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

by Louth Nick

  9.45am: Ring on doorbell. Eunice forget her keys? Maybe the builders, now AWOL for a week, have decided to resume work? Not so. A big 4x4, four way flashers on, is parked at the front, and a woman is standing on the doorstep in the rain looking rather sheepish. “Did you have a black and white cat?” she says. “Because I’m afraid…”

  Did? Oh God, Hermès! I rush out and inspect. The tail looks about right, but…well, for the rest all I can tell is that it was once a cat. Huge guilt that I forced the poor animal out to its death. Woman departs after a thousand apologies (and flashers still on, daft bat). Must get sorted before Eunice returns. I shovel the remains into a Waitrose bag (only the best, you know). Pour sand on the gory stains in the road. Dig a hole at bottom of garden behind cucumber frames, gently deposit Hermès and pat earth on top. Fashion a crude wooden cross from old fruit box (getting splinter and banging thumb with hammer) and am just starting to think about some appropriately maudlin words when I hear Eunice’s car. She is inconsolable.

  Elevenses: Take Eunice out to lunch at La Pergola, money and wine no object. Lots of snivelling. On our return she rallies enough to inflict a hippopotamus manoeuvre on me, knowing I can hardly refuse. First in the afternoon, surely, since Ian Smith declared UDI.

  Close of play: Markets panned. Sit in the den watching Wall Street’s miserable close. Long shot: used remaining spread-bet credit for a modest up bet on the Nasdaq at 2075. Jemima arrives home from work at 10.30pm. More cat-related waterworks.

  Wednesday 14th June: Spirent spirals

  Lie awake listening to Eunice’s broken drain impersonation, and worrying about shares. Decide this is lunacy and get up. Walk into kitchen and in the dawn light see a cat outside. Not any cat, but our cat. Whoop with delight, scoop up the feline and race upstairs to show Eunice. Only having dropped purring puss on bed and woken the trouble-and-strife do I recall it is 4.20am. Still, I’m soon forgiven.

  8am: Profit warning from Spirent. Shares 45p yesterday, 36p today. Bang head on wall. I’m cursed! Why didn’t I sell? Now I can’t, I’ve lost too much. Worst of all, I still don’t understand what this blood company does. Problem arose in ‘Performance analysis broadband’ due to lower sales of ‘older platforms’ and transition to newer ‘product solutions.’ I’m none the wiser, quite honestly.

  Elevenses: Hot crumpet with melted butter and strawberry jam. Fantastic, took me right back to childhood. However, caught in the act by Eunice who returned early from shopping (I’d assumed she was going to Bluewater).

  “Bernard, I think we need to have a talk about your food secrets.” The lecture starts on the five-a-day vegetable portion, moves on to my health (cholesterol, age, exercise, possibility of diabetes), and then to my “secretive habits.”

  “What do you mean secretive?”

  “This drawer you used to hide food in. And that silly tunnel on your railway, that I found jam tarts in the other week.” How did she know about that?

  “Bernard, you have to realise that if you put sticky sweet things in the loft, I’ll be able to smell them when I collect your tea mugs.”

  Friday 16th June: Coach and hearses

  Josh Fenderbrun arrives at 8am. We agree that if I find exercise embarrassing, I can do it indoors. He starts me at the foot of the stairs, doing step-ups. Then going up two stairs and down and then three. All the time this booming voice is in my ear: “Breathe B’nard, use those lungs. Stop wheezing.” To wind down after the ‘workout’ I’m told to lie on the floor and think of nothing, but all I can visualise is my portfolio, disappearing down a whirlpool. This isn’t hugging the inner me, it’s suffocating it. Subsequent sessions, thank God, will take place by phone.

  Elevenses: One orange, peeled and prepared by Eunice who supervises my medication like Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  7pm: Am reading and re-reading the Spirent annual report, hoping for some ray of light in the misery of my losses when doorbell goes. Two angelic little girls of about seven are standing there, with some crayoned posters in their hands. “Have you seen our cat?” they ask. “He’s called Snuggles and he’s black and white.”

  Chapter Twenty: In for a Penny, In for a Pound

  Wednesday 21st June: Penny stocks, pounding losses

  Sat outside at the Ring o’Bells for the share club meeting, soaking up this rare heat. However, the club portfolio is clearly wilting. Billiton, bought at £11.55 is still down to £10 or so. Fortune Oil, the brainchild of Martin Gale, our very own speculator, was bought at 6.5p and the price now is 5.8p. It’s actually worse than that, as K.P. Sharma rightly pointed out. The spread is at least a halfpenny, so we could only get 5.5p if we sold now. That 1p fall is a 15 per cent loss. Thank goodness we could only afford to buy 4,000 of them in the first place. With little cash in the kitty for new investments and losses already behind us, the mood was little glum. All except Harry Staines who, despite being 73, eyed every passing woman.

  “Phwoar, look at those,” he said of one buxom brunette. “Two and half British Standard handfuls there, I’d reckon.”

  K.P. Sharma, born in India and brought up in colonial Uganda, raised a quizzical eyebrow at the mention of this hitherto undiscovered imperial unit.

  “Don’t ask,” I said. “You’ll regret it.”

  Elevenses: My share of two large packets of cracked pepper kettle crisps while Mike Delaney and Harry earnestly discussed Iran vs Angola. God! I’m so sick of the World Cup.

  Close of play: Up £112. Nasdaq Composite up-bet, placed at 2075 on May 13th, clearly in profit at 2120. Market does seem to be gradually recovering.

  Thursday 22nd June: Bernard’s lost notes

  Eunice has tidied up the den and now I can’t find half my notes. Yesterday’s close of play prices. Gone. Detailed notes on the food companies I’m researching. Gone. I had compared Britvic, Northern Foods and Premier Foods and had written down all their yields and P/E ratios. Gone. The only thing that is still there is bloody Prescott, the suede pig, sitting on my chair with his trotters on the PC keyboard. Perhaps he should do the investing. Can’t be any worse at it than I am.

  “I know not to throw things away, Bernard,” Eunice responds when I ask her. “But why don’t you buy a proper pad of paper. It’s inevitable that you’ll lose things written on envelopes. Don’t you remember that time you’d written the electronic ticket reservation number for our flight to Malta on the household insurance renewal which I was sending back to the Pru? We nearly missed the plane!”

  Elevenses: A handful of grapes and a banana, no doubt placed in the Hornby drawer by ‘matron’.

  Friday 23rd June: Coach party

  7.15am: Life coach Fenderbrun rings just as I’m emerging from the shower. Wants to discuss how the ‘Inner B’nard’ is evolving. I tell him the outer me is clean but wet, and thanks to Eunice the inner me is overdosed on exotic fruit, nuts and other jungle junk. The only evolving I’m likely to do is growing a prehensile tail.

  Elevenses: A banana, half of which was bad.

  11pm: Eunice is dropped back after some drinks party for the basket weaving set. She’s drunk, again. Claims to be on a special Pimms diet. So far she’s lost two days.

  Saturday 24th June: A vision in beige

  Jemima seems very depressed. Every telephone conversation with former boyfriend Toby (several per evening) gets the waterworks going. “Why do you keep calling him if it upsets you?” I had the temerity to ask.

  Eunice tugged me into the kitchen. “For goodness sake Bernard, leave her alone. You’re so insensitive.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes you are. Remember when she was going to marry Tymon…”

  “Oh, yes that awful split-capital trust salesman…”

  “She came in wearing her wedding dress to show you. And do you remember what you said?”

  “Yes. I pronounced her a ‘delightful vision in beige’. And she was.”

  “Bernard, you are hopeless. No wonder she burst into tears. Beige is a horrible,
dowdy middle-aged colour.”

  “So why did she order a dress in it?”

  “She didn’t. It was soft ivory, for goodness sake!”

  “It doesn’t matter what it said on the label, it was bloody beige. And it cost £1,250! And it had to go back when we discovered Tymon was rogering an aromatherapist from Bromley! I’m sorry, Eunice, Jem has to stop being so bloody soppy.”

  Eunice’s final word? “Oh, go up and play with your train set.”

  Tuesday 27th June: Martin Gale in action

  Slightly sheepish phone call from Martin about his own shares. He bought a £6,000 holding in iSoft in January at 390p having read about it in a tip sheet. After this huge profit warning in February, they plummeted to 180p. Confident of recovery, he doubled up, taking out a £6,000 loan again his house equity. He says: “I would have broken even at 285p, that was the attraction. But now they’re down at 70p. You’re a safety-first man, Bernard. What would you do?”

  I tell him I’d buy a box of fresh cream éclairs and eat the lot.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Waving the Flag

  Thursday 29th June: FTSE leads the way

  Huge rise in FTSE, over 100 points! Finally, it looks like this correction is giving up the ghost. Good rises across the board, barring Spirent of course, which seems on a relentless slide. Decide to forget that I paid 82p for them in 2004 and sell anyway. Get just 37p a share, loss of £4,500. Awful.

  Elevenses: Sneaked in a plain chocolate Bounty. If the gastronomic Gestapo catch me, I shall explain that it was the coconut filling I was after. If ketchup is one of the five portions a day, then surely this is.

  Close of play: Up £3,816. The up-bet on the Nasdaq is now showing a five per cent profit, so I’ll take it. That’s £2 a point, £200.

  Friday 30th June: Yank the chain

  8am: Good early start. Finally found my notes on Britvic, Premier Foods and Northern Foods. Low P/Es, decent yields, but what of the outlook? Just getting to grips with details when life coach Fenderbrun rings. Tedious questions. No, I haven’t watched the damn video. No, I haven’t read his tedious book. No, I haven’t done any more damn silly exercises.

  “Well, B’nard,” he sighs. “You do seem to have a bunch of attitudinal issues which I think we ought to progress towards a resolution timeline. I’m coming to visit with you next time.”

  “I’ll arrange not to be in, then,” I say as I hang up.

  Elevenses: The corduroy hand grenades have reappeared in the drawer. Still, perhaps I should save these kiwis to hurl at Fenderbrun when he comes next week.

  6pm: Get a phone call from Martin Gale. Says he’s made a smart investment on behalf of the club. “Now the World Cup’s over, I’ve just laid hands on 26 boxes of England car flags for just 37p a pair, compared to £1.79 full retail. All we need to do is keep them to the next UEFA Euro championship in 2008, and we’ll all make a killing.”

  “Where are you going to store them?”

  “Ah, yes. I was just getting to that. You know that conservatory of yours…”

  No, no and no!

  Saturday 1st July: Re-education camp

  Took Eunice and Jem over for tea with Brian, Janet and the Antichrist. Arrive to discover my schoolteacher son is having a ‘house stakeholders meeting’. Janet discovered a mobile phone in Digby’s jacket, stolen from another child. The pocket-sized Satan claims it was given to him. Brian, rather than give the imp the good hiding he so richly deserves, has fallen back on Vietnamese re-education techniques. While Janet takes notes, Brian tells his son in moderated Mandelson-like tones that they are seeking a ‘paradigm shift’ in his behaviour.

  “We don’t mind you taking the phone, Digby. We don’t really. But the dishonesty is very hurtful to Janet and to me as household leader.”

  Meanwhile the child chants ‘Look bogies!’ and holds back his nostrils, gleefully displaying the vile contents of his head to all concerned.

  “He’s got attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, poor mite,” explains Janet.

  Eunice’s fixes me with a glare that says: Bernard, don’t you dare say anything. Over tea, the tiny tyrant, far from being clapped in irons, beeps away at a Gameboy and noisily sucks a litre carton of chocolate milk through a straw. So much for punishment.

  Monday 3rd July: BAE ringmaster at Airbus circus

  Only a bunch of clowns would make an aircraft with a Spanish tailfin, a German fuselage, British wings, and glued together by the French. Oh dear, the A380 doesn’t fit together. Profit warning, angry customers. Only then does BAE confirm it wants to sell it’s share in Airbus, using a valuation (that it commissioned itself!) that says its stake is worth 20% less than it wanted. What a circus! And we poor shareholders have paid the admission price.

  3pm: Builders finally finish off the conservatory roof. All that is left are the door handles and fittings to be re-ordered from China, because Eunice spotted the last ones were ‘brass effect’ not the gold she ordered. Could have saved £370 plus VAT if we’d accepted them, but oh no, we had to go the whole hog.

  Friday 7th July: Vic and the vixen

  7.15am: Went out for a constitutional to avoid the dreaded life coach and his irritating early morning phone calls that besmirch my Fridays. Marvellous sunny morning, park deserted so strolled over to the hill-top bench and (once discarded pizza box removed) sat to soak up the view of mist-laden beeches in the valley beneath. The sun glinting off the stream silhouetted a heron as it descended on unhurried wings for an early stickleback or two. My reverie was soon disturbed. Along the path was ambling a stocky fellow in an old and shiny gabardine mac, with florid face and a shock of greasy grey hair. The final giveaway was the four filthy Sainsbury bags looped on a string over his shoulder.

  “Mind if I sit down, Governor?”

  “Help yourself,” I replied, though in truth the bench was not as long as I would have liked.

  “I’ve sat here every morning for over twelve years,” he said, revealing a carious grin.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. That’s the life of Vic Handley. Nineteen years in the Royal Navy for king and country, six years with the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company and twelve years here on the brow of Finnstead Fields.”

  He reached into a bag and pulled out a bottle of Magners cider. Unscrewing the top, he peered inside. It was half empty. He took a small swig and then paused before offering me the bottle. “Sorry, Governor. Would you like a drop yourself?”

  “No, thanks.”

  He puzzled for a second, then muttered an apology. He wiped the grime-blackened cuff of his mac vigorously over the bottle top. “That’s better. Must remember me manners.” He waved the newly buffed bottle toward me.

  Trying to suppress my gag reflex, I raised a cautionary hand. “I’ve got a hangover from last night,” I lied.

  “I don’t get them any more,” Vic said. “Still get drunk, mind. But no hangovers. I’ve no place left to have the pain in, what with all me dead brain cells. That’s what me wife reckoned.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Yeah. Alice. Childhood sweetheart. She got the house, the kids, the car, all that in 1973.”

  “When you divorced?”

  He nodded. “Not seen me kids for 20 years. They moved away. Besides, they’d all be grown now, with families of their own. Still, it don’t matter. Not when you got all this to look at every morning. Amazing. No one sees the dawn any more. I mean, really looks at the colours, the shape of the clouds. At five in the morning there’s no one here to see it but me. Even by eight almost everyone else is all rushing about, ferrying kids, jumping in cars and what not.”

  “True. No time to stand and stare.”

  “That was written by a tramp,” Vic said.

  “Really? I had no idea,” I said, hiding my scepticism.

  “You know, in all this there’s only one thing I miss.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My old Garrard record player. She got that too. Here look,” he s
aid, delving into one of his bags. He pulled out a scuffed record still in its sleeve. “I’ve got all my old Billie Holiday ‘78s, but nowhere to play ‘em. Now that’s a shame ain’t it?”

  “They must be worth a bit now,” I said. “Have you been carrying them about like this for 12 years?”

  “Reckon so. They’ve become good friends now. I couldn’t sell them. Besides, money’s not important to me. I’ve got what I need.”

  “Where do you sleep?”

  “Different places. There’s a wooden bus shelter down at Heligoland Road, but I sometimes get moved on. In summer, when it’s dry, I sleep in the woods there. I only get disturbed by the vixen, and she knows me now. We’re like old mates. I bring her the boxes from my KFC chicken dinners, and she’ll take ‘em from my hand now.”

  After another half an hour, and almost reluctantly, I took my leave of Vic. While I could neither sleep rough nor drink cider for breakfast, I realised I had just got a valuable bit of life coaching. And it was free.

  Monday 10th July: V or W, £600,000 question

  Mum phones to say she has received a letter she doesn’t understand. Of course, she rarely understands any of her post, but this letter turns out to be from Telent’s share registrars. Inevitably (and in some excitement) I have to drive round to Isleworth to look at it myself. It turns out there is a match on one of the addresses she provided to the old GEC share register that Telent has. The last contact was back in the late 1960s. However, instead of my father’s actual initials, G. V. Jones, it is down as G. W. Jones. The letter asks Dot to somehow show that these are the same people. How on earth are we going to do that? Perhaps we can prove that our Geoffrey Victor Jones did live at 63, Downland Terrace, but how do we prove that someone called G. W. Jones never did? Hugely frustrating: £600,000 riding on one typing error.