Excerpt from Bernard Jones and the Temple of Mammon

Chapter One

Mr Twenty Per Cent

New Year’s Eve: Thompson twinge 

Having lost six per cent on 2006, Hell’s Bells may be one of the more ramshackle share clubs in terms of performance, but I like to think we get our dividends in fun. Our New Year’s party at the Ring o’Bells went with a swing, partly because most of us have been let off the family leash for the evening. However, the one ‘other half’ who did attend was Mrs Sharma, looking resplendent in a glittering green sari and half moon specs. As the pub couldn’t get kitchen staff, she supplied most of the food, including the notorious  thermonuclear samosas. However the tandoori lamb was divine, and the fish madras with lime quite exquisite. Still, such fare needs plenty of lubrication and after three pints of hand-pulled Spitfire I head off on a rather wobbly sortie to the toilet. Lurching through the door, I see it’s been refurbished in lime green (do I detect Chantelle’s tastes here?). The moment I reach my destination, there is a hiss and something that smells like Tom Jones’s aftershave is squirted about me. Looking up I see the skull-like ‘fragrance disperser’ and the dread emblem of Rentokil Initial. Similarly emblazoned is the (empty) soap dispenser and the (non-working) hand-dryer.

Rentokil was one of my first and worst share forays, as I fell under the spell of one Clive (now Sir Clive) Thompson, a.k.a Mr Twenty Percent. I bought in the middle of 1998 at about 400p when the firm could do no wrong, spilling out profits faster than paper towels from a badly-fitted dispenser. Soon however, growth came as reluctantly as sheets of toilet paper from those big metal drums which are designed to stop the theft of the roll, and on which I once cut my knuckles at Gatwick Airport. I eventually sold at 225p, having missed the brief chance to sell at 475p in the 2000 bubble. The collapse of Sir Clive’s low income savers’ firm Farepak last year brought back distasteful memories.

Now the final Thompson challenge. A new washbasin has replaced the cracked old thing which always leaked. However, its shiny minimalist taps (labelled F and C: Did the pub try to save money by ordering surplus Congolese or Paraguayan versions?) have no obvious mode of operation. Nothing to twist. No foot pedal. I press tap C. Absolutely rigid. I try waving my hands in front in case they are cunningly infrared operated, which in the mirror makes me a Tommy Copper impersonator (just like that). But still nothing. At this moment Harry Staines lurches in, cannons off two walls and into the cubicle, whose door he leaves open as he does his Victoria Falls impersonation.

            “Do you know how these work, Harry?”

            “I never trust a tap,” he says enigmatically as he strides out to join the great unwashed.

            Finally, I press the top of the other tap. Instantly a ferocious spray of freezing water (so that’s what the F stands for) hits me at trouser height. After some Anglo-Saxon vocal exercises, I find there is absolutely nothing, neither towel, curtain nor sheet of toilet paper in this Rentokil khazi to dry out these embarrassing dark patches. Furtively, I emerge in search of beer towels and run straight into Mrs Sharma, who takes one trouser-ward glance and flees. Oh God! I think Sir Clive has cursed me.

Wednesday 3^rd January 2007: Vintage misery

Edgington dinner party on Saturday. Peter’s scribbled message on the invitation said “celebrating a vintage year in 2006.” He’s bound to gloat about his share-picking performance. I find this too depressing for words.

Elevenses: Eunice and I had a huge row about cholesterol and diet over Christmas culminating in her flouncing off to the spare room. Three days of bliss, safe from snoring and dreaded hippopotamus manoeuvres. However, the final compromise forced on me is to give up the Hornby drawer key, though I can still (for now) eat what I like.

Close of Play: Down £270, second loss in a row. I though January was supposed to be a good month.  

Thursday 4^th January: Share checkers anonymous

After a first day frenzy, the market seems to have gone soggy. However, I’m going to try to make a New Year resolution of only checking share prices three times a day. Once at the open, once at elevenses, and once at close of play. That’s really perfectly adequate. Yet I have to admit the lure of that little screen portfolio tool is very strong. While I’m trying to research what I should buy this year by doing some fundamental research, I have developed this crackhead’s habit of doing a sneaky click to see if Domino’s Pizza or BAe have added 1p or lost 1p in the last ten minutes. Who cares, Bernard? You are in for years not weeks, yet here we go again. Click. BAe up 2p.

Elevenses: Now, here’s a curious thing. Came to eat the last eccles cake from drawer and found a small self-adhesive red dot on it. What on earth does this mean?

Sunday 7^th January: Perfect Peter entertains

The Edgington dinner party last night saw Peter at his most nauseating. While Geraldine showed Eunice her collection of Edwardian jewellery, Peter walked me through his successes for 2006, most of which seem to have soared AND pay big dividends: Scottish & Southern Electricity, Viridian, Irish building products firm Kingspan, HBOS, Northern Rock, and Persimmon. Had he lost money on anything at all, I wondered?

            “Almost,” he said. “I made very little when I sold BG Group. However, it was clear that wholesale gas prices were going down from about August, so I would have lost out had I waited.”

How awful for him. To nearly lose money.

Elevenses: A plain chocolate Bounty. As I opened it, I saw it had been labelled with an orange stick-on dot. What can this mean?

Monday 8^th January: The Quatermass experiment 

Peter’s successes seemed all to come in value stocks, the flavour of the year 2006. Can hardly continue surely when dull old electricity firms rise by 50 per cent in a year. Also read a piece of research from the U.S. which said that the shares covered by the fewest analysts did best. Now we know just how overpaid those chinless City wonders are. When Goldman Sachs initiates coverage we should probably sell.

Elevenses: A curious green finned fruit-like object has materialised in the Hornby drawer. There’s no obvious fuse or explosive charge, but it does sport a green adhesive dot. I leave Prescott, Jemima’s suede pig, to guard it while I seek enlightenment from on high.

            “It’s a star fruit, Bernard. You must have seen them,” Eunice said.

            “It’s more like something Dr Quatermass dreamt up on an off-day,” I retorted. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

            “Eat it in slices. It’s full of vitamin C. That’s why I gave it a green light.”

“Green light. Ah! Is that what those silly dots are all about?”

“They’re not silly, that’s the government traffic light scheme to label food according to how healthy it is.”

“I know, but if the supermarkets don’t want it, why should you impose it within the household?”

“Supermarkets don’t want it for obvious reasons. They want people to buy fatty foods because they are more profitable.”

“Supermarkets don’t reveal their profit margin by product. It’s a closely guarded secret. Don’t tell me you’ve been doing some share research of your own?”

“Don’t be facetious, Bernard. It’s perfectly obvious. Fresh foods are an open book. An apple, a parsnip or a carrot has a value the shopper can relate to. They couldn’t charge us £1 each because we’d know from common sense it’s too much. Yet who knows what arcane processes go in to making a packet of Hula Hoops, a sausage or a one of your precious eccles cakes? The truth is that we think we know the right price, yet the cost of ingredients is far less than we suspect because of cheap sweeteners and industrial hydrogenated fats.”

“You’re ignoring the fact that supermarkets don’t make their own products,” I said.

“Of course. They buy them in cheaply. Anyway, I really don’t want all that rubbish clogging up your arteries. That is why I have started labelling your elevenses.”

Eunice oversees me as I eat the thing. It has a curious waxy texture and is mildly sweet, but I can’t escape the worry that I’ll swell up like the Elephant Man and be sent to intensive care.

Tuesday 9^th January: Global warbling 

Rank, my pick for the share club, has continued to drift since news of the poor price gained for selling Hard Rock Café to the Seminoles. Forty years ago Red Indians were being slaughtered on screen by John Wayne and co. Now, as Native Americans,  they are raking in gambling money and buying up international restaurant chains. Still, I read that other potential bidders were shut out and are threatening to Sioux. 

Elevenses: A packet of crushed Hula Hoops from the bargain bin at Kwik Save. 11p!  

Radio 4 interviewed the obscenely youthful environment minister, David Millipede. So articulate, but with 1,000 to choose from he’s bound to put a foot in it sooner or later. He was responding to the PM being taken to task for flying abroad on holiday. Well, you can hardly imagine him sitting on the beach at Clacton with a knotted hankie on his head, can you?  I’m no fan (whether sustainably-powered or not) of Blair but I’m sure he’s on target to make government travel carbon neutral. The obvious plan is to pipe the by-products of combustion deep into cavernous and otherwise unusable storage spaces, such as John Prescott. The Germans are already using Helmut Kohl mines, so we have to keep up.

Actually, I’m heartily sick of this tosh about global warming. I can recall in the 1980s we were supposed to freeze to death because of a nuclear winter, and now we’re all going to drown as sea levels rise. Like the Millennium Bug it probably won’t happen. But even so, am I missing an investment opportunity?

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