Edinburgh agency Cuthbert White has won Christmas again. Or at least it has won Diary’s (highly unofficial) annual Christmas card competition.
The team is perhaps best known for something best-forgotten – its take on the Athena tennis girl – while last year saw team members dress up as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five.
This year’s card is another winner; four parts Abba to one part Mulligan and O’Hare. Lucky collector Ian McKee, managing director of GLM and former chairman of RICS Scotland, has a full set!
Happy, timeless, Christmas everyone.
You know it’s #Christmas when the superb @CuthbertWhite Christmas Card arrives #brilliant #fullset pic.twitter.com/QI3Jo0Vdk2
— Ian McKee FRICS FCABE (@ifmckee) 13 December 2018
Tastes like Christmas
One cold winter’s morning (which happened to be the final press day of 2018), EG’s retail elves were feeling a little light-headed in between breaking news, reporting less-than-jolly profit warnings on the high street and the latest media frenzy caused by Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley.
As luck would have it, Knight Frank delivered a much-needed sugar hit to EG Towers that very same day in the form of some elaborately iced gingerbread, thus restoring some festive cheer for one particularly jaded senior reporter. A Christmas miracle!
Nothing like a (very pretty) sugar hit for a press day pick-me-up while we pull together our last edition of the year. Thanks @knightfrank! ⛄️❄️🎄 pic.twitter.com/3EPg2uYYyL
— Pui-Guan Man (@PuiGuanM) 13 December 2018
Season’s REIT-ings
Filling us with slightly less Yuletide spirit, but nonetheless still greatly appreciated, was this e-mail Christmas card from the Jefferies REIT research team.
Points to it for not sugar-coating the message: “This is the sunset over The Shard and City of London skyline from our offices but unlike last year’s Santa Rally on M&A activity, the chart shows the UK REIT sector down -19% ytd (don’t blame it all on Brexit) and underperforming the FTSEAAS by -580bps. Wishing you all the best for the festive season and 2019.”
Well there’s a sobering message.
Time for bed?
Did someone say sobering? Perhaps the year’s most vital research reached us from a perhaps unlikely source: Benson For Beds. The title? “How the Christmas party affects your body, in 24 hours.”
Accompanied by a surprisingly long infographic, the study reveals what time a hangover is likely to hit you the hardest.
Apparently more than 40% of boozy Brits admit to consuming up to 10 alcoholic drinks during the office Christmas party and, as your body takes 24 hours to recover, the after-effects will worsen at different times through that period, swinging you from huge surges of dopamine and happiness, to nightmares, anxiety and depression the next day. Sounds familiar.
It was our party yesterday, and Diary thinks it might go for a little lie down now – where’s the nearest Bensons for Beds?
Stockton shopper spitting shocker
We’ve noted our retail team’s eventful 2018, but the hidden side of being an analyst during the “Year of the CVA” is the sea of local news stories you have to wade through when you have a Google alert set up for “shopping centre”.
They don’t always make it in to Diary, but they do always give us a chuckle – and, since it’s Christmas, we thought we would share this one. “Mum spits in face of Christmas elf in Stockton shopping centre,” reads the headline – one that pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
But, for good measure, let’s throw in the reaction of Karen Eve, manager of the Castlegate Shopping Centre, who told the BBC that the flare-up “doesn’t scream Christmas spirit at all”.
Though, since the mum in question also apparently verbally abused other elves, it probably screamed a few other things. Fear not though, Santa, your little helpers will be ready for Christmas, Eve assures us: “The elves have dusted themselves down and they’re absolutely fine.”
Marie’s the name
What do Ashford in Kent and the Romanian royal family have in common? Quite a lot, apparently.
And so, last week, around 150 VIP guests – including Romanian royals and the country’s ambassador to the UK – descended on Ashford to attend the unveiling of a statue of Queen Marie, the last queen of Romania, at Stanhope’s new Elwick Place leisure development.
Queen Marie, the daughter of Queen Victoria’s son Prince Alfred, was born in Eastwell Park, near Ashford, in 1875, and went on to marry the future King Ferdinand of Romania.
This is her first statue outside her adopted homeland – but she may have had many more had fate sent her down a slightly different path.
Queen Victoria was, we are told, keen for the girl to marry her cousin, the future George V, but both Marie’s mother and potential mother-in-law opposed the plan.
Crateloads of Romanian wine were shipped over for the unveiling, which Thomas Coulson of Elwick Place’s managing agent SHW confesses may have been more keenly anticipated by some than the statue itself.
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