Donkin Life

Buried treasure

2008-10-09T11:40:00.006Z

Talking of stuffing money in mattresses, we should remember that this was an attractive option for some people no more than a couple of generations ago.

I must have been about 16 or 17 years old when my maternal grandmother died, aged about 90. She was born in the 19th century with attitudes to match. She really did have an aspidistra in her best room with pictures of angels on the wall.

As far as I knew she didn't have a bean but when she died there was a share out for the grandchildren. I was given £150 in fusty one pound notes that had been buried in a biscuit tin in my Uncle Dennis's council allotment greenhouse.

All those years I had grubbed around in the soil among the brassicas and the chrysanthemums (he was known for his chrysanths), never realising that hidden among their roots was a box of cash. There was probably a thousand pounds which would have been worth far more had it been invested in a building society.

But my grandmother didn't trust banks because she had lived through the Wall Street Crash and the great depression. How silly. Being a sensible young man I took the money and bought a car with it. The car, a Hillman Imp, was constantly breaking down and absorbed all my spare cash. It broke down so many times that in the end I had to call a scrap yard to tow it away. There's probably a parable in all this but I can't think of one.

Not our fault

2008-10-09T09:44:00.005Z

In all the furore over the banking crisis it's easy to forget the root cause of our problems. We can blame the banks as much as we like for the credit crunch but ultimately this crisis is of our own making. It's not the fault of governments and banks but of borrowers who take on more debt than they can sustain in the long term.

But there wouldn't be borrowers without lenders, you may say. That's true. There is no doubt that lending policies in too many institutions have been woefully relaxed. Lending and borrowing involves risk - the bigger the risk, the more you stand to make if you pull it off. The banks can be blamed for the way they dressed up and traded this risk, even fooling themselves in to thinking they were simply being sophisticated, until it was too late.

But how can people be blamed for simply wanting to improve their lives? When house prices are rising we can see the way that those with mortgages enjoy the increasing values in their homes.

Equally, those with some cash to invest could be tempted in to buy-to-let arrangements. I recall friends telling me about the flats they had bought to rent out. Many of them, I am sure, did quite well. Only now, as prices and rents fall are they seeing their gains shrink somewhat, but most of them, I have no doubt, are still ahead. Only those who bought at the top of the market are suffering just now although their numbers will increase as the market falls.

I have lost money in shares - bank shares to be precise. They seemed a good investment three years ago. Nothing seemed more solid than a bank. But my stock market investments were relatively small (but big enough) so the pain is bearable (just).

One thing you notice among investors is that there is always a risk/return ratio. Why would anyone deposit money with an Icelandic bank, I wondered? Anyone could see that Iceland's economy didn't make sense. How can a country with a population the size of a small English city, lot of cod but not much else, be so prosperous? I don't suppose it worried those local authorities who decided that a seven per cent return in an Icelandic bank was better than five per cent in the UK. An extra two per cent can cloud your judgement.

Equally the return on buy-to-let five years ago was more like 9 per cent per annum and then there was the capital gain in the rising property price for extras.

There are people out there - lots of people - with money to invest who will tell you that only mugs would settle for five per cent, or at least they were saying that a year ago.

Today we may need to settle for something less and we may be saying goodbye to free banking too. That's one of the realities about banks. We might not feel too kindly disposed to them just now but we wouldn't want to be without them.

I get a great deal from my bank. It pays me good rates of interest on my deposit account and handles all my transactions without charging me, even paying a little bit of interest on my current account. I realise that this service is not free. It is costing the bank more to service my account, I am sure, than it makes in interest from my deposits. Maybe not. Maybe the bank is winning. I don't care. The point is that I feel I'm getting a good deal.

I don't have to carry around lots of cash. There are holes in the wall that give me money on demand. I can pay for a lot of things with a plastic card for which I get billed after payment and which gives me money back when I use it. That seems a good deal as long as I settle my account every month.

I don't borrow from banks, from credit card lenders or any institution. I have a little bowl of change for parking meters and a wallet with enough cash - pounds and Euros - to cover taxi fares, cups of coffee and an occasional copy of Private Eye. The house mortgage was paid off years ago before I told my employers I wanted to leave and they me gave a large sum of money to go away.

In some ways this troubles me. I feel too bloody comfortable and think that a bit of financial hardship would be motivational. To deal with this I tell myself I am not well off and choose friends (with a few fine and honorable exceptions) who are considerably better off than I am. Since wealth is relative this means I can happily wallow in the understanding that I am less well healed than many of those I know.

But this isn't poverty. All these newspaper headlines and panic reactions are a symptom of middle class angst - people on the up who have just taken a tumble.

Real poverty is something else, something consigned to the news in brief columns about atrocities and aids victims in Africa. It doesn't have a face beyond the clips they make for Children in Need with a visiting celebrity trembling with horror and frustration at the sight of a malnourished child.

We must, therefore, suffer our pain from the credit crunch with a sense of perspective. Perhaps we can't afford the cruise or that new cooker or the kitchen makeover or the X-Box 360. We may even have to forgo a bonus or possibly even a pay rise. But if we have our health and our families and food on the table we shouldn't complain. But we shall because the crisis wasn't our fault. We're all blameless.

Cash in hand

2008-10-08T14:37:00.005Z

I can't keep up with all this bank and economics stuff any more. Ships/icebergs/Iceland/lifeboats. Have you noticed how everyone is an expert in finance all of a sudden, wandering around quoting J. K. Galbraith at every opportunity?

Last night at a Royal Society for the Arts dinner the conversation on both sides of my plate was all about the banking crisis. The man on my left used to work for the Bank of England and he didn't know what was going on.

On my right was a lawyer who kept poodles and drove a Mercedes. And she didn't know either. "Well of course, we need banks. We're not going to be taking our cash out in a suitcase are we?" I said to her.

"I'm thinking of doing just that," she said. "I have a big safe at home and I'm going to put my money there for a while."

What does this mean? If lawyers who keep poodles and drive Mercs are panicking perhaps there's going to be a rush to stuff the nation's mattresses and tea caddies with freshly minted notes. I wonder how house-safe sales are going? If this carries on, burglary is going to get interesting again.

Burgling prospects have been so poor in recent years with one or two exceptions. But not everyone is sitting on an £80m plus art collection as Harry Hyams was. Most burglars have to settle for the video recorder and an X-Box 360.

But if people are stashing cash again there could be new openings for the old-style safe crackers who thought their days were over. Burglary may become trendy again. M&S could launch a range of black-and-white hooped jumpers (cashmere naturally) and silk masks for long dormant tea-leaves who, as I write, are rummaging in their cupboards for dusty swag bags and ageing stethoscopes.

The peasants' revolt

2008-09-29T21:36:00.006Z

Woah! The ship just settled further in the water. Perhaps we have been sailing on a financial Titanic after all.

Justin Webb, the BBC's man in Washington called the House of Representatives' rejection of the Paulson bail out plan, a "peasants' revolt." That's just the kind of high handed remark that is inflaming public opinion.

I'm a little bit sick of economists describing the bail out plan as a "sophisticated response" as if the opinions of ordinary people should count for nothing in the financial system.

It is not just the banks that have lost trust in each other. The electorates are losing trust in the banking system. But people are not stupid. The anger has been directed at those who have played fast and lose with our banks, not the banks themselves.

No we can't afford the banks to topple like dominoes. If the financial system grounds to a halt then so does most economic activity. Businesses will struggle to get credit, more will go bust, jobs will be lost and we'll all end up planting carrots.

But will it be the end of the world as we know it? So we might not be able to buy MFI kitchens, so what? House prices will no longer dominate dinner party conversations and within the industrialised nations we might all need to get used to the idea that we are not quite as well off as we thought we were.

But wealth is relative. The definition of poverty is not a Wall Street investor down a few million dollars. It is, as it was before these past three weeks, the lives of people struggling to survive in the Eastern Congo, Darfur, Zimbabwe and other stricken parts of Africa. A failing bank means nothing to those with nothing to lose.

That sinking feeling

2008-09-28T15:54:00.006Z

I’ve been wondering these last two weeks whether the collapse of Lehman Brothers was rather like the Titanic hitting an iceberg. Just as those who sailed in the ill-fated liner, the bankers and economists at the helm of our financial system thought it was unsinkable.

Even after the Lehman crash, the passengers down in steerage were told not to panic as those at the helm prepared lifeboats that they knew couldn’t help everyone. So Lehman went under and HBOS was swallowed up while AIG
was saved and the band played on.

Now all hands are at the pump while the US Treasury secretary, Hank Paulson works out a rescue package with Congress. Perhaps the Titanic analogy is too obvious and not particularly helpful. After all, the Titanic sank while the financial system is going to be saved. It is, isn’t it? But at what a cost?

Reckless lending

Just as there was a place in a Titanic lifeboat for J. Bruce Ismay, head of the White Star Line that owned the ship, whose insistence on a fast passage led to rash behaviour by an otherwise prudent captain, the US Government is now preparing to help the very bankers whose reckless lending endangered the entire capitalist system.

When the Titanic sank, many of the poorest passengers paid with their lives. In the latest financial crisis it is the taxpayers who are being asked to bail out those who feathered their own nests in ways that have brought our banking system to the brink.

We know this is unjust and so do the lawmakers. But our fortunes are so intertwined with those we have trusted to handle our savings and investments that, even in the face of their continued enrichment, underpinned, as it has been, by greed, we must dig in to our own wealth to save their undeserving necks.

Remember how all of this was triggered by the sub-prime mortgage debacle, caused by unwise lending? That didn't happen so much when lending on house buying was largely the responsibility of building societies. The concept of mutuality that underpinned the building societies meant that those societies were owned by their savers, not by investments in the hands of fickle fund managers. This is still the case with a few of them such as Nationwide. But others, like Bradford and Bingley, wanted to become banks and turned their backs on the prudence expected in handling mutual funds.

Panic for survival

Will the bail out work or is it simply rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship? In theory it should help a lot. The banks, after all, could be doing more to help themselves using their collective liquidity could they not? But through their own fears they are pricing their credit out of the market. It is the equivalent of the Titanic lifeboats standing to for fear they will be swamped in the panic for survival.

What we are seeing today are the unthinkable consequences for a society forged from the principles of “buy now, pay later.” We have lived for too long on the promise of future earnings.

I recall going in to a car showroom a while back. The salesman was unhappy about selling me a car for cash because his own bonus favoured selling cars on a financing deal. When credit begins to take precedence over cash there has to be something wrong.

Respect for thrift

But the banks have not respected thrift. Their undoing has been to court borrowers, no matter who they were or how sound their credit rating. Now this policy has gone in to reverse but still they are loath to welcome savings, treating savers like non-paying guests.

Even if, as now seems likely, Paulson succeeds in securing an agreement for the US administration’s proposed $700bn bail out of its ailing banks, we need to do some hard thinking about the fundamentals of the system.

The easy answer, I suspect, will be to build better lifeboats and stronger safeguards. But this will not remove the frailties of a system that relies on spending-fuelled growth and the unacceptable waste arising from profligacy. Where were the so-called “risk managers” in banking when we needed them?

Another "ism"

In the long run we may need to find another “ism,” something, perhaps, that is focused more on long term sustainability with greater sensitivity for the environment. The invisible hand of self-interest can no longer be regarded as the tide that raises all boats. That same self-interest means the tide has gone out when the banks are thirsting for liquidity.

Now I really am mixing my metaphors with banks sinking, others beached, lifeboats becalmed and the rest of us standing enthralled on the tideline watching the white water in the distance that might just be heading our way.

Great depression

And what if the rescue fails? What then? What if we’re plunged in to a recession or depression that Warren Buffet has warned could be “long and deep?” I wasn’t alive during the great depression but my father was and he couldn’t find work. It was the same all across Europe and North America. The US spent its way out of depression on grand infrastructure projects. Germany re-armed.

War should not be seen as an inevitable consequence of economic failure but war can arise from instability and, so often, conflict comes from the left field. Here we are today, worrying about Islamic fundamentalism, but what happens if the Chinese economy collapses or if Russia goes in to decline?

I’m not sure that you or I can do anything about that but we can do some things as individuals. We can live a little differently. We can save instead of spending (ignoring what our economic masters tell us we should be doing). If we can’t afford something we shouldn’t buy it. We can learn to appreciate what we have and know what it is to have enough. Life is less complicated that way.

Read my thoughts on the "economics of enough."

Things that bug me: 2. Escalator hogging

2008-09-11T14:42:00.003Z

Very quickly when you live and work in London you learn to stand on the right hand side of the escalators in underground stations.

I think that Londoners must be taught such behaviour in survival classes before they can walk, it is so ingrained in their psyche.

So you always know when someone is blocking your path in the overtaking lane that they are an outsider.

Lost, confused, anxious, they are easy prey for the streetwise Londoner who sweeps them aside with a curt "excuse me." Unless, of course, the step is blocked by a thug with barn door shoulders and "love" and "hate" tattooed on each set of knuckles. In which case the otherwise confident Londoner stays schtum becoming timid and anxious himself as bolder types crowd behind him.

"Come on, move it. What's the hold up?" They don't actually say this. Commuter speak is conveyed through glances and subliminal gestures within the ant-like movement of people around the capital.

Strangely this disciplined escalator etiquette is abandoned once the underground traveller steps out of the tube and in to a department store. Department store? Relax, two abreast, let the escalator take the strain.

Nowhere is this more noticeable than in Bond Street tube station. You have just swept up the escalator two steps at a time, zapped through the barrier, and suddenly there, between you and the street is another short escalator clogged with people on both sides of the step. Significantly this is OUTSIDE the underground barrier. So all bets are off. You want to come past buddy? Foggedaboudit.

A night at the opera

2008-09-11T13:53:00.005Z

Sun readers who responded to a special offer in the newspaper have been enjoying a night at the opera - Don Giovanni, the story, it says, of a "bed-hopping stud who is dragged into hell for his wicked ways."

The Sun's report of the performance left its readership in no doubt about the high spot of the show: "just before the final curtain, Sun readers were given an extra special treat close to their hearts — Don Giovanni with a topless babe in his arms."

What a good idea. How will the rest of the press respond? Can we expect the Telegraph to be offering its readers a chance to go whippet racing in Cleckheaton? Will the FT be running a special report on the Blackpool illuminations? Is the Times to feature a new Jeremy Kyle column? The possibilities are endless.

This could be the start of a revolution in toff-dominated events. Proposals for next year: fish and chips at Glyndbourne, Polo at Old Trafford, the Royal Variety Performance at a working men's club in Blackburn, croquet with John Prescott. It could happen.

Large hadron rap

2008-09-10T09:34:00.006Z

CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, has just sent its first lot of proton particles around the Large Hadron Collider - a 27km track buried deep under the French and Swiss alps.

The whole project has cost about £5bn so far with numerous cost overruns and delays. But in the media and among the public we have seen hardly a breath of criticism. Contrast this with the hullabaloo surrounding the Millennium Dome that cost £789m and the London Olympics (current budget - £5.3bn).

The dome was easier to criticise since it was no more than a very large circular canopy designed to keep the rain off a not very exciting exhibition.

The Large Hadron Collider, on the other hand, is more difficult to criticise because most politicians and journalists - the people who make their livings from kicking visionaries - have not the foggiest idea about what it is trying to do, hence the expression "blinded by science."

Moreover funding for the collider has been shared among 60 nations whereas funding for London 2012 will come from British taxpayers, London ratepayers and television and advertising revenues.

Another thing: while Beijing gave us a £20bn two-week long sporting extravaganza, CERN, at a quarter of the cost, is hoping to provide an answer to one of the great mysteries of our time - what is dark matter?

I'm afraid I must line up with the ignorant politicians and journalists but I do share some of the excitement and admire the balls and tenacity of those scientists who made this happen. Extracting £5bn from 60 countries to build a giant tube shooting around things that we can't see - that's impressive.

If you haven't seen it, one of the clearest outlines of the whole project has been produced here in the Large Hadron Rap.

What all this really means is that if we feel need the need to hold our own in pub conversations from now on we shall have to learn a whole new set of words and concepts. Either that or we can continue to debate the health of Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse and Pete Docherty. Five billion pounds to get that lot out of the news for one day? It was worth every penny.

Things that bug me: 1. Airport caravels.

2008-09-09T10:06:00.003Z

I dislike airports generally. But one thing I really hate is the way people crowd around luggage conveyor belts in arrivals halls.

The “caravel jostle” is so unseemly and so unnecessary. There is always a bottleneck near the flap or ramp where cases appear from the baggage handling bay.

Everyone wants their case first. Some families hunt in packs where dad and the kids stand in file by the conveyor like a blocking line in gridiron football, while mum guards the luggage trolley. You see poor elderly ladies crowded to the fringe of the throng but even these old girls can get the elbow working when they spot their case.

Then there are those who panic, who must have their cases at all costs. Pushing, grabbing, gouging, anything goes to reach the case for fear of the agonising, unthinkable, consequences of failure: “IT MIGHT GO AROUND AGAIN!!!!”

The horror. The horror. Miss your case and it might go around again creating a five-minute delay in joining the traffic jam home. No one deserves to suffer luggage abuse of such appalling proportions.

Beyond those afflicted by the infectious panic there are the “black case obsessionals.” These are people who cannot distinguish their black cases from other black cases, so they check every label, sometimes turning promising items of luggage from the conveyor thereby sending a shudder of indignation along the lines of other black case owners.

Why don’t the black case worriers wrap their cases in yellow bands? That would make identification far too easy. Besides it would carry the risk that copycat band-wrappers would follow, thus restoring the confusion.

Of course – accepting that people would never do this themselves – the airport authority could create a pick up “buffer zone” by painting a red line a few feet from the caravel. A rule would allow people to step in to the zone to pick their case. A simple concept but deliciously fallible.

You can imagine people, having spotted their case 20 yards down the conveyor entering the zone to position themselves for the pick up, in doing so blocking access to those with nearer cases. The system would quickly dissolve into luggage anarchy. Asbos would be issued. Little old ladies would be jailed for assault. Airports would recruit caravel police and armed SWAT teams. Newspaper headlines would scream: “Case Wars!” and arrival lounges would be transformed in to no go areas. Stranger things have happened.

The Pirates of Camp Pete

2008-08-26T17:34:00.006Z

As Kate Quinn said: "When blokes organise things....." In the wake of last year's Camp Dick, Peter Allen, one of our rugby-watching group, decided it was time he had a "Camp Pete."

Peter has a farm at Bampton Grange in Cumbria. He timed the event to coincide with the annual River Lowther raft race and thought it would be a good idea if we entered a team.

My problem was fishing. We didn't get away from the River Dee until the Sunday morning and the raft race was some time on Sunday afternoon. I didn't know the start time, nor whether my presence was required. It was.

Seamus, Simon (aka The Philanderer) and Stuart had formed a team but they were one down.

The lads are all getting older and they needed a master paddler. Short of that, they decided I would do. But we dawdled too much on the motorway and came off the wrong exit. By the time we arrived in Bampton Grange the race had started.

The raft was fine: four plastic drums held together expertly with rope and Japanese lashings, set off with a large pirate flag. But it was a little bit underpowered as its motley crew puffed and wheezed down the course.

I was there, on the bridge, to cheer them on and record the finish on my camera. But the cheers fell on stony ground, or rather the stony bottom of the river,as the pirates made me walk the plank. "Good sport Dick," said Simon, as if I had any choice.

Cinema buffs may know that Bampton was the location for the film, Withnail and I responsible for such classic lines as this one: "We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here, and we want them now." The place has atmosphere.

Later we chewed the fat around a camp fire with a few beers and Cumberland sausages, then settled down in our tents as the wind whipped up in to a howling gale. British summer time. Don't you just love it.

Clueless Cluedo

2008-08-15T11:03:00.006Z

I have always thought there was something a bit grizzly about making light of murder. As we sit around the table at Christmas playing Cluedo do we ever pause to wonder what someone's head looks like when it has been stoved-in by a monkey wrench?

There is Dr Black, dead in whatever room, his brains spilling on to the carpet, and what are we doing but giggling about the possible culprit. OK, it's only a game and the old-fashioned names and Agatha Christie-like setting remind us that we are several steps removed from reality. It is the deduction that matters.

But if it was just about deduction we needn't have characters or weapons or, indeed, murder. You could use the same logic with symbols, boxes and colours. The murder adds a morbid, human dimension.

New names

Now Hasbro, the US toy maker that owns the rights to the game, in a particularly clueless example of the current obsession with makeovers, has "modernised" the game, introducing new names for the characters, thus Colonel Mustard becomes "Jack Mustard."

But how far should modernisation go? All the original characters were white and middle class. No-one in the new line up looks anything like a suicide bomber although Jacob Green (no longer Rev) could be mistaken for Jean Charles de Menezes if one of your game-playing circle happens to include a member of the Metropolitan Police.

Broken bottle

The weapons have changed slightly to include a baseball bat and a dumbbell. What, no Uzi, sawn-off shotgun or broken bottle?

Murder is dirty, nasty and usually in the family or among "friends." In Cluedo it is clean and sterile. It's not real. Updating the characters in a way that retains the sanitized image of the original is pointless. They should have left Professor Plum as he was. Either that or make him the deranged psychotic that he might be. Instead he has become Victor Plum, a self-made video-game design billionaire. Perhaps he designed Manhunt2. Hasbro take note.

Cold wet nose sniffs trouble

2008-08-15T10:21:00.007Z

Beverley Cuddy strikes me as a dog lover. She owns two dogs and writes about them frequently as editor and publisher of Dogs Today Magazine. She also writes a blog called Cold Wet Nose - an excellent name for a dog blog.

She's just been in touch to remind me about an up-coming TV programme, Pedigree Dogs Exposed (on BBC 1, 9pm August 19) that will be putting the activities of the Kennel Club under the spotlight.

I have had my suspicions about the Kennel Club for some time. Does it represent dog lovers or canine eugenicists? Sometimes it can seem like a fine line as Beverley has pointed out in the past. I suspect it is an organisation that needs some reform if it is to live up to its primary objective: "to promote in every way, the general improvement of dogs."

A sign of its concern is that Ronnie Irving, the Kennel Club chairman, has been getting his retaliation in first before actually seeing the programme.

I accept that the Kennel Club does many good things for dogs. It even recognises the merits of cross-breeds which have their own annual show called Scruffts.

But I do think it needs to do more to address the perils of in-breeding. If it's big enough to run expensive offices in Piccadilly it should be big enough to listen and learn from criticism, particularly any accusations that competition judges are still rewarding exaggerated features.

Our West Highland white terrier will not be watching. He's not the most clubbable of dogs.

Nothing like a good clear out

2008-08-10T16:49:00.004Z

It's not often that Gill and I get a weekend to ourselves but all the boys were away doing various things. So what did we do? We went to the tip.

When you have lived in a house for 18 years you accumulate a lot of stuff; or at least you do if you are not good at throwing things away. The time has come to be ruthless. But it's so hard. I hate throwing away things that are perfectly serviceable.

We've had two of everything for a while. It's when you start to get three of everything that you know you're in trouble. A third vacuum cleaner arrived in midweek from our next door neighbour who is moving to Switzerland. It's a great vac so it was out with my dad's old upright.

We started on the garage which hasn't had room for cars for some years now. Instead there's a settee, an armchair, a sideboard and a bureau. It's more like a front room without the carpets.

We chucked the armchair - perfectly serviceable. That hurt. It wasn't so difficult to part with the single wooden oar found on a beach years ago, or the four old suitcases and assorted nylon bags - the sort you get at conferences for all the papers - or the Hewlett Packard laser printer that buggered up my old computer.

All the other computer bits - the keyboards and joy sticks worked just fine. But they had to go.

For some reason - I have no idea why - we had hoarded bits of carpet in the loft. They've all gone. The loft is a nightmare: boxes of books, a commode, a plate rack, lots of paintings and prints, lampshades, more suitcases, wooden rackets, old computers, school exercise books and boxes and boxes of toys (for the grandchildren - says Gill. By the time that happens the Brio train set will be a museum piece).

We didn't make much of an impression on the loft.

I wanted to throw out a music cassette player and video cassette player. But Gill pointed out that without them we would have no means of playing any of our old videos and cassettes. People must have had these debates in the past when they wondered whether they should part with their wind-up gramophones and 78s.

At the tip it was such a shame to see so much good stuff going in to the skips. You aren't allowed to take things; that doesn't make sense to me. When we were first married people used to hang around the tips eyeing up the goodies.

We Tarmacked and edged the drive of our first house with asphalt and kerb stones tipped by the council. That was real recycling. Today new things are coming out so quickly there is no time for your existing stuff to grow old.

The video monitor is a case in point. If it's not a flat screen these days, no-one wants it; nothing wrong with the old ones, they're simply not flat.

We took a load of old plastic plant pots to the local gardening centre where they had a recycling bin. But all the bins were full and they couldn't accept more. "The people who said they would pick them up from us don't appear to have got their act together yet," said the manager. So the pots went to the tip.

But why couldn't the nurseries recycle pots? When I buy a new plant I don't need it to be in a new plastic pot. It's the plant, not the pot that I want. The garden centre will tell you that old pots are not acceptable to consumers. Why don't they try us?

I think that councils should allow their refuse workers to earn a few bob on the side selling some of the better waste as jumble; but that wouldn't do, allowing a bit of entrepreneurial spirit at the local tip. That wouldn't do at all.

The Foggitt files

2008-08-05T09:34:00.007Z

One of the best things about working in provincial newspapers was the way that certain characters would stamp their imprint on a locality. On a light news day at the Huddersfield Examiner we could rely on eccentrics such as Jake Mangelwurzel mentioned here.

At the Yorkshire Post we could call on Bill Foggitt for a prediction about the weather. When I began writing about Foggitt in the Financial Times twenty years ago a lot of my colleagues believed he was a fictional character.

Far from it. Bill, who lived alone in Thirsk, was a shy but slightly mischievous character who was more of a co-conspirator rather than a straightforward source for these snippets on weather lore. The Foggitt reports appealed to my former colleague, the late Malcolm Rutherford, who edited the FT diary for a while. Malcolm had his own eccentricities so that might explain his liking for this oddball take on the weather.

Oddball or not, I still take note of where the frogs are laying their spawn in the pond.

I have collected most of the diary items here in my archive under the heading: "The Foggitt Files" which includes a feature on Foggitt the man.

Crosswords - just tickety boo

2008-08-05T08:19:00.008Z

Crossword compilers are a funny lot. I think that mostly they must sit in darkened rooms and live in the Isle of Man, or possibly Southwold, without television. They seem to occupy a space in time at least thirty years behind the rest of us.

For example, when was the last time you described yourself as "tickety boo?" Yet this was the answer to "six down" in today's Daily Telegraph crossword. Funnily enough it appeared also in a DT crossword just three days earlier (eight down, Saturday). Coincidence or plagiarism? I suspect the former since the crosswords will be submitted well in advance.

It is nevertheless typical of the archaic phrases beloved of compilers. You would never find modern street idiom here, more the language used in Ealing comedies. When did you last call a cabinet a "closet" (two down)? It was a word popularly used by my Auntie Joyce when I was a child, but it's no longer in common usage today.

Beyond crosswords the only time I have noticed old fashioned English phrases in print has been when reading Indian newspapers where, typically, an evasive government minister, might be described in a report as "beating about the bush."

In Telegraph crosswords I can't recall seeing any words that reflect the world of the new media, such as "emoticon," or "avatar" or "webcam" or even "blog." Perhaps there is an assumption, rightly or wrongly, that to include such words would befuddle half of the newspaper's readership. But what about the younger readers who might not even possess a suit, never mind entertain the prospect of getting in to their "glad rags" (28 across)?

I never saw the crossword compilers at the FT but came across one or two at the Yorkshire Post. One of them, a refined-looking woman, would glide in to the office wearing a cloak, rather like the model in the Scottish Widows advertisement who looks far too young to be widowed. Except the compiler was older and looked more like a spinster (again a rarely used word today but perfect crossword fodder). On reflection I suppose the comparison fails, apart from the cloak, although the YP compiler didn't wear a hood either.

But here she is working on that Saturday clue: Mark to obey disconcertingly! That is satisfactory (7-3). Or was it today's clue: Fine cook Betty, I fancy 7-3)?

Anyway it left me with a lasting impression that crossword compilers occupy a world of their own, cloaked in their own thoughts and imagery drawn from gentler days. I wonder if they mix much?

There are times I feel so angry about a badly framed clue that I would be quite happy to drag the compiler before a firing squad. Yet sometimes an elegant clue such as eight down today - "this might produce fir cone(7)" (conifer) - leaves me breathless with admiration.

I dislike those who use such obscure words that I suspect are also unknown to the compiler. Compilers who resort to such behaviour should be dismissed without references.

Yet I doubt whether most newspaper editors ever pay much attention to their crosswords. Yes, they know that the crossword is a "must have" but do they realise just how significant they are - that the crossword is a vital feature in retaining readership? Had I cared about the FT crossword I might not have cancelled my subscription.

A tune called Alice

2008-07-30T19:24:00.005Z

I don't listen to the outpourings of DJs any more. But I do look at interesting things on the internet when people point them out to me. My son, John, found this hypnotic arrangement the other day and can't get it out of his head. It's made up of clips, sound loops and samples from Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland with the addition of a beat. More proof that Andrew Keen was wrong.

According to unconfirmed reports Tim Burton, the film director, is filming a live-action remake of Alice with Johnny Depp in the role of the Mad Hatter.

Cuil - the new kid on the block

2008-07-30T19:08:00.005Z

Where do you want to go today? I just had a quick look at the new search engine, Cuil. It's black - nice. I can't believe I'm discussing a search engine.

Anyway this is what it says about the way it works:

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Then we offer you helpful choices and suggestions until you find the page you want and that you know is out there. We believe that analyzing the Web rather than our users is a more useful approach, so we don’t collect data about you and your habits, lest we are tempted to peek. With Cuil, your search history is always private.

I put in my name (well you do don't you) and it came up with this - all about me at the time of writing. That's just dandy.

Will I swap from Google? Not sure, but it's good to have a new kid on the block.

The force is with the Keystone Cops

2008-07-30T18:00:00.002Z

Don't you ever yearn for the days of silent movies? Imagine cinema now if they were still with us. For those who can't imagine.

Beer, cigarettes and social change

2008-07-28T11:32:00.005Z

Beer sales in pubs are falling. Last year more than 1,400 pubs closed in the UK. Take home sales of beer, meanwhile, are increasing. The strength of beer is increasing too.

We used to put the world to rights in pubs. Now we do so on internet forums. Dinner parties are simply not the same. For a start, you are not on neutral territory, you're expected to behave yourself for the good of the host and then there's the smoking problem.

Last week I was having dinner in a pub with my wife and three others - all men. Conversation was flowing quite nicely during the main course but as soon as our plates were empty Gill and I were deserted by our companions as they went outside to smoke.

I never liked smoky clothing or smoke in my eyes but I do get on well with plenty of people who smoke. Now, however, as the law has excluded the smokers from public interiors, it is the non-smokers who are facing social exclusion.

Our social lives are changing and I'm not sure that all the change is for the better.

No Comment....No FT

2008-07-18T23:17:00.004Z

I'd like to thank all those friends, colleagues and readers who have written to me in the past few days with such kind remarks about my Financial Times column. Yes that really was the last one but the FT tells me that there will be something in that space in future, written by one of its staffers.

I wasn't quite ready to give up the column but I was told that the newspaper had to make economies and staffers come before freelancers. I know how it is. It's going to be tight in the Donkin household too for a while so the FT subscription has had to go. No comment....No FT.

Simon's Cat

2008-07-18T22:12:00.003Z

I wrote a column the other day discussing Andrew Keen's book, The Cult of the Amateur among other things. If you have read it you will know that Keen complains about the internet being overloaded with all kinds of rubbish. Perhaps it is. But you can still find diamonds like this in You Tube's back yard. And this; oh yes, and this.

Tuscany

2008-07-14T14:16:00.006Z

I'm cautious about booking holidays. I always look at the brochure pictures for signs of building work. But everything looked pretty good about the Tuscan property we took for a week, and so it proved.

OK, there was no water when we arrived, no toilet rolls, soap, washing up liquid or kitchen rolls. It was as if the god of cleanliness had demanded a particularly thorough sacrifice from the previous tenants.

So we crossed our legs for a while as Guiseppe, the man who looks after the property, got the water running again. We shared a bar of soap and a single toilet roll for a day until we found a shop for more supplies.

But it was a small price to pay for this wonderful place that had everything you could want of a Tuscan holiday: good sized outdoor pool, indoor pool (the sort you play with cues) marvelous views, shady places to eat and bedrooms everywhere - more than enough for our party of 10.

A well-stocked vegetable garden gave us fresh salads and tomatoes every day with eggs from the chickens - all this and just half an hour from Pisa airport. The roads became progressively narrower until we ended up on a dirt track to the driveway. This ensured privacy but it didn't take long - about five minutes drive - to find a great restaurant in the nearby village.

It's not every day that Gill's mum and dad get the chance to be with all their grandchildren so we were chuffed that all our boys and their two cousins could come. The mix of generations worked well and everybody helped out so that Gill wasn't left with all the jobs.

Usually it takes me a full two weeks to wind down but this time it was pretty instant and we all feel rested. I think it helped to leave the computers at home and mobile telephones switched off. I wouldn't normally spend an hour watching an ant drag the carcass of a much bigger fly laboriously over the patio but you can do that kind of thing when time doesn't matter.

We love Florence, but our day there was disappointing, never again in July - too many crowds. Lucca, on the other hand, was something else, what Florence used to be like before the crowds descended.

The only downside was the flying - I don't like the EasyJet scrum for undesignated seats or the airport hassle that makes flying today the very worst kind of transport. Scotland next with a long drive north - but always worth it when we get there.

Bourne killer

2008-07-04T18:14:00.007Z

George, our youngest son, was packing his bag for a short flight. I was reminding him about all the restrictions covering items in your hand luggage.

"Can you take keys in hand luggage?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"You could do someone a lot of damage with a key," he said. "Jason Bourne killed someone with a pen."

Bourne, in fact, could be quite a liability on aeroplanes as he turned out to be a master at killing people with everyday objects, variously dispatching assorted assassins with a pen, a rolled-up magazine and a towel across the three Bourne films.

What might be left in the Bourne armoury? A beer mat? A fluffy pink slipper? A haddock?

Absurd, I know, but not that long ago we would have thought the same of a bottle of aftershave or a shoe for heaven's sake. A few years earlier we wouldn't have balked at an umbrella but it did for Georgi Markov. It's a shame he never read Robert Ludlum.

Stop press: If all else fails Bourne could always reach for the couch.

There ain't no justice

2008-07-03T22:03:00.007Z

If you have not managed to watch the drama series Criminal Justice running all this week on BBC1 get over to BBC i-player and catch up while you can. It's one of the best pieces of TV drama I have seen for a long time.

The courtroom scenes brought back a lot of unhappy memories. I have been to crown courts many times in my life as a news reporter but only once as a witness - an experience that I wouldn't want to repeat in a hurry.

The case involved the prosecution of a British Rail guard accused of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. According to the prosecution, the guard had beaten up a passenger in a darkened first class carriage because the passenger, holding a second class ticket, had refused to leave the compartment.

It was one of those old-style compartments with two rows of three seats facing each other. The passenger, a young man, had been drinking at a Christmas lunch in Leeds and had settled in the middle seat of the compartment. When instructed to leave by the guard he refused, so the guard stood over him and rained blows on his head.

The guard told the court he had been acting in self-defence, believing the passenger had possessed a knife. The jury, which had been shown pictures of the victim's badly bruised head - found the guard not guilty.

As a barrister in tonight's episode of Criminal Justice pointed out, a jury must be convinced "beyond reasonable doubt" that the accused is guilty.

A solicitor in the drama said: "I know that the vast majority of those I defend are guilty and half of them get off."

Violent attacks on rail guards are not uncommon. Violent attacks by rail guards are rare. When the guard was committed for trial in Liverpool his trade union staged a 24-hour stoppage in protest against "violence on their staff."

A problem for the prosecution was that they had just the one witness - the belligerent young man who had been attacked. I was that witness. The external bruising has long gone. Inside it's still there.

MPs save kitchen cabinet

2008-07-03T21:33:00.007Z

We're desperately in need of a new kitchen so I think I'll have to become a member of parliament. MPs have just voted to retain their so-called John Lewis list with allowances for home improvements - such as £10,000 for a new kitchen - and other "essentials" like a wide screen TV (up to £750).

The problem is I'm just not sure which party to join. I suppose the obvious choice would be the Monster Raving Loony Party but, wait, the Church of the Militant Elvis Party sounds interesting.

With 26 names on the ballot paper, the Haltemprice and Howden by election, forced by the resignation of Tory MP David Davis, is fielding the largest number of candidates that anyone can remember.

This suggests to me that it is time that election deposits need to rise. If so many people are prepared to risk losing their £500 deposits, perhaps the economy is not in quite such bad shape after all.