A red-letter day in the history of the Smith household. Our team (or to be accurate, the team of which we form a part) won the Coworth Park School Quiz!
This is our 5th or 6th time of trying, and every year we have come second, usually out of 12 teams. The first year we only lost by half a point out of 200; we have never come so close again. Tonight, we take the lead with one round to go and think we have blown it by only scoring 5 out of 10 on the final round. But our closest rivals, including (to our delight) our close friends, blow it even more spectacularly. We are each presented with a fine and valuable Thornton’s chocolate shield with an appropriate inscription beautifully scripted in icing. This will sit, untouched, on the mantelpiece until it turns green.
The weekend press comment is still very mixed, not to say confused in places. The general view is that the result will be close and that a split vote between RBS and BoS is quite possible and might save us; if RBS and BoS each win 30% or even 40% then in theory we could stay independent. However, some of the commentators believe that if this happens, Sir David will have a moral obligation or perhaps even a legal responsibility to do a deal. If we can't win 50% of the votes, then we have in effect lost the moral support of our investors, which seems a reasonable point of view.