4054 days ago
My old colleague and fellow t1ps emigre, Robert Sutherland Smith writes from the Hampstead Ponds...
The arrival of the autumn equinox probably went unnoticed by the majority of the fully clad population, enclosed as it is, in heated office home, car and train. But not amongst the minority of open water swimmers who are in true tactile touch with the outside world of the weather with myself at the Hampstead Ponds every morning.
4084 days ago
From our man on Hampstead Heath...Swimming in the now cooling waters of the pond - as summer recedes and energy bills rise - somehow prolongs those salad days of life; the water being as crisp as a lettuce and the swimmer growing as cool as a cucumber. These days when the wind scuds across the surface water, raising small droplets that splash over your head, are a particular pleasure to inland pond swimmers; it is like swimming at sea but without the salt.
Only a week or two ago in heat wave weather, the pond was more like the African Impop; now, it is a little closer to swimming in Dover Harbour Pond swimming, like markets, is often surprising in its sudden changes of mood - or is it my mood?
Dear old ‘Athenean’ George Osborne, Blighty’s Chancellor is probably - to steal the imagery of Andrew Neil - celebrating his ‘winning the economic argument’ down at Anabel’s. I am sure it was him I saw in a darkened corner? In any event,
4115 days ago
My old (158 at the last count) colleague from t1ps Robert Sutherland Smith is working out his last weeks at the place that should not be named. As of now he is full time back where he belongs with Steve and myself. As such he continues his monthly reflections from the ponds at Hampstead Heath. RSS has done a cracking piece on bonds and equity markets - why he is bullish - today on shareprophets (here) but for me writes:
It’s that ‘gather ye rosebuds while ye may’ season of August in high summer at the pond. Blackberries (still an unripened green) are forming in the undergrowth of shrubs and bushes at the edge of the water, reminding us that nothing lasts for ever - particularly northern summers. Soon, there will be fireworks over Edinburgh Castle to mark the end of the Festival and massed bands and pipers will be marching to the old tunes - the ‘Black Bear’ and the barren Rocks of Aden, swaying - down the Royal Mile and into Autumn.
4145 days ago
My old pal Robert Sutherland Smith, now aged 167, is off on a summer break for a few days. Before departing he offered up his thoughts on life from Hampstead Heath. He has also served up two articles today (on G4S and Tesco) on www.shareprophets.com Over to RSS.
Now that the great heat has come, the ponds more closely resemble the Ganges with seemingly half the population of London seeking its cool liquidity, except that the water no longer has that cool crispness which bites back in less sunny days.
Crowds as we know are prone to madness
4184 days ago
It is always good to be firmly reunited with old friends. Robert Sutherland Smith and I started working together along time ago when he was only 148. I am pleased to say that he is, as of yesterday, devoting his freelance enterprises to www.shareprophets.com – thus the four key writers who made t1ps what it (once) was: myself, Steve Moore, Zak Mir and RSS are all reunited again over at www.shareprophets.com
RSS will continue to pen a monthly Pond Life column here but three times a week he will be analysing a FTSE 350 yield stock over on Shareprophets. Having started his City career in 1967 ( the year before I was born) RSS knows what he is talking about.
While some financial websites groups have recently admitted to sharply falling numbers I am delighted to say that after less than two months www.shareprophets.com already has 7,000 registered users who go there for free share data on all UK listed stocks as well as breaking news and cutting analysis from 20 writers with the men who made t1ps what it was at the heart of it.
If you have not registered you can do so for free at www.shareprophets.com
4191 days ago
As I swim through the still bracing cool waters of the pond up at Hampstead Heath, a duck makes passage across my bows, or to be lucidly un-metaphorical, my nose! There is something comforting about ducks; reliable creatures bobbing along in an unreliable world, asking only the companionship of other ducks and some weed to eat.
In my mind I hum the tune of that old Roy Rogers (the elegantly attired, spotlessly laundered, white hated singing Hollywood cowboy of my childhood) song about his horse, the reliable and faithful “Trigger”, “… that four footed friend …he’ll never let you down …….etc” and add my own words: “That web footed friend, that web footed friend…….etc. It is a wonderful therapy doing something physical and boring enough to make your mind a vacuum into which such abominating thoughts pass through unbidden. Then, come thoughts of the market. As I make my turn by a weed covered buoy – I spot another approaching duck as my thoughts meander across the exceptional May market… Have we all been misguided?
For most of the month it has disobeyed the old market dictum about selling and going away until St. Leger’s Day. I wonder who St. Leger was and vow to look him up on Google!
4256 days ago
The thoughts of my old friend the one and only and truly great Robert Sutherland Smith…
I stand on the jetty gazing onto the cold grey waters of the ponds on Hampstead Heath, a stiff breeze blowing against, around and seemingly through me, directly from somewhere deep in the Russian Arctic region - surely more than a marketing exercise by Gaszprom in promotion of the gas they sell us for warmth, at economically indefensible prices? My darting, uncomforted gaze fails to be met by that of any bobbing coot or duck. They have wisely gone elsewhere; or simply not bothered to turn up.
The place is empty and silent. I stand there a swimming trunk clad standard bearer for the a dead nineteenth century English public school tradition of privation, physical self denial and cold showers - not that I attended any such establishment myself - knowing that the late Dr. Arnold of Rugby School, no doubt now sitting on the right hand of the Creator Himself, would be proud of me! Flashman, I conjecture, now reincarnated as a minister of the Crown, will probably be turning over in a warm bed somewhere, sleeping off too much champagne from the night before and in his case, no doubt, after a sound flogging by some dominatrix in a steel lined corset.
It is strange what thoughts visit your imagination, when swimming here? March they say, comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Not this March I venture! If it makes any concession at all, it will to be to go out as a polar bear. It is April that is described as the cruelest month. But (I hear Dr. Arnold sigh as I wilfully commit the impropriety of starting a written sentence with a co-ordinating conjunction) in 2013 AD April can scarcely prove crueller than this raw and bitter March.
As I prepare to push off for a rapid dash through fowl abandoned waters, I luridly think that this forlorn scene reminds me of the Chancellor’s March ‘Autumn’ budget. If he wishes to put himself in contention as the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer of the past century, he has made a powerful case for himself.
4287 days ago
My old ( very old) friend from t1ps.com Robert Sutherland Smith continues his monthly column dreamt up while taking an early morning swim on Hampstead Heath… Pond Life.
There is nothing better at about 7am on a raw February morning, when flurries of snow in the air are driven hither and thither by a hectoring easterly wind coming across the North Sea from somewhere south of the Ural Mountains, than to make your way to the ponds for a winter dip. Thankfully, it is not that cold this morning; only three degrees above freezing. Almost sub tropical compared with some days. You enter the enclosed compound to find that a few other sturdy fellows are already undressing; hanging their winter cloths on cold metal hooks. They stand there in the poor light of an early winter dawn, white as flour; more like spirits from another plane or dimension than living, breathing beings from north London before the working day.
What is this urge to plunge into forbidding steel grey waters on such a day – or indeed almost any day in an English winter?
4320 days ago
Christmas day at the Highgate Ponds – where allegedly lunatics and pike swim and crayfish behave like sharks – is the top of the yearly swimming market; overpopulated with unfamiliar crowds pulled in by the ‘greasepaint’ momentum of the occasion but woefully unfamiliar with the joys of swimming throughout the seasons.
In consequence, it is my habit along with the other waterfowl to duck out of the Christmas day plunge; going short of the mulled wine, the hoisting of the Union flag on the ruins of the old high diving board of the long vanished, once celebrated, Highgate Diving Club; the traditional bugle call across its steel grey water – and of course, the hyperventilating joy of Christmas Day hyper cold water as men in rubber swimming hats and snow white bodies, dive in to race across its bitterly chilling surface – to the distant cheers of a well wrapped, North London spectacle seeking onlookers. Even the ducks, coots and the grebes take off until this Christmas day festive peak is passed, and the place sinks quietly back into the consoling values of solitude and the wintery beauty of Boxing Day, when I returned.
4321 days ago
My old pal, from my 12 years at t1ps.com, Robert Sutherland Smith is a cheery old fellow (he is 157) with a dry sense of humour. A noted enthusiast for early morning swimming on Hampstead Heath I imagine that he has a few spare hours on his hands right now. Surely he cannot be swimming at present? We will all find out shortly as he starts his new monthly “Pond Life” column here on www.TomWinnifrith.com
So bored as he is he sent me a few of his thoughts on Greggs (LSE:GRG). We both like food and I am a major bear of this stock
4335 days ago
Robert Sutherland Smith started his City career the year before I was born. He is, I think, 157 years old. He and I have worked together for almost eight years. at t1ps He is my friend and he is a very funny and intelligent chap. He is now branching out to celebrate his 158th by doing some freelance writing over at TradingResearchPoint on FTSE 350 Income stocks. He is a great one for focussing on yield. He is also going to do a monthly column for me on this blog on the subject that really interests him, life on Hampstead Heath. I am sure we all look forward to “Pond Life.” RSS today looks at BP. I cannot say that I disagree with his analysis.
One should always have some oil exposure in your portfolio. Those of us old enough ( and I certainly qualify on that count) can remember at least three oil shocks when events in the Middle East have sent the crude price soaring. While the rest of one’s portfolio tends to take a bit of a hit on such occasions, your oil stocks prosper. You need that hedge. And, although no expert on regional geo-politics, it strikes me that the Middle East is, as a region, rather more “combustible” today than it has been for many a year. Sooner or later it will go up in flames, the oil price will spike and shares in large scale oil producers will be re-rated rapidly and brutally. Until then the issue is what oil stock to hold and that brings me to BP (BP.). Is the yield on offer sufficient to both offset business risks and also give me a reasonable return until the oil price spikes as it will inevitably do at some stage?
However, I start not in the Orient but in the United States.
