I’m in my mid fifties, so the internet wasn’t really a thing for any of my childhood or a good chunk of my adulthood. I’m just older than the original ARPANET, the last twenty years is when it’s become a – I’m going to use the word ‘quotidian1’ – part of life. This means that our children, born in 2004 and 2009, grew up with the internet.
Knowledge from dead trees
Physical encyclopaedias were the source of knowledge. I collected a part work encyclopaedia in the late 70s, it’s in the loft. The only thing I remember was how important the author of the Billabong entry thought it was that we don’t confuse a billabong with an ox bow lake. It remains the only time I’ve seen capital letters being used for emphasis in a reference work.
You can hear the frustration in the writer’s prose. How many times a day must they have been confronted with this basic confusion? An ox-bow lake is NOT a billabong, and don’t you forget it, young man!
We also had a 12 (I think) volume reference from the ’60s. This was much slacker about the definitions of riverine features. It also had beautiful full colour insets with cutaway diagrams of flowers, sailing ships, hydroelectric dams and (less lovely) frogs. Instead of doomscrolling or getting lost on a Wikiwalk, we could spend a wet Sunday leafing through these reference works and bore each other with really interesting facts.
Early days of the internet
I first heard about email in 1990, at university. One of my tutors explained how he could use his computer (he had a computer in his office!) to send a message to a friend in Southampton and would likely have a reply that afternoon. A miracle!
Academia and the military were the first adopters of internet. When I started work at Liverpool university in 1993 I got my first email address. I didn’t have anyone to email until a few years later when my dad, an early adopter, got home internet in ‘96. He used it for research – he was a keen genealogist, and the digitising of parish records and the availability of registry office records online was just beginning.
What now?
I’ve written before about how the internet changed how I did my job as a research scientist. I’m now self-employed and the internet enables my work. My online shop couldn’t exist without the internet. I’d have to have the goods printed for me or buy a suitable printer and then have the hassle of storing unprinted goods (t shirts in all sizes and colours, bags, cups, blank stickers…) .
The impact that the internet has on our lives is astounding when you think about it from the point of view of what it was in the 1990s. In an interview with Jeremy Paxman in 1999, David Bowie said he was convinced that it would change our lives and our idea of what media could be. Paxman was sceptical, as most people would be. Who really needs a computer in their homes, just to do shopping or read emails?
Bowie and Paxman could not have foreseen the rise and ubiquity of smart devices, where almost everyone can have access to the internet. It’s now so routine to have internet that to be without can seem, for some, to be a personal disaster.
I could also have used ‘jejune’, but let’s keep things suitable for family viewing, shall we? ↩︎
You might think he’s one of the greatest actors of his generation, a philanthropist and mentor, but there are other sides to Michael Sheen. He’s got more sides to him than a full set of D&D dice.
Who is he, really? One minute he’s a dishevelled wild man in the poorly-shot Staged, the next he’s Arthur, the exquisitely groomed robot in the better-filmed Passengers.
Michael Sheen as he really is (left) and being paid to pretend to be a robot (right).
Often he’s too lazy to think up a character to portray, such as Arthur in Passengers, Paul Bates in Midnight in Paris or Brain Clough in The Damned United, so he resorts to pretending to be real people. But which one is he? Is he satirist and interviewer David Frost, slightly smarmy Prime Minister Tony Blair, effete and prickly actor Kenneth Williams, or the tragic revolutionary leader, Lucian the vampire?
Michael Sheen in four roles depicting actual people. David Frost in Frost / Nixon (2008); Tony Blair in The Queen (2006), Kenneth Williams in Fantabulosa (2006), and Lucian in Underworld (2003).
Feud with David Tennant
Sheen first worked with Tennant on the TV adaptation of Good Omens, the book co-written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The relationship got off to a bad start, with Sheen replacing Tennant as the angel Aziraphale during rehearsals. Pretending to be the Good Guy again. The third series is due out soon, maybe he will show his true colours this time round.
Michael Sheen (right) as the angel Aziraphale and David Tennant as the demon Crowley in Good Omens. Sheen looks very smug and totally mis-cast as an angel. And I’ve only just noticed that Crowley’s belt buckle is a snake’s head.
I’ve mentioned Staged and this is at the nub of my issue with Sheen. This public, ongoing war with Scotland’s greatest actor and the second-best Dr Who1 David Tennant was pitched as a distraction during Covid. Yet Sheen chose to heap humiliation on David, flaunting his art skills in the first episode and repeatedly correcting his Welsh pronunciation.
Staged Series 1, Episode 1. Sheen gets the humiliation in early with this display of artistic talent.
All actors are evil
Not content with pretending to be someone he’s not – for money! – he’s turned his sights on his hometown of Port Talbot. Not content to constantly insist that the ‘t’ in port shouldn’t be pronounced, he’s plotted to flood the British stages with Welsh actors. Firstly, he’s funded and is Artistic Director of the new Welsh National Theatre and secondly he initiated ‘Welsh Net’, a talent-scouting project aimed at finding and developing Welsh talent.
This is clearly misguided. Apart from Sheen there are no known actors or entertainers from Port Talbot or anywhere in South Wales. Well, none of much note.
He’s set up a charity to provide housing, little thinking that in doing so he might affect house prices in Por’ Talbot. He sold his houses to fund a the Homeless World Cup in 2019. Again, without a thought of the effect on property prices. He also used his own money – gained through devious means, don’t forget – to wipe out £1 million of debt for 900 people in South Wales.
Gameshow takeover
The latest calumny is his ousting of poor little Richard Osman on House of Games, no doubt the result of a hostile negotiations. What next? A series of successful murder-mysteries, I’ll warrant.
Studio shot of the new House of Games studio, now that Michael Sheen has completed his conquest.
In summary
The answer to the question at the top is ‘no’. I think he’s a brilliant actor and a wonderful person.
We’ve not been to many live performances recently. Having kids put a cramp on going out at all, and we’d lost the habit of going out by the time they were old enough to leave alone in the evening. When we do go out together, it’s a comedy night. We are both fans of comedy, though mainly on telly1.
Last January Mrs S got us tickets to see Bill Bailey in London in January ‘25. This was just after I’d been made redundant, so the mood lift was needed. This is the fifth time we’ve seen him and he didn’t disappoint.
First time was in 1992, when he was part of a double act called The Rubber Bishops with Martin Stubbs. They performed at Loughborough Uni at one of the regular Saturday night shows. During my time at Loughborough, I also saw Eddie Izzard and Lee Evans during their early years, and Rory Bremner who was quite a big star to get at a little uni in the Midlands.
We saw Bill a few more times in Brighton on various occasions, whenever we could get a babysitter.
This was the first time we’d seen him since his ‘dramatic’ haircut, but that didn’t affect his act. Highlight was the account of getting a cappuccino in Amsterdam. Yes, really.
Bill Bailey before and after his ‘dramatic’ haircut.
Prior to Bill, we saw Ed Byrne at our local theatre in September ’24 and The Mousetrap at St Martins Theatre for its 29,692nd performance in July ‘24.
I’ve seen Bill more than any live performer. Second place would have to be New Model Army (four times), probably the only other multiple-watched performers.
I should get out more.
We mostly agree on comedy. Except for Stewart Lee. Mrs S can’t understand what’s funny about his stuff. ↩︎
I always vote, whatever the level of the election. We have local council elections in my area this coming Thursday and I’ll be voting. Not sure who for, yet.
Voting is a hard-won privilege. In the UK, the Reform Act of 1832 passed after hard-fought campaigns to allow the growing middle class the vote. Not everyone was in favour, of course. The fear that the working class might have a say in the make-up of parliament was primary. The Duke of Wellington said that he couldn’t envisage a better system. This was a system where Leeds, a city of 130,000 people, shared two MPs with the whole of Yorkshire, and Old Sarum (population: 0) also returned two MPs. Notable among these MPs was William Pitt, the elder, Prime Minister from 1766-68.
Non-property owning men gained the vote, provided they paid a rent of over £50 a year (about £5000 today).
Women won the vote in 1918, but then only to women over 30. Male voting age was 21 at the time. The property-owning stipulation was lifted for men in 1918, but not for women, though. They still had a property-related restriction until 1928.
Across the Atlantic, voting privileges in the USA seem to be under attack. It’s already very difficult to vote in The States – every time there’s an election we see footage of enormous queues of people wanting to vote. Who knows how many are disenfranchised because they cannot spare two hours waiting to vote? The logical alternative – postal voting is also under attack.
Voting is a ‘use it or lose it’ privilege. I’ll be using it on Thursday.
I’ve never had an aim in live or any job that I want to do (see previous post).
I’m choosing to interpret this question as finding my way around. Mostly I can navigate without help if I have been somewhere before. This baffles our older child, who once asked me how I knew the route from home to Bath (just over 100 miles) without a satnav. All I could say was that I knew it in the same way they knew the way to school. You head north for an hour and a bit until you reach the M4, turn left and then another hour and then follow signs for Bath. Easy.
As far as finding my way on unfamiliar roads goes, I usually rely on Waze, the free satnav app. Or, as we have dubbed it “The Waze Woman”.
Why “The Waze woman”?
Partly because the voice I use is a female voice, it’s the default British English setting. But also because we love to personify the special speaking machines that we trust and which infuriate us.
The name comes from a scene in Blackadder II. Edmund is worried that he fancies young Bob1, his new manservant. After an abuse-filled visit to the doctor2, in desperation he takes a trip to Putney to visit ‘The Wise Woman’.
I’ve stopped having a favourite restaurant. Of the five that I would give as my favourite, four have closed and one has taken a dip in quality that has put us off going there.
Cafe Retro, Bath
Closed 2020-ish
Cafe Retro in the centre of Bath.
When we first moved to Bath, we lived round the corner, from this place. It became our occasional Sunday treat, no-frills fried breakfast maybe once a month, evening meals maybe twice during the six years we lived in Bath. the decor is what might be called ‘eclectic’, with mis-matched chairs and no two tables looking alike. But the food is what matters.
I had breakfast there on the morning of our wedding, in the company of my best man, who also loved the place because their veggie food was brilliant.
Martini’s, Bath
Closed 2022
The smell from this restaurant was amazing.
We loved the smell as we walked past on the way home from Sainsbury’s. Mainly garlic, some meaty and bready smell as well. We only went twice, because it was a bit expensive. Best dish was the chili chicken livers as a starter. I’ve tried to reproduce this since, but can’t quite get it right.
On our second visit, Chris Evans (the DJ) was having dinner with a huge group of friends.
Cafe Notturno, Melbourne
Closed 2023
Cafe Notturno, fantastic pizzas and much-needed cheesecake.
“Nottie’s” as we knew it, was on Lygon St, Carlton in the heart of what was the Italian quarter. We visited often, they did great pizzas and the best cheesecake. When Mrs S was pregnant I would go there to get cheesecake for her. We also went there the evening Mrs S’s parents flew in to see their first grandchild. They have no memory of that meal.
They closed after 45 years some time before we revisited Melbourne in 2025. The site is now one of many Indian restaurants on the street – the diversity of cuisines has expanded somewhat in the 20 years we were away.
Tristan’s, Horsham
Closed 2022
The only Michelin starred restaurant I’ve been to more than once (been to one other ever). All four visits were wonderful experiences. The thing with very high quality food is that you don’t get a lot, but you’re full afterwards. Last time we went, we had the four course seasonal menu (below). Considering the quality of the food, £50 is a bargain especially with the occasional amuse bouche thrown in.
Menu from our last visit to Tristan’s. The menus had a seal, so you could pretend you’re doing Taskmaster!
I had the crab, then quail, lamb and cheese afterwards. Previously we’d had rabbit and I even found a mushroom I like. Girolle1, which, of course, are chuffing expensive (about £1 each).
Girolle or chanterelle mushrooms. These have a nutty taste and a firm texture, unlike the general musty flavour and soft texture I find other mushrooms have.
I got a free tot of whisky (Monkey Shoulder, a blend of unpeated malts2) when we went on my birthday (my 50th, I think). They also serve wine of such quality even I could smell the blackberry in it (Boom Boom, California Red by Charles Smith). Normally, all I can smell in red wine is ‘wine’.
There’s a more complete review on this blog post by Major Foodie.
A pub (near Guildford)
We used to live going to this pub for Sunday lunch. It’s close to where my father-in-law is buried, it was my pick for my birthday meal at work after the company moved to Guildford. Unfortunately, it changed hands a few years ago and since then there’s something a bit off about the food, the service and the ambiance. We’re scouting for a new place in the area, there’s plenty of pubs around that do good food, but finding one we feel comfortable in may take time.
Launched in 2005, Monkey Shoulder is intended as a cocktail whisky, but I’m very happy to drink it as is. They now do a ‘Smokey Monkey’ as well as the unpeated version. ↩︎
This is one of those questions that gets asked at interviews1. I’m not quite sure what the correct corporate answer is. I know there are several wrong answers: “laughing hysterically on a pile of my dead enemies”; “In your chair”; “In a job where I’m not asked stupid bloody questions”. Any of these answers would result in the swift termination of the interview.
The AI wouldn’t let me generate an image with the prompt “laughing hysterically on a pile of my dead enemies” so I had to substitute “dead enemies” with “dolls”. Which is worse.
Luckily I’ve never been asked that. There’s two things to say about this question for me: first of all in 10 years time I’ll be getting close to the age when I can collect a state pension in the UK. So as long as I’m still healthy and compos mentis2, I’ll be fine with that.
Secondly, today I started a new job. It’s part-time, at the local sixth form college, and they weren’t damn fool enough to ask where I saw myself in ten years time.
Whether I’ll still be doing this in 10 years time I don’t know, I’ve only done one day. It depends really on how well the Heath Way Prints business – or any of the other business ideas I have – go.
Along with “Why do you want to work at (this place)? When I interviewed as night-shift staff at a local supermarket, I came up with some spectacular bullshit. The real answer – I need the money – wouldn’t have worked. ↩︎
There are a lot of books I’ve read several times. I’m pretty sure I’ve read most of Terry Pratchett’s books at least three times (exceptions), all the Flashman books a couple of time, too. Another author I am very fond of, who isn’t Pratchett, is Iain M. Banks (1954 – 2013).
The ‘M’ (For Menzies1) is important. Mr Banks wrote literary fiction as Iain Banks and added the M for science fiction.
The Culture
Most of his SF books are part of The Culture series. The Culture is a post-scarcity civilisation spanning many star systems in the Milky Way. Its living inhabitants are mainly humanoid (Earth features in one short story) and are effectively immortal. Minds, hyper-intelligent artificial intelligences, oversee the civilisation.
A common problem for the people of The Culture is boredom. Many people have drug glands implanted to provide sexual stimulation, speed up neural processes, improve memory, enhance concentration or help you wake up after a night of overindulgence. You can change gender as often as you wish. You can acquire a new body2 in any form. You can indulge in any fantasy with a virtual reality that indistinguishable from reality. How tedious. One way to avoid boredom is to play board games.
Player of Games (1988)
In Player of Games, the main character, Gurgeh, is one of the elite games players of The Culture. A rogue drone, acting for the Minds, blackmails him into accepting a mission for which he is uniquely qualified: to win a game called Azad.
This is no ordinary game, though. The Empire of Azad is built around the game. The champion becomes Emperor, your performance in the championships determines your career progression. The game is the empire, the empire is the game. The boards fill huge rooms, semi-sentient game pieces add unpredictability to the game and competitors spice up play with side bets that range from loss of money to radical surgery for the loser.
This isn’t quite how I imagined the boards in the game of Azad, but this is the sort of scale of one of the boards. Picture by Sam Fontaine.
Gurgeh spends the months it takes to reach Azad learning the game. He arrives in good time to join the tournament and is shocked to find a society with rigid gender ideas (albeit there are three genders) and a strict caste system. This goes counter to the free-wheeling, (almost) anything goes anarchy that Gurgeh knows. But if anyone knows how important rules are in a game, it’s Gurgeh.
How he copes with a society he can’t understand without understanding the game that underpins the society is the core of the book.
Why do I come back to it?
This and the next in the series, Use of Weapons show Banks expanding The Culture into the bedrock of the following series. He wrote nine novels and one short story collection about The Culture.
I love the inventiveness of the society that Banks created. The Culture is a paradise, and for most of the trillions of people who live in it their only concern is what party to go to and who they next have sex with. For some, this is not enough. The game players all feel the need to reduce the tech level of their lives. Having real, visceral objects to play with against an opponent who is your intellectual equal is an ideal that replaces the virtual that is freely available. We see this now, where people want lower-tech phones, seek early gaming consoles and, indeed, play board games.
I saw a criticism of The Player of Games that held the position that Banks, writing in 1988, couldn’t have predicted the rise of computer games where you can play against people in different countries. I’d say Banks was spot-on. People surrounded by tech want to be able to switch off, to play chess, to carve things from wood, to learn a musical instrument3.
So the well-realised society that is explored is a pull. But the character of Gurgeh, his journey, and the mystery of the game and civilisation of Azad get expanded upon in every reading. That’s what brings me back to this, of all the Culture books.
In Excession one character does both. They become female to have a baby and end the book with the body of an alien species. The Hydrogen Sonanta, the last Culture book, features a 10,000 year old man who once spent five years as a whale. ↩︎
There’s an aspect of this in The Hydrogen Sonata. The protagonist has spent years learning how to play a particular musical instrument. She even had major surgery to enable her to play properly. An AI controlled robot could play it perfectly. But that wasn’t the point. ↩︎
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I had a range of jobs I wanted to do when I was little. I saw my first combine harvester (or “combast harvinger” as I called it) at the age of three I wanted to drive one of them.
When I went to school we were often asked what we wanted to do when we grew up. Now, I’ve never really known what I want to do, should I ever grow up. It changed every time, and I kind of fell into science. I envy Mrs S, who always knew she wanted to act. However, when I was five I said I wanted to be a window cleaner.
Why I said this, I don’t know. We didn’t have a window cleaner at home, my parents cleaned our windows themselves. Someone may have cleaned the school windows, but I never saw them, despite our house backing into the school grounds. It may have been a telly programme such as Nationwide or Blue Peter that showed window cleaners cleaning tall buildings that lodged the idea in my head. Or perhaps George Formby influenced my decision.
George Formby (Jr)
When I think about window cleaning now, the famous song by George Formby1 comes to mind and won’t leave.
Released in 1936, the song was banned by the BBC. The lyrics were a bit risqué for the time:
The blushing bride she looks divine,
The bridegroom he is doing fine
I’d rather have his job than mine
When I’m cleaning windows.
Lord Reith, the controller of the BBC, expressed his disgust and contempt2:
If the public wants to listen to Formby singing his disgusting little ditty, they’ll have to be content to hear it in the cinemas, not over the nation’s airwaves
John Reith, the first Director General of the BBC. He insisted that the BBC should give equal consideration to all viewpoints. But they should also not broadcast what he saw as filth.
The royal family disagreed and King George VI requested that he play the song for them at a royal command performance.
Formby didn’t care what Lord Reith said. His star was on the rise and he became the highest paid British entertainer with a six-film £500,000 contract with Columbia Pictures.
Segregation and World War II
Formby died in 1961, aged 56. In the alternative 1985 of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, he’s the President of a republican England. At a book signing in 2004 I asked him why he chose Formby to be the president. The answer was remarkable.
During the Second World war, the Entertainments National Services Association (ENSA) paid Formby £10 a week to provide entertainment and morale-boosting content. This he did, making films and touring factories, theatres and concert halls. He performed in Normandy after the D-Day landings, giving impromptu concerts in barns and on the back of farm carts. His 1940 film Let George Do It! got great reviews on its release in America as To Hell with Hitler.
When the USA joined the war, Formby received a commission to perform for the American troops stationed in Britain. He refused initially, standing firm against performing in front of a segregated audience. Fforde explained that Formby saw segregation as a class issue. As a result of this stand, the US commanders ensured that his concerts were to to non-segregated US troops. In addition to his Normandy performances, he did nine concerts to the 6th Airborne Division standing beside a sand-bag wall to an audience in fox holes.
All this put a new perspective on a man I’d only ever seen as a turnip-faced ukulele strummer who sang silly songs. His position as a fictional President of England was clearly justified.
Goes to show, you can’t judge by appearances.
His father was also billed as George Formby. In Warrington cemetery there is a huge monument to George Formby. As an afterthought there is the inscription “Also George Formby OBE, son of the above”. ↩︎
The BBC has a great tradition of blocking songs that now seem innocuous. I Am the Walrus by The Beatles got banned because it contained the word ‘knickers’. ↩︎
The stock exchange scene at the end of ‘Trading Places’ confused me for many years. I learned, many years later, just what was going on and how stock trades aren’t linear in the same way shopping is.
The set up
Trading Places is a 1983 comedy film starring Dan Ackroyd, Eddie Murphy and Jamie Lee Curtis. These younger actors get first class support from Denholm Elliot, Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy.
Ackroyd plays Louis Winthorpe III, managing director of Duke & Duke Commodity Brokers. The Duke brothers (Ameche and Bellamy) are capricious millionaires who only care about money.
Mother said you were greedy
She meant it as a compliment
Street hustler Billy-Ray Valentine (Murphy) enters the scene and is arrested after a misunderstanding between him and Winthorpe. The Duke brothers decide to run an experiment, to investigate nature versus nurture. They bet on this for “the usual amount”.
They ruin Winthorpe by planting drugs on him. After his arrest he loses his job, his house, his fiancée and has his assets frozen and credit cards cut up. Ophelia (Curtis), a prostitute released from the police station at the same time, lets him stay with her while he gets his life in order.
Ophelia and Louis meet outside the police station.
The Dukes give Valentine a job (Winthorpe’s job) and a house (Winthorpe’s house) with a butler, Coleman (Winthorpe’s butler, played by Denholm Elliot).
At a Christmas party at Duke & Duke, Winthorpe – dressed as Santa Claus – tries to frame Valentine for drug use. This fails. Security eject Winthorpe, but not before he manages to steal a side of salmon to hide in the beard.
Winthorpe has reached rock bottom. Trying to eat a side of salmon through his fake beard on a bus.
In the toilets, Valentine overhears the Dukes discuss their bet. They declare the nature v nurture debate settled and the bet is paid. All $1 of it.
Winthorpe has hit rock-bottom. His suicide bid fails when the gun he traded his watch1 for fails to fire. He takes an overdose of the drugs he used to frame Valentine and passes out in Ophelia’s bath. When he recovers, he finds himself back in his own home, reunited with his butler and less than pleased to see Valentine. Valentine explains how the Dukes did this to them for a $1 bet. The pair seek revenge.
Revenge is ours!
Since the only thing the Dukes care about is money, they decide to ruin them. They give the Dukes false information that the orange harvest will be poor, which leads them to decide to corner the market in frozen concentrated orange juice (FCOJ).
The final scene is where the confusion lies. Trading floors in the early 80’s were high-tension environments. We see traders asking about each other’s stomach ulcers and hypertension before going into the bear pit that is the high-stakes world of trading frozen concentrated orange juice.
The high-stakes world of frozen concentrated orange juice trading.
The Dukes, confident that the price of FCOJ will rocket because of the bad harvest, start buying FCOJ futures. This creates a speculative bubble and drives up prices. Winthorpe then announces that he will sell 30 April futures, each of 15,000 lbs, at $1.42 a pound. They are mobbed, selling to everyone. The price drops and the Dukes watch in horror as they face ruin.
The Duke brothers realise something is amiss.
After an hour of frantic activity the true crop report is broadcast. This forecasts a normal harvest. The price of FCOJ plummets and panic ensues. When the price hits 46c, Winthorpe starts buying from everyone except the Duke’s broker. The final price is 29c a pound.
At the margin call, when all trades have to be settled, Winthorpe and Valentine see the Dukes. They also had a bet; Valentine bet Winthorpe that they could ruin the Dukes. Winthorpe pays up.
Winthorpe pays up on the bet he had with Valentine.
Exchange officials confront The Duke brothers. They must pay $394 million (over $1 billion today) to cover their trading losses. This exceeds their assets, and the brothers are bankrupt. Even at the end while one of the Duke brothers collapses with a heart attack, money is first and foremost.
Official: Mortimer, your brother is not well. We better call an ambulance.
Mortimer: Fuck him2! Now listen to me! I want trading reopened now!
The film ends with Winthorpe, Valentine, Ophelia and Coleman on a beach, trying to decide whether to have lobster or cracked crab for lunch.
What I don’t understand…
How trading works is at the centre of this scene. In the world of brokerage buying and selling aren’t necessarily linear. You can sell things you haven’t yet bought. If you think the price will fall, you sell as many of a thing as possible with a promise to supply at an agreed time. Then you have to buy the thing and if the price has dropped, you get profit.
The Dukes think that a poor harvest will mean frozen juice will be in demand. So they think that the price of FCOJ will be high in April. They tell their dealer to keep buying, no matter what.
Winthorpe sells 30 contracts, each containing 15,000 lbs of juice for $1.49 a pound – that’s $639,000. This is a promise to sell that juice in April at that price. How much he eventually pays for the juice is not the buyer’s problem. A poor harvest would indicate that this could be a good price. No wonder they get mobbed.
The real crop forecast is released after an hour’s trading. Winter storms have not affected the harvest, so the value of the frozen juice plummets. Panic ensues, the FCOJ price tanks until it reaches 29c a pound. Winthorpe and Valentine start buying the juice that they will sell in April at a much reduced price. Nobody will want frozen juice in April when there is plenty of fresh juice.
Had Winthorpe and Valentine only done that first trade they would have made $508,500 by buying at 29c and selling at $1.42. but they did many more trades than that – it’s never clear how many, but it’s a lot.
On the other hand, the Dukes are in the hole for $394 million. They bought a huge amount of stock at the high price and couldn’t sell it before the end of trading. They need to pay for the juice they bought at $1.42 a pound.
If only the Dukes weren’t so greedy. But then, if they weren’t there wouldn’t have been a moral for this story.
A Rochefoucauld, the thinnest waterproof watch in the world. Retails for $6955. Bo Diddley gave him $50 for it. ↩︎
Don Ameche apologised to the crew for swearing. ↩︎
