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.

 

Friday 30th July, 2015

If you ever doubted the professional in me let me tell you, the largest part of my summer holiday is upon me.  A day off tomorrow to drive up to Scotland and I’ll be taking Monday off too, to drive back down.  It’s time for the Big Stick, our annual family golf contest which this year will comprise my father, just one of my brothers and, whisper it ever so quietly in front of other members of the R&A, Bob.  Going to be interesting that daunting drive down the first.

 

But if my holiday is a short trip up North into what is forecast to be a cold, damp and grey Fife with even a hailstorm forecast, Hen on the other hand is chillin’ in the South of France.  It’s not exactly lifestyles of the rich and famous.  She went by bus with a girlfriend and a tent to a Reggae Festival near Orange and since that is now over, but they didn’t much feel the desire to move very far, they have apparently located themselves – I suspect totally illegally except that it’s France - on an island just up the river from Le Pont du Gard.  I found the very spot via Google Earth whilst on the phone to her the other night.  She had rung to give me the run down.  Seems they spend the day after eating a couple of peaches for breakfast messing about on the river and whiling away the hours before pate and du pain for supper washed down by a bottle of red.  Here’s the thing though.  She was able to tell me – though I know she knew it would impress me – that the wine they were drinking that evening was corked.  Atta girl.  So proud.

 

 

 

As we are on the subject of camping, though I hesitate to include this in a week when Cecil the Lion and the issue of trophy hunters has made such headlines.  Bob whilst he does have a slightly blood thirsty streak in him has a rule of eating most whatever of which he dispatches.  Including grey squirrels.  He has been up at a friend’s farm sleeping rough on the land and working on gaining control of the local vermin problem.  Confident in a limitless supply of rabbits and pigeons the only food he took with him was six tins of ratatouille.  Weird eh?  Almost as weird as this WhatsApp message/exchange I had with a friend.  It’s Art so that’s fine! 

 

 

 

And with that I’m out of here and hoping you will have forgotten this nonsense by the time I get back on Tuesday.

Friday 24th July, 2015

OK.  So my poor run of recommendations continues.  Adam Scott (@ 20:1) didn’t win the Open, but I take full responsibility.  Bob can’t be blamed.  In fact he brought good fortune to most everyone he carried the scoreboard for.  Tom Watson’s penultimate round started well enough.  The damage to his hopes of making the cut happened on the second day culminating in a shank and a three putt on the 18th.  Bob, that day, was with a little known Yorkshireman called Danny Willett who shot 66 to lead the field going into the third round and gave him an unsigned golf ball for his efforts.  And they call Scots mean?  Then on Sunday Bob was paired with Louis Oosthuizen and a young Irish amateur called Paul Dunne who played the round of his life to end up tied for the lead with Louis.  What excitement.  The Beeb was all over them.  There was a great shot of Bob’s feet at one point ( shoe laces undone we noted ) and then, my nephew managed to Snapchat us this photo, taken as they left the 18th green, of Paul Dunne, a future Open champion ( possibly ) doffing his cap to Bob ( in the white jump suit – at least I think that’s Bob ).  

 

 

No, it definitely is Bob.  Despite the fact I write this slightly hungover from an irresponsibly late Thursday night out I am by no means in the state I was last Friday morning following a session at the Railway Inn, Lower Largo.  

 

Thursday night is Quiz night in the Railway as you might be aware and I got a bit carried away after successfully answering albeit just the one question that practically no one else got which was - no conferring and see if you can recall - who was the first black footballer to play for England?  In high spirits I landed a couple of pints of Belhaven on top of several bottles of the Wine Society’s Croze Hermitage.  Well that was a mistake.  

 

So when I finally made it up to St Andrews the next day and met with a client I still wasn’t feeling my best.  We trundled out onto the course to watch a bit of golf and eventually, at the 6th tee, caught up with the Adam Scott group to which Bob had been assigned.  The tall, blond haired boy in the jump suit, barely 10 yards away from us, responded when I shouted “Bob”, but quickly hid his face behind the scoreboard he was carrying as he realised that both my friend and I were defying all the R&A protocols and taking photos of him.  And I suppose I was just a little miffed that he hadn’t shown us a nice smile when, as the group walked away, I began to have some doubts.  The walk seemed too stiff and erect.  And the hair, whilst fair, was well kempt.  No, I concluded, after way too long a deliberation, I really wasn’t certain it was Bob.  My friend Iain looked at me kindly, but bemused.  

 

I would normally be able to recognise my own son.  Really I would.  I told you I wasn’t feeling well.  It transpired that Bob had volunteered to go with an earlier group and was farther out on the course with the very Danny Willett who was having, as I mentioned, a wonderful round.  So focussed was he on his game and the tricky second shot he was standing over, that I really don’t think Danny noticed the commotion behind him, but which greeted me, the very instant I finally caught up with them only to witness Bob’s scoreboard be literally blown to bits by the howling gale and yellow numbers scattered all over the 12th fairway followed by Bob and the bunker-raker scrabbling about trying to pick them up before they ended in the Eden Estuary.

 

Hey ho.  Of course the Open was just a fairly irrelevant precursor to the key competition this summer on the Old Course …. Bring on the Big Stick, a week on Saturday.  More on that anon I suspect.

Thursday 16th July, 2015

Early one this week as I am heading up to Scotland this afternoon to hook up with a few clients at The Open in St Andrews.  If you are going to be there on Friday/Saturday or Sunday and I havn’t touched base with you already well then shame on me.  But if you are not too offended I do have the odd spare pass into the clubhouse/R&A tent so drop me a line and your mobile number and let’s try and get together.  

 

Talking of the golf, on Tuesday the professional at my local club, Royal Worlington don’t you know, sent me an email with his top tip for the Open which started of course this morning.  Adam Scott at 20/1.  He has been playing well even if he hasn’t won anything this year.  “This might be his moment” the pro tells me.  But I know something he doesn’t.  On Friday a certain Bob Sandison will be accompanying Adam Scott round the Old Course in Bob’s capacity as scoreboard carrier.  Poor Mr Scott doesn’t have a chance.  Quite apart from the fact that Bob is, like his father, mathematically challenged so who knows what score Scott will be shown to have shot, I defy anyone being able to maintain their concentration and composure with Bob in tow, in whichever capacity, on the golf course.  Incidentally today Bob is in even more august company.  He is carrying the board for a group which teed off at 8.33 this morning including Ernie Els, Brandt Snedeker and, get this, TOM WATSON!  How cool is that?!  Anyway, good fun.  

 

Oh and mentioning dodgy recommendations I have the embarrassing task below of addressing Weichai Power, one of my “In the Stock” picks and which fell 12% on Wednesday.  As I often tell you though the best ones invariably go wrong at the start.  Bob  is also showing early signs of being prepared to put his neck on the line although his picks are not the sort to mature given the benefit of time nor nearly as thoroughly researched as mine.  He found himself on a crowded train from Cambridge to Newmarket last weekend packed with  happy go lucky race-goers making their way to the last day of the July meeting.  Bob was wearing his pride and joy.  A baseball cap with “Sea the Stars”, a famous racehorse, emblazoned on the peak.  Some poor soul assumed he worked in one of the racing yards and asked him if he had any tips.  I know this doesn’t reflect well on Bob, but having randomly made a selection for the 2.05 from a cursory glance at a discarded copy of the Racing Post and emboldened by how appreciative the recipient of his advice had been, he spent the rest of the half hour train journey walking up and down proffering “investment advice” to all and sundry.  And, it turned out, he picked not a single winner.  “But everyone was having such a good time….surely that’s the point” was his ex-post justification.  It’s a worry.  Next thing he’ll be trying to tell Ernie Els how to swing more fluidly.

 

Meantime – and this is a little risky too you might think – Jimmy, having returned from the most luxurious retreat imaginable, an incredible villa in Mozambique overlooking the Indian Ocean on one of the longest unguarded beaches in the world, is away now in another sandy waste, Morocco.  Talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous.  She has gone trekking in the Atlas Mountains with a university friend, a guide and a donkey.  We have rechristened her and Henry, “Mary and Joseph”.

Friday 10th July, 2015

Possibly you didn’t notice, but I sneaked in a day’s holiday mid-week.  How indulgent was that?  Well the fact is I have been chained so religiously to my desk this last year that I felt I deserved it.  More to the point Mrs S landed me with a three line whip.  We have a French exchange staying with us at the moment.  A pleasant though quiet 14 year old - much different from the last exchange we hosted a few years back, also a 14 year old girl from Paris.  That one was a disaster.  I knew we were in for trouble when I read the letter of introduction that she had sent through the school.  “ I love to speak English and want to do it with my English teacher “ if I recall correctly were the words that flashed warning signals.  And indeed she proved a strange and troubled child.  My daughter point blank refused to get on the bus for the return leg and I didn’t blame her to be honest.  I digress.  

 

We had intended to go punting on the Cam on Wednesday, but the skies were grey and foreboding so instead, and I know this is a bit politically incorrect, we got in the car and drove an hour and a half to the Norfolk coast where we had lunch in a pretty wretched pub in the village of Burnham Thorpe, birthplace of Admiral Horatio Nelson, sitting under a clock which, I noted, commemorated the Battle of Trafalgar.  It wasn’t deliberate I promise you.  The point was really to go for a walk on Holkham Beach.  I suppose I was thinking I would show Juliette, who in a few weeks time will be hosting Lottie on the Ile de Re, that we’ve got beaches too.  We managed 10 minutes in torrential rain and I only stood on one dog poo, before we surrendered to the elements, sloshed our way back into the car and drove disconsolately home.

Friday 26th June, 2015

I am heading up North today.  An exciting jolly to my old school for my nephew’s leaving bash.

Talking of schools and stop me if I have been banging on a little too much about Bob.  It’s not even as if he has been out and about slaughtering things as far as I am aware anyway.  No, as I have highlighted with reference to his election as secretary to the Rugby School wine society, he seems to be developing some slightly more socially acceptable traits, though there is many a slip twixt cup and lip.  

He was home for the weekend and revealed that he had a part in a play which he and fellow house members will be performing before the end of term.  You have to slightly let your imagination roam at this point though I can help you with the attached photo of Rugby Schools Gothic inspired chapel.   Splendid eh?

 

 

The school chaplain is a great guy and likes to enliven the daily early morning service occasionally just to keep people on their toes.  But even he would probably concede that his suggestion to Bob and his friends, that it might be fun and original if they were to stage an abbreviated dress rehearsal of their play in the Chapel, was a little rash. 

 

As you may be aware I am an historian if that isn’t too grand a boast from someone who scraped a 2:1 in History and Economic History at Leicester University and consequently I would be fascinated to know if any other boy in the last 135 years since Rugby’s magnificent chapel was built has burst through the heavy wooden doors into a service dressed only in his boxer shorts?  If that wasn’t ridiculous enough Bob, who told me proudly that despite his state of undress he had managed to remember all his lines, delivered as he wandered down the centre aisle in front of the assembled school, admitted that he was somewhat nonplussed at the lack of kerfuffle caused by his entrance.  This was was explained afterwards by the fact that all least three pupils came up to him afterwards saying that their first reaction had been to think that he was even later than usual that day and had probably been in such a rush he had forgotten to put his trousers on.  No big deal.  Hmmm.

 

Worryingly, that chat with Bob, over the dinner table on Sunday, one of the increasingly rare occasions when all six of us were assembled – I overheard Lottie, our 14 year old, talking to her grandmother on the phone “Yes, Grannie, it was just like Christmas.  I had quite forgotten how many siblings I have” – led to talk of a long standing dare at Rugby, yet to be delivered upon.  Only Harry Potter fans will appreciate this, but the challenge is for someone to come rushing late into Chapel shouting “There are trolls in the dungeon”.  I wouldn’t put it past him.

 

Anyway back to the forgotten trousers.  The thing is there is form.  Hen, I have told you, returning to school once, forgot to pack a single item of her school uniform, so it runs in the family.  And the other day the mother of a friend of Bob’s who is at Uppingham told Sophie that she had been at athletics match at her son’s school against Rugby.  She had wondered if she might see Bob, but then overheard two Uppingham boys asking if anyone had a spare pair of size 10 running spikes that they could lend someone from the visiting school who had forgotten his.  You go to an athletics match and forget your spikes???  She said she couldn’t help asking them.  “Is he wandering around barefooted?”  They replied in the affirmative.  “Is his name Bob Sandison?” she said?  And of course you know the answer.  The Rugby School hurdles champion indeed.  You kind of know where his friends are coming from.

 

Now, I’d better dash for my plane so have a good weekend and by the way – hip hip hooray - it seems I have already lined up a few of you to come to Shanghai in September.  This is a result….come on…you know it makes sense:

 

 

“It went well.  Mr Dhanda said he’s never had a secretary so good at pouring.” 

 

Attaboy.  He’ll make a stock-broker yet.

Friday 19th June, 2015

Being the discerning sort you are, you will be aware that sometimes, all too often some of you may say, when I sit down and scribble this ludicrous email, I really have nothing to tell you.  Other weeks the problem is I don’t know where to start.  Well, it’s one of those weeks.  My, have I had a busy one and I’m quite exhausted.  Kylie Minogue at Newmarket tonight so woop woop to that.

 

First off, I’m not one for castle-creeping however I’ve been mixing with the rich and famous true enough and have got a new best friend.  Photo attached. Had lunch with him at Hawksmoor last Friday.  He wasn’t wearing a dress which was quite a relief.  For various reasons probably enough said on this subject in this forum.  

 

Then on Wednesday evening I went to a charity auction.  Remember I told you just the other day about my twitchy finger?  Well it happened again.  Why on earth did I think that buying 4 tickets to watch New Zealand play Namibia in a World Cup group match at the Olympic Stadium 8pm on a Thursday evening was a good idea?  In the end I avoided being landed with them by the skin of my teeth, but I didn’t know that when I skulked home at mid-night, feeling broke and somewhat the worse for wear from the dubious wine we had been served, muttering innocuously to Sophie that I had had a lovely evening.

 

And talking of wine, Bob, hot on the heels of his success in the hurdles, has clearly decided with a year to go, it is high time he fleshed out his somewhat patchy list of school achievements.  Catching pigeons and Canada geese bare-handed or rustling up grilled squirrel in his house kitchen don’t really wash on the CV.  So he applied for a position as secretary of the Rugby Wine Society.  The application process required a letter setting out his credentials. 

 

From: Bob Sandison  
Date: 3 June 2015 20:48:23 BST
To:  >
Subject: RE: Wine Society

Dear Mr Dhanda,

Many people have wondered why, despite being named Oliver I am referred to as Bob. The answer to this is that, for my christening I was given by some generous godparents a case of Bollinger 97 Champagne. And so my name, Olly was altered to Bolly. Bobby and Bob shortly followed but it is the Bolly that I would like to focus on!

My father is a wine enthusiast and from an early age, far before I was old enough to appreciate the subtleties of a fine wine, he encouraged me to taste and comment on the wine that he was drinking. My comments and appreciation for wine has come a long way since  ten year old me would say, tongue in cheek, “yummy” and then drink a glass of water.

I believe that I would be an appropriate candidate for a Secretary of the Wine Society because I have a real enthusiasm for wine. I would love the opportunity to be able to encourage others to enjoy and relish the delicious  andvarying qualities of wines. Furthermore, I am a sociable person and I understand the social aspect of drinking and tasting wines.  Wine Society provides a place for people with a common interest to meet and talk and enjoy new wines. It would be an utter privilege to help organise and invite people to such events. Finally I believe I would be a good secretary because, as I am interested in wine I would be very pleased to try and find guest speakers to help improve my and other members of the Society’s knowledge of wine.

I hope that you will consider me as a future Secretary and Ithank you very much for the opportunity. 

Kind Regards,

Bob/Bolly Sandison 

 

Well obviously with that background who could deny him the job.  Last night was the first meeting of the society with Bob in his new role…..a text I received this morning read: