I have not been spoken to like that since I left school. I am seriously considering handing in my resignation.
Love,
Fred
PS: When are you back from your management training course?
From:
Mary.jones@interfinance.org
Date:
4 June
To:
Fred.jones@ncfe.gov.uk
Subject:
Financial realities
Fred,
My annual salary is £75,000 gross and yours is £45,561. Our combined net of tax monthly income is £7333 out of which our mortgage takes £3111, rates, food and other household expenses a further £1200, and that’s before we think about car costs, holidays, and your fishing extravagances.
Resign your job? Don’t be a prat.
Mary
PS: I am home on Thursday but I have to leave on Sunday for New York for a conference on Sarbanes-Oxley.
Memo
From:
Andrew MacFadzean, principal private secretary to the secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs
To:
Herbert Berkshire, private secretary to the parliamentary undersecretary of state, FCO
Subject:
Salmon⁄Yemen Project
Herbert,
Our masters tell us this project should be pushed on a bit. The sponsor is not a UK citizen, but the project can be presented as a template for Anglo-Yemeni cooperation, which of course has wider implications for perceptions of UK involvement in the Middle East.
I think you could quietly drop a word in the ear of David Sugden, whom I believe is the director of the fisheries people at DEFRA, that a successful outcome to this project might attract the attention of the committee putting forward recommendations for the next New Year honours list. Equally it is only fair to point out that an unsuccessful outcome might make it difficult to defend NCFE against further cuts in grant funding in the next round of negotiations with the Treasury for the new financial year. This might help get the right messages across. We have, of course, talked at a senior level to the appropriate people in DEFRA. Keep this off the record.
Lunch at the club at 1 p.m. tomorrow?
Yrs,
Andy
Memo
From:
Director of communications, prime minister’s office
To:
Dr Mike Ferguson, director veterinary, food & aquatic sciences, Chief Scientists’ Group
Subject:
Yemen salmon project
Mike,
This is the sort of initiative that the prime minister really, really likes. We want some broad-brush comments on feasibility from you. We do not require anyone to say absolutely that it would work, only that there is no reason for not trying.
Peter
Memo
From:
Dr Michael Ferguson, director veterinary food & aquatic sciences, Chief Scientists’ Group
To:
Peter Maxwell, director of communications, prime minister’s office
Subject:
Yemen salmon project
Dear Mr Maxwell,
Monthly average rainfall in the western mountains of the Yemen is around 400 millimetres in each of the summer months, and mean temperatures at elevations above 2000 metres fall to a range of between 7 and 2,7 degrees Celsius. This is not uncharacteristic of British summer weather and therefore we conclude that for short periods of the year conditions exist, particularly in the western provinces of the Yemen, which are not necessarily inimical to migratory salmonids.
We therefore speculate that a model based on the artificial release and introduction of salmonids into the wadi systems for short periods of the year, linked to a programme of trapping the salmon and returning them to cooler, saline water during other periods of the year, would not be an inappropriate starting point for a modelling exercise to be carried out by the departments with the relevant expertise. I believe NCFE is the most appropriate organisation for this.
I hope this brief note is sufficient for your purposes at this stage?
Yrs,
Michael Ferguson
PS: Have we met?
Memo
From:
Director of communications, prime minister’s office
To:
Dr Mike Ferguson, director veterinary, food & aquatic sciences, Chief Scentists’ Group
Subject:
Yemen salmon project
Mike,
That’s great. No, we haven’t met, but I look forward to it some day soon.
Peter
Memo
From:
Peter
To:
Prime minister
Subject:
Yemen salmon project
PM,
You will really like this. It presses a lot of different buttons:
positive and innovative environmental messages
sporting (cultural?) links to a Middle Eastern country not as yet closely aligned with UK interests
secular Western technology bringing improvements to an Islamic state
a big, positive news story that will take front-page space away from less constructive news items coming out of Iraq, Iran and Saudi
A great photo opportunity: you standing in a wadi with a rod in one hand and a salmon in the other-what an image that would be!
Peter
Memo
From:
Prime minister
To:
Director of communications
Subject:
Yemen salmon project
Peter,
I like it. The photo idea is great!
2
7 June
Until today, my diary has for the most part been used to record the times of meetings, appointments with the dentist, or other engagements. But for the last few months I have felt the need to set down some of the thoughts that come and go, the increasing sense of intellectual and emotional restlessness which has grown in me as I approach middle age. Today’s date marks our wedding anniversary. Mary and I have been married now for over twenty years. It seems right, somehow, to start recording the pattern of my daily existence. Perhaps it will help me find a perspective from which I can appreciate and value my life more than I am able to just at present.
For Mary’s anniversary present, I have bought her a subscription to The Economist, which I know she enjoys reading but begrudges the cost of buying for herself. She bought me a replacement brush for my electric toothbrush, which is most useful. I never think much about anniversaries. The years pass seamlessly. But for some reason tonight I feel I ought to reflect on what is now many years of marriage to Mary. We married not long after leaving Oxford. It was not a whirlwind romance, but I think ours has been a calm and settled relationship suitable for two rational and career-minded people such as ourselves.