My early Friday morning walk to my networking group BRX Bond Street at the RAF Club 128 Piccadilly http://www.rafclub.org.uk/ near Hyde Park Corner, has me wondering who these smart military types are strolling the other way in their full dress uniform with medals clinking. It is of course ANZAC Day commemorating the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 in Turkey when thousands of Kiwis and Aussies died. This is a big occasion down under but not really noted in Blighty. It is warm and dry for once so their smartly-pressed uniforms do not get soaked.
At BRX we get back to our normal routine of each member doing 10 minute presentation after their usual 60 second one. The previous week we had substituted this for telling our fellow members and guests something no one knew about them. This gives me an opportunity to mention the flight of my life http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=21 but the most memorable story is from one lady who mentioned an incident when she was a child in Scotland. Having grown up in the countryside there, her family moved to a cottage in the Outer Hebrides but were surprised when a neighbour enquired after a few days, why they had not seen her husband’s pyjamas on the washing line!? Her mother decided there were nicer places to bring up her children after that.
The club itself has lots of beautiful aviation pictures adorning the stairs and walls but one picture that always grabs me is a watercolour by Bob Murray showing an old Blackburn Beverley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIRlZmiLmZs
(a heavy military transport aircraft from the 1950s) landing in Kenya with Mt Kilimanjaro in the background.
In the finest gentlemen’s club tradition, in the smartest rooms you are not allowed to carry bags or talk shop, gentlemen must wear ties and ladies have to wear skirts. However, the breakfast is good and it is a lovely place to start the last day of the working week. Enquiries with Google lead me to The Beverley Association http://www.beverley-association.org.uk/ an old comrades association of people who flew, worked or knew this old workhorse. Their Secretary suggests that I take a picture and e-mail it to him to see if the artist can be tracked down.
Another lodge meeting at The Old Sessions House in Clerkenwell http://www.sessionshouse.com/ has among the usual notices, apologies for absence from one member – a stuntman who has been filming the latest James Bond film in Mexico for 3 months. Just as he got back another good job appeared in Europe, so off he went again. Their next Festive Board should be very interesting when he returns.
The week is taken up with an intensive residential training course in Bristol with the Institute of Financial Planning http://www.financialplanning.org.uk/homepage_flash.cfm whose Certificate in Financial Planning (CertFP) is internationally recognised, unlike the more academic Chartered insurance Institute’s Chartered Financial Planning Certificate (CFP). Apart from being the perfect shot in the arm, it is great fun with colleagues from Edinburgh, Manchester, Preston and Old Street – just near my office in London. Just to keep us on our toes, the trainer plays the banjo!
Reading the paper in coffee breaks shows our property market going into decline and reminds me of comments not so long ago about how safe property was as an investment. The bad news will not last for ever of course, but if your mortgage loan is nearing the end of its fixed or discounted period, it is time to get in touch with a broker. Mortgage deposits are creeping up again and apparently getting to 10 per cent, rather like 20 or 30 years ago. Manageable if mummy or daddy has equity in their property which they can borrow against and give to their offspring, but not everyone is this fortunate. Parents might also decide that they need this equity in case they need to pay for their care in old age.
Thursday is May Day and my coursework makes me forget to turn on the radio and listen to the madrigal singers from Magdalen College Oxford which are sometimes broadcast at dawn. Only the bridge jumpers make the news http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/7376954.stm At the end of the course on Thursday afternoon, feeling quite braindead, I leave Bristol for Oxford where I lived for a few years in the late sixties at about the same time as ex-President Bill Clinton when he was doing his Rhodes Scholarship (no our paths never crossed). As usual when in that neck of the woods, I unwind at the Victoria Arms in Old Marston just next to the slightly flooded river Cherwell http://thames.me.uk/s02420.htm This pub was into real ales before traditionally-brewed beers became trendy and anyone had ever heard of CAMRA http://www.camra.org.uk/
On the drive down, it is a stonking gliding day with flat firm bottoms in rows close together and I am talking about clouds http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=103 To the north west, flying cross country would have been like stepping across stones in a pond.
Correspondence from my 10th April blog about mixed metaphors http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=131 reveals that the kettle of fish one probably came from Laurel & Hardy although I came across it in a spy novel. My reading of Rumpole of the Bailey stories (Perry Mason with irony and some humour) by John Mortimer, reveals that the Dade county in Florida is named after an American soldier who managed lose a battle against the native American Indians. That of course was in a work of fiction, but some real info is here http://www.dadebattlefield.com/ Readers may remember Dade county from the 2000 Presidential election where hanging chads apparently decided the outcome.
On a more modest political note, today is election day for our London Mayor a post which we managed without for many years. No hanging chads here as we still put a X on the ballot paper but are told not to fold them – a new experience for me so the 3 ballot papers slide face down into the box. The local polling station was a Methodist School Hall which also sported a sign for an AA meeting – Alcoholics Anonymous perhaps?
As a treat after my studies, I had been saving What Your Sleep Position says about you http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-kinosian/what-your-sleep-positionb98281.html but ironically, now find myself too tired to read it, so Good night!
Pingback: Father Confessor & Busby Babes