The Evil Diaries: Gold, Globo HM Queen and India

Gold on the way: the chairman reminded me of the need to be long gold. So I did as I was bidden. So far so good. Now $1,176.

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Yesterday, I was visited by a bright fellow who went over why he considers Globo (GBO) to be a scam. It is pretty sobering. It’ll all come out sooner or later and, at 33p, it is a screaming short.

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You have to take your hat off to HM Queen. How she is prepared, despite whatever she personally may feel, to roll out the red carpet for the Chinese delegation commands one’s drop-jawed respect.

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Muddling ideas: Although my younger daughter has lived in India these last ten years and, as a boy, I was drawn to the story of Clive of India and of course much more, quite undeniably I live in a miasma as regards that subcontinent.

For instance, I have never read Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet. I just think I have a sense of events informed by that fictional presentation of history where such a sense must be categorised as lunatic. It gets worse. I picked up cultural ideas and even a sense of Indian commerce by purchasing some thirty plus years ago a bottle of Fern’s chutney. Inspection of that bottle reveals that it is based on a recipe of a Mrs Fernandez – presumably a derivative of Portuguese immigration to India.

I just find myself imagining history. This is ridiculous but, in its latest iteration, I was wandering through the Tesco online catalogue and encountered a chutney offer by a Mrs H S Balls. Needless to add, I wondered just how Mrs Balls, presumably some Anglo-Indian, had found herself over a stirring pot that developed from back street stove to widely known brand. So I bought some. Closer inspection of the bottle last night discloses that it is from South Africa. So now I am back on Cecil Rhodes, the colonialist rather than the hapless lion lately snuffed out in Zimbabwe. It just goes on and on.