Bah Humbug

Family, Friends, Ne’er-Do-Wells.  Greetings!

Thanks for scanning the QR code.  If you’re here, it worked.

It’s the way of the future and we’re finding our way with a proverbial shovel and a flashlight. This is a bit of an experiment.  Experiments can go wrong.  Mea culpa, ex ante.

The website that you have been launched into was set up to record my hike across the Camino in 2017.  We’re piggybacking on it.  If you’re interested in what it’s like to walk about 1000km+ in 35 days with a lot of smelly Europeans, please digress and read on at Slog-Blog.  It’s all there.  Unvarnished.  Blue in places.  No regrets.  I can’t recommend the trip strongly enough.  I will do it again.

So, onto 2018.  A lot happens in a year, much of it mundane, much of it sufficiently interesting, we hope, to share with you.  What follows is a quick summary of the year, accompanied by a pastiche of photos. 

Home

We’re still lucky enough to be able to split our time between Hambleden and London.  We’ve kept the cottage that we rented while we renovated Molyneux Street.  It’s excessive, a luxury but also a wonderful de-compressant (if such word exists, but I am American and making up words is a birthright) at the weekend.  Hambleden also serves as a de-facto storage facility for all the stuff we’ve accumulated over the years but are too attached to and reluctant to get rid of.  We walk out of our front door and are immediately immersed in the quiet of the Chilterns.

A ten minute car ride and you’re in Henley, epi-centre of rowing. A half hour and you’re in Oxford.  Despite its mere 35 mile proximity to London, Hambleden full-time is not compatible with a sustainable commute – if it was, we’d have sold up and moved out already.  I need to be at work by about 0645, and to get to the City by that time means I’d have to rise at 0400 thereafter drive to the station, endure an unpredictable journey (will the train run/on-time, wont it?) and two tube changes, also unpredictable.  Not practical so for the moment, we remain reluctant Londoners.

Health

Carolyn was diagnosed with cancer early in 2013. Unfortunately, lightening does strike twice. 2018 sees us statistically clear. She still has some neuropathy and loss of sensation in her feet, but otherwise all good. What we learned from this is that treatment for cancer has side effects and after effects.  They’re different.  The latter takes a long time to overcome.  If anyone is researching health insurance, we cant speak highly enough about Allianz in Europe.  Not cheap but you get what you pay for.  If you know anyone going through this, drop Carolyn a note.  She can help.  She’s a rock.

“Parenthood”

Bruno died in March 2017. He was our 4^th Boxer. We welcomed Bailey, our 5^th, in January 2018.  She’s a New Yorker and though not the sharpest tool in the shed, we’ve not had a dog with a sweeter disposition.

Even as a youngster, she has proven adept at making her way around London and has been enjoying Café Society with her friends.

She turned one in November and weighs just over 50lbs.  She’s not the Amazonian I hoped for, but I’ll settle. 

Her best friend is Goblin, a large Bulldog with an immense underbite and uncanny mouth-eye coordination when it comes to catching bits of sausage.  They are well-matched in looks and intellect. Goblin was also Bruno’s best friend.  Actually, Goblin was Bruno’s ONLY friend.  Bailey will hopefully have a brother sometime in mid to late 2019, also a New Yorker.

Weddings

Three weddings this year.  No funeral.  

Elizabeth and Alex in Santa Cruz in August. Kyu and Heinz in Rome in September.  And Steffi and Jeff in Positano in October. 

Busy, busy, and I consider it a personal triumph that I was able to convince Carolyn to wear the same dress on all three occasions. We saved enough to pay for our travels!

And now, perhaps next year I will be able to afford some long pants.

They were all wonderful, intimate events that we wont forget and were privileged to share.  The romantic stand out was Kyu and Heinz though.  Ever read a story about the man who waited for the woman?  This is it.  I’ve known Kyu for over 20 years.  An absolutely wonderful woman.  We were colleagues but have remained friends across continents, with no effort.  You know when you have a true friend when time passes but it seems not to; a conversation after a couple of years is as fresh as a conversation after a couple of days.  Heinz is a real prize.  Engaging, at ease, delightful and the epitome of a gentleman.  I wish my wife were as fortunate!!   These weddings were all wonderful events, and to boot, the weather cooperated for each and every one of them. We wish all our friends and family longevity and unconditional happiness in their new lives.

Work

Where to start?  I took a 12 month sabbatical from May 2017 to May 2018.  I was mentally and physically knackered, and our dog (Bruno) had just died which, surprisingly, had a disproportionate impact on my head space.  If you want to know what I did for some of the time, read the blog.  Caveat Emptor – it’s not all pretty.  I’m now back at the proverbial coal-face. In a consolidating industry under attack from an uninformed media and zealous regulators with good intentions but limited expertise, there are few growth opportunities.  I believe I found one, albeit unlikely and initially doing its best to prove my optimism wrong.  I now work for Nomura, a Japanese bank.  There is a mandate to build a credit trading business and my remit is to build a research function, thereafter focussing on distressed debt and special situations investments.  Based on where we sit in the economic cycle, I think we are well-positioned to benefit from the adversity that parts of the global economy are likely to face.  I find myself in the invidious position of hoping to profit from the discomfort of others, but then again, economics is supposedly a zero-sum game…  Cycles repeat.  You hunt, kill, skin, eat and do it all again. 

Two Wheels

I’ve love two wheels.  Weekdays, I make my way from Marylebone to the City on my trusted, if staid, Brompton six-speed, folding bicycle.  It’s different at the weekend.  

My current muse is a BMW XR1000SE.  I’ve had a Harley, Suzukis, Yamahas, Ducatis and other BMWs, but the XR is altogether different.  I’m not “on” this bike, I’m part of it.  I call her Mrs Jones ’cos “we’ve got a thing goin’ on…”  Google it.  After 9 months of having my riding style picked apart then re-built, about 7,000 road miles and two sets of tires, I passed my advanced rider test (got the car test in 2017).  Hard work but highly rewarding.  2019 anticipates more track days and, I hope, another advanced qualification or an instructor qualification.  I’m a member of a bike group called TVAM – about 1200 bikers, very serious about their skills and their speed.  Check it out Thames Valley Advanced Motorcyclists 

Thruxton 2018……

…not Sturgis circa 2003… and yes I was there, and yes those were indeed my photos.  And no, I didn’t keep my food down…

The icing on the cake is that I put a new set of Metzlers (tires) on Mrs Jones and was entered into a competition, the existence of which I was unaware.  I won….a custom-made, leather, one-piece professional racing suit….advertising Metzeler tires.  Hello Barry Sheen and Kenny Roberts.  My name is proudly emblazoned on the arse.  Getting into this thing is like spooning sausage meat into a condom.  It’s not pretty.  I feel like I’ll have a target on my back at the race-track – all the gear but no idea….  Winner’s Curse, or in my case, Loser’s Curse. 

Politics

What a mess.  There are no adults in Parliament (just privileged buffoons and foppish twats) and there’s a Cheeto-dusted sociopath in the White House. Weeds make better use of oxygen than the Vice President. Mike Pensive? Mike Poodle? “Catatonic Mike”? Hard to know.  What a bell-end!  He has the charisma of a mollusk. Politicians of all hues are outright disappointments.  Conviction, to a politician, only means a jail sentence, not a firmly-held belief.Theresa May has the poisoned chalice that we all wish Donald Trump would drink from.  Nuff said.  The Brexit debate pits direct democracy against representative democracy, together with a romantic yearning for the days of the Empire and the rise of ugly caricatures like the Dickensian Rees-Mogg.  Who knows, if these fossils have their way, we’ll be back to the quill and ink-well, hanging and flogging and shoving small children up chimneys…? But, at least it is democracy with warts unlike the French version:  democracy by riot and decision by capitulation (would decapitation be more apropos?). I’ve always questioned the mental capacity of the UK electorate but they enjoy an ethereal collective genius when sat beside my fellow Americans.  Bush Junior, a national embarrassment in his day, is a National Treasure when compared with DT.  The Democrats don’t have the spine to impeach DT so the only hope for the Nation is that Jodie Foster makes some “promises” to John Hinckley Jr. and he takes care of business.  For those of you who don’t get it, Google it.

Damp

I hate the damp.  It merits mention because it has pre-occupied us this year and has been a source of continual discomfort.  It seems as difficult to cure as syphilis (so I’m told).  It’s only spoken about in hushed tones, “You know so-and-so’s house has ‘the damp’, so sad”.

It’s unsightly and it keeps coming back.  We renovated our house a couple of years ago, but leaking bathrooms and rising damp remain, despite hours and hours of investigation and untold expense. I hate the damp.

That’s it for now.

Here’s a pictorial jaunt through our 2018, accompanied by some completely irrelevant one-liners… Hover your cursor over each photo for more information.

January  – “My son asked me what it was like to be married.  I told him to leave me alone…and when he did, I asked him why he was ignoring me.”

February – “Whats the difference between Amy Winehouse and a moped?  A moped can make it to 30.”

March –“I asked my North Korean friend how it was up there.  He said he can’t complain….”

April – “Smoking will kill you.   Bacon will kill you.  Smoking bacon will cure it.”

May – “Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana”

June – “A dad is washing the car with his son. After a while the son asks ‘do you mind if we use a sponge’?”

July –“Thanks for explaining the word ‘many’ to me.  It means a lot.”

August – “What do scooters and fat girls have in common?  Both are fun to ride until your friends find out.”

September – “A dog has an owner.  A cat has staff.”

October – “I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather.  Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car.”

November – “When I found out that my toaster wasn’t waterproof, I was shocked.”

December – “My friend Neil is the reason the gene pool needs a lifeguard…”

With love and best wishes for 2019

Carolyn, Simon and Bailey.

aka Doris, Des and Dizzy