It is Shakespeare’s birthday as well as St George’s Day, so here’s a little quiz about England’s patron saint courtesy of the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1945854.stm The guy was actually from Turkey and was adopted by England about the time of the Crusades which is also when the myths, stories and legends started about the Holy Grail not to mention the Turin Shroud, which has also been carbon-dated around that time. We all love our myths. Even Shakespeare’s birth date is the day it was recorded in the register of his parish church, so like many ordinary mortals born at that time, his exact birthday is lost in the mists of time. In days when infant mortality was higher than now, it was common to wait a bit before registering a child’s birth.

Anyone with an interest in family history and with forebears over here will end up going through microfiche records of handwritten parish and other records at County Record Offices. Allied to these are Bishops’ Transcripts which the Church Warden had to copy to his local bishop annually.

While the parish record might be scrawled untidily, with the same family name sometimes spelled different ways (this was way before universal education) and the occasional sarcastic comment in the margin, the Bishops’ Transcripts were usually much more neatly written in a fine copper plate hand. At this stage, errors sometimes creep in which all adds to the fun of tracing your ancestors. And there is the occasional gap – for example, when a Church Warden took the Parish Register of Births, Marriages & Deaths home to do the above-mentioned trans-scripts and his house burnt down….The one problem that does not arise usually is shortage of information. If anything, there is too much of it, it is very easy to get side-tracked and if you are not organised, very frustrating. For retired people with the luxury of lots of time, it can be great fun. Good Luck.

Still on a traditional theme, I discover the world’s oldest sea-going paddle steamer the Waverley which does tours round the UK as well as cruises around the Western Isles of Scotland, Isle of Man and other places you might have seen in an atlas, but never got around to visiting www.waverleyexcursions.co.uk

Back in the world of finance, some good news about transferring pensions overseas http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/22/cmabroad22.xml but as always there are winners and losers and specialist advice is recommended.

Also in the world of work, our mortgage department is busy as many cheap Fixed and Discounted deals run off and people want to see if there is a better deal around than the Standard Variable Rate of their current lender. We contact the clients concerned who often wish to discuss it with their partners or whatever. Two days later, more often than not the deal they might have wanted has been withdrawn – buy now while stocks last. My colleague was preparing to work till 10 pm last night as Abbey were withdrawing a lot of their deals. Most applications now are done on-line and if ALL the information including your bank details, solicitor/conveyancer details are not entered, the application will not be submitted and you may lose the juicy deal you were after. As Lord Baden-Powell said, Be Prepared and as Scouting enjoys a renaissance, I find out that the famous Scout motto was based on his own initials!

Readers will be aware of one of my regular rants There is no point in having a small pension as it will not be enough to live on and yet might disqualify you from State Benefits. Well, Paul Myners http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Accounts who is charged with delivering Personal Pension Accounts in 2012, the Government’s form of compulsory pension, has said the same thing earlier this week in the Daily Telegraph.

Still enjoying minor celebrity life as master of my lodge, at a recent meeting a fellow mason points out that last year Freemason charities gave £2.7 million to Masonic charities and £3 million to non-Masonic ones.

I will finish on a Shakespearean note as my favourite theatre http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/ opens St. George’s Day with productions of King Lear (Out vile jelly! – not my cup of tea really) but in a lighter theme there is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merry Wives of Winsdor (Desperate Housewives in an Elizabethan setting?) and others. For a previous view of this delightful place see http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=94 and don’t worry if you never studied Shakespeare at school – this place is one of the most under-rated tourist attractions in London and knowledge of Shakespeare is not required for a very enjoyable afternoon or evening. It owes its existence to the vision of American film-maker, the sadly late-Sam Wanamaker.

Regular readers may be aware that one of the headings in my blog is Cancer http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?cat=13 where I have written up my experiences as they happened over the last year or so. This is a summary – all in one dose.

It really all started with a sore throat, but the background is relevant here. A business life which had been pear-shaped for some time, stayed that way which meant that I eventually hit the buffers. This meant selling my house, settling my second divorce finally and moving into rented accommodation in November 2006. Not nice at the time, but Muswell Hill is more central, closer to my children and has a sort of buzz about it which I and a lot of other people like – clouds do have silver linings.

But back to the sore throat. Illnesses often have triggers and mine was emotional. A big promise did not happen and in the second week of December 2006, my voice went hoarse. At the time, I put this down to exhaustion but as I had a 3 and half week holiday coming up in Thailand, I thought this would fix it. Thailand is a country which has been very good to me and it was great to be back after over 30 years but no change in the voice.

Two weeks after my return in January 2007, I am tired and one morning when walking to the bus stop, I stop and think. My chest is basically telling me that I am exhausted and that I should go back to bed. I take most of the next two weeks off but still have a gravelly voice. Friends and family are telling me to go to the doctor. Finally, I listen to one of my friends from ecademy and visit his GP in Wimpole Street where I phone for an appointment in the morning and get one at 3.30 pm that afternoon. Time from ringing the doorbell, going to reception, telling the doctor the background, being examined, collecting the prescription and being back on the pavement again – 10 minutes and £105 please. The Wimpole Street doctor said he knew my previous GP in Tufnell Park and that I should return after a week, if no change.

Thinking I might as well kill two birds with one stone I visit my former GP who does not recall this colleague in Wimpole Street and I am seen by his new lady colleague. She has no hesitation in referring me to the King’s Cross ENT hospital and after 10 minutes aggravation on the telephone as that hospital is not part of her area on-line booking system, gets me an appointment two weeks later.

The examination there by another lady doctor is my first with a nasendoscope or the worm as I have come to know it, and tells me that my vocal cords are slightly swollen so they want to do a biopsy. They promise to take only one teeny weeny sample and this event is scheduled for 5th April 2007 – the end of the fiscal year, normally a very busy time for IFAs. Two days before this, a nurse from the ENT hospital phones me and goes through a questionnairre – do I have any allergies, take any medication etc and have I had any implants? For what? is my first thought, but managing to avoid falling of my chair laughing, I inform her that the answer is No! On the day, my youngest daughter comes with me and I change into a disposable smock. There seems to be a lot of paperwork and I sign that I have understood what they are doing, might get a broken tooth with the long metal tube that they are going to shove down my throat etc. all cheerful stuff.

Lying down on the trolley (gurney) I am taken away from my daughter, and wheeled into the next room where a needle is put into the veins on the back of my left wrist and taped. Just as they say, the first anaesthetic feels cold as it is dripped into my veins. Next I am told that I am going to be given some Oxygen. No problem here as I am used to this flying gliders at 25,000 feet http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=21 A hairy hand holds the clear plastic mask over my face. First breath, this Oxygen smells a bit funny; second breath, are they really giving me Oxygen? third breath, oblivion and I wake up with a raging thirst 40 minutes or whatever it was later. A cup of warm tea and sandwich are placed in my hands but even with a mouthful of tea, I cannot swallow all the mouthfulls of sandwich and spit a couple of them out. The dryness goes over the next few hours so I am able to enjoy the planned dinner with my daughters and their partners.

Two weeks later, I am back at ENT. A Chinese doctor sees me this time and my file is on his desk. He seems busy with other stuff, a nurse comes in quietly closing the door after her and leans against the wall. She seems to be examining her fingernails and the doctor turns to me and there is a funny drawing of a “A” shaped thing in my file. It’s squamous cell carcinoma. You mean cancer? Yes, it’s in the mucous of the vocal cords – we took 3 samples and in 2 of them the cells are invasive. The tenor of the delivery is more or less “What else did you expect it to be?” The drawing is of my vocal cords or vocal folds as they are also known and there is a tumour on one of them about the size of my fingernail. Treatment? surgery or therapy – other doctors will go into more detail about the options. Reflecting for a couple of seconds, I mention that in a way I am not surprised – there has been a little voice in the back of my mind saying that it might be the Big C. I do not lose my composure as several members of my family have had it including my mother who died of it when I was 19. Two of my cousins had died of it before 50 and with all of them, their courage and dignity up till the last, made a big impression on me. The nurse leaves quietly and I am told that I will be looked after the University College Hospital UCH in future.

Now I have to tell my family and colleagues, but occasionally the reaction is such that I end up reassuring the other party that things are OK. Visits at UCH involve CT scans – a kind of X-ray that is better for soft tissues and ultrasound. There are two options for treatment. Quickest will be surgery involving an overnight stay or a course of Radio Therapy (RT) lasting about 6 weeks. The tumour has been spotted early so, thank heaven, I will not need chemo. The late comedian Roy Castle had described it as paint stripper being injected into his veins when I heard him in 1992 at an LIA Conference in the Barbican. Within my own family, squabbling stops and a rota is worked out so I will not go to the RT sessions alone – hence the title for my earlier blogs The Positive Side of Cancer.

Before treatment can start, I need to be fitted out with a mask which will keep my head and neck immobile while I am zapped with X-rays. This is formed from green thermo-plastic mesh which is soaked in warm water and then draped over my face till it sets. First one does not fit so after an hour wait we do another one. Later, I am taken to one of the treatment rooms in the Basement of UCH and they set about calibrating it so it the tumour will be hit “spot on”. This can be done to within 3 mm and means that the left-hand vocal cord which has the tumour will be zapped more than the right one. A computer generated image of me is in my file looking as if I had been done by a giant bacon slicer and yes, the black + showing the focus, is off to one side. My daughter does not quite recognise this at first and asks what the fuzzy shadow in the middle is which is of course, my windpipe.

Calibration takes sometime and on one occasion I seem to be strapped down on the table for 20 minutes. It reminds of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift where he is in Brobdingnag and was tied down so he could not move. Fortunately, claustrophobia is not a problem with me but at the end of the long sessions, I begin to see what claustrophobia might feel like to some people. The tattooed spot that I was promised on my chest to help targeting the X-rays, does not happen, so selecting a something more decorative like an evil eye or target image to carry round on my chest for the rest of my life, becomes a might-have-been.

Treatment is scheduled to start late-May but after internal quality checks reveal a vagueness in targeting, it is back to the basement to calibrate everything again. Only one irritation arises when my eyelashes get caught in the plastic mesh when the mask is put on and I am clipped down to the table. There is no pain here but it is like having a mote in one’s eye – very annoying and distracting, but fortunately easily remedied with a paper tissue over my face underneath the mask. Now treatment will start after the May Bank Holiday and finish Friday 13th July 2007 – someone has a sense of humour!

A routine is established. Every afternoon, I meet one of my daughters at the hospital and we get the lift down to the basement. When called from reception, we have a long walk down the corridor usually to the farthest of 5 brand new machines, to another waiting area. Previous patients come and go. There are smiling children with no hair in wheelchairs, a distraught young man in a wheelchair with a plastic tattoo transfer on the front of his neck being comforted by his girlfriend, a sad young Asian girl being comforted by her family that occasionally I can cheer up a bit, ladies with no hair and headscarves, ladies with dark pink patches on their cheeks from the treatment that they cover up when talking to me, people who sit in front of you one minute, start coughing up white sputum and disappear into the loo where you can hear them wretching – all human life is there.

Treatment at first produces no visible effect. I am going to have a radiation dose of 64 Greys over 33 sessions every weekday spanning six and half weeks. My office is very understanding so I can have my sessions in the afternoon when it is much less crowded and my time is usually around 4 p.m. – the latest possible.

To avoid repeating myself you might wish to see an earlier blog describing a typical day under treatment http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=85 which did indeed finish Friday 13th July 2007. Two weeks afterwards, I have a few relaxing days in Germany with my brother and when I do a bit of sunbathing the radiated patch on my throat goes yellow. Shortly after I return, the worst part of the whole episode happens which is of all things constipation. Five painkillers are being prescribed by this time and three of them – codeine, paracetamol and morphine all list the other big C if you like, as a standard side effect. This all comes to a head one weekend when I am due to have a Sunday lunch with my daughter but I am too uncomfortable to go. All sorts itself out 14 hours later, but it is the last place I expected effects to appear. My voice is a whisper by this time but I am able to perform my lodge duties as Senior Warden at the Neptune Lodge No.22 250th Anniversary meeting in United Grand Lodge in August 2007 but my party piece, the Charge after Initiation has to be done by someone else. E-mails can still be answered from home but I do not go into the office for about six weeks and do not see any clients for months.

Voice therapy starts at this time and as these are in the afternoon and on the 14th floor of the new UCH building, often take place when there is a glorious gliding sky visible a few miles away. For my most read blog in this whole episode, see http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=103

Come September, the tissues in my throat are less tender so the doctors can have a look inside me again and the first post-treatment visit is quite memorable like a roller-coaster ride inside your head see http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=96

Treatment has left me with a hairless patch under my chin which I no longer need to shave and where the skin is baby- smooth and if anything, younger looking. Below that, a two inch strip looks 20 years older and unconsciously I find myself wearing a tie more often rather than have an open-necked shirt. I no longer bother with skin cream and the redness on my neck is fading. The voice is still a bit gravelly if I do not sip water regularly and in another example of clouds having siver linings, a couple of ladies have said that the occasional huskiness is quite attractive…..

Six sessions with the worm show no trace of the tumour but I do not believe one is ever really free of cancer. Compared to many others, I feel I have got off lightly and in a strange way the timing was perfect, as I had moved further into London and had my treatment in a brand new hospital where 5 new scanners had been installed. A more common remedy 20 years ago would have been surgical removal of the voicebox and two people I saw on my last visit had had this procedure – indicated by white plastic plugs in their throats. Having avoided chemo, I have no problem returning for check-ups with the nasendoscope whereas other people I know whose chemo-treatment finished 2 years ago, dread returning to their hospital for a check-up. A curious small change is that I now find myself reading the sports pages which were of zero interest previously and which I usually gave or threw away, unread – perhaps I like reading about winners now?

One year on, I can really thank the friends and family for their support but the same issues in business, life and everything else are still there and have to be faced and dealt with. It feels like I have come full circle, and life goes on….

Mixed metaphors can be fascinating and for some reason the one above has stuck in my mind years after I came across it in a spy novel. (A bottle of wine for the clever fellow who reminds me of it.) It seems quite apt for the economic mess we are in, and to quote one City editor, there are few problems that Governments cannot make worse.

Here George is going to stick his neck out and make a couple of predictions: 1) Living standards are probably at their post-war peak – I mean WW2 here. 2) House prices are in a similar state. 3) Part of this is due to the highest ever levels of taxation in the UK – for example, 65 per cent of the cost of petrol is tax. 4) Inflation is going to get worse before it gets better – if the Bank of England is reducing interest rates to prevent a slump then keeping inflation in check by raising the price of money i.e. interest rates, is on the back burner. 5) We are all going to get poorer. If you prefer the sound bite version – Hard Times Ahead. As The British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan said decades ago “You’ve never had it so good!”

My own training as a private and international banker taught me a couple of things but one of the most significant ones was the difference between banking and say, baking. If you have 12 bakers in town and one goes bust, hooray for the other 11 and the people who in work in them. But banking is different as it is not in really any bank’s interest to let another bank go bust if they have a run on deposits, as the panic could so easily spread to them. For a previous rant on panic see http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=100

Banks seems to have forgotten this fundamental point and have stopped lending to each other often at any price. As the wealth of most people is tied up in their homes (bricks & mortar) a tight credit regime will have dire consequences and this tightness will make a bad situation worse. A generation ago, when a bank got into difficulties the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (Bank of England) would have had a quiet word with a few people and some of them would have clubbed together to buy up the stricken bank but things are more formal now.

The evaporation of confidence in the aftermath of the Northern Rock debacle will have social consequences too. Many people will be unable to move to a bigger property if they plan to have children or a bigger family. They will be unable to move to a better property in the catchment area for the nice school they want for their children. Their property will not sell for the price they could have got last year which means that they cannot afford to pay as much for the next one as before. For those who cannot keep up the payments, more properties will be repossessed and sold into a falling market. Eventually demand or rather affordability will meet with supply and things will pick up again – but don’t hold your breath.

For anyone waiting to get on the housing ladder they will always need two things – a deposit and a job – in that order and unsurprisingly, the 100 per cent mortgage has disappeared.

But there are always exceptions to doom and gloom. An estate agent I met a few weeks ago at a lodge meeting told me with a big grin how busy he was. Rather than waiting for business to come to him, his firm hits the phones and calls property owners in his area regularly. When someone says that they will move in say, three months, they get a call.

In another case, I was able to suggest using a pension benefit from a defunct employer to help boost a new small but successful business. The existing broker was no longer around and no correspondence was being received from the pension trustees or insurance company about what the funds were worth, for example. A networking colleague referred the person to me and it was good to be able to help. It is often a pity that Good news is No news as there are always people who are sensible, hardworking and succeed no matter how hard or silly times are.

For a change, last weekend found me in Brussels courtesy of my Valentine. She decided to whisk me off via Eurostar from the new St Pancras International terminal four months after the in2 Consulting Christmas Beano see http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=114

36 hours was enough to see the Manneken Pis, try fresh warm waffles, eat whelks (escargot) in a warm clear soup (much nicer than the cold ones served in the UK), eat our fill of mussels (moules), see Grand Place and nearby, a Chocolate Museum http://www.mucc.be/ not to mention trying several beers. The strongest of these was 9.1% ABV and of the fruit flavoured ones: strawberry, cherry and raspberry. The latter beers are generally sweet, and popular with the ladies for this reason. If you like this sort of thing in London, I can recommend http://www.lowlander.com/flash.html in Drury Lane with 15 different Belgian beers on tap as well as many other bottled beers.

Brussels may not have the glamour of Paris but it does grow on you and the 2 hour train journey from London is much more civilised than mass air travel. Arrival in the rain and a long taxi queue at the station led us to try the public transport system which was excellent. A JUMP card for a day, valid on all busses trams and metro costs 4 Euros – less than half the price of a Day Travelcard in London. Sunday was spent at the Atomium which is celebrating its 50th anniversary http://www.atomium.be/ and is easily reached via the Heysel station next door to the well-known Heysel sports stadium.

From Thailand, my friends tell me it is Songkran or Thai New Year shortly so the Thais have a 3 day holiday http://www.sriwittayapaknam.ac.th/songkran.html and it is the hottest part of the year there now.

Back at home, my stats show an enquiry phrase “What happens with a joint life insurance policy, if both parties die together?” Answer, the eldest one is assumed to have died first under the doctrine of commorientes and usually arises in Inheritance Tax cases – another word for Scrabble maybe? http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/IHTmanual/ihtm12192.htm

On a lighter note, Premium Bonds are now available through W H Smith http://www.nsandi.com/products/customerwelcome.jsp?ccd=WQXPAA As the whole subject of financial planning can get very heavy, Premium Bonds are one way of leavening things a bit. Look at them as a Lottery Ticket where you can get your money back.

AN INVITATION – my pages read stats as at last night show: Hungary 2805, USA 2309, EU 100 and GB 68. As these relate to pages read, I have no idea how many people are involved but if you are in London, please drop me a line.

Itchy feet or maybe itchy wings get to back to Lasham http://www.lasham.org.uk/ on a Sunday as the weather has kept me on the ground for a month. A beautiful DG 1000 two-seater glassfibre glider lies parked empty at the launch point but as this needs a conversion flight with a spin test, I am pointed towards an empty ASK 13. This two seater metal tube and fabric glider can perhaps be called the “Model T” of post war gliding as thousands have earned their wings at its controls. Prior to this, I help a lady instructor strap herself into the back seat of another ASK 13. She is taking a passenger for a flight and is explaining to this worried-looking lady emergency procedures, what to expect etc. I stand quietly by while she does this and eventually the canopy is closed, airbrakes checked and she gives me a nod that she is ready for me to attach the launch cable. As it is a first flight, the cable is attached to the nose hook as the gentle launch will be done by another aeroplane rather than the quicker and more exciting winch launch.

Several times before launch the passenger gives me a worried look, but the launch goes smoothly and they manage to stay up in lift for half an hour. By the time I launch the lift has gone, so apart from practising a stall, chandelle and wandering over the M3 motorway, I drift around in the now smooth air and land after 25 minutes. In the landing circuit, I see a glassfibre single seater Astir glider from the sister Surrey & Hants Gliding Club. He is also searching for non-existent lift and he lands on the grass just behind me and to my right, 10 seconds later. Several more gliders are out now for the evening course so I do not need to fly the glider back to the hangar, leaving it parked at the launch point. My friend Colin who teaches aerobatics is not there today so my next loop in a glider will have to wait a week or two.

Airfields tend to be wide open windy places, so it is usually worth wrapping up warm and having comfortable boots or shoes. As my guest has been standing round for a couple of hours while I have been flying or helping out at the launch point, she deserves something to warm her up. After mulling over the three nearest pubs: The Royal Oak in Lasham Village and The Fur & Feathers in Herriard, we settle on The Poacher in South Warnborough http://freespace.virgin.net/ron.lafferty/info.htm and are not disappointed.

Another Friday, and we finally make to http://www.bavarian-beerhouse.co.uk/ near Moorfields Eye Hospital for an office beer or two. The beer is fine but pricey at £7.20 for a litre, but one gets the feeling that the decoration budget ran out, with its bare concrete floor and painted walls. My enquiry about their menu and whether they have a classic German Dish Konigsberger Klopse http://www.myhouseandgarden.com/recipes/koenigsberger_klopse.htm meets with a disappointing Nein, so I will have risk cooking it myself or see if anyone does this on the net.

In the You couldn’t make it up department, the metal in some respossessed homes in the US is worth more than the property itself http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/04/02/noindex/wushomes102.xml

Back at the ranch near Old Street today, it is the end of the fiscal or tax year and some colleagues are exhausted. Remortgage business is as busy as ever and as lending criteria get more difficult, it is more worthwhile than ever using a mortgage broker to shop around. Every week lenders tell me that cheap products are being pulled. A colleague mentions an attractive 2 year fixed rate at under 6% p.a. but the Arrangement Fee is £2,800.

As a guest at a lodge meeting at United Grand Lodge in Great Queen Street, I find cables and film vans parked everywhere. This building (and sadly the male toilets) is used in the BBC Spooks series but one of the many guys standing around tells me that the film vans are for a feature film Green Zone about the invasion of Iraq. Matt Damon stars in this and parts of the interior look similar to the inside of Saddam Hussein’s former main palace in Baghdad. Probably slightly safer than filming on location…..

Returning from swimming one evening, I pop into The Woodman http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=124 to ask when grilled kangaroo will be on the menu again? Not for a couple of months apparently, as the chef Xavier tells me it was not very popular.

Reaching home and being unable to sleep, I turn on the TV for the first time in days and am educated for two hours about a resort everyone in the UK has heard of – Benidorm - Spain’s largest seaside resort and a place which I have managed to avoid. My idea of a holiday is to be somewhere different and similarly, with different people. The first programme, a soap about Brits whingeing on holiday, is frankly depressing while the real life hour afterwards only slightly better. As one guys says, you don’t go to Benidorm if you want to see what Spain is like. The legendary Sticky Vicky featured in the programme has been in Benidorm for ever it seems, is fluent in Spanish but her show leaves me with the unusual feeling that perhaps I have had a very sheltered life.

Have a good weekend.