It is well known that Winston Churchill was bipolar. When he experienced his so-called black dog days, he would trot down to the pigsty and converse with the animals. Not for him supercilious cats who look down on you, or dumb, obedient dogs who look up to you. Only pigs treat you as an equal. That's not, I suppose, ABSOLUTELY relevant as regards the Haagen year, but I thought I'd mention it nevertheless.
The only PIGS of at least some relevance might be the unfortunate European countries whose elected governments have spent the last 30 years with their snouts in other people's savings, giving nothing back while consuming vast amounts of perfectly good oxygen, but even that situation was elegantly sidestepped by our firm BTG Pactual. We were in the press only last week: a group of investors pulled out the 12-inch chequebook, poured half a pint of ink in their fountainpens, and wrote a rather large cheque for a minority stake. With characteristic Brazilian understatement, our CEO was quoted in the Chinese press saying "the first generous deal is a sign of a new financial order. The deal means a valuation of 100 million billion." I have to say I used a low-grade translation software, but I'm warming to it; coming up with statements like that I'm not going to upgrade any time soon. It also translated our firm's name to Brazil Brazil Butterfield, which frankly I couldn't have come up with in a million years; I suspect the little Google gnome sitting in my compiler was smoking some pretty serious designer weed. But I digress.
Irene is in danger of losing her amateur status as an artiste: a similar bidding frenzy took place a little while ago for lot #29 at the annual ICM Banquet:
Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
"I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty."
12 bottles of Bollinger Special Cuvee champagne and an original Davincino 3ft * 2ft, framed oil-painting titled "Bubbles"
Donated by www.davincino.com
The girls are as happy as clams at high tide, nobody more so than the little Chuckles & Trouble act we call Kit Kat who seems quite pleased with the fact that we didn't call it quits after Storeslem and Lilleslem (Google Translate required). I must of course apologize to you other inhabitants of our good old planet; you have a right to expect more responsible behaviour but heck, we just couldn't help ourselves. I’ll buy carbon credits, so there.
And let me finish by quoting the immortal words of John Lennon:
You may say I’m a Dreamer
But I’m not
