Quarterly reporting complete, our duty to protect the investing public is fulfilled

All of our public clients have filed, the spars and rigging are firmly mounted, and off we sail to perform the divinations of our trade before year-end.

I was asked to visit auditors in the field and describe my exposures to the southern Appalachians and the coastal Low Country.

So I began in the Low Country. Georgia and South Carolina, rife with hidden treasures, if one puts the time into discovering local taverns and inns. Yet, I believe that which I experienced, sipping brandy dockside on the Wadmalaw Sound, was similar to the what most of us encounter on the inlets and sounds of the Low Country. For after the Great Flood the waters did recede and Noah did surely detect the aroma of low tide. A scent more overpowering than the odours left on the Ark by two of every beast. It is difficult to enjoy oysters and local fare when your olfactory receptors are inundated with the bouquet of rot, decay and shite marsh.

I chose to debrief an audit team at dinner. The group seemed jovial, as any inhibitions were drowned in Malbec. The consensus was universal. An impending encroachment of busy season, the tomorrow, pushing everyone toward abbreviated merriment.  It was pleasant even though the air was rife with tidal dank.

Off to Appalachia!

A remarkable time with the common man. I abandoned any attention to the audit teams upon whom I agreed to consult. Why, you inquire? Because never has the clubbed foot nor the harelip ever been more en vogue than in the valleys and hollows of the Smokey Mountains. The apple brandy flowed, the artisans responsible for its manufacture hobbled about in toothless conviviality. After fewer rounds than supposed, I too was hobbled. Not by genetic malfeasance, as befell my amusing hosts, but due to the concoction from which we took pleasure. It was a level of gaiety I have not seen in years, and for which I have plans to return.

-The Viceroy-