Tuesday 19 July 2011

Paul Bate wants me to bite him like a crocodile

The man is insane. This Paul Bate is the founder of Matterhorn Investment Management, which is an emerging market specialist, a long/short equity fund manager. It manages assets on behalf of pension funds, endowments, foundations, individuals, family offices, and funds of funds. And there's nothing wrong with that. It all seems perfectly reasonable. But there's something wrong with Paul Bate. He tells me he's not a scrawny chicken, he's a big elephant. And if you want to pounce on an elephant, you've got to be a crocodile. What is he really saying?

I'm not going to get involved. I get all sorts of strange requests. There are so many fantasists around.

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Still haven't sorted myself out yet. This feels like a transitional phase, don't it? I can hardly bear to read the news. It sickens me. It strikes me as being superficial, and stupid, and obvious. Well, it always has struck me, like that, I suppose. But I am less able to tolerate it now. I am not satisfied.

It's all emptiness. I want news that makes me full. Full of life, full of joy, full of knowledge, full of wisdom.

Maybe I should write it myself. Just cut loose of the square world. Just surrender to the visions. I mean, fully. No half measures.

I don't know. It's early days yet. I take comfort from the fact that I'm only forty-two and that my astrologer has told me I won't start to do my best writing until I reach the age of fifty-four. And he's no end-of-the-pier idiot. He has a PhD in Physics. He helped develop technology for the Stealth Bomber. He has also translated Beckett's plays into Bengali.