by Louth Nick
Phoned Telent, who said try the share registrars. Tried their number and after pressing lots of buttons got through. The name English Electric produced no recognition, neither did pre-war share certificates. They have nothing prior to 1980, and suggested I try the company. “But I’ve tried them. They told me to call you!” Slammed the phone down in disgust.
Elevenses: Took a constitutional and nipped out to Kwik Save, while Eunice and Jem conduct a Toby post-mortem. Bought a Cadbury’s Flake, which I consumed en route, and two packets of jaffa cakes for stashing away. Need somewhere safer than the Hornby drawer, unless I can find the key to lock it.
Close of play: Quick glance showed Marks & Spencer absolutely unchanged at 482p from my short-sell price. Down, boy!
Wednesday 25th January: Sniffing out the truth
Made a cautious call to Peter Edgington, self-styled investment oracle. “How would you find the history of a company 30 or 40 years ago, if you can’t get it online?” He suggested the company secretary, who has annual reports back to the year dot. If there were a company archivist, he said, they would know.
“Which company, Bernard?” he asked casually, the sly old dog. I fobbed him off, but I’m sure he will keep sniffing.
Jemima announced she was taking us out to dinner up in town. Eunice ordered me to dress up, so it was best blazer and brogues, and a quick blast with the nasal hair trimmer. Jem, appropriately enough in black, looked the professional lawyerette, a world away from the sullen child of recent days. A wonderful bottle of Chablis, superb sea bass, and best of all, traditional spotted dick and custard. No doubt a bill to match. Altogether an excellent evening, until the last few minutes. Eunice went off to the ladies, and Jem says: “Daddy, I don’t like to ask, but I know what a share whizz you are. Thought you might have a spare twenty I could borrow?”
Baffled, because I had thought she was paying, I reach for my wallet.
“No, not for tonight. I’ve got that covered. No, I have a bit of a problem, because of Toby,” she says.
As she gabbles out the dreary details, which she seemingly doesn’t want Eunice to hear, it slowly dawns on me that her twenty isn’t twenty pounds (or ten bob, like Mum thinks), it’s twenty thousand. My daughter, casual as a cat, wants to borrow twenty thousand pounds. It’s the invisible word, like a stealth bomber in the middle of the phrase, that causes the damage. I’m too stunned to reply, and Eunice is soon back, sniffing conspiracy.
“What are you two up to?”
I fumble for a reply: “I’ve decided that we shall treat Jem tonight. Isn’t it good to have her back?”
Thursday 26th January: Hippopotamus manoeuvres
Eunice, decidedly squiffy after five glasses of wine, inflicted a hippopotamus manoeuvre on me last night. Cleaning my teeth, and still reeling from Jem’s loan request, I didn’t notice she had donned the dreaded black negligée. Seeing my expression as I emerged from the en suite, she adopted a wounded tone.
“Bernard, please show willing tonight. We’ve done nothing since Boxing Day morning.” So the old soldier, eventually standing to attention, was led to his duty.
Tricky time coming up, a veritable minefield for hippo ambushes: January 30th (our anniversary), February 4th (her birthday), February 14th (an inevitability, this one) then April 1st (my birthday, but I’m expected to want some). In this struggle, my ammo box of excuses is even lower than my libido. Lumbago (over-used), headaches (too predictable), tiredness (pathetic, really), too much alcohol (very high risk: it works on me, but makes Eunice utterly carnivorous). Blood pressure tablets might be promising though. Better still, perhaps I should do a Toby and claim I’m gay.
Chapter Seven: Striking it Rich – For a While
Friday 27th January: Home, home on the range
Finally got through to someone in Telent’s (i.e. Marconi) company secretary department at 3pm. Very helpful woman. Seems GEC takeover of English Electric in 1968 was of five GEC ordinary shares for every three English Electric ordinary, which means Dad’s 100,000 shares equate to 166,666 GEC shares. Then there was a 2:1 split in 1982, making the total 333,332. She looked in the 1999 annual report and said GEC was then worth £5.77 a share. Good God, that’s nearly £2m! Surely even Marconi couldn’t have put paid to all that! She said the recapitalisations of Marconi in 2003 were complex, and there was something about British Aerospace too, so she would e-mail the details. Cloud Nine!!
Eunice is taking Jem to the cinema with Irmgard and numerous trendy cronies tonight. Going to see Bentback Mountain, or whatever it’s called. What is it about middle-aged women and woofters? Eunice never showed the slightest bit of interest in Audie Murphy, Alan Ladd or Bonanza. I can only assume that seeing naked chaps, or even chaps wearing chaps, tickles her. There was some resentment that I refused to go. “Bernard, you have no tenderness. To you the word tender means something that trundles behind a locomotive.” Well, I retorted, I hope you show the same enthusiasm to accompany me when the lesbian stage version of the Sound of Music comes to the West End.
Elevenses: Two undercover jaffa cakes, packets now secreted in the long tunnel on the railway layout. She’ll never find them. Got an appointment with the quack first thing on Monday. Not looking forward to that.
Monday 30th January: Returning to the nest
Got through last night’s wedding anniversary celebration (our 38th) unscathed on the hippopotamus front. Low key meal with Eunice at the Harrow, then sat up talking to Jem until the small hours about debts. By the time I went up Eunice was fast asleep, apparently gargling in Flemish.
The Jem situation is dire. She and Toby bought an expensive flat in Fulham eighteen months ago. He’s given up his job and gone off to Costa Rica with a saxophone-playing bond salesman called Carlos. Toby used to pay the whole mortgage, but isn’t paying anything now.
Jem reckoned she had a solution: “Now I do understand you haven’t got the twenty to spare Daddy, so I was thinking that I can just keep it together with the mortgage and the credit card debts so long as I don’t have any other costs, apart from getting the train in to work.”
“Are you hinting you want to move back in?”
“Oh Daddy! You’re so sweet. That’d be OK, wouldn’t it? If you just rent a van and help me shift all my clutter back here, then I can rent the flat out. Simple!”
What could I say? At least now Eunice’s giant conservatory will be used, if nothing else, to house Jemima’s Hamley’s-sized soft toy collection.
Elevenses: A Crunchie on the way back from the quack’s. Had samples of everything from blood to urine taken and tested. Blood pressure too high. Lots of impertinent questions about diet and alcohol from some humourless locum young enough to be my son. Lectures on exercise and cholesterol. Have to phone for results in a day or two. Not looking forward to that.
Close of play: Bovis still doing well. No sign of that Telent e-mail. Come on, come on!
Tuesday 31st January: Shareholder value
Absolutely scandalous! Unbelievable! Got the Marconi e-mail. Much worse than I thought, with two recapitalisations in 2003. In the first, for every 559 old Marconi shares, you get one new share plus something called warrants. So that’s 333,334 divided by 559, which my lying Woolworth’s calculator insists is 596. Check it and re-check, knock it on the wall, but that’s it. Then in the second in July 2003, for every five shares, again you get just one, which makes that certificate worth 119 Telent shares. And what are they trading at? I look up in the Telegraph, a shade under £4. So a shareholding that was worth £136,000 in 1936, and £1.9m in 1999 is now reduced to just £476. Am absolutely incandescent with rage, and storm out for a walk.
Elevenses: An entire packet of four fondant fancies from Kwik Save, mostly consumed NAAFI style while in the interminable checkout queue. Checkout girl looks up after running the empty box over the barcode reader, to see my hamster-like cheeks bulging. I gave her the cash and fled. Still haven’t got Eunice a birthday present. Damn.
Close of play: Didn’t look.
Can’t bear to see another share price today. I feel like giving up. How is it that a managerial disaster at a company I had the good sense never to invest in can still be our ruination?
Chapter Eight: Qinetiq Energy
Friday 3rd February: Cholesterol capers
Awkward day. Marks & Spencer shares continue to climb, however much I stare at the screen and will them to self-destruct. At 499p, my inaugural spread-bet short-sell is now 17p in the red, that’s £170. Still, I’m pretty sure that 500p will be barrier too far.
Meanwhile, Eunice badgered me relentlessly all morning to phone the quack’s for the results of Monday’s medical. While I made the call she lurked nearby like a hyena sniffing wounded prey. As expected: cholesterol too high. Blah-blah. Make new appointment. Discuss diet. “Oh good, that’s a relief then,” I said to the nurse as I put the phone down. Told Eunice everything was fine. Her narrowed eyes indicate scepticism. I’ll hear more about this for certain.
Elevenses: Last two jaffa cakes from the long tunnel.
Close of play: Hornby shares have been climbing sharply since a trading statement on Monday which reckoned the railway modelling enthusiast is alive and well. I am now! The price has steamed up 30 per cent from 170p to 220p. Still, it is a shame the company seems to be shunting all production across to China.
4.50pm: Oh God! Still haven’t got Eunice a birthday present. It’s tomorrow! Tore into town, got stuck in rush hour traffic as shops gradually emptied and closed. Finally parked and found I’d left my damn list and reading glasses behind. This is going to be a disaster!
Saturday 4th February: Gift horses examined
“A Homer Simpson mug tree, Bernard. How nice.” Eunice distinctly cool about her presents. Did little better with the Victorian-style pyjamas, even though (amazingly) they were the right size. I thought she’d appreciate M&S’s evocation of the industrial designs of Isambard Kingdom Brunel lovingly recaptured in rivet-pleated, reinforced winceyette. As for Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess Eunice muttered that when I became a domestic god, she would up her game, and not before.
Elevenses: Had to play host to Eunice and her cronies for unbelievably tedious birthday coffee and biscuits. Irmgard, the spaniel-faced vegan was there, of course, wearing something that looked woven from old Peruvian fishing nets. Other gin-drenched members of the basket-weaving evening class were there too, plus Peter and Geraldine Edgington. Got cornered by verbal bulldozer Daphne Hanson-Hart, who banged on about the war crime of introducing wheelie bins until I lost the will to live.
Later: Hippopotamus ambush, middle of night. No survivors.
Monday 6th February: Frantic for Qinetiq
Last minute flap to get off an application for Qinetiq shares before today’s deadline. As an ex-MoD man, this company is right up my street, so I’m glad there was a change of heart about letting in the small investor. With a forward P/E of eleven it isn’t even expensive. Brilliant British boffins. Can’t beat ’em. Still, hope they haven’t offered jobs to many of the MoD managers I had to work with. Take the Bowman infantry radio. While anyone can walk into Phones4U today with £40 and get a mobile that weighs less than a satsuma, we spent more than a decade and £2.5bn on a radio that ended up weighing more than a truck battery (and more than its stone age predecessor, the Clansman), gave its users burns and on which you couldn’t even get through to the local Pizza Hut.
Elevenses: Evidence of escaped chimpanzees ransacking the Hornby drawer. Six bananas have appeared. Meanwhile, the remnants of Mr Kipling’s almond slice have gone AWOL. Finally, I tackled Eunice.
“Well, Bernard. I have documentary evidence you do eat bananas. I’ve given up on pears and kiwis.”
The armoured slice, as she called it, is in the bin. Took a stealthy look later on, but it’s irretrievable, covered with Hermès’ leftover cod fillet with parsley sauce. Fussy bloody cat!
Close of play: M&S edged over 500p. Bit worried about this.
Wednesday 8th February: Hells Bells
Inaugural share club meeting in the backroom at the Ring o’Bells in Shensall village. Not been there for years, but it’s still got sticky carpets, rickety chairs and overflowing ashtrays. First face I recognise, apart from Mike Delaney’s, is the florid mug of Harry Staines, towering at the bar. A well-known ex-Navy man with a line in filthy jokes, Harry is otherwise known as the Rear Admiral after an incident in an Alexandrian brothel in 1962. After getting a round in, Harry introduced Martin Gale, a retired civil engineer and leading light of the local ramblers, and K.P. Sharma, who by reputation made a packet when he sold his chain of convenience stores to Costcutter in 2002. K.P. (Harry immediately asks if it stands for King Prawn) is the only one who is prepared, with carrier bags full of papers and a copy of Company Refs.
After two pints and some pork pie at the bar, Mike tries to get the meeting under way, but he’s no match for Harry, who is in the middle of a joke (“Then the Scotsman said: If that’s the best you can do, I’ll sleep with the rabbi.”) After two more pints, nothing was decided except the club name (Hells Bells. It beat the Clangers by a short head) and nothing remembered by me bar the final line of Harry’s joke as I lurched to the gents. “Then Princess Margaret turns around and says to the sepoy: Not in my handbag, you don’t.”
I’m still trying to work out how it started.
Close of play: Violently ill in the downstairs loo.
Chapter Nine: Losing Direction over Compass
Tuesday 14th February: Performance anxiety
Went up to town for Compass AGM at Queen Elizabeth Centre. Dismal, utterly dismal. Not called to give my question, but plenty of others put the boot in. Spent my time among the refreshments looking for Turkey Twizzlers to hurl at the board. Bought Compass shares at 345p in 2004, now 220p. It’s tempting to sell, but then if I hadn’t owned them I’d be thinking of them as a recovery story. Cash flow is there, dividend yield is 4.6%.
Failed to glean any optimism, especially given what’s on the menu later. Eunice has booked a table at Piccolo’s, a place the Edgingtons recommended. She says it is intimate (i.e. cramped), ultra chic (over-priced) and romantic (too dim to see the food). Then we have a four-poster room at five-star Downley Grange. “Lovely,” I said over breakfast. “How thoughtful of you.” Brace yourself Bernard, Valentine’s day hippopotamus manoeuvres approach!
Elevenses: Various dodgy-looking Compass comestibles.
On the way back bought Eunice a box of Belgian chocolates (“What size would you like sir: the ‘overlooked-errand’, the ‘forgotten anniversary’, or the top of the range ‘apology for infidelity’?”). To go with it picked up one of those sloppy cards with a weary joke about middle age on it. Why is it you can never find the price on them? Price code JJ was all it said. If I’d known it was £2.35, I’d have made my own card and written a better joke.
Close of play: M&S closed at 519p. Eeek! That’s £370 down. Not sure what to do.
Wednesday 15th February: The morning after the fright before
Why do we always choose the grandest surroundings to have a row? We could have had a comfortable cheap falling-out at home, then a British Standard huff and flounce from Eunice. She watches TV, I go to the model railway and separate bedrooms afterwards. Easy as pie. But no, we had a £160 meal at which Eunice quaffed five big glasses of Chablis and flirted with the waiter, then I drove to Downley Grange (£280 a night, excluding breakfast) where I virtually had to carry her, thirteen stone of chiffon-clad giggles, up two flights of stairs (hotel too posh for lifts). Then she disappeared into the bathroom long enough for her passport to expire. Bored witless (hotel too posh for TV), I fished out the latest Railway Modeller. As I heard the lock, I put a pillow over the mag and undid my tie, braced for whatever carnal blitzkrieg was about to be unleashed.
Eunice wobbled towards me, naked except for stiletto heels a bright pink thong, and an odd expression. Sliding her freezing cold hands under my shirt, she whispered that the thong was ‘edible.’ I replied: “Should h
ave warned me before I order that zabaglione, can’t eat another morsel.”
She hit me with the pillow, thus discovering the Railway Modeller. “How could you, tonight of all nights?” she spat.
“What’s the matter, it’s not a copy of Mayfair is it?” I retorted.
“No, if only. Then at least I’d know there was some life down there.”
So, inexorably, and punctuated by several Oh for God’s sake’s and You never look at me’s we spiralled down into four-poster misery, with not a word exchanged over breakfast or in the car on the way back. Five hundred quid’s worth of bust-up.
Elevenses: A banana. One down, five to go.
Close of play: Spirent falling again, now below 50p. Qinetiq, for some reason I can’t fathom is drifting down too, nearly at 200p. Thank God for Bovis, over £8 and going strong.
Tuesday 21st February: Power surge
11pm: Was just watching the Winter Olympics highlights. First time I’d seen curling, apparently derived from northern housework habits. Involves throwing a Russell Hobbs kettle up the ice at two oafs with brooms who have to finish scrubbing the floor before it reaches them. Still, beats sliding down an icy shute on a tea tray, a suicidal pastime which is apparently two events of different names (skeleton or luge) depending on whether you risk your brains or your balls. Anyway, phone rang.