Spring is offically here, as at 11.43 UT (GMT) 20th March 2009 the Sun passed from the southern to the northern hemisphere or passed through the Plane of the Ecliptic, an imaginary line you get when you extend the plane of the equator into outer space. No shortgage of rituals associated with this event. Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon after this event and Nowruz, the Iranian (Persian) New Year starts a 13 day period of celebration then for its followers of Zorastrianism whose followers are probably better known as Parsees, not to mention our own Druids at Stonehenge. If you want some dates for your diary or horoscope see: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/explore/astronomy-and-time/time-facts/equinoxes-and-solstices#equinox

The year continues with an interestingly new angle from the regulators. From September the http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/ will be publishing large firms’ and banks’ names in their complaints statistics with the likelehood of smaller firms and individual advisers after that. As the FOS put it, ‘Financial businesses would be encouraged to deal with complaints properly in-house in the first place,’ discounting claims that some firms might be tempted to pay compensation quickly to avoid their name appearing in the statistics.

One pleasure of growing old(er) can be when one’s children become fully fledged musicians decades after their nervous first music lessons. A rather sad Mothering Sunday evening saw the Barnet Symphony Orchestra http://www.barnetsymphony.org.uk/ back in St John’s Church in Friern Barnet with five pieces.  Favourite for me was Oblivion by Piazzola which any tango dancer will know while most memorable part perhaps was the little girl in the row in front putting down her colouring book in the Modéré in Scaramouche, and doing some conducting of her own, crayon in each hand. But the excitement with her mother playing flute in the front row of the orchestra is all too much and she curls up and nods off shortly after the interval, sleeping soundly even through the rousing bits of Sibelius’s Karelia Suite. Hannah Riches, the alto saxaphone soloist, does an excellent job taking a break from her usual group http://www.lunarsax.co.uk/index.html Next concert is Sunday 28th June 2009 and if you know any talented musicians, they are looking for a regular trombonist and trumpeter, plus violinists.

Friday morning meeting www.brxbondstreet.co.uk featuring a 10 minute presentation by www.chinaonecall.com shows the value of corporate videos to get your message across as well as explaining why number 8 is lucky in Chinese – Bah! is 8 while the similar sounding Fah! is wealthy. In spite of having heard the 60 second message many times about their real time interpretation service, it was only after seeing their 3 minute video of a typical case, that made the penny drop.

A question arises from my own 60 second presentation, how does one check if one has paid enough National Insurance Contributions? Answer: a form BR19, which is now available on-line http://www.thepensionservice.gov.uk/resourcecentre/e-services/home.asp Cost of buying up missing years with the Class 3 Voluntary Contributions goes up from £420 to over £600 after 5th April 2009. But after 5th April 2010, the number of years contributions required drops to 30 years for men and women. Point here is that paying too many years NI contributions i.e. > 30, will not gain any extra State Pension payment – the excess will be completely wasted.

Back in the world of mortgages, client and mortgage adviser are tearing their hair out over a simple case originally submitted in December for a well-off client. Lender C&G have quietly admitted that they fired too many people in the most recent cost cutting round with the inevitable drop in service. Information requested sits in a queue for 8 days before it is looked at and then after a couple of days, more information is requested. This eats up weeks as all communication is via a call centre, wheareas the underwriting information could all be sorted out in a 10 minute conversation with an underwriter. Another clever decision made by C&G was to chuck their USP out of the window a couple of years ago when their branch managers had real authority to lend. This gave them a real edge and enabled some mortgage offers to be produced in days – the record being four from application to written offer. This was abandoned in favour of a centralised system with a call centre making everything take many times longer than before and putting them back in the pack with everyone else. Apparently, some supermarket chains insist on their directors spending one week a year back at a real store, so they do not lose touch with real customers – something which banks would do well to copy and which might have avoided the credit crunch scenario.

Years ago on my overland travels to Thailand, one of my companions was fond of quoting gems from his education over here like “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game”. A philosophy which helps build character but is a little outmoded in today’s competitive and often very highly paid sporting environment. It is also a bit tiresome to see one’s country thrashed again and again in sports that were largely invented here. One sport which has very much grabbed the bull by the horns here is cycling, and for an insight into how our cycling sports machine works see: http://www.sport-magazine.co.uk/More…/Special-report-Cycle-of-success.html

It’s that time of year again and thanks to a colleague for suggesting a simple way of getting some investment losses back and boost your pension. Equity funds or shares which have lost much of their value can be used to make an in specie pension contribution. In plain English, rather than selling the units/shares, getting the cash and making a pension contribution, the original units/shares themselves are used as the pension contribution e.g. 1,000 units in XYZ fund are your pension contribution. In specie here basically means as they are and you are avoiding selling and buying costs. As this is a disposal for CGT purposes, a tax calculation has to be done but if you have made a loss, you are not likely to get CGT bill. The cherry on the cake is that your pension contribution is allowable for Income Tax purposes, so you could be entitled to tax relief at your highest Income Tax rate and any future increase in value of the investment is free of CGT. Couple of points to bear in mind: Income Tax relief is only available against earned income (not dividends) and once the contribution is inside the pension scheme, you can only get 25% out as tax-free cash and buy an annuity with the balance, after age 55 – tax relief like everything, has its price.

Fans of Queen and those with a basic understanding of the markets, might find the attached link amusing http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=101373 especially if you put on the music Bohemian Rhapsody.

This arrives just before I think about the 4 weeks since I have last been to tango so Easter Sunday finds me back at Wessex Hall in St John’s Hill, Clapham Junction. Alan’s wonderful mix of old, new and traditional tango, milongas and waltzes keeps me on my feet most of the time but as always, there is something new. Compatibility as opposed to ability never ceases to fascinate me at dancing, and Sunday is no exception. With some ladies, improvisation comes very easily, one hardly puts a foot wrong and one could easily spend more time with them than the usual turn of 3 dances – for some tango/salsa etiquette see http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=33 In an afternoon, there will typically be 3 or 4 outstanding or memorable ones and the first few seconds with a new partner normally shows how the rest of them will go. Being told by one new lady that my leading is good enough for her to relax and practically go to sleep while I am taking her round the dance floor, really makes my day.

Near my office in Shoreditch, the local school has sold off their small playing field and a new development is going up http://www.bezierlondon.com/ but one wonders how many Olympic athletes will be missed here. Odd when we have the 2012 Olympics to look forward to and our cyclists seem to be doing well at the World Indoor Championships http://www.worldtrackcycling.com/ Bussing schoolchildren to a new playfield seems a strange way to reduce carbon footprints and stuff.

It also makes me wonder how much good the new hybrid cars actually do. Do the miles per gallon figures allow for the extra petrol consumed lugging two hundred weight of batteries around all the time? Has anyone calculated for example, how much energy and resources manufacturing, transporting and installing all these extra gadgets cost??

A review meeting with a client gives a welcome break to the daily doom and gloom when he tells me that his bespoke suits are now given as a perk to buyers of a new Bentley – ladies get a nice handbag apparently www.terencetrout.net

In my usual rounds of meeting other professionals, comes a case where the client has recently died apparently intestate, overseas and with assets in the UK and elsewhere. Can we help? In a classic example of why I prefer to remain a generalist rather than a specialist financial adviser, the two obvious points to clarify are: what is the situation regarding domicile? and is there a valid will? If there is a will, it can be rewritten if necessary under a Deed of Variation but the domicile issue is crucial from a tax point of view. More generally, further information is needed about the estate and potential beneficiaries. Once this is received, we can give a written estimate of the work involved and no fees will be payable by the client until Terms of Business etc are signed.

The week finishes off with a fascinating 10 minute presentation at my Friday morning networking group http://www.brxnet.co.uk/bondstreet/index.html where £300 million of second-round funding is being sought for a world-wide group of indoor SCUBA diving centres. Here one will be able to swim in water of say, 26 degrees Celsius rather than 4 degrees, swim with real fish, do the training and everything else. The BRX Bond Street Group itself goes from strength to strength with other people wanting to transfer from other groups which is fine as long as there is no clash of disciplines.

Among my search phrases that turn up in my web stats are: how long does it take for life insurance to be paid out in UK? Answer, usually week or two after all paperwork has been sent to insurer. Sometimes people just can’t cope with the forms and this is often the cause of delay. But if the policy has not been put in trust (see last week’s blog) then you will have to wait for probate.

Lady pension calculator? Female life expectancy is about 4 years longer than males in the UK (although the difference here is slowly decreasing) so females get a lower annuity rate from an insurance company as they will receive it for longer. http://www.pensioncalculator.org.uk/ Most people start saving too late and with too little for a decent pension.

Is my foreign property safe from UK creditors? Probably not but it depends on where the property is.

Investing in Gambing? An oxymoron if ever there was one, unless you are going to open a casino perhaps.

Checking your horoscope before investing? Sounds like fun and if passive investing is to be the new fashion, see http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=105 then it may be just as useful. And I’m an Aries!

Have a lucky weekend.

The job of Financial Adviser can feel like being a: financial G P, financial dentist, father confessor and quite often a financial or life coach. Once a relationship has been established, finding out what clients really want in life is fascinating and helping them achieve it by sorting out some of the financial issues, is very satisfying.

One area where likes and dislikes come out, is when I ask if people have any views on how or where their money is invested. Views vary enormously, even in the same family and in one memorable case where I saw two brothers in the same day, one stated that he wouldn’t want to do any investment unless it was in an ethical fund whereas his younger brother stated that his money could be invested in poison gas for all he cared!

Ethical or SRI Socially Responsible Investment funds will have positive criteria like investing in companies which are: conscientious about saving energy, good to their staff, give lots to charity for example, and negative criteria like not investing in gambling, armaments, big polluters etc. After this, it gets complicated as one ethical fund manager explained at a lunch sometime ago. On one of her several hundred company visits she and her colleagues made each year, she visited the financial director of a nursing home. Investing in such a company ought to be fairly simple you might think, since there is no issue with either of the above criteria and with an ageing population, it ought to be a fairly solid investment too – no shortage of demand. But it turned out that one of his aims was to increase his profits by reducing granny’s food budget from the fairly modest figure it already was. So here you had a SRI-qualifying investment which met the above criteria on the face of it, but as a business was not being run very ethically and no, she did not invest in that chain of nursing homes.

It turns out that some so-called SRI funds are basically closet-Tracker funds with say, the mining and tobacco companies removed – two sectors which have done very well recently. Many companies at the cutting edge of environmental and technological research are too small, under-capitalised and financially weak for any fund manager to consider investing your money in. Getting the money for a brilliant invention and moving into profit can still be very difficult – see last week’s blog http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=119

If you really want to be “green” with your money and do it yourself, then you might want to look at http://www.eiris.org/ which lists stocks which they consider suitable. A final point on investment risk here – if you are going to limit your possible investments to the few hundred sticks vetted by EIRIS, then you are pursuing a higher risk strategy than if you had the whole market of several thousand stocks to choose from.

Later in the week, there is another “rush job” as it turns out that the trust arrangements for one of the large group pension schemes we look after are getting untidy and amendments need to be made to the Trust Deed. Generally preferring to engage specialists for tricky areas, I check the Law Society website and get a long list of pension law specialists. One is a name that has given us good referrals in the past but when I phone my contact, he is slightly embarrassed and mentions that they might do international pension law but not UK pension law.

Back to the list, and I send e-mails to two other firms at about 10 minutes to 5 p.m on a Friday. A senior partner of one firm phones me 10 minutes later while the other firm sends me an e-mail at 09.55 on Tuesday inviting me to look at their website – no prizes for guessing who got the business.

For a change from the area of trust law, I visit a lady author where her accountants had introduced me to her last year. Her day job is optometrist but her passion is writing and her two books: India British-Indian campaigns in Britain… (ISBN-0-9531630-908) and India in Britain (ISBN-0-947728-031) deal with the untold story of the tremendous contribution made by the Indian community in Britain. The former has a forward by Dr L M Singhvi, High Commissioner for India and the latter forwards by Prince Charles & Mrs Indira Gandhi. It was lovely to hear about her dream of an institute dedicated to the Indian diaspora – on the lines of one in Israel http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/ggcenter/

In a week when the Busby Babes are in the news again 50 years after the infamous planecrash which killed them, my pilot genes remember that the pilot Capt. James M Thain spent a fortune trying to clear his name after a German crash enquiry blamed the crash on pilot error. It seems political pressures made him the fall guy until he was cleared in 1969 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/manchester_united/article3279019.ece

My diary is slightly quieter now after a whirlwind of lodge meetings and my being installed Master of Neptune Lodge No.22 where our most famous member was Capt Matthew Webb, the first person to swim the English Channel in 1875. My old school chum Roger and an 11-strong delegation from Neptune Lodge No.5150 in Hampshire, make a very special evening, unforgettable. Their large cheque presented to me after being installed in the chair will go to my nominated charity Salvation Army Family Tracing Service – and this link http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=10 will show you a moving example of their good work. Event planning now falls to me and a social one in May where I hope some lady masons can attend, is on the agenda.

As another indication of my recovery from my throat cancer and the RT last year, Sunday finds me able to do 90 minutes of lessons followed by 2 and half hours of tango with Alan & Ros at Wessex House, St John’s Hill, Clapham Junction on Sunday afternoon (starts 2pm). As ever, Alan’s wonderful mixture of: traditional, pugliese, tango waltzes, piazzolla, milongas and tango nuevo keep us on our feet most of the time. The only casualty seems to be my knees. Walking up and down stairs is slightly uncomfortable afterwards, as they do not seem to like shoes with heels, even if they are specially made men’s tango shoes – looks like another item for eBay.

Wishing you all a good – and restful weekend…

Just when I am thinking of writing something different after last week’s topic of ageing baby boomers, the Office for National Statistics releases a flood of new information http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=6 It seems that the oldies are now in the majority with more people over the age 60 than under. I am not quite there yet but having grown up with so much emphasis on youth, this is quite ironic. I see what were the “teddy boys” of the 50s and 60s still doing their stuff on the dance floor at ceroc on Tuesday evenings where you will find me at Great Portland Street http://www.ceroclondon.com/new_page_7.htm. What started off as French Jive 25 years ago, has developed into its own genre and of course is a great way to keep healthy and much more fun than the treadmill at a gym.

One saving grace for the population numbers and structure is immigration but as ever, this is a sensitive topic. For example, for decades in the UK there has been an emphasis on Arts education at the expense of the technical. There is a sort of prejudice about having a job where you get your hands dirty which for some reason does not seem to be so prevalent in the North of the UK. Discussing this with a German student a few years ago left him speechless when he found that there were hardly any apprenticeships in this country – “Who will build your Mercedes?” he asked me later. All this has led to a chronic shortgage of engineers now often filled by people from eastern Europe where engineering is better regarded. The immigrants who come are of course usually younger than the UK average age of 39.6 years, and this helps redress the ratio of working people to older (non-working) people. Not for nothing are 80 per cent of the words in the English language of foreign origin, giving English the largest vocabulary of any language in the World but some of the most illogical spelling too.

Keeping in this cheerful vein, two German economists slate the UK’s economic performance calling it a sham http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/10/22/bcnuksham122.xml The Government is basically subsidising our current lifestyle with ever increasing borrowing which means our grandchildren will end up paying for it. Economically, this Government has painted itself in a corner and the only thing which will save the Chancellor’s bacon is an economic boom. But 700,000 extra public servants since 1997, the red tape that goes with it and ever more stealth taxes reducing people’s net incomes render this only possible in an Alice in Wonderland scenario.

The above seems to be manifesting itself in the opinion polls where the Tories have over 40 per cent support which has not been seen since 1992. Irony pops up again as this started with the idea of raising the Inheritance Tax (IHT) threshold at the Conservative Party conference in September. Reducing IHT or raising the threshold at which people start to pay, is the worst sort of tax policy even if it is popular. To get strong economic growth which will raises people’s standard of living, it makes far more sense to reduce taxes in the productive part of the economy rather in than the situation where people inherit or get something for nothing.

Christmas approaches and it will be November next week. I am pleased to say I have booked tickets to see my chums in Thailand again so will miss some of the festivities here but note that several of my friends are making similar arrangements.

As another stocking filler, if history is your thing rather than the economics recommendation of last week’s blog http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=105, may I recommend The Command of the Ocean by N A M Roger ISBN 0-141-02690-1, A Naval History of Britain 1649-1815? The reviews are superlative and it won the 2005 British Academy Book Prize.

After 30 years, I finally book the ticket for 3 and half weeks back in a country which was so kind to me when I was younger. I land in brilliant sunshine after a 12 hour flight with Taiwan-based EVA Air at Bangkok’s brand new airport which is on the opposite side of Bangkok to the older one. The motorway is not crowded and we are soon on the outskirts of town. Bangkok itself is much less polluted thanks to many vehicles running on LPG.

For a change from Bangkok’s bustle, we drive south and Christmas Day starts with a 12 noon brunch at Hua Hin with fantastic views over the coast. Hua Hin is the archetypal tourist trap with prices more expensive than Bangkok and getting e-mails printed at an internet café costs even more than in London. I decide to treat myself to a Thai foot massage. The salon I choose has a Swedish family there when I arrive and a little lad has fallen asleep after his treatment so dad carries him back to the hotel. My session lasts 90 minutes rather than the booked hour and I wander back to the hotel past the bars and restaurants which are still open. Our departure is a bit chaotic as there is a power cut so none of computers work at the bureaux de change and tranactions go back into the pre-desktop age with everything being done on the telephone. My postcards from Hua Hin posted on Boxing Day take 10 weeks to arrive in spite of the Airmail stickers.

While a break from the long nights and cold for 3 and half weeks is something to look forward to, the same without any dancing is something else. I have been told about the ballroom dancing scene in Bangkok where some of the keener people go to the international ballroom championships in Blackpool. But my own preference is definitely the real Latin version and this scene is very small in Thailand with interesting cultural differences.

It occurs to me that it would be fun to take one of my friends to an Argentine tango lesson or dance as she has not seen this before, but unwittingly cause her some embarrassment. In Thailand it seems, if you are a lady then you basically have your own teacher and it is bad form for you to go dancing with someone else. This rather old-fashioned situation does not seem to the the case with salsa for example and certainly not with Argentine tango in Thailand. Although my friend offers to get a me professional tango partner I end up going dancing on my own.

This is 30th December, and I am at a pre-New Year’s Eve dance run by Andreas http://www.tangobangkok.com/, a German guy who speaks English and Thai. This is near a metro station about half an hour’s ride away from the Sathorn district where I am staying. I meet my friends from London again who have settled into Bangkok very well and finally deliver the Christmas card as promised. The crowd at the dance are about one third Thai with the rest being ex-pats and we all leave at about 11 pm.

On New Year’s Eve we are at a party given by my host and CNN News is on – a bomb goes off at the station I was at 24 hours before. Within an hour, 8 bombs have gone off but casualties are low compared to other places with 1 person killed with a few injured. It is quite surreal as this was the room where my friends had heard about the 7/7 bombs in London. At that time, I had been on a train to work and was completely unaware of any bombs until I had an SMS from Bangkok.
I have one other lesson at a dance studio in a very smart new shopping centre where I try a McDonalds Rice Burger, but I do not get around to the salsa which is on every Friday evening at the Sheraton.

My host has a large garden and we make a day trip down south to a Burmese border post where orchids are brought over the border. These are sold by weight at a very low price and the shopping village next to the border post is very much two worlds. Near the actual border is the plant bit with people who have walked over the border and are very poor. One lady runs after my host with another full bin-liner of rare orchids which she wishes to sell for 20 Baht – about 30p. About 200 metres away is the smarter more touristy part where gold, jade and teak souvenirs are sold at at higher but still relatively cheap pices when compared to the UK. Back in Bangkok, the assorted orchid plants are held in place with coconut fibre which is nailed to the bark of various trees in the garden, where they should take root after about two months of regular watering.

A friend takes me shopping to the other side of Bangkok to buy a wooden spirit house as these are far lighter than the stone/concrete ones one normally sees. It costs 2,500 Baht for the smallest one.

I take the opportunity of having some suits made for me and get two suits with an extra pair of trousers each plus 3 shirts for a total of about 25,000 Baht which comes out at £324. Only problem is I have now lost weight – at least they are comfortable.

It is now the hot season in Bangkok while we have till recently been shivering, and by the time our summer is here it will be the rainy season there. Next Christmas beckons………..For part I of my Thai memoirs, see http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/?p=78

Only in the office 4 days this week as I will be at the Growing your Business exhibition at Olympia on Friday 23rd March

* A cry for help from a friend who is being threatened with bankruptcy by HMRC over some back tax. The only potentially realisable asset he has is a tiny pension where the fund value is under the so-called “triviality” limt of £15,000 so this can be taken wholly in cash. This will involve a transfer and then encashment so I have to charge a fee. My friend is quite happy to do this but I feel the whole exercise is pointless as he will be throwing way his only financial asset to settle part of the tax owing. The money would be much better used in starting another business venture for example, where the chances of earning a living and paying tax are quite good. My written advice to him explains this but I insist that he talks to an insolvency practitioner first.
He finally meets the guy who confirms my thoughts that encashing the pension to pay part of the tax owing is pointless. He offers to help my friend complete the bankruptcy questionnairre when it comes in the post. I am glad my gut instinct was right here.

* It is the last day of term for teaching swimming and as my usual first pupil is away, I am given another boy aged about 6. Peter the owner of Dolphin Swimming Club, suggests some stroke work as he has done 25 metres. The first three minutes are fine but near the halfway steps in the pool where the water is deeper, he bursts into tears and tells me he does not want to go down the deep end. How did he get he gets his 25 metre badge? I ask – three half lengths at the shallow end!
There is only one cure for this. We go down to the deep end with him doing a front crawl kick and me holding the float to the annoyance of other teachers at the deep end – I can be very selfish about my pupils when they are at a critical point. We come back and spend the rest of the lesson with him swimming across the pool in water well out his depth and most the time he is in tears. In spite of this, he swims to me when asked and away from me too – a very good sign.
Though he does not know it, he has done very well and I am pleased to tell him so at the end of the lesson. I do hope his parents follow my advice and practice the same stuff in the holidays to reinforce what he has learned, otherwise the poor lad will have the same torture at the start of next term.
Another dad gives me a lovely handmade thank you card from his son and a bottle of Glenfiddich for my efforts. Perhaps I am not such an ogre after all….

*My salsa is getting rusty so I bring in my dancing shoes and leave to go to www.streetbeat.co.uk who meet at Turnmills near Farringdon. For some reason, the shutter is down and getting late so time for Plan B and I get the Metropolitan line to Great Portland for some ceroc www.ceroc.com in the International Students Hall, the venue for many salsa club nights. It turns out to be a great evening with a beginners’ and intermediate class with people from their early twenties to their sixties. Perhaps my private tango lessons have paid off indirectly as I manage to learn the four basic moves in the lesson. Then it is onto the dance floor for the freestyle bit. I have a memorable dance with with a lady who is there with her son who is in his thirties – she tells me she does jive and tap dancing which makes me feel very unfit.
As ceroc is a new dance – a cross between salsa and jive, it is very liberated. Guys still lead but ladies do not wait to be asked if they want a dance with you. Sadly it all finishes at 10.30 pm.

* The Budget is consistent with previous policy in that the effects are the opposite of the fine words. I also get the feeling that the Chancellor does not like poor people or to put it more politely, people on lower incomes, very much. Thus a reduction in Basic Rate Income Tax leaves poorer people paying more when National insurance contributions are taken into account. Changes in Corporation Tax penalise small companies and benefit big ones.
With pensions, Basic Rate tax payers with taxable earnings of less than £34,000 will now get less tax relief on their pension contributions. Currently £100 into a pension becomes £128 with tax relief. After 6 April 2007, £100 into a pension becomes £125 with tax relief. Nice one Gordon.

N.B. I will not be in the office on 5th April 2007

After learning salsa for a while, I naturally thought I could carry over much of what I had learned to tango but that was not the case. If dancing regularly, tango can be just another routine to learn but it really is different. For example:

* In a salsa club night, you and your partner pick a place on the dance floor and dance there. In tango you have a line of dance where you go round the dance floor in an anti-clockwise direction.
The man is leading and navigating while the lady is going backwards for much of the time. She has to have trust in the guy and on a crowded floor, navigating can make one forget the nice steps just learned in the previous lesson.
* There is an air of melancholy in tango which is definitely not there in salsa. The words of some of the old songs are desperately sad, for example “my love for you was at its height when you dumped me,……and now I am a man in the gutter…” To enjoy the evening, some change of music is required. In one London venue where the DJ does not bother with this somtimes, one lady told me that she has sometime felt like slashing her wrists when she gets home!!
* It is quite OK to have one dance with a lady in salsa, but the etiquette in tango is to have 3 dances with a new partner. You can always have more if you are getting on well….
* Dress is mostly informal in salsa – especially for the guys. In tango, more ladies dress up – again most guys just go casual.
* The average age of people in tango seems to be slightly older than for salsa.
* Tango is more romantic & subtle than salsa but it can be very sexy too. There is of course, nothing to stop you doing both!

Having done both for a while, I seem to be doing more tango these days but would definitely recommend starting with salsa as it is easier than tango and technique does not seem to be so critical. It is quite common for people to have private tango lessons but much less so for salsa. Whichever dance you start in, a new universe seems to open up. After starting salsa, I discovered cumbia, bachata, boogaloo and merengue. And when I started tango, I discovered the tango waltz and a more cheerful dance called the milonga.

N.B. Just to confuse you, milonga can also mean an event (the milonga starts at 3-o-clock for example) so you need to be aware of the context.

I finally decided to go to a salsa class back in July 2003. A friend had recommended it and e-mailed me a list of places. I chose one called Salsa-Fusion in central London as it was good for beginners and there was no need to book. I duly turned up at 7 PM one Thursday evening and found myself in a class of about 25 people of all ages. This was in a church hall which had salsa on the ground floor and Greek dancing downstairs.
Salsa is a dance with 3 steps within 4 beats. This means one of the beats has to be longer – usually the last one. This also makes the dance very adaptable. For the first couple of classes, we learned one-two-three-tap to keep in time with the music, but gradually the tap was lost and we moved forward slowly.

There were some couples there but a lot of people were on their own like me. The first part of the class was in rows with all of us dancing individually, but later on we paired up. Where the numbers of men and women were unequal, some had to stand out for a turn or two. We then went through the same exercises in pairs and changed partners roughly every three minutes. I started going twice a week and then even three times a week, visiting another school too. All teachers have their own styles but you learn something from each of them and the more you practice, the quicker you learn – no magic recipe.

After about 4 months of this, I finally decided to go to one of the Club nights which started at 9 PM on a Saturday night and finished at 2 AM on the Sunday morning. This was a bit of a shock at first but typical for the Latin dance scene in London. Needless to say, I was a bit nervous as it was decades since I had gone to a dance on my own. My daughter came along with me as she had spent a year in Cuba as part of her Spanish degree and made a couple of interesting observations. First, she mentioned that there seemed to be a lot of “middle-aged men” dancing with young girls. Second, she said there were a lot of Cuban guys there too. These guys have been dancing since they were very young and can lead very well, so they can take a beginner and get them dancing very quickly.

The format of the Club nights is interesting. Early in the evening is a group master class in a small room attached, which might be salsa, cumbia, rumba, bachata or whatever. This is also a good warm-up for the main event in the big ball room. In a smaller venue, this will all take place on the main floor.

Taking all this in makes one think.
The dance floor is a very old fashioned place – men lead, ladies follow. This means that the guys have to learn their steps first then they have to learn how to lead. Ladies tell me that they feel they have it easy! Having grown up with equal opportunity etc this was quite a shock.

Dancing close to someone is actually very nice and it is interesting to note that you can tell whether someone likes you or not in a few seconds, when you hold them. In over two years, I can clearly recall two dances with ladies which were unpleasant, as they could not dance in the first place nor could they follow, and the dance felt more like a wrestling match. I am quite happy to “follow” a lady who is a better dancer than I am but interestingly, these ladies do not actually “lead” – they give a subtle hint so I know what to “lead” next which makes us both happy.

Having been a salsero for 3 years and a tanguero for one year, I find that learning how to lead is still the most difficult and subtle part of dancing.

Dancing also helped me get fit and helped me lose weight. It is just as energetic as the gym and for me, a lot more fun.

As I progressed, I moved from Beginners to Improvers and after about a year to the Intermediate class on Thursdays and Saturday afternoons. Two of my friends there had moved to tango as well and I thought I would give it go – I am talking about the real Argentinian tango – not the simplified ballroom version.

For those of you out there who are: still together, separated, divorced, single or whatever, give yourselves a break from the gym or dating agency and get some dancing lessons. Everyone seems to have two left feet when they start, but like anything else it will improve with practice. A final word for the guys (the ladies know this already) if you can dance, you are ahead of 90 per cent of the other males around and you can find yourself quite popular. At the end of the day, dancing is about communication. See you on the dance floor.

http://www.salsa-fusion.co.uk/
http://www.salsarhythm.co.uk/
Tango @ La Mariposa in Hammersmith on Sunday afternoons – contact Alan Wallace tel. 020 7652 3633 – 07946 609 047
Tango por Dos http://www.sadlerswells.com/peacock/2005_2006/tango.asp#