video she took of herself the worse for wear after two demi-carafes of rose.  She is to be joined down there on Saturday by the new boyfriend I told you about the other day.  Remember?  He was coming to dinner.  Nice boy.  Even though he called me Dave.  And as I write Jimmy is on a bus making her way to Amsterdam to get up to what I dare not even think about.  Bob is back at school though I’m in a bit of sulk with him today truth be told.  This evening he should have been at the opening ceremony of the Rugby World Cup in which I gather his school has a starring role.  I had imagined him playing the part of William Webb Ellis dressed in long white trousers, a funny cap and strange socks, picking up a football and running the length of the pitch in front of 70,000 people, but could I persuade him to go back two days early for rehearsals?  Not surprisingly…I could not.

Friday 14th August, 2015

Funerals are difficult events and you can end up blethering inanely caught up in all the tension and emotion of the occasion.  But I thought I was on safe ground as I chatted with Hen.  She had come with us to a service on Wednesday to commemorate the life of my brother’s father in law who had died after a long illness.  I can’t quite recall what I was talking to her about outside Salisbury Crematorium on a warm, sultry afternoon.  It might have been a bit mundane I suppose. Perhaps the options for the route back to Suffolk.  M3 or M4, round the M25 and up the M11; that sort of thing.  But it really didn’t deserve this cruel put down in front of the assembled company of fellow mourners:

 

“Dave….I can feel my eyes closing a wee bit and if you carry on like this it could get dangerous….I’m standing up you know”.

Friday 7th August, 2015

I think I’ve told you about the “Big Stick” before.   This is our annual family golf contest which is played over a round on the Old Course, for the most part in decent humour which is not to say it is not intensely competitive, but usually a fair amount of kummel is involved too.  This year, and I think it counted against me, we teed off at 9.30am.  Instead of kummel we gobbled down bacon, egg and black pudding rolls on the first tee whilst fighting off some voracious and ferocious seagulls. 

 

Despite the attention of the birds, my drive down the first was quite majestic.  But that was pretty much the extent of my challenge this year and with Bob and my brother William also failing to trouble the scorers much, my father won comfortably.  My second shot was a miserably topped eight iron from 140 yards out, which like something out of the Dambusters, hopped over the Swilken Burn, onto the green.  Failing to capitalise on my good fortune, a repeated feature of my life, I proceeded to three putt.  Now I know not all of you are golfers so I’ll stop there before I lose you.  Suffice to say it went from bad to worse.  The thing is apart from the lack of alcohol – although that was sorted by a fine lunch afterwards with a delicious white Savigny Les Beaune and a bottle of Grand-Puy-Lacoste – I was a bit distracted by the fact I had managed to forget to bring up the coveted trophy we play for each year.  A beautiful, horn handled, shepherds crook with a silver plaque onto which is engraved the winners initials.  It was in pride of place in our sitting room – where I might add it has been for several years now – and, much to my father’s disappointment, there it remains as I failed to pack it in the car when we drove up north.  What an assiam. 

 

There was one notable success whilst up in Scotland that I’d like to share with you.  I havn’t mentioned my vegetable garden much recently.  To be honest, this year we have been plagued by black flies.  You may have noticed them.  The broad beans and artichokes were ok, but my peas have been disastrous.  Potatoes, beetroot, courgettes, fennel, kale, various herbs….nothing to write home about.  Raspberries have been in abundance however and I have been making copious quantities of jam.   You really need to try it.  It’s sooooo amazing.  I got this just wonderful email from my mother to whom I gave some:

 

“Your raspberry jam would definitely win a prize at the Cortachy Show xx” 

 

Sweet.