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

by Louth Nick

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Bernard gets Swiss Rolled

  Monday 24th July: Geneva believer

  10.30am: Strange phone call. Sultry-sounding woman from Consolidated Bank of Geneva, said I’d been recommended to them. They were just expanding into the UK, and were seeking experienced investors for a high-income fund that was due to be launched in September.

  “Was that Peter Edgington who recommended me?” I asked.

  “Well, the referrers are confidential,” she said, but the tone of her voice suggested I’d hit the nail on the head. “They have been restricted to only one reference each. So it looks like you’re the lucky one.”

  After I asked what this investment actually was, she put me through to a trader, Guy de Burgh. Background racket indicated some big trading room.

  “Hi Mr Jones. Let me tell you about the fund. There are no upfront charges, the annual fee is just a half per cent. The yield will be determined by the tender price, but we’re expecting it to be nine spot two to nine spot four at launch.”

  “9.4 per cent!” I replied. “How is the money invested?”

  “Essentially we’re talking of gold deposits here in Geneva. Now normally commodities don’t produce income, but we’ve put the yellow stuff to work. We’re able to lend this out to cover short-selling of gold futures and options.”

  “That sounds risky to me,” I replied.

  “No, no, not at all. Your capital is fully guaranteed. You see, we are insuring the commodity investors against the slight chance that they have to make physical delivery of the gold that they have sold short. But in reality, 99 times out of a hundred, the positions get closed out. The gold investors either make a loss or a profit, we don’t care which, we just pick up that premium each and every time.”

  “Sounds brilliant,” I said. “I haven’t heard of your bank though.”

  “You haven’t!” Guy snorted, then gave me a website address. “Look us up Mr Jones. Look at all the deals we’ve done. We’ve got Marc Thyssen de Rothschild on the board! We’re approved by the U.S. Federal Reserve, and the National Bank of Switzerland guarantees the value of our gold holding.”

  “I can’t make a decision now,” I replied.

  “Well, don’t take too long. It’s already clear the fund is going to be oversubscribed so we have to close by Friday 10.30 GMT. Also, the other restriction is that we cannot accept more than £40,000 per investor for the same reason. Is that a problem?”

  “Er, no. No problem.” I took the man’s number and agreed to call him back once I’d thought about it.

  Elevenses: An eccles cake.

  Called Peter Edgington, and left a message. Seems he’s still away. Picked up the phone to K.P. Sharma, and then put it down. K.P.’s probably the shrewdest investor I know apart from Peter, but I can do my own research.

  Tuesday 25th July: Don’t know which way to turn

  Jemima off sick. Over breakfast announced she’s pregnant! Went ballistic. How did this happen? Eunice interrupted: “I’m sure it was the usual way Bernard, let’s not have histrionics about it.” Turns out it was Toby, so perhaps it wasn’t the usual way. Allegedly gay Toby who dumped my daughter to run off with a Spanish bond salesman called Carlos, then did a handbrake turn on the sexual orientation roundabout, ditched Carlos and took up again with Jem. This pantomime, it seems, has been going on for weeks. Her answer? “But I still love him, Daddy!”

  Elevenses: Half a packet of plain chocolate digestives, while sitting in the car park outside Kwik Save.

  Wednesday 26th July: Guys and doles

  Huge glossy brochure arrived for me, all about Consolidated Bank of Geneva, with plenty of FAQs, pictures of the guarantee certificate, and documents with the Fed letterhead. Took another look at the website. It had a clock counting off the minutes before the offer closed. I’d heard a lot of stories about scams, but this was clearly a professional bank. No spelling mistakes or bad grammar, and some big names aboard including former members of City banks. I phoned Guy in Geneva, and left a message. He called me back just as I was due to go to the Ring o’Bells for share club.

  “Hi Mr Jones, have you made a decision?”

  “Well I still have a few questions. There have been so many scams, you know.”

  He laughed. “Tell me about it. I fell for one myself, in 1992. These guys took me for a hundred thou and left me on welfare. You’re absolutely right to ask. That’s why we know you’re the kind of guy we need. Shrewd and smart. Don’t make a decision now, just send in the bank details form and the signed debit mandate. Leave the subscription form until tomorrow, when you decide how much you want to invest.”

  Didn’t tell a soul at share club. Filled out all the forms, set my sub at £10,000. I reckon I could get another advance on the mortgage for this and still be quids-in on the difference between the 9.4 per cent yield and the 5.2 per cent mortgage fix we’re on. I’m just off to post it now.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Special Delivery

  Thursday 27th July: Not so Royal Mail

  4.30pm: Just posted my letter to Consolidated Bank of Geneva. As soon as I let go of the envelope I felt nervous about having sent off all my banking details to a foreign bank. Just then, who should I see but a very tanned Peter Edgington. Obviously now back from his villa in Capri, he was walking his springer spaniel, Bartholomew. After small talk, he said. “Didn’t quite understand your phone message, Bernard. I haven’t recommended you to any bank. What was it called again?”

  When I told him Consolidated Bank of Geneva, his face contorted. “Never heard of that one. Had you?”

  “I looked up their website, they’re quite big actually,” I replied.

  “Can’t see why any reputable bank should be cold calling. I trust you told them where to go, Bernard.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I lied. I made some excuse to go into the papershop, and when I came back looked again at the pillar box. What a fool I’ve been! Oh God, I have to get that letter back. The collection is at 5pm. No one was about. Compared the width of my arm to the slot. Managed to get my hand in, but you would need limbs like Kate Moss to manage the 90 degree angle down, and the box was nowhere near full. Went back into paper shop and bought glue, an eraser and some string. Sat on the wall outside, tied the eraser to the string, coated it with glue, and after looking carefully around, lowered it inside the box. The letters seemed about a foot down. As mine was the last in, it should be on the top. Gingerly, hauled up the string, peered through the flap and there it was! Trouble was, the angle was all wrong, and the A4 envelope kept jamming against the roof. I tried to nudge it to the correct angle with my fingers.

  “Well, really!” I turned around to see a large middle-aged woman. “May I get to the box? The collection is in a minute.”

  “Won’t be a minute,” I said and turned back to my task.

  “Excuse me, but stealing the post is a criminal offence,” she added.

  As I turned round, the string jerked and the letter fell. “Damn, now look what you’ve made me do. I needed my letter back because I haven’t put the cheque in it.”

  “That will save you some money then”, she said as pushed a great pile of letters past me into the slot. After a final exchange of snarls and mutterings, she strode off. Two minutes later a Post Office van pulled up. A greasy-haired youth, wearing his uniform in the sloppiest secondary modern manner, slouched out, stared insolently at me, and opened the box.

  “Excuse me,” I wheedled. “I wonder if you could help? I’ve posted a bill without putting the cheque in. Would it be possible to have it back?”

  “Na mate. Regulations. Could lose me job.”

  “Who’d know?”

  “Dunno. You could be Adam Crozier’s dad for all I know.”

  I looked him over, and took a gamble. “Would a fiver change your mind?”

  “Are you trying to bribe an employee of Royal Mail?”

  “A tenner?” I whispered, pleadingly.

  “Twenty and you’re sorted,” he said,
looking around. While I opened my wallet, muttering, he looked around and opened the sack. Once identified, he handed me the letter and took the cash.

  Close of play: Envelope burned, £10,000 saved. Bliss and relief. Bought a Toblerone to celebrate. Something Swiss you can trust.

  Friday 28th July: Pridgeon post

  Dot’s old correspondence includes a letter addressed to Dad at 63, Downland Terrace and postmarked 1938. He was nineteen then, and a letter from the landlord, one Mr Pridgeon, mentions that he is the only tenant. That should get rid of the ambiguity over the G. W. or G. V. Jones. Photocopied letter and envelope and sent original to Telent share registrar’s ‘dissentient investor department’. Hopefully, my mother’s claim to £600,000 worth of shares should be verified.

  Elevenses: Remains of Toblerone.

  Close of play: The FTSE100 has risen above 5,900. I think we can pronounce the correction slain, despite the ongoing Middle East fighting. Trouble is, most of my shares haven’t recovered.

  Saturday 29th July: St Austell here we come

  Ah, blessed holiday. Going away to Cornwall for a week this morning. Brian has lent me his old laptop computer, so I can keep an eye on the City news. While Eunice buys up porcelain knick-knacks to fill our new conservatory, I can sit in the garden of our hotel and keep my finger on the financial world’s pulse. Clotted cream beckons!

  10.30am: Set off two hours late. Pulled a muscle in my back lifting one of Eunice’s three giant suitcases into the Volvo. Eunice opened all three searching for Ibuprofen and in so doing unleashed a volcano of elasticated trousers, peasant skirts, silly fashion belts, and enough miscellaneous knitwear to stock a branch of Help the Aged. My own neat luggage, meanwhile was squashed flat. Glad I brought a tupperware box for any edibles I need to conceal.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Laptop Dancing

  Tuesday 1st August: Priceless

  Staying at St. Austell, or Snozzle as it is known locally. Standard British summer holiday experience. Chilly, overcast, £70 per night hotel, a view over the local Kwik Fit. Tried repeatedly to operate laptop, borrowed from Brian, to check portfolio. Bit concerned about Hornby, whose shares have been drifting down since their peak of 250p in July.

  Found you need the dexterity of a bomb disposal expert to use the tiny mouse button in the keyboard. Couldn’t get into the usual financial websites either. After hours spent squinting at the screen discovered that this ungrateful piece of machinery ‘won’t accept cookies’. Clearly Mr Dell is being prodded about cholesterol too.

  Elevenses: Scone and tea with Eunice in café overlooking the old harbour. Immediately the waitress posed the ‘fresh cream or butter’ question, Eunice interjected: “Neither for Bernard, and not too much jam either.” I feel gastronomically repressed.

  Sat on a bench to read yesterday’s prices in the Telegraph. The moment I lifted the paper, Eunice started on the subject of Jemima’s pregnancy. “What are we going to do about it, Bernard?” There then followed 90 minutes of pointless debate until the rain returned and the paper, still unread, was pressed into service as a rain hat.

  Close of play: Walking back to hotel, nipped into HSBC branch which had Teletext of closing prices. Eunice tugged me out so quickly that all I recall is Xansa, up 2p. I don’t even own it.

  Thursday 3rd August: Trouble in the garden of Eden

  Eden Project. The best use of an old English China Clays quarry imaginable. Used to own ECC shares back in the 1980s. Couldn’t understand why it failed to prosper and was eventually taken over. ECC sat right on top of its raw material, had a market for paper coatings for glossy magazines, yet somehow lost its way.

  Noon: Leaving parking slot at Eden, Eunice driving today in view of my dodgy back. While lecturing me on antioxidants, she robustly reverses the Volvo into something. Breaking glass, angry yells. We emerge to see a Mr Kipling van with a broken front light, and a pile of bakery trays tipped out at the back. Enough wasted apple tarts, cup cakes and viennese whirls to fill a thousand Hornby drawers. Emerging from the carnage is 20 stone of hirsute Brummie, with a cut head. “Chroist almighty,” he intones in adenoidal fury. “Why deencha look beoind?”

  “You’re in the wrong place,” Eunice says. “The tradesmen’s entrance is there. Can’t you people read simple signs?”

  “You cheeky southern cow.” The gorilla calmly walks past Eunice and reaches inside the Volvo. Crack! He emerges with the driving mirror, which he gives to Eunice. “Here. ’Old that. I’ll just remove the other bits you don’t use.” He then grasps a wing mirror and starts twisting.

  “Bernard, do something!” Eunice cries.

  “I shall write a stiff letter to your employer about this! I’m a large shareholder in RHM,” I lied.

  “I’m outsourced, you pillock. I don’t work for Rank ’Ovis anymore. It’s the new economy and yer can’t touch me.”

  Later, as I sit in the passenger seat with three mirrors on my lap, I reflect on the attractions of investing in insurers.

  Friday 4th August: Revenge of the hippo

  Awful sleepless night. Back still playing up from lifting Eunice’s luggage. Fretting over Dot’s inheritance, my portfolio, bill for Volvo repairs. At 2am, couple upstairs began the mother of all hippopotamus manoeuvres, working up to a choral crescendo that had the glassware on our dressing table vibrating. As I’d feared, Eunice awoke with ideas of her own. As she slid over me in a hiss of BHS nylon I knew, like all prisoners of war, that resistance would be futile. However, when it came to decibels, Eunice’s sciatica and my crushed vertebrae show that agony beats ecstasy every time.

  Elevenses: She must be pleased. I was allowed a mug of hot chocolate with a swirl of cream on top.

  7pm: Using laptop, which suddenly burning hot on my knee. Jumped up, hopping around in pain. Yanked the mains cable out and rushed the recalcitrant device outside where it smoked like Vesuvius for 15 minutes. I think I’ll go back to paper and pencil.

  Sunday 6th August: Prawn free

  Wonderful sunny morning, up early, free to buy the Sunday papers, wander down to the harbour and generally enjoy myself on our last day. This possible only because Eunice has Tintagel tummy and remains in bed. The culprit I’m sure is last night’s ‘salade de fruits de mer’. Prawns, in my humble opinion, are merely maritime cockroaches, and crayfish just pensionable relatives with antennae the size of GCHQ. They cost so much because the description is in French, and you need a Paraguayan torturer’s toolbox to get at them. Rick Stein has a lot to answer for.

  Elevenses: Double bacon and egg doorstep with real butter, plus two fruit scones with butter jam AND cream (so there). Bought clotted cream, fudge and nougat to fill my Tupperware box, now secreted deep in luggage.

  A new and exciting investment idea is hatching: restaurants! Money for old rope, definitely.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Quite Contrarian

  Monday 7th August: Pig in a pipe

  BP’s dropped itself in boiling oil again. First blowing up its workers in Texas City, then leaking oil in the Arctic, now it’s rusty pipes from Prudhoe Bay. As Betonsports discovered, once the U.S. legal system starts to get interested, things have a nasty habit of getting much worse. I have often been tempted to buy BP shares, but I keep remembering what Peter Edgington said a couple of years ago, that we should be contrarian about management cycles as well as share price cycles. With Lord Browne he reckoned, the reputation and expectation was so stellar that even mediocrity would generate disappointment and the wrong kind of headlines. I hate it when he’s right, but he looks to be so, once again.

  Elevenses: Two pieces of fudge with clotted cream on top, the remainder (too large for the Hornby drawer) being concealed in an airtight box in the long tunnel of the model railway. Delicious, hidden pleasures. Others philander, I just eat confectionery. So why am I persecuted?

  Close of play: Why is it everyone else’s shares recover but mine?

  Tuesday 8th August: Ginger nuts

  Gaah!! Now that I’ve sold the little sods,
Spirent shares are soaring on stake building by its U.S. rival Agilent Technologies. Got just 33p for them on 29th June, and now they’re 36p. Damn and blast!

  “That’s some particularly severe harrumphing, Bernard,” Eunice noticed over breakfast. “Look, you’ve torn the Telegraph.”

  I made some excuse and went out into the garden. The bloody O’Riordans have now installed a trampoline in their garden, and even at 9.15am the heads of giggling ginger monsters could be seen from time to time over my fifteen foot leylandii hedge. Perhaps I’ll invite Harry Staines over on Sunday. He’s a member of the local clay pigeon shoot, and cracking ginger nuts would be just as easy. “Pull! Bang…crumbs!”

  Elevenses: Finally fixed the lock on the Hornby drawer, inaugurated it with a packet of jam tarts. This will now be my own territory, barred to Eunice and others. Have decided to put a sign on the door of the den: You are now entering the People’s Republic of Lemon Curdistan.

  Close of play: Spirent now up at 38p. Grrrr.

  Wednesday 9th August: iSoft in the head

  Share club meeting, first for several weeks. Nothing very impressive in our portfolio. Fortune Oil is now at 5.8p, down 11 per cent on purchase, while Billiton is hovering around a tenner, down a similar percentage. We’ve accumulated a bit of cash from monthly contributions, which Martin Gale wants to spend on iSoft. He’s almost deafened by the chorus of ‘no’.