Friday 3rd February, 2017

I was in Edinburgh earlier this week for a day of meetings with management of Carabao, the energy drinks company from Thailand.  What a great bunch.  The son of the founder, the CFO and the IR lady who happened to be the 22 year old niece of one of the other founders.  We had a few gin and tonics on Tuesday evening and a few more malts in the Balmoral’s excellent whisky bar, and would you believe what I discovered in the wee small hours?  None of them had heard of Irn-Bru.  I put that to right by buying a six pack from Greggs the following morning and took the liberty of bringing it into the sandwich lunch meeting which a kind hearted client had laid on for us.  It might be my imagination and I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but a slight lethargy that had begun to set in during the third meeting that morning ( jet-lag obv ), disappeared in a trice.

 

It was my first trip with Easyjet since the trauma I suffered at their hands on New Years Eve.  Incidentally having ranted a couple of weeks ago about the trouble I was having getting a refund for the impromptu trip I had to make to Liverpool I finally appealed to a super helpful contact I have at the airline, the Corporate Account manager for Northern Europe, who has secured free Easjyet Plus membership for me over the past couple of years.  One email to him and two hours later all sorted.  Deep joy.  In addition to which my flight north on Tuesday afternoon was on time, so faith restored I settled back into my usual seat, stretched out my legs and was delighted as the doors closed that I had two spare places beside me.  

 

Alas at the very last minute one of my fellow passengers,  wielding her EasyjetPlus membership card, exercised her right to a seat on the front row.  It’s a club, an elite one obviously, so you have to accept these things with equanimity if not enthusiastically.  Furthermore I could tell she was a chatty sort and I had an episode of The Crown I wanted to watch so I was very much on my guard when she leant over and said “I imagine lots of people tell you you have a doppelganger.”  I groaned inwardly.  She was bound to say Will Gompertz which is so boring, even a little upsetting for me.  I will admit I am actually slightly flattered when others occasionally come up with Bill Nighy.  But no, it was a new one.  In fact I didn’t recognise the name at all.  She assured me it was a compliment and that he was super cool and very successful having been involved from the inception of the TV programme Big Brother no less.  She knew I wasn’t actually him she continued “because he’s way too wealthy to have to fly on Easyjet”.  So that burst my bubble, Mr Smug Git in 1C.   

 

I surreptitiously, but, having failed to precisely register his name, unsuccessfully trawled the net before the flight took off trying to identify him which gnawed away at me somewhat I must admit as we flew north.  I managed to avoid conversation with my neighbour for the rest of the trip, but nosiness got the better of me as we were unbuckling our seat belt.  I made some banal comment about the smoothness of the landing we had just enjoyed, before casually asking her to repeat who she thought I looked like.   “Sir Peter Bazzalgette.”  None the wiser however now fully armed to Google him I wasted no time – just as you might be doing I suppose.  No, I didn’t see a likeness either though I was wearing a blue checked shirt.  The internet is an amazing thing for inquisitive people like you and me isn’t it.   Talking of which my fellow EasyjetPlus member left her card lying on the seat between us and I managed to sneak a look at her name.  Found her easy peasy:

 

 

 

 

A behavioural psychologist no less.  Probably could have had quite a useful natter with her come to think of it.  Missed opportunity.  Anyway, life goes on and I have to tell you about the return leg on Wednesday afternoon.  My flight was scheduled to depart at 5.50pm.  I was slightly held up at security whilst it was explained to the guy in front of me that the printed out ticket he had presented was for a flight due to depart on the 4^th of March!  He was over a month early.  Our flight took off at 5.45pm and we landed at Stansted at 6.35pm.  Crazy!  I had to check there hadn’t been a time zone change.  I was halfway up the M11 before the Archers came on.  All time record.  I love Easyjet! 

 

PS For those of you who grappled unsuccessfully last week with the denouement of my story about the haggis, the shop assistant – and let’s put it this way, I don’t think English was her first language - handed me a pack of “Huggies” nappies.

 

Friday 27th January, 2017

Whilst I trekked over to Leicestershire for the Beaters Day last Saturday Lottie was representing her school at a dressage competition on the outskirts of Cambridge.  No end of excitement in the Sandison household these days.  I gather Sophie thought she had done a pretty respectable test so they decided to stay to the end to find out where she’d come even though the events invariably last an eternity.  Eventually though the tannoy announced that all the scores were on the board and Lottie went to look.  She returned grumpily.  “It’s so boring Mumma.  We always stay for the results and it’s never worth it.  I came 15^th.” she said.  They resumed packing the final bits and pieces into the trailer and were just about to head disgruntledly home when another school parent came running up to them,  all excited, and congratulated Lottie.  What Lottie had read against her name as 15^th was actually 1^st!  What a twerp.  So, she is the County Schools Champion for Cambridgeshire.  Go her.  Sophie was less delighted.  “Humph”, her text to me read as I thrashed my way through the undergrowth of a wood trying to rouse the odd pheasant, “now I have to take her to sodding Bicester for the National Championships”.   

 

With perfect child status very much underpinned Lottie announced over dinner the other night “I think I won’t bother going to school tomorrow”.  She is indeed diligence personified so though we might have feigned indifference if it had been Bob, the sense of surprise round the table at this display of chutzpah, was palpable.  “My double English session”, she continued, “which I particularly look forward to on Wednesday, has been replaced with two sessions of s*x education followed by netball practice.  So what’s the point of going in really?”

 

Changing the subject can I have a little moan please?  I parked my car in the KFC car park in Haverhill last weekend.  I had been dragged out on a cold, damp, Sunday evening to watch La La Land.  As if that wasn’t dull enough I’ve just received a whopping Penalty Charge Notice for which price I could have bought 3 ten piece Wicked Variety Buckets, a Zinger Salad and a Twister and still have had enough change to have bought a ticket in the main car park twenty yards further along the road.  What a total poo.

 

Talking of which I called into various shops in the course of my walk across the City to the station on Burns Night earlier this week.  I was in search of haggis you won’t be surprised to hear.  As rare as they are running free with their peculiar leg configuration round the steeply sloping heather moors of Scotland they are even more elusive down south.  I scoured M&S, Sainsbury and Waitrose fruitlessly, and as I got to Old Broad Street, the Tesco Express store there represented the last chance saloon.  To my great surprise, not least because she didn’t seem to have a great command of the English, the shop assistant nodded knowingly when I articulated, a little more carefully on the second time of asking, the word HAGGIS and gestured me to follow her.  

 

What joyous anticipation I felt, with my fingers crossed that it would be Macsween’s, as we meandered through the shop around the various aisles.  Lottie and I, I mused, would be able properly to commemorate Scotland’s National Poet.  I might even allow myself a small malt.  In addition to which, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful, Hen, who’s home at the moment, had told me she was cooking roasted vegetables with curried chickpeas for supper which wasn’t really going to float my boat truth be told, Burns Night or not.  As well as you know me, I don’t believe you can come close to picturing the disappointment on my face when we turned into the toiletries section and the girl stooped down and triumphantly handed me a pack of disposable nappies. 

 

P.S. If it’s any consolation I didn’t get it immediately either….

 

Friday 13th January, 2017

 

I’m late with this and if I didn’t wish it you wouldn’t miss it, but Happy New Year anyway.  I was on Block Leave.  The phrase that allows you to shrug your shoulders and pretend that two weeks away from one’s preferred and dedicated spot in the work place wasn’t of your choosing.  

 

Had a good time for the most part other than finding ourselves stranded in Liverpool on New Years Eve after Easyjet cancelled our return flight to Stansted from Geneva.  But don’t want to start the year whinging so what uplifting stuff do I have to tell you?

 

Well, there’s a little monkey on my shoulder desperately urging me on to report some follow-up revelations about my old Colombian “friend” Ben Curry following an email exchange I had with the renowned author Louis de Bernieres, but it would be career jeopardising to put it in print ( not for me happily ) and anyway it wouldn’t get through your internet censor software so I had better save it for the next time we meet over a drink.   

 

Talking of South America, Bob headed off there yesterday.  He left the freezer well stocked with a brace of pheasant, five widgeon, one hare and two muntjac garnered over his last week at home so we will not starve in his absence. 11 squirrels also met their maker on Sunday morning.  We turned this offering down.

 

It shouldn’t have surprised me, but bearing in mind he was going away for six months, I expected something more substantial by way of luggage than the back pack that was draped over one of his shoulders when I went to Heathrow to see him off on Wednesday.  Two tee shirts, a spare pair of boxers, swimming trunks and shorts…one of each.  And I don’t imagine there is anything even close to 100ml of toothpaste.  He checked the bag in though.  Perhaps there would have been some hair gel in there too, but more likely the armoury of knives and snares I suspect is accompanying him on the first stage of his travels to Chile, Patagonia and the Argentinian wetlands.  More on that anon no doubt.

 

As for Christmas, we spent it “skiing”in Chamonix.  There wasn’t much snow.  In fact not a drop of it down in Argentiere where we staying.  Conditions were consequently ideal for long boarding.  It’s a strange story that could only ever have Bob and Hen at the heart of it.  They had sneaked out of the apartment a little before the rest of us to have a quick beer in a bar on the way to the restaurant where we all going for dinner.  We were supposed to pick them up as we passed however whilst I spotted Hen there was no sign of Bob, but as they arrived shortly after us I thought nothing of it.  It was only much later that evening when we adjourned to said bar for a couple of post prandial genepis and a young guy was pointed out to me ( see attached photo ) that I discovered the story behind Bob’s absence.  The two of them had got chatting in Franglais to the lad who after a beer or two presented a “proposition”.  Would either of them be prepared to drive with him in his car a few kms up the hill out of Argentiere to the Col des Montets from where he intended to longboard back down the main road?  It was 7pm and pitch black and he needed someone to follow him allowing the headlights of the vehicle to show him the route and particularly to illuminate several treacherous S- bends along the way.  Complete madness.  Bob said it was the most exciting thing he had ever done and that was simply driving a rickety old French van at 50 kmph, hazard lights flashing, with the maniac 30 yards in front of him hunched on top of his longboard, hooting and hollering as he hurtled headlong down the narrowing road into the centre of the town, before the predetermined motion of clapping his hands together behind his back indicated to Bob that his crazy French friend was about to pull off a screeching sideways sliding halt which he performed right in front of the very bar from where this crazy expedition had started.  After which Bob and Hen wandered up the road and nonchalantly tucked into a delicious cheese fondue as if nothing had happened.

 

If this is the sort of thing that Bob gets into in a sleepy Alpine village a couple of days after Christmas goodness only knows what is going to transpire in South America.  He arrived safely yesterday morning, indeed half an hour ahead of schedule according to the Flight tracker website that I was using to monitor his progress, and I woke this morning to a Whataspp message sent from Santiago at 2.00am.

 

“Had a wicked day

xxxxx”

 

was all it said…….

 

Aye Right….it’s a wicked day ahead for me too.  Another lovely boy has just invited me to lunch at Sweetings and I have management of Globalwafers in town this afternoon so pip pip for now and have a lovely weekend!

 

Friday 23rd December, 2016

Short and sweet today.  I’m distracted by all the baby darlings that my various colleagues have brought into the office, a splitting headache and the prospect of a 3.00am reveille tomorrow morning to catch a flight to Switzerland.  But as I am away for two weeks I feel I should briefly put pen to paper if only to bemoan my luck that finally having thrown caution to the wind, chucked another pea in the soup so to speak and decided to take the family skiing there’s no snow.  Pants to that.  

 

I havn’t mentioned Bob very much recently.  He has had his nose to the grindstone and since July has managed to earn £7,000.  Early in the New Year, after he and I have another crack at the wildfowling, he is heading off to South America for four months followed by a couple more in South East Asia. I am as jealous as heck.  I may have told you before my biggest regret in life is that I cancelled the plan I had to head to South America on my GAP year.  The idea was that I would travel to Tierra del Fuego to play my recorder sitting on the southernmost tip of the continent.  I had written to various random people who appeared in my old school address book and lived in South America and I got some lovely letters in response.  The one that follows is typical and if nothing else I’m sure you will enjoy a warm nostalgic glow at the sight of a proper, typewritten missive.  Mr Curry wrote a book about his own adventures in Colombia which is a good read if you have a spare moment.  Last I heard bandits had sequestered his farm and he was living in a beach hut on the Caribbean coast.  I’ve harboured a fancy for a while now that it would be good to buy him a beer or something to thank him for this so maybe I can persuade Bob to look him up:

 

 

 

 

 

If you need anything from the great house before my return on the 9^th January please call the desk number and someone will leap into action…..

 

Otherwise, merry Christmas and a happy New Year when it comes.

 

PS Oh no….one of the children has started crying.  Time for me to hit the road!

 

 

 

 

Friday 16th December, 2016

I am still chuckling as I write this short and sweet one about Lottie.  She’s our number four who as I’ve told you before only goes to prove that sometimes its worth persevering, I’m delighted to be able to brag.  She’s at the Perse Upperherself and had the first of a series of mock GCSE’s exams earlier this week.  “How did you get on Lottie?” I asked her nonchalantly, whilst tucking into a handful of delicious salted peanuts from Aldi as is my want of an evening these days.  She didn’t even pause.  “Oh very well I think.  If I answered everything correctly I’m pretty sure I’ll get 100%.” 

 

A note on drinking habits in Japan got me thinking of a story I read about earlier this week.  I’m Scottish, as I think you probably know, so I can say this, but wasn’t it inevitable that it would be us Scots who spoil it for a bunch of Benedictine Monks in Devon?   For the past 90 years or so the monks have been making a handy living from an interesting concoction they created called Buckfast or “Bucky” as it is affectionately known in Dundee and possibly other parts of Scotland.  But whilst everywhere else in the UK manages to responsibly enjoy the energising effect of this wine and caffeine tonic, in Scotland it just seems to get people fighting.  In a case involving a teenager who had downed two and a half bottles of Bucky (75cl bottles @ 15% alcohol content….fair do’s I suppose ) brought in front of the Dundee Sheriff Court the judge expressed his opinion that there is a very definite association between Buckfast and violence.   “Mine’s a bottle of Bucky….yoooze want sum, pal?”

 

Mind you I nearly got in a fight on the train home last night and I’d only had a couple of glasses of Chilean red at our office Christmas drinks.  The trains were up the spout so everyone was on edge I suppose and maybe I shouldn’t therefore have given the evil eye to that big yob who slumped on his chair across from me and proceeded to conduct an 100 decibel phone conversation all the way from Tottenham Hale to Harlow Town.  All I did was tut a couple of times which he took massive exception to.  Hey ho.

 

On the subject of festive spirit this very timely email has just arrived on my screen.  I had just topped up my tepid cup of coffee left over from the morning meeting with some hot water and was feeling like a nibble of chocolate.  

 

 

 

Wishing to thank the kind person who had come to the rescue I asked our Japanese desk assistant whose birthday it was……

 

“Jesus” came the reply leaving me shame faced as per usual.  

 

Oh and while I’m feeling a bit sheepish did you spot this new initiative from Japan?  It’s called “Premium Friday”.  A proposal from METI and industry groups that starting February 24^th next year companies should insist that employees should knock off at 3pm on the last Friday of each month….I know it’s only the 16^th but pip pip.

 

 

Friday 9th December, 2016

If you’re sitting comfortably then I’ll begin.

 

In early 1992 a few friends and I went on a duck shooting expedition in Heilongjiang Province, North East China.  Oh no, he’s off on that jag again.  Well bear with me.  I’ve not told you this before.  I had been enticed in part by an alluring description of a hunting lodge on the banks of a lake in the easterly steppe marsh-lands quite apart from the tales of abundant duck.  We were sold a pup.  There was scarcely a duck to be seen.  The only poor creature shot, late on the first day after we had endured a fruitless five or six hours crouching in the reeds, turned out to be a bird of prey and a protected variety at that.  In the course of the week we barely managed half a dozen duck between the five of us. It was a sore disappointment for my four companions who were all keen if moderate shots. In the absence of our prime prey we wandered around the bogs for miles and miles and every now and again a snipe would fleetingly present itself.  I loved it.

 

As far as I was concerned the real disappointment concerned the “hunting lodge”.  The “lake” by which the lodge sat was more like a large muddy puddle.  The dwelling, which I had pictured in my head all pinewood, log fires and cosiness, consisted of some concrete slabs corned together with corrugated iron sheets place on top.  In the middle of the living room, decorated with a single photograph of Chairman Mao, was an inadequate sulphuric coal fire place around which we shivered for a few minutes each evening before hastening to rickety uncomfortable beds.  A tanker arrived every other afternoon to deliver some tepid, foul smelling brown, bath water.

  

But if you know me you will appreciate I would have coped uncomplainingly even with all of this if only there had been some decent food and fine wine to be had.  Wine?  Not a drop.  There was beer, pungent with formaldehyde, which gave you a headache just to look at.  The food though was on another level of awfulness.  If you’ve been watching I’m a Celebrity Get me out of Here, nothing that any of the stars had to sample in their various Bush-tucker challenges came close to what was served up to us passing for breakfast, lunch or dinner. 

 

That was apart from one evening.  There must have been a little warning bell ding-donging in my head before we left Hong Kong for our trip of a lifetime.  I had gone Olivers in the Princes Building and bought a large bar of Toblerone ( which we ate on the train from Harbin to Qiqihar ) and two cans of haggis.  I don’t know what came over me really.  I’d never had canned haggis before – nor since indeed – but on the third evening in China I retrieved them from the depths of my rucksack announcing that we would dine like kings that night at least.  I ventured into what passed as the kitchen, a small dark room with a contraption that appeared to be an oven above which was a large metallic chimney.  In the absence of a tin opener – this was 1992 please bear in mind – I managed to open the cans using a knife.  Ludicrously neither was there a spoon anywhere to be found so I prised the haggis into a large greasy wok using a pair of chopsticks and I stood there heating the haggis as carefully as I could.  The gas fired hob was more akin to a blast furnace and required concentrated and frenetic stirring with said chopsticks.  When the haggis started to sizzle a bit I deemed it done and  with a triumphant flourish distributed it as evenly as possible onto our plates.  It was a magnificent success though I say it myself.  My joy was dampened however when I felt the top of my head ( I had a decent crop of hair in these days ) and discovered to my horror that leaning into my cooking with such gusto I had brushed repeatedly against the extraction chimney and my considerable mop ( those were the days ) was coated with a thick layer of burnt greasy cooking liquefactions.

 

Bit precious?  Woteva.  I have been mentally scarred by the moment and thus – time for a commercial break – this weeks initiation on a China A share by our analyst Richard Huang resonated strongly with me. 

Hangzhou Robam 002508 CH self cleaning range hoods

 

So that’s good news.  My word, China’s come a long way since 1992 the same year, coincidentally, that the first stock foreigners were allowed to invest in began trading on the Shanghai B share market.  Strangely appropriate to my story.  Can you name it??  I’m glad to say I dodged that bullet.

 

Now, I wasn't going to bother telling you about the wildly social week I’ve had. I was out on the town two nights in a row.  There’s life in the old dog yet.  On Monday I went to a Primal Scream concert in Cambridge and then on Tuesday??  Well I only went to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the O2.  How totally cool is that?! 

 

Anyway, the thing is I was talking to my mum on the phone as I walked to the station the following evening, feeling a little weary I must admit, but I thought if it was OK to brag to anyone about my high-jinx it would be to my mother.  So after listening to her tell me how dark it was up in Scotland I mentioned that I'd been at a concert and didn’t get to bed till nearly 1.00am the evening before. I didn't bother telling her who the band was. Dear old Mum. She'd give us all a run for our money in most respects, but when it comes to contemporary music her knowledge really ends at Val Doonigan.  So I knew she wouldn't have heard of the RHCP’s.

 

She was having none of it and I was soundly admonished off for being so blinking condescending. "Ah, how dare you" she said when I revealed the name of the band. "Not only have I heard of them. I know someone who had them play at their daughter’s wedding. "  I was suspicious.  I really was.  But my parents have one or two very wealthy friends up there in the Kingdom of Fife and as I had already had one verbal skelp on the lug I decided to leave it at that.  Mum, now she'd got me on the run, couldn't be stopped. She wanted to know all about the concert, the venue and indeed why we had gone to see them. I told her it had been the most amazing concert I'd ever been to.  A friend of mine is bezza’s with the drummer and has promised to get Bob a set of drum-sticks from him, but I admitted that really I’d got tickets because Jimmy is so fixated with the lead singer. “Oh” she said a touch tentatively, “I’m surprised they’re Jimmy’s thing, but anyway, I didn't know they had a singer. I thought the band was just a drummer and a few men playing the bagpipes.”

 

And then I put two and two together.  She thought I’d been rocking at the O2 with 25,000 others to the tunes of that renowned Scottish group, the Red Hot Chilli Pipers.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hot_Chilli_Pipers

 

I negotiated the treacherous London Wall/Old Broad Street junction with tears streaming down my face and my mother yelling at me down the phone that I’d better not dare tell anyone about this....so if you bump into her maybe don't mention that I’m looking forward to sitting down to a big family Christmas dinner and the opportunity to ask her to pass the salt and piper.

 

If I still have you maybe you’ve time as we rock on into Christmas for one quick heart warming story from the land of Hen.  She got a parking ticket in Brighton the other day.  She told me she was particularly affronted because someone had parked in her reserved space and, knowing she would be at risk of the zealous local traffic warden leaving the car where she had to, she had scribbled a long and elaborate note explaining her predicament which she left in the windscreen.  In the interest of time all you need to know is that she was going to the Lewes bonfire night that evening and felt she needed a gas-mask to protect her eyes and lungs.  She’d spotted an old one in a nearby antiques shop and would literally be away for five minutes.  And that’s as long as it took for the traffic warden to pounce and write her ticket.  A few days later she felt she’d better do something about the fine and to her surprise discovered that the envelope had already been opened.  Inside was £5 and a letter from someone saying that they had read Hen’s endearing exposition and watched aghast as her van had been ticketed regardless.  A fiver was all they had in their wallet, but they hoped she would accept it as a small contribution towards her parking fine.  Is that not the sweetest thing?  Only happens to Hen.  Strangely appealing world she lives in.

 

 

Friday 2nd December, 2016

If I ever do manage to get out for a quickie down to Canary Wharf and back during the lunch break, it normally takes more energy forcing myself to leave the work station, the pleasures of serving you and dragging myself down to Nomura’s basement changing room to put on my kit than I use up actually running.  But on Wednesday…well it wasn’t that hard.  At the risk of boring you rigid let me take you through my morning.

 

It started with me catching the 5.38 by the skin of my teeth.  Psycho Susan, the remaining lurcher puppy ( previously went under the name Bear ) and who is indeed joining the ranks of the landed gentry if m’Lud is as good as his word and pops by after shooting in Norfolk this weekend, had taken rather a long time to do her stuff when I took her out at 5.00am.  I then had to drive more circumspectly than usual owing to the icy conditions.  On that subject, I had been very pleased with myself when I got home the night before at the foresight I had to warn Bob, who would be driving back from Newmarket later on, to be wary of the slippery roads and to use his gears rather than brakes to control his speed.  I had noted with a certain smug satisfaction, whilst Psycho was pootling about her leisurely business, that the Polo was safely parked in our drive.  I might add I gave the car only a cursory glance.  Apart from the fact I was already running late, the car is held together with at least two rolls of Gorilla Strong Duct Tape so anything more than a quick look is just upsetting and rather pointless, but at least it was in the right place.

 

Having it made it safely to the office I found I had a bit of good stuff to grapple with in the shape of an initiation on HK Exchanges, some comments on Samsung Electronics and a note on Indian autos ( coincidentally ) so I got on with that, though, whilst I know you wouldn’t have noticed, I must admit I was a bit distracted by a nagging concern over Jimmy down in Bristol.  The thought came to me that a little ( unprecedented ) gesture of moral support in the shape of a modest food parcel would cheer her up as she grapples with meeting various essay deadlines.  I had literally just pressed click to send – some goats cheese and salted almonds - for delivery the following morning when Sophie dropped me a line saying Jimmy had rung, fed up with the cold and filthy student house, and was coming home that very afternoon.  Aaaaagh.  Why do I bother?!  I cancelled the order.  Then spoke to Jimmy who had  decided to stay in Bristol on hearing that I was sending a food parcel.  I reinstated the order.  So that was all fine then.

 

The phone rang.  It was Sophie again, this time to relay the news that Bob had skidded off the road on the way to work and the car was stuck in a ditch.  I handled this dire development with a degree of equanimity.  He was fine and, after all, we’ve been there.  I’ve done it three times actually. Once when I was well on track to break the all time record for a drive from Portree to Kirriemuir in my mother’s Honda Civic and I got caught out by a rather tight corner on the approach to Blairgowrie.  The milk tanker I had narrowly missed kindly stopped and pulled me out.  Remarkably the only damage was a bit of a scratch to the bumper.  The car was white.  I touched it up with a small can of Airfix model paint and she was none the wiser.

 

But, back in the present, you might imagine after the morning I’d had, I positively skipped out of the office to let off a bit of steam and, by the way, was back within the hour running one of my fastest times ever, though still not  up to Georgette Lenoir standards.  That’s another record, like Portree to Kirrie, I am beginning to fear, that will forever elude me.

 

Ah the weekend….deep joy…and you know the thing I’m most excited about?  I’m making a goat curry for Sunday.  Not even kidding.  That’s how full a life a life I lead!