Cereal House on Mark Lane was home to the London Commodity Exchange when I started in the City in 1976. There were futures markets for sugar, coffee, cocoa, etc there, as well as a bar. In 1981 the grandly named International Petroleum Exchange opened in a room that had been home to a defunct futures market – palm oil?
So it is with nostalgia that I go back to visit the dentist in the basement. I have mixed feelings about etiquette in the dentists’ chair. In the barbers’ chair I feel I can impose silence and in return hand over a tip. I don’t tip the dental hygienist, should I? Because I don’t she seems to dominate the conversation and last week, rather imaginatively, asked if I had holiday plans. I smugly confided that I was going to Spain – but somewhere she would never have heard of. How are the mighty fallen … in the midst of flossing.
“Oh, I go to IKEA there – my mum lives thirty minutes away.” She went on to say that it’s an especially attractive part of the country. I am looking forward to rambling around the city and adjacent national park next week while Robert plays tennis. So expect a lot of Spanish balls here soon.
The dentist comes from New Zealand. Her PM was over here recently taking tea with the Duchess of Sussex, as I read in the Court Circular. She added to this bit of trivia telling me that her PM also met the re-insurers at Lloyd’s responsible for meeting the claims after the earthquake in Wellington. Subsequently somebody questioned the advisability of re-building on an earthquake fault line but I imagine people want to return home and not have a Watership Down exodus.
Tweet of the Day is a welcome interlude from largely depressing news bulletins. I was pleased to learn that a bar-tailed godwit flew 11,000 km in nine days and lost a lot of weight; the longest known non-stop flight of any bird. When it slept it shut down alternating halves of its brain, something I do when I’m awake.
A VDF (Very Dear Friend) has reassured me that a transition from EU to WTO will be smooth. Although I disagree, she put up a good case but nevertheless I bought this yesterday – just in case.
I’m nostalgic about corned beef. Tritely, when I was a docker for a day, I spent the morning loading cases of corned beef onto palettes. Seriously, my grandfather said his diet in the trenches in WW I was largely corned beef, relieved by chicken when a rare food parcel arrived. In his old age he enjoyed corned beef more than chicken.
As a backstop you should know how to make a mean and manly corned beef hash.