by Louth Nick
“Try that on, Bernard. That’ll be lovely for the winter.”
‘That’ was a scarred outdoor jacket, with an acne of extraneous patches, zips and pockets: Chris Bonnington meets Big Issue.
“I will not. It looks worn out.”
“Bernard, that’s the fashion.”
“In which case I should be off down the Paris catwalks in my cardigan.”
“Bernard, your cardigan could make its way down the catwalks unaided. I have to put it out at night. It uses a litter tray.”
“But look, it says ‘Expedition Leader’ on the back. What nonsense. What expedition?”
“Don’t be so literal, Bernard. It’s just the style.”
“So lying is the style? I am not walking round wearing a lie. And who is Ultimate Endeavour?”
“It’s the label.”
“Why can’t they write it discreetly inside the collar. Not emblazon it in embossed two inch leather letters down the sleeves.”
“You’re making a scene.”
“Look, if this lot want me to wear a marketing billboard they will have to pay. There are some perfectly good plain £70 outdoor jackets there. As far as I can see, at £160 I’m paying them £90 to wear their bloody adverts. Does ITV pay Procter and Gamble to advertise soap powder? Does the FT pay Morgan Stanley to advertise its services? Of course not, so I’m not doing it either.”
Close of play: Sat on some chewing gum on the train on the way home. Grrr.
Tuesday 17th October: Gale of havoc
Martin Gale drives to see me in a state of some agitation. He reminds me, as if any of us could forget, that he’s in a hole with his iSoft shares. He bought £12,000 worth, half of it from a loan secured against his house, and has a break-even level of 285p. The shares are 50p, but today’s AGM statement noted numerous ‘expressions of interest’ in buying the firm. Now the company’s up for sale he reckons it’s a bargain and is bound to rise. His request: Could I lend him ten grand to double up again? As I hesitate, he tells me he’s got £22,000 of debt on ten cards, and has just been forced to sell his 13-year-old daughter’s pony. Bryony hasn’t stopped crying for a week. As I watch him, wondering how to couch my refusal, I see beads of sweat on his ruddy forehead and the desperate forced smile. I feel sorry for him. For Martin, this one share has become an obsession, a personal battle of wills against a price chart, in which all context and logic have been burned away.
“I’m sorry, Martin. I don’t even have it. Have you tried K.P. Sharma?”
He nods mutely, taking in our enormous new hardwood conservatory. As he leaves, coffee and bourbons untouched, he puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be alright,” he says. “Something will turn up.”
Elevenses: All four biscuits. Can’t say I enjoyed them.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Differently abled
Tuesday 24th October: Senile delinquent
With a due sense of dread, took my mother shopping for a mobility vehicle. Found a swanky specialist shop, crammed with everything from stair-climbing wheelchairs to what looked like turbocharged golf carts. This is clearly a hot new industry serving those dicky of heart, dodgy of bladder, and bulging of bank balance. Dot was so excited at the chance of causing some road rage that her dental plate dropped out and the salesman and I spent five minutes rummaging under a Rascal 889 high performance scooter to find it. There being no washbasin in the shop, I kept hold of the loathsome and now dirty object while the purchasing process continued.
“How fash ish that one?” Dot slurred, towards a sleek silver model.
“That’s an 8mph model, Madam,” oozed the young moustachioed salesman. “Suitable for those looking for long distance durability, high performance and some off road capability.”
“Actually, my mother’s career in the Paris-Dakar rally ended some time ago.”
“Can I tesh drive?”
Before I could say ‘no’, the salesman had helped Dot aboard and guided her on the controls. Immediately she reversed over his foot, making him yelp.
“Bernard, lesh get thish one.”
“Don’t you want to look around, Mum? There are plenty of other models.”
“Thish ish the only shilver one.”
The only pleasant surprise was the price: £795, reduced from £1,800. Insurance, amazingly, is merely an option. A 90-year-old with poor vision and addled brain who’d never piloted anything more gutsy than an Asda trolley, is perfectly entitled to joust with juggernauts in an 8mph vehicle without insurance. Still, comprehensive cover only costs £57.50 for the year, so I got it anyway. Bargain!
Elevenses: Two slices of victoria sponge at Dot’s. Returning home on the M25, fished in my jacket pocket for remaining stick of a Kit-Kat. What I brought to my mouth was actually Dot’s dental plate, dotted with lint. My involuntary shudder at this London Dungeon exhibit had me swerve briefly onto the hard shoulder, narrowly missing a broken-down Skoda. In two terrifying seconds my entire portfolio passed before my eyes. It was all red.
Wednesday 25th October: Crumbs away
Share club cancelled. Martin’s ill, Harry’s hung over and K.P.’s away on business.
Elevenses: Invited to join Eunice and Daphne Hanson-Hart for coffee and the last of the bourbons. Daphne still crusading against wheelie bins, ready to die like some Joan of Arc, braised over a pyre of disposable nappies, Weetabix boxes and Dysoned dust.
Close of play: United Biscuits, a company close to my soul, is being taken over by private equity for £1.6bn. One buyer, PAI, already owns Kwik-Fit. Can’t imagine what synergies there are between jaffa cakes and exhausts, but no doubt it’s just Bernard being dim again.
Another thought: Just wonder what investments I can find in mobility vehicles. Perhaps Tanfield, my favourite milk float firm?
Friday 27th October: St Trinian’s Technology College
Son Brian proudly announces he is to be head of maths at the notorious secondary modern near Dorringsfield. It falls to me to show him the local rag. His predecessor, a fine old scholar with 40 years unblemished service, was sacked after being filmed on a mobile phone manhandling a fourteen year old female pupil. The film passed from phone to phone among pupils and was finally posted on YouTube. His complaints that the girl had just head-butted him, and his clearly broken nose, cut no ice with a craven board of governors. Clearly, the real training camps for technological terrorism are in the playground, not Afghanistan. It is our teachers, not the SAS, who are in the front line.
Saturday 28th October: Chocolate devaluation
Picked up box of After Eight Mints as well as a good Bordeaux for Edgingtons wedding anniversary dinner tonight. But how many years? Beyond golden, but before diamond say Eunice. Bakelite perhaps?
Chockies turned out to be shocking rip-off. An After Eight used to fit its sleeve like a banker’s arm in a Savile Row suit, now they’re no bigger than cuff links. It’s just the latest chocolate devaluation. First Wagon Wheels shrank in the 1970s (this won’t affect the tuck in your pocket, as Harold Wilson might have said). Then they chipped away the chocolate on a Club Biscuit. Now it’s After Eights. Don’t they think we notice? Typically tight Swiss. Before Nestlé bought Rowntree, trimming a man’s confectionery would have been unthinkable.
Got home 11.45pm, with Eunice a bit squiffy and shaping up for a hippopotamus manoeuvre. However, Thames Valley Police had left a message, asking us to ring them urgently.
“It’s about your mother,” was all they said. Oh God!
2.20am: Finally back home. What a scare! Dot was apprehended at 9pm on the hard shoulder of the M3 at Sunbury in her mobility scooter. When the police finally stopped her she apparently said: “I’m off to shee my shun. Heesh shtill got me teef.”
Untrue. I posted them back on Wednesday by recorded delivery. She must have lost them again and forgotten. Wilful and demented, but so very rich. What can we do with her?
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Orchard pillage
Sunday 29th October: Investing in disability
Fin
ally got my Excel spreadsheets to work correctly. Even wrote a formula which gives me year-to-date returns! Unfortunately, this works out at precisely zero overall, while FTSE is up almost 10 per cent. Maybe the burgeoning market for disability products conceals a growth stock which can help me outperform?
In my day, the ‘differently abled’ were called invalids, and were lucky to get an unreliable, blue three-wheeler known as a Hillman Limp. These days, the disabled are the new Mafia. Blue-badged Chelsea Tractors occupy double yellows with impunity, mobility scooters clog supermarket aisles and public buildings are ripped apart to provide access ramps and lifts. Such is the clout of the disability lobby that the entire London Routemaster bus fleet, the capital’s most iconic tourist symbol, was scrapped due to not “connecting with the disabled”. Tell that to my old asthmatic schoolmate Stan Atkins who was knocked down by a number 159 outside Streatham Bus Garage in 1968 and has carried his innards in a bag ever since. However, seeing the market opportunity is the easy bit. Where is the pure play share for me to buy?
Elevenses: Finally found that piece of Kit-Kat in other jacket.
Big family lunch, usual disaster. Eunice cooked fine leg of lamb with cauliflower, but defiant grandson’s reaction was: “Uuurgh.”
Far from clouting her monstrous offspring, Janet resorted, like so many consensus-seeking New Age mothers, to begging: “Please, Digby. Just for me. A tiny forkful.”
“No. Want hoops.”
“Please, darling. We can have spaghetti hoops tonight.”
“No.”
Eventually she cut up his meal into tiny bits for him, each morsel drowned in salad cream. Digby even negotiated eating it on the lounge floor while watching Monsters Inc on DVD, with Janet on hand to ferry salad cream and mop up spillages. He may only be eight, but I can see a great future for him negotiating sugar tariffs in the WTO. The other side wouldn’t stand a chance.
Brian, emboldened by his new head of department role, is growing a beard, though if he wants to protect himself against head-butts he’ll need more than that. He continues to hound me about my investment in Bovis (which at 950p is now 44 per cent above my purchase price less than a year ago!) He sees all house builders as latter day Genghis Khans despoiling the countryside, tearing down trees and replacing them with soulless boxes. He, however, has yet to come to terms with moving to Dorringsfield, where he will undoubtedly struggle to buy a house outside the new estates clustered around the school. Things have moved on since I lived there as a boy, when you could get a detached house in Old Dorringsfield village for 800 guineas with an acre of orchard and two hen houses thrown in.
Tuesday 31st October: Incendiary rules
Shopping for fireworks. The trouble began because Densley Fields is off limits for fireworks again this year for health and safety reasons, and I decided to have a family display at home.
Many years since I’d done it, but expected to enjoy looking for two bob roman candles, sixpenny catherine wheels, jumping jacks and shooting stars, but hadn’t reckoned on the new nanny state rules. First mistake was choosing the local fly-by-night discount retailer, which had been set up on a short lease in what had been a branch of Currys (until that chain decided that being close to the customer on the high street was providing an uncharacteristically good service that could damage its reputation).
Entering this Aladdin’s cave, I realised that all the produce was in glass cases under lock and key. The anorexic young shop assistant was so busy texting that she didn’t pay any attention to my increasingly robust harrumphs.
“Excuse me. I’d like to buy some fireworks,” I finally said.
“‘Old on.”
“I have been holding on, for some considerable time. What are you sending, War and Peace?”
“Eh?”
“Never mind. Can you get some of these boxes out? I’d like to get a selection.”
“Everyfing’s a mixture.”
“I can’t see them in there. Can you get them out for me?”
“Which one do you want?”
“I haven’t decided, and I won’t until I’ve had a look.”
“They’re all sealed though.”
“I want to look.”
“It’s elfinsafety innit.”
“I don’t want to ignite the bloody things, just have a look.”
My insistence brought forth an elaborate eye-rolling sigh, and extended key jangling. Finally, I chose a collection which promised 26 different rockets exploding at various altitudes, though none would match the stratospheric price: £110!!!
Before taking my card the elfin erk turned her vacant face on me and recited the following at a gabble: “You warrant that you are at least 18 years old.”
“Of course.”
“It is your responsibility to ensure that they do not fall into the hands of children.”
“They’ve just been in the hands of children!”
“Eh?”
“You’re not 18, are you?”
“I am, nearly. Anyway, the manager’s over forty.”
So she’s allowed to sell them, but not buy them. What a curious world.
Elevenses: Cappuccino and lemon cup cake in The Coffee Shoppe. Have enough explosives under my seat to launch myself into orbit. Gives a curious sense of power. I wonder if that’s how Guy Fawkes felt?
7.30pm: Oh, yes, it’s bloody Halloween, the imported festivity that is replacing our traditional Penny for the Guy. Some local yobbos with black capes and skeletal face masks have just thrown two eggs at the house just because we refused to answer the door to this American ‘trick or treat’ nonsense. They don’t fool me though, I can spot a ginger-haired O’Riordan delinquent a mile off.
Wednesday 1st November: Losing a fortune on Fortune
Share Club meets without Martin Gale. Mike Delaney reveals that Martin is joining the IVA multitudes to deal with his debt. Hopefully, that will finally mean that he will part with those stupid iSoft shares which are now at 43p and falling daily. I get more congratulations about Rank, which at 250p is up 18 per cent on our August buy. The club still doesn’t have enough cash to buy anything else, so Chantelle, today sporting a new lip ring, makes a suggestion:
“We should sell Fortune Oil. It’s a dog, and tying up cash.”
“That was Martin’s pick,” K.P. reminds us.
“He’ll be gutted,” Harry says. “You can’t do it. Not unless he’s here.”
“Look,” said Chantelle. “The chances are that Martin’s going to have to cash in his chips at the club under an IVA, isn’t he? If we sell some shares now, we’ll have the cash to pay him back his due, won’t we?”
Nobody had thought of that. But when we came to sell Fortune, we saw a colossal 5.55-5.85p bid-offer spread, which effectively doubled the loss to 15 per cent. We went ahead anyway.
Elevenses: Probably a pint too many at the ’Bells. Drive back on lanes through Old Dorringsfield. The old orchard is fenced off under a giant Celandine Homes sign! Screech the Volvo to a halt to read notice detailing 86 executive homes. For God’s sake this is green belt! A huge bulldozer is squatting in the orchard, beyond which half the Worcester Pearmain trees have already gone, just stumps left. Beyond them the pear tree, thank God, still stands proud amidst a sea of mud. Somewhere on its trunk in 1961 I carved “B.J. loves A.W.” Took me absolutely hours. Amelia Wrigley. Lovely, teasing, curvy Amelia. My God. All those memories, all here…
Just then, a bloke in a hard hat wanders up to me. “Interested in one of these, then?”
“No, I’m bloody not.”
He shrugs, then looks back at me. “Here, are you alright mate?”
“Must be a piece of grit,” I lie. He hands me a grubby packet of tissues. I thank him and flee to the car, dabbing my eyes. Safely inside, I lean my face on the wheel and howl like a child. Good grief, where did that come from?
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Going to War for Love
Thursday 2nd November: Assisted passage
Celandine Homes has a
nerve. Can’t believe the bastards got planning permission! I can’t bear the thought of 86 awful mock-Georgian executive cubby holes despoiling my childhood memories. I shall ring the council, let them have a piece of my mind. Must save the pear tree. In my heart it already has the blue plaque: ‘In this place on Ascension night 1961, with the scent of blossom in the air (and after 18 months of badgering), Bernard Jones finally lost his virginity to the wonderful Amelia Wrigley.’ What an unexpected parting gift, on the night before her family emigrated to Oz. Ah, Amelia. Hardly a day goes by…What might have been, eh? Still, decisions made and regretted. Can’t do anything about it now, except try to save our tree.
Elevenses: Tried to find some Worcester Pearmains in Waitrose. Nope. Tesco: blank looks. Found a little greengrocer in Shensall village who at least remembered what I was talking about. Said he try to track some down for me, if I left my number. Now, there’s old fashioned service for you.
Friday 3rd November: Brownfield planning blues
Do you know what the council said? Brownfield! It’s an orchard, I said, how can it be brownfield? Turned out the culprit was those tumbledown 1920s chicken coops at the end, where as ten year olds Four-eyes Filton, Bob Snetton and I used to race our pram dragster. Poor old Filton. Lost touch with him after school, but heard he’d been killed in Aden in ’64. Died for Queen and Country. A Mini-Moke reversed over his tent in Falaise Camp, apparently.
Elevenses: Three mince pies, half of a packet on special pre-Christmas offer at Kwik Save.
Eunice seems to sense that something’s up: “Bernard, are you moving house?”
“No. I’m just going through some boxes.”
