by Louth Nick
“But it’s a real bargain, now,” he complained. “It’s the same company at the start of the year, but now you can get it for an eighth the price.”
It was noticeable that one thing Martin did not say was how big a personal position in iSoft he already had.
“I don’t know much about iSoft,” said K.P. Sharma, “But aggressive revenue booking is a sign of desperation. Even if it’s not fraudulent, it’s far too high risk for us.”
“What about a restaurant group?” I suggested. “We now spend more eating out than eating at home. Look at what some City-types spend eating out. There must be something out there.” I told them that one of my best performing shares was Domino’s Pizza, and that other chains could replicate that successful roll-out.
Chantelle, now sporting lime green hair and a row of new studs just under her collarbones, suggested a bank or utility to get some income and stability into the portfolio.
“What about a shipyard, love,” responds Harry Staines. “You’d keep ‘em in business buying all them rivets. You’re halfway to being a Dalek, aren’t you?”
Finally, after Chantelle has threatened to exterminate Harry, I was deputed to research a suitable leisure industry share and present it in a fortnight.
Elevenses: Two packets of pork scratchings at the Ring o’Bells. Think I dislodged a filling.
Close of play: Spirent up again at 41.5p. What torture!
Thursday 10th August: Bingo wings
Morning spent researching leisure firms. The restaurants, like Carluccios on a P/E of 30, just look too expensive. Then I stumble on Rank. It’s about as fashionable as kiss-me-quick hats and Capstan Full Strength, but at 200p the P/E’s just six and the dividend yield nearly seven per cent. The more I look at it, the cheaper it appears. The Hard Rock Café, which I presume I couldn’t bear to eat in, seems to make pots of money and there’s all sorts of restructuring possibilities.
Close of play: Liquid bomb plot news was terrifying. I think K.P. was flying to India today. Hope he’s O.K. Interesting how resilient the UK share market is these days. Just 30 points down in the end. We’ve managed Dunkirk and the IRA, I’m sure we can do without hand luggage. Besides, after my experience with inflammable laptops, the best place for those is in the recycling bin not the hold. Spirent up again, 43.25p, gah!
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Bournville Ultimatum
Friday 11th August: Spiralling higher
Spirent seems to be climbing again on these bid hopes. Really cross. It’s almost 36 per cent above the 33p I sold at in June. Those are my losses that someone else is recouping. My money and I want it back. Don’t really know what to do. If I buy now, the bid might not come, but if I don’t buy, then it surely will. There is so much investment information out there, and I’ve got enough of it on the shelves of the den to replant the Siberian taiga. But none of it tells you what to do at a moment like this.
Elevenses: Two jam tarts with a blob of clotted cream on each. Comforting.
Saturday 12th August: Men are from Mars, women from Nestlé
9am: Jemima, who didn’t come home last night, arrives looking weepy. “I’m not pregnant,” she announces.
“Oh, thank God. What a relief,” I say, getting up to give her a hug, but she bursts into tears and thunders up the stairs. “You’re so BEASTLY,” she yells down.
I’m baffled. She didn’t want a baby, and now she’s not going to have one. Her career won’t be dented, we won’t have to play at being childminders. Good news, surely? Yet suddenly, there’s more waterworks than Thames Water’s annual spillage.
“What did I do?” I ask Eunice, after she comes back from comforting Jem.
“Bernard, look. Even though she didn’t want the baby, losing it even at two months represents a loss of a dream, the end of a future life.”
“A future with Toby? That’s an impossible future, surely.”
“Oh never mind, Bernard. You’ll never understand.” she says. Spend the rest of the day hiding behind the pink certainties of the FT. Even managed a surreptitious Mars bar.
Monday 14th August: The Plastic Pol Pot
9am: Knock on door. There stands the chief hobgoblin of Waste Services, one Gordon Fletcher, apparently none the worse for his battles with Daphne Hanson-Hart. Ominously, he is carrying a plastic bag at arms length, as if it were radioactive.
“Are you Mr Bernard Jones?” he says.
“Yes.”
“According to official records, you were allocated the wheeled waste recycling receptacles with the following codes.” From his clipboard he read out some absurdly long serial numbers.
“I have no idea. I’ve got better things to do than memorise bin numbers. What’s the problem?”
“We’ve had reports of recycling infringements in regards to the said receptacles.”
“I shouldn’t think so. My wife’s greener than Swampy.”
“That’s as may be.” He opened up the bag and showed me some plastic objects. “I have to tell you that these were recovered from your wheeled recycling receptacle. They are in contravention of the regulations.”
“You recycle plastic, don’t you?”
“Ah, but this is a yoghurt pot,” he said, showing me the offending object. If you had read page five of your guide…”
“So? It’s made of plastic isn’t it? What’s more, it contained 100 per cent organic strawberry live yoghurt. Should be just what you want.”
“No, no, no. Obviously, we can’t take plastics that aren’t either PET1 or HPDE2.”
“What do you mean by ‘obviously’?”
“Look at the bottom. It says PP5. Now this one,” he said, showing me a margarine pack. “This says PS3. It’s well known that yoghurt pots, margarine containers and packaging for other sundry refrigerated consumable emulsions….”
“What in God’s name is a consumable emulsion?”
“Quasi-solids, normally containing air. Chocolate mousse, for example. As distinct from non-consumables such as Dulux vinyl silk.”
“I’m a council taxpayers, not a bloody biochemist. I don’t give a flying organic fig about yoghurt pots, or emulsion, come to that. I can’t read those tiny embossed letters, and I do not intend to try. Perhaps you should turn your attentions to the manufacturers, so that they only supply packaging that can be recycled.”
“That’s not my department. The regulations are very clear, and I’m afraid that I have to caution you that you have infringed. Now on this occasion I’m going to be lenient. We prefer to re-educate where possible, except in the most recalcitrant cases.”
“So I’m to be dragged off to Hanoi, am I?”
“Beg pardon?”
“Re-education. Do you tinpot Pol Pots know what you sound like? Even a little bit of power goes to your heads. God help us all when ID cards come in.”
Now I realise what Daphne Hanson-Hart is on about when she said wheelie bins are a threat to the British way of life.
Elevenses: Two Mr Kipling pastry-based fruit emulsion receptacles. In a daring gesture of revolutionary zeal, tossed their foil containers in the green waste bin. How they will tremble in the halls of the mighty!
Tuesday 15th August: Councils of despair
Local councils, so I read, are now playing the foreign exchange markets with the pension funds of their employees. What an appalling thing to do, even if professional fund managers are placing the trades. Martin Gale, the share club’s loosest of speculative cannons, isn’t yet drawing his local authority pension but even he won’t approve of this surely. It’s like saying: “I’m not happy with the returns on gilts, so I’m off to the casino. But it’s alright, I won’t be gambling myself. I’m funding the chips for Texas ‘Bob’ Gunsmoke.”
Elevenses: Last of the Cornish nougat. Good job the Hornby drawer is lockable now, because a bunch of grapes has been spilled across the den by a mysterious intruder. Like cluster bombs, I keep finding I’ve stood on one. This is just the latest unprovoked gastronomic attack on Lemon Curdis
tan.
Close of play: Spirent now soars to 46.5p. Grrr!
Wednesday 16th August: Astrid travel
Awful O’Riordans. Our neighbours have gone too far. Not content with having paved over the whole front garden and filled it with an estate car, a Chelsea tractor and a quad bike, I got up to discover a giant camper van at the front about the same size as a National Express coach. Not only had it damaged the plane tree on the ornamental grass strip, but it completely blocked sunlight into our lounge.
“Go and have a word with them, Bernard,” said Eunice.
All very well for her. Not looking forward to confronting Ken O’Riordan or his poisonous bottle-blonde wife.
11.15am: By the time I’ve plucked up courage, the wagon is mysteriously gone. I walk outside into the street and there is blissful calm. No music, no swearing, no shouting. Indeed, it’s a gorgeous hot day, best for weeks. Then I notice that the O’Riordans have left their front door open. I call out to see if anyone is home. No reply. Walk into the kitchen and tumble over a woman, working backwards with a mop in her hand and who, because of her iPod, hadn’t heard me. She is on her feet in a second, shrieking.
“Oh my God! You almost scared me to death,” she says, one hand on her heaving chest, the other helping me up. She is quite the most beautiful creature. Huge brown eyes, wavy chestnut hair, long tanned limbs protruding from skimpy shorts and T shirt, and as graceful as a gazelle. She cannot be more than 25. Getting my breath, I explain that I’m a neighbour. She is Astrid, an au pair, who arrived from Copenhagen yesterday. The O’Riordans had just left for a fortnight, presumably off blocking the minor roads of Britain in their tank. She offers me coffee while we get our breath back, and I accept. She’s disarmingly friendly and chatty. I am transfixed.
“Where have you been, Bernard, lunch was ready an hour ago,” Eunice asks when I finally return. I tell her I’ve been walking, but Eunice’s eyebrow seems to twitch.
“Oh, really. Walking to Kwik Save, I suppose to stock up on chocolate.”
“I haven’t been to Kwik Save!”
“And you don’t have a Bounty concealed in your trouser pocket? ”
“I haven’t!”
“Well, it looks like you have. And you look very guilty. Don’t blame me if your pancreas gives up the ghost. I’ve done my best.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine: One Man Went to Mow
Thursday 17th August: Sign on the dotty line
Glory be, Dot’s had the letter we’ve all been waiting for! Dad’s position on the GEC shareholder register back in the 1960s has been confirmed. They accept there was no G.W. Jones living at 63, Downland Terrace as the original register entry had it, only my father G.V. Jones. This means my mother as his heir is entitled to her 142,930 shares in BAE, which were given to GEC shareholders in an asset swap in 1999. We’re all rich! Portfolio problems over for good! Trouble is, who can predict what a batty 90 year old would want to do with all this lolly?
After Dot had read the letter over the phone to me, I tried to explain all this to her. Trembling fingers sliding over my calculator I told her that even at yesterday’s depressed closing price of 344p, well down from February’s 450p peak, her shares were worth almost £492,000.
“Oh good. That means I can get a new kettle. That Russell Hobbs is playing up again. And the tea towels are full of holes…”
“Mum, you can do anything you want. Anything! You could have that dishwasher we’ve been talking about.”
“I told you Bernard, I won’t have anything made by the Hun. Not after what they did to Auntie Vera and her macaw in the Blitz.”
“Mum, Bosch is just a brand. I’m not even sure it’s made in Germany. You don’t have to have a Bosch, there’s dozens of different types. There’s some made in Italy…”
“Aren’t there any English ones? I want an English one.”
“I’ll look into it Mum. Look, forget the dishwasher! You could go on a cruise! You could move out of Isleworth, closer to us. Anything.”
“Mrs Tilly from number nine went on a cruise. And they sailed five times round the Isle of Wight. And they gave her curry. I’m not eating that African muck.”
Finally, I gave up. I’ll go round at the weekend. Soon I’ve got to bring up inheritance tax planning. I’m not looking forward to that at all. The byzantine details of Gordon Brown’s tax regime are too much even for professionals, yet alone confused pensioners.
Elevenses: Celebratory bottle of champagne with Eunice. Booked a table at La Pergola for dinner on Saturday.
2pm: Wandered out into the garden. Glorious sunny afternoon, and all is well in the world. Sound of lawn mower from next door. The delightful Astrid, house-sitting for the Bloody O’Riordans next door, seems to have been cruelly lumbered with gardening. Suddenly hear a bang. Run along to the bottom of the garden where the hedge is low, and see Astrid in a pale blue bikini bending over the hover mower. Good God, what a sight she is!
“I think it’s broken”, she said in her lovely Danish lilt. I can see it’s true. She’s chopped clean through the power cable. Let’s see if I can help.
Close of play: I’d been gone quite a while when Eunice came out to find me, finally seeing me over the low hedge. “Bernard, why on earth are you mowing next door’s lawn?”
“Their mower’s broken.”
“But you absolutely detest mowing. And you’re not overly fond of the O’Riordans.”
“Just being neighbourly, dear.”
At this moment Astrid emerged with a glass of lemon barley water for me. “Mrs Jones, your husband is so kind. I broke the mower machine, so he offered to let me use yours.”
“Yes, he is so selfless, isn’t he?” Eunice said looking Astrid up and down then turning a basilisk gaze on me. “Bernard. I think you had better come in now, before you get a melanoma.”
Needless to say, after the venomous row that ensued, La Pergola was cancelled and I retreated to the model railway for the evening.
Friday 18th August: Milk float punt
Missed a wonderful piece of news yesterday. BAE Systems has landed a giant new arms deal with the Saudis. Shares jumped 20p by the close, making Dot £28,586 richer! Still, am absolutely baffled why Saudi Arabia needs all these weapons. Seems to be the one Middle Eastern country that never fights anyone as far as I can see.
Used the internet to look into dishwashers for Dot. Found Hotpoint, which I thought was a UK brand, and has factories here. However, turns out the firm is owned by Indesit of Italy. What on earth has happened to British industry? No volume carmaker, no lorries, no washing machines, no hi-fis. The only ‘industry leader’ I did find was a little firm called Tanfield, dominating that absolutely crucial next generation industry: milk floats! So when the lights go out in the halls of UK industry, at least someone will have picked up the empty bottles from the doorstep.
Elevenses: Lemon curd tart, while I downloaded Tanfield’s annual report online (you old sophisticate, Bernard). How wrong I was about milk floats! The AIM-listed firm has a bulging order book in zero emission vehicles, using battery power for jobs like airport luggage loaders, aerial lift vehicles and the like. Shares are already doing well. Worth further investigation.
Chapter Thirty: Angel Cake
Saturday 19th August: Dot’s lucid moment
Having seen the solicitor yesterday, arrived at Mum’s with full documentation. Repeated whole GEC/BAE share story until I was blue in the face, and outlined why we need to set her up a broking account and start selling some shares immediately for both tax and inheritance reasons. Finally, I broached the subject of ‘potentially exempt transfers’.
Dot’s eyes narrowed: “You’re not trying to diddle me out of your father’s money are you?”
“No Mum, of course not. It’s not for me, but for Yvonne, and for your grandkids Jem and Brian, and little Digby. It’s just that if you pass some on to Yvonne and me now, so long as you live for another seven years, you won’t pay tax on it.”
“How can I pay ta
x when I’m dead?”
“It comes from your estate, Mum.”
“But that just means you get less, doesn’t it?”
“Well, yes.”
“So it’s you that pays the tax, not me.”
“If you like, yes.”
“I see, so you want me to give you my money now so I won’t inconvenience you by dying, is that it? Well, it’s Geoffrey’s money and he would have wanted me to decide.”
Dot’s rare lucid moments always astonish me. It’s as if the senior bookkeeper she used to be has returned, with a mind still as sharp as a pin. Drive all the way home with nothing achieved.
Elevenses: Three slices of battenburg.
Later: Bit overcast, but did a spot of gardening. Mowed the lawn. Replaced pane in the greenhouse broken by Liam O’Riordan’s football. After 45 minutes Eunice stormed out, walked straight past me to look over the low hedge to next door where Astrid was sitting in a garden chair reading a book.
“Bernard,” she hissed leading me away by the arm. “Don’t you realise you are old enough to be her grandfather?”
“Whose grandfather?” I replied.
“Don’t start, Bernard, I’m not in the mood.”
Sunday 20th August: Danish tasty
Weather’s gorgeous again, but garden off limits with Eunice in possession of sun lounger. Despite slices of cucumber over her eyes, she’s clearly on guard. I spent the morning trying to teach myself Excel so I can put my portfolio on a spreadsheet.
Elevenses: Freed of matron’s oversight I brazenly eat a jam tart in the hall, making loud lip-smacking noises.
2pm: From en suite bathroom upstairs notice Astrid is sunbathing. Damned leylandii hedge masks all but her tanned feet…and not one, but TWO pieces of discarded pale blue bikini! Nude sunbathing, in Britain! Could it really be true? Need to get higher! Scamper up into the loft like an adolescent, heart pounding. The only windows here are dormers almost at the apex of the roof, but I can reach one by balancing my Casey Jones stool on the tabletop layout, and stand on it. Carefully position stool to avoid its feet damaging the Unigate milk float poised to cross the level crossing, and the dozen tiny commuter figures which took two weeks to paint. Gingerly, I climb on the stool and ease window open. Eunice is straight ahead, apparently asleep. Need to lean out a bit to see sharp right over the hedge. It’s awkward, but I manage. Oh Lord, the tanned angel is fully as glorious as I’d imagined, wearing nothing but an iPod and sunglasses. She’s humming to herself and twiddling her toes in time to the music. For several seconds I linger in this heavenly position. Then, for some reason, Eunice starts to get up. Panicking, I pull back. Too fast. Once the stool slips, I know I’m doomed.
