I know you two don’t use it much but lots of other people do. What were we going to do?”Well, darlings,” said Jane’s mother, who had kindly got up early as well, to keep us company, “there is this strange thing called public transport. Then Jane’s car wouldn’t start.Time ticked on, and my nerves began to fray I was going to be hideously, hideously late Everyone would be furious with me I would lose my job The end of the world was nigh There wasn’t time to wait for the breakdown people. We both woke with throbbing headaches from our unaccustomed consumption of sherry.”Should have stuck to vodka like we usually do,” I muttered between gulps of black coffee.

I adore driving my car.”So we ended up staying the night, resigned to an unspeakably early start.Plainly, we weren’t quite resigned enough.Even by the usual standards of grimness for Monday mornings, this one took the biscuit. “I know everyone else in the City drink-drives, but I’m not like that.”"Well, it’s no good looking at me like that,” I huffed “I’m not prepared to lose my licence either. Before we knew what had happened it was 9 o’clock, supper was ready and we were both well over the limit.
“I’m not risking losing my licence,” Jane said as crossly as someone who knows they’re in a mess and it’s all their fault. It all went swimmingly, so swimmingly in fact that when her father offered us a glass of dry sherry at 5pm Sunday, we both took one without a thought. I’d gone away with my pal Jane for a chilled-out weekend at her parents’ house in the country, with sleeping, being fed and the odd spot of healthy exercise being high on the agenda.

BIG MISTAKE, drinking on a Sunday evening. “It’s a perfectly respectable way of raising money, but there are no buyers and sellers,” he says “It’s another form of venture capital.”. His company came to AIM in April 1997, when its turnover was half the present pounds 7m, and he regards the listing as valuable in helping raise the finance for an expansion programme.He sees little trading in his shares, except from market makers marking the price up or down, depending on company developments. The second survey of AIM published yesterday by Pannell Kerr Forster found that, although the respondents were acutely aware of the problems facing smaller capitalisation companies in terms of investor caution and liquidity, their views “were somewhat more upbeat than the “doom and gloom” in press coverage over the last six months.”PKF – which questioned 144 AIM-listed firms and 17 that moved to the main market last year – says AIM should create and publicise sector indices to help monitor growth and high-income stocks to stimulate investor interest; track the performance of the top 50 performers to profile success; and continue encouraging institutional investment and attracting European finance.Andrew Swanston, chairman of Methven’s, the chain of book shops that operates in affluent south-eastern towns, wants a fundamental reassessment.