The death of Mike Lynch as caused such a stir that thousands of people immediately cried out in anguish and despair: “who?”

“Oh, the geezer wot sunk on ‘is boat in Sicily”. Weren’t even a proper boat, only had a bloody sail; what use it that to anybody when you could ‘ave a pair’a really noisy 400 horse-power engines spewing out diesel fumes all round the Med?

Anyway, fucking massive boat, sporting the world’s (2nd, apparently) largest mast ever in the whole universe, got hit by a ‘water spout’, tornado thing, and sunk within 60 seconds. The mast, when hit by an amazingly strong, swirling wind, acted as a massive lever to tip the boat. Other factors then played out and under it went.

The mast was 72 metres long. That would take Usain Bolt over 6 seconds to run that far. Probably have to be lying on the ground, would take him longer to run upwards. It would take you 3 minutes to walk it. Because you dawdle. But basically, it was a big boat. 10 great big ‘suites’ for guests, all the usual superyacht paraphernalia, plus the mast. Probably cost 500 mil. (guessing, never bought a Superyacht.) and now its gone.

Mike Lynch shared my birthday!! It could so easily have been ME on that yacht!!! Except he was born in 1965 and I was born in 1956. Spookier and spookier. An anagram of my birth year!

Mike was raised in South West Essex too. But there we start to diverge. He went to Cambridge, I went to prison. He set up amazingly profitable tech companies and acted in an entrepreneurial way for all the years I was ‘workin’. Then he sold His company to Hewlett Packard. For millions and millions. Apparently a few too many millions as HP then sued him, dragging him over to America to stand trial, for ‘falsifying accounts’ to inflate the apparent value of the company.

He won. Was acquitted on all charges. There had been some fraud, but not by our Mike. Essex boys don’t do fraud. Just car-theft, drug-sales, breaking and entering and assault.

And this boat trip was with his leading legal team, his accountants and bankers as a celebration of his victory. A tragedy.

Last week, Mike’s business partner, also acquitted at the trial, died when hit by a car whilst jogging.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I’d be beside myself with glee. But I’m not. Just two tragedies. Both awful.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx