Funny Money: The (Investment) Diary of Bernard Jones (Bernard Jones Diaries)

by Louth Nick

  “Single ones not good enough for you?” I ask, foolishly.

  “They would be, Bernard. But I can’t remember the last time…”

  “Look,” I say, pointing out through the rain-misted windscreen. “Isn’t that the fellow who was on Crackerjack?”

  “You mean Peter Glaze? No, I believe he died. And you’re changing the subject.”

  “What subject?”

  “Our love life. Or to put it another way, the infrequency of your wielding the Crackerjack pencil.”

  Elevenses: A delicious slice of victoria sponge, 85p from the Mothers’ Union stall. Rest of the day spent up in the loft with my locomotives hiding from Eunice and her darker motives.

  Wednesday 31st August: Hurricanes galore

  Saw news about Hurricane Katrina. All those homeless people, all that devastation. Bad taste thought (why is investment so full of them?) but perhaps it’s high time to buy some oil shares. Probably should have bought them earlier in the year, and listened to Mike Delaney when he said Shell was a bargain. Still, never trust a man who wears corduroy, that’s my motto. Mike is covered in so much of the stuff that he gets snagged on the flock wallpaper in the curry house.

  Shell or BP, Shell or BP, Shell or BP? Can’t decide.

  Elevenses: Slice of illicit battenburg. Divine!

  Close of play: Up £12.62. Notice Lloyds TSB starting to recoup the dividend. The penny’s dropped about how ex-dividends work.

  Tuesday 6th September: The quote arrives

  Oil price still rising, and rigs are damaged in the Gulf of Mexico. Still can’t decide what to buy. Found what appeared to be two corduroy hand grenades in the Hornby drawer. On closer inspection turned out to be kiwi fruit! What on earth Eunice expects me to do with those I can’t imagine. Perhaps I’ll pull the pins out and fling them at Hermès if she gets into the veg patch again.

  3.30pm: The Conservatory quote has arrived! £43,200 plus bloody VAT! I’ll have to say no, I really will. That’s more than half the value of the portfolio. I don’t think she realises we haven’t been making money. You can’t fund that kind of outlay when you’ve just been treading water.

  Elevenses: Battenburg crumbs, plus a mid-afternoon Islay to recover from the shock of that bill. Back’s playing up now. Perhaps it’s twinge drinking?

  Close of play: Down £215.30. Jarvis weaker again, ho-hum. I really should sell.

  Thursday 29th September: Porridge portfolio

  Portfolio looks like porridge again. Third profit warning this month, this time from Compass. What’s so difficult about serving up school dinners and squaddie meals? Bought the shares at 345p back in 2004, and now look at them. Not much more than two quid’s worth. About enough to buy a coffee at Starbucks. Speaking of which…

  Elevenses: Two eccles cakes and a cappuccino.

  Bought 100 shares in First Choice Holidays after a tip in the Sunday papers, cost me £200. Paid for it by dumping my holdings in Shire Pharmaceuticals, which after a whole month seem to be going nowhere. At least I didn’t lose anything except the £20 commission each side, and the stamp duty of course.

  Close of play: Portfolio down £486.30. That’s £900 down for the week so far. So that’s the end of Eunice’s conservatory plans, because I absolutely refuse to add it to the mortgage. Still, I’ll be in trouble when I break the news to her.

  Tuesday 4th October: Intruders in the Hornby drawer!

  Mighty row about the conservatory yesterday evening. Eunice seems to think we need something the size of Brighton Pavilion attached to the back of the house. Went to find my biscuit stash this morning and guess what? Between the double-O gauge Spanish locomotive and the rare boxed Russian artillery wagon (what a find that was!) sat a giant packet of chocolate digestives that I had not put there. This must be an apology for calling me a “complete waste of space.” Frankly it’s the conservatory that will be a waste of space. It’ll be filled up in a jiffy with second hand cane furniture, raffia baskets, and bloody toby jugs. Still, she seems as immovable on this subject as on any other.

  Elevenses: Four chocolate digestives.

  Close of play: Portfolio down £273.25 Bah humbug!

  Saturday 8th October: Peter’s boasting

  Popped around to Peter and Geraldine’s for coffee. While Eunice and Geraldine discuss HRT (sounds like another new tax from Gordon Brown!) Peter’s all too happy to spirit me off to his appallingly tidy office and boast about what he’s been investing in. Says he uses an automatic spreadsheet where the closing prices are automatically filled in. That’s just flash, frankly. I prefer fiddling with my old bits of MoD graph paper. He just bought 15,000 BP shares at 640p, which he reckons is a bargain. But the size of the deal, 15,000 times £6.40! That must be worth…um, lots. Saw a cutting on his desk about a few recommended AIM companies. Think I might look that up when I get home.

  Wednesday 19th October: Simple Simon says

  Told Eunice about the ‘portfolio situation’. Her reply?

  “Oh Bernard, you spend simply hours in there hunched over that screen, surrounded by a sea of filthy crumbs and wearing that ragged old cardigan, and now you tell me we’re losing money. What’s it all been for?”

  Then, the final insult: “Bernard, darling, why don’t you just buy what Peter bought. He’s made simply pots.”

  Because, you silly fool, he’s already made the money. If I buy now, it’s going to be too late. What I need to buy is what Peter will buy tomorrow not what he bought yesterday.

  Elevenses: A whole packet of delicious high-fat Scottish shortbread. See if I care!

  Close of play: Too angry to look.

  Friday 21st October: Wall Street beckons

  My broker’s website says I can now buy U.S. shares through them. Think I might start trading on Wall Street. Got my green eye shade and a nice Havana, what more do I need? Keep reading about Intel and those famously shrinking microchips which power the world’s computers. Reminds me of my own investments: Bernard Jones and his incredible shrivelling investments. Or, a horror film for Eunice: Honey, I shrunk the kids’ inheritance.

  Read that millions of ordinary Americans trade Intel. Seeing as half of them can’t spell the name of their own country, there must be room for someone with a bit of breeding to turn an honest penny. Evening trading in the New York time zone would make a nice change from listening to Eunice snoring her way through Taggart.

  Elevenses: The digestives have mysteriously vanished. Found one measly soft fig roll at the back of the Hornby drawer. Eunice has started leaving fruit for me again. I really do wish she’d stay out of the den.

  Close of play: Up £8.03. Every little helps.

  Monday 24th October: Vindication

  Oil price is falling again and so is BP’s share price. Glad I didn’t buy any at the time of Katrina! Must work out what Peter Perfect has lost. That’s 15,000 times 34p, which must be five grand surely. Haha! Hornby, meanwhile is chugging ahead. It may be a small investment, but it’s heading in the right direction. Finally decided to sell Jarvis. Good riddance, I say. Proceeds should buy a couple of windows in Eunice’s palace, at least.

  Elevenses: One and a half eccles cakes, the remainder having exploded in my hand. Took 20 minutes to get all the puff pastry out of the keyboard.

  Close of play: Up £141.89.

  Saturday 5th November: Bonfire of the sanities

  For weeks now, we’ve had firework lunacy. Despite the new regulations, kids from the council estate have continued to get hold of bangers which they lob at old ladies in the high street, and every night until 2am we’ve endured sporadic booms that make us feel like we live in Beirut. Then today, on the very day that there is supposed to be a proper public display, the council officials decide after a last minute inspection that the local Round Table cannot after all use Densley Fields as they have for 20-odd years because “access for emergency vehicles is inadequate”. How ridiculous! What a nation of killjoys we’ve become.

  Elevenses: A Club Biscuit. What sad emasc
ulated things these have become. Time was when a Club was so thickly coated, you could nibble the chocolate off all round in big chunks. Now it’s thinner than an undertaker’s smile.

  Sunday 6th November: Research department

  Decided to have a bit of a root and branch rethink on the investment front. Ploughed through a stash of old investment magazines, found a useful piece on price earnings ratios and why they matter. Maybe I’m in above my head, seeing as I don’t know a P&L from a G&T (or S&M for that matter). Found an article about defence companies. At least I know all about these fellas. Got a lifetime’s MoD knowledge I should put to good use.

  Elevenses: Packet of crisps, allegedly smoky beef with wholegrain mustard. Tasted more like char-grilled linoleum. How do they name these flavours? Presumably someone makes a mistake on the smoky bacon line, tips in a tonne too much acidity regulator or locust bean gum or whatever, and the supervisors stand around munching on them like Jilly Goolden: “I’m getting sun-dried tomatoes, drizzled with olive oil…”

  Must make sure Eunice doesn’t find the empty crisp packet, which is still in my blazer pocket.

  Tuesday 6th December: Inspiration and discipline

  Decided on an investment diet: buy nothing above a P/E of 10 or a dividend yield below what I get on my savings account (three per cent). If it’s cheap it shouldn’t fall, and at least I’ll get as much in income as if I’d taken Eunice’s advice and stuck it all in the bank. Better still, maybe I will stick it in a bank. I’ve paid enough in bloody bank charges over the years. Now, which of them is best? Used the stock screener that Peter Edgington showed me, and got a list of 20 companies with a P/E below ten and a three per cent or better yield.

  Elevenses: Nothing, got doctor’s appointment today. Quack’s bound to give me grief on the biscuit front.

  Close of play: Down £12.53.

  Christmas Eve 2005: Cutting down the costs

  Changes to the portfolio are all doing well. Domino’s Pizza is up seven per cent in a few weeks, BAE likewise. Decided to keep the Lloyds TSB instead of chucking it out, and I’m thinking about Scottish Power now that the Germans have flounced off when their bid was rejected. Also, finally decided to move to a proper online broker. Found one that only charges ten quid a trade! I had no idea you could get it so cheap. Worked out I could have saved hundreds this year. Of course, I’d have saved even more if I hadn’t traded at all! New year resolutions are next to be worked on. I’m going to make this the last year that I lose money.

  Chapter Three: Yuletide Misery

  Christmas Day: Buzzards and sporrans

  Whole family round for a bellicose Christmas of braying inanities, pointless rows and indigestion while slumped in front of The Sound of Music. After last year’s food poisoning incident, Eunice has at least given up the free range organic buzzards, or whatever species that mottled monster was. The Volvo’s boot still stinks of it. Buying from local farms is all very well, but give me a Waitrose turkey crown any day. While Tesco has become the big bad wolf, Waitrose is like the Queen, no one has an unkind word to say. Shame you can’t buy shares in it, but perhaps that’s the point. A jolly worker’s cooperative without the hammer and sickle. There aren’t many places where both Eunice’s vegan friend Irmgard and Monday Club members like the Hon. Giles Topham MP would both be happy to be seen shopping.

  Pressies were fair to middling. I had fantasised about the Hornby live steam LNER Flying Scotsman with double tender, but at £525 that was never going to happen. Perhaps if I sell the shares in Hornby, then I can almost afford one! The Smoky Joe Caledonian Railways saddle tank loco was an imaginative second best at thirty quid (Thank you, Brian and Janet), though clearly as my only son Brian should realise it doesn’t fit with a 1930s Great Western layout.

  Eunice also bought me a book about Warren Buffett, called The Midas Touch. Could certainly do with a little of that. Everything I invest in turns not into gold but into a different four-letter word. I’ll certainly need to be like the Sage of Omaha now that we’ve arranged to stick the cost of the conservatory on the mortgage. Why do I never win these fights? The new space will get cluttered up with china knick-knacks and cat litter just like the existing rooms.

  As for those M&S tartan boxer shorts, that’s daughters for you. Jemima has had 27 years to realise I’m a Y-fronts man. I hold Stuart Rose personally responsible for that three-pack of billowing kilts. If this is their idea of the products to turn the company round, the only way to do it is by using them as sails. Still, at least M&S allow you to change them without the receipt.

  Boxing Day : Seconds out, round two

  Most of the clan has departed. Just Brian and Janet left, and everyone’s favourite little Antichrist, Digby. Still only seven, the monster grandson refuses to eat anything except baked beans, spaghetti hoops and Dairylea cheeses, all with lashings of salad cream. The tantrums are unbelievable. Of course this has been clear from birth. I knew he was going to be a bad one when he vomited into my ear while I held him at the christening. I couldn’t hear properly for weeks.

  By 3pm I was able to escape into the den to look at Wall Street prices. What workaholics those Yanks are, even trading on Boxing Day. Have decided I will definitely open a spread-betting account. Making more with less seems the way to go.

  Tuesday 27th December: Salad cream days

  Got my spread-betting application off, all online and very simple. None of that nonsense about sending in copies of utility bills or passports like you do for a bank or stock broking account. Paused slightly at the warning about the danger of possibly losing more than you invest. Sounds a bit like negative equity to me. Still, nothing to worry about. You just wait until the situation improves, like Eunice and I did with the house in Guildford Road in the early nineties. Shouldn’t be a problem.

  4.30pm: Brian and Janet are still here, and the creature from the black lagoon is driving us mad. Had to nip out to Kwik Save for another bottle of salad cream (Eunice’s home-made egg mayonnaise clearly isn’t good enough for the little tyke), which at least gave me the opportunity to slyly take advantage of a two-for-one offer on Cadbury’s mini rolls. These now reside undiscovered in the depths of the Hornby drawer. Have a copy of the Cadbury annual report somewhere; must take a peek sometime.

  Wednesday 28th December: The trend is your friend

  Snowed today! A good couple of inches dusting the woods and the paddock behind. Looks delightful. Made my first spread bet, a £2 per point up bet on the FTSE. Made £34 in fifteen minutes! This looks easy. Just wait to see which way the market is moving, and go with the flow. Feeling indulgent towards the world in general, I suggest to Digby that a snowman would be a good idea. His usually sullen face widens into a huge grin.

  “Yeah, cool!” he coos. “Can we get it from the garden centre? They have huge ones,” he said stretching his arms wide. Slowly it dawns on me. He wants one of those ghastly inflatable jobs from the Wyevale, as featured atop porches in the council estate! No, I say. We’re going to make one.

  “Uh?” he yells. My God, whatever happened to childhood! Has the boy never played with snow?

  “He gets chilled easily, Bernard,” Janet warns as she wraps the urchin up in fifteen layers of multi-coloured woollens, blue-spotted Wellingtons and a voluminous anorak that wouldn’t have disgraced Scott of the Antarctic. “We’re just going outside, we may be some time,” say I, as we exit. Of course, the child complains that the snow is cold and after five minutes wants to go in. So I end up making the snowman on my own, rolling a great squeaking ball of ice around the lawn while my son, daughter-in-law and their vermin offspring watch from the house. I almost give myself a hernia lifting it upright and placing a second ball of snow on top. My old pipe, two lumps of anthracite and a Dairylea cheese for the nose complete the picture.

  Had just come in when Eunice hissed at me, “Bernard, I thought you might like to know that Brian has taken Digby upstairs to play with your train set.”

  Aargh! I flew upstairs, snowy wellies an
d all, banging my elbow on the banister. Too late, they are already up in the loft and the Antichrist is making chuffing noises as he tries to push my Devon Belle Pullman locomotive!

  “Why don’t the wheels go round, Dad?” says Brian. Through gritted teeth I carefully explain about precision electric motors for the umpteenth time, emphasising that a model railway is not the same as a train set. Not a toy. Do all schoolteachers lack common sense, or merely the one I sired? Then I notice that there is salad cream grease on the loco, and the points and the switches. Brian, watching my face, tries wiping it off with his sleeve. Digby, of course, is grinning like a loon. I give up, I really do. Still, only one more day to go and they depart.

  Thursday 29th December: Bovis and Butthead

  Brian, in earnest schoolmaster mode, is lecturing us over the final lunch about the way house builders are despoiling the countryside. Having bought 500 shares in Bovis before Christmas, I’m feeling a little defensive though God knows a few hundred pounds profit is a rare enough event. Little Barratt boxes, he says, ruining our green and pleasant land, and you’re helping finance them. But what about the schoolteachers and the nurses, I say, where are they going to live without affordable housing? Not everyone has the help you did from us, Brian. Janet’s expression shows that is a low blow, and I suppose I should regret it. But he does come out with such tosh. Britain’s house builders are merely following government rules to make the best use of land. In any case it isn’t green and pleasant. It is brownfield, old quarries, railway sidings and weed-strewn tips in places like Slough and Harlow.