News to no one

AV (homage to Martin Day)

2011-02-15T08:57:00.003Z

Merchant Taylor's Hall

2010-09-19T08:29:00.004+01:00

Official pictures

2010-09-19T08:13:00.004+01:00

My weekend attire

2010-09-01T10:04:00.001+01:00

On my own

2010-08-13T08:16:00.002+01:00

Brian has no work on at the moment, so he's taken the opportunity to go first to Sweden to meet our friend Mikael and then to Hungary to the flat and the house. The weather is, I'm told, very good there (it was raining and hailing in Manchester yesterday, where I was). The house is in good shape, the garden is in full swing - another plum tree is ripe now - and they were having a barbecue when I spoke to Brian last night.

I miss him.

Culture

2010-08-07T09:31:00.002+01:00

Last night, Brian and I went to the revival of the Beauty Queen of Leenane, the Martin McDonagh play. We had seen it together over a decade ago, but I had forgotten how perfectly judged it is. There are only four parts, but they are all fully developed and while a black comedy, you are not laughing at the characters out of superiority, but out of identification. The opening scene of the second half, where Patto reads his letter to Maureen out loud, is a comic masterpiece.

The Young Vic is a small theatre, which means that the audience really feel absorbed in the production. In the second half, the audience was unselfconsciously oohing and aahing at the drama, which I don't recall ever having heard before in a theatre in quite that way.

It's not quite my favourite Martin McDonagh play - the Lieutenant of Inishmore takes that prize - but it is a great play. I'd recommend it to anyone.

Joan

2010-08-01T15:11:00.002+01:00

Joan, my aunt, is 80 this week. She had a big party for family and friends in her home village of Shenstone yesterday. She's in terrific form and it was great to see Agnes, her younger sister and my dad's older sister, over from Australia. They were both having a great time.

Brian and I were introduced to Caz, her new friend. I'd discreetly asked whether Joan would like him invited to our partnership, to be told that "it wasn't that kind of friendship".

Brian and I spent quite a bit of time winding my mother up about the fact that she hadn't phoned us when we were on holiday. She claimed to believe that it was much much more expensive for her to phone my mobile when I was out of the country and that she needed aspecial code. Since I had told her otherwise before I went, I don't believe that for a moment!

Bunhill Fields update

2010-07-29T17:43:00.002+01:00

On my walk into work today, I saw a big poster draped on the fences of Bunhill Fields that reads: "Britain in Bloom finalist". Now, as already noted, I'm a big fan of Bunhill Fields, but not even I can understand that nomination. On my walk through Bunhill Fields, there wasn't a single flower in bloom - not even the customary red rose on William Blake's grave.

Bunhill Fields

2010-07-25T14:09:00.002+01:00

I only have a five minute walk to work, but as five minute walks go, it's fantastic. I go past the Honourable Artillery Company, past the Methodist chapel (the main one for the entire country) and through Bunhill Fields, turning left onto Bunhill Row and going past a very classy row of early Victorian houses.

Bunhill Fields may be a graveyard, but it's an ancient one - the most recent burial was 150 years ago - so it isn't shrouded in recent grief. And it has some fascinating graves, including John Bunyan, Daniel Defoe, William Blake and Rev.d Bayes, being the final repository for those who died in the City of London and who were not connected to a parish church. Grey squirrels flit like smoke between the trees and an air of consummated peace hangs over it.

Although I walk through it more or less every day, I never take it for granted. London depends on its open spaces, even its smaller ones, and Bunhill Fields is a gem.

Annoying day

2010-07-24T15:29:00.002+01:00

Brian's watch strap broke; it was a Bedat watch, bought from Harrods and a very good one. I'd bought it for him four years ago, but it still had a five year guarantee. I traipsed across to Harrods, who no longer stock Bedat watches. Their response was: "go to Selfridges". After a brisk discussion, they are going to try to secure a watch strap themselves from Bedat. I have told them that my future custom depends on them learning what after-sales service is.

Ed Balls myth-making

2010-07-19T08:13:00.003+01:00

In the Guardian today, Ed Balls has an article warning us not to repeat the folly of the 1930s:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/18/deficit-cuts-dont-repeat-30s-folly

He draws parallels with the deflationary budgets that Britain had in the early 1930s and warns of the disaster they created. Stirring stuff. Except it isn't true in Britain.

From 1929 to 1932, GDP dropped by 5.8%, following which the economy started to recover. In the most recent recession, GDP dropped by 6.4% according to the latest estimate. In other words, the recession that Ed Balls was in part responsible for was more severe than the one that he tries to frighten us with.

News digest

2010-07-07T18:38:00.001+01:00

Is this the first occasion that an erect penis has been shown on the BBC?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8792000/8792008.stm

I feel for female deep sea squid.

Return to the country

2010-07-07T18:28:00.002+01:00

Brian and I drove back down to Pécsely yesterday. I busied myself picking the ripe fruit - the garden is packed with the stuff. I filled a bag with plums, sour cherries and a few mulberries and raspberries. I then made plum jam (which didn't set very well, though all the books say that it sets very easily) and sour cherry and mulberry jam (which set like a charm). Both taste very good.

Today we went on a long trip, crossing the lake and driving all the way to the south of Hungary to the Vylyan vineyard. Brian and I are big fans of Vylyan's red wines: they are probably the best in Hungary at the moment. We got there without incident, seeing a lot of Hungarian regions that we hadn't seen before. The view from the ferry across to Szántód is probably the best view of the lake that you can get. As you look west, you cannot see the end of the lake, giving the strong feeling of being at sea.

We reached the winery, which is on top of a hill with stunning views across the plains. Brian was driving, so he looked on enviously as I tried five wines: a Merlot, a Cabernet Franc, a Syrah, a Cabernet Sauvignon and finally their deluxe Cabernet France. There wasn't a mediocre wine among these and we filled the car (and when we got back, the cellar). We got given a free bottle of a private estate wine called Dobozó. This is clearly one for a special occasion.

Back to blogging

2010-07-05T12:27:00.002+01:00

I've had a week away from the blog because entertaining a houseful of guests (including two very lively children) isn't very compatible with blogging. The houseful has now returned to northern Ireland and everyone has had a good time.

I'm now in Budapest, on a work day. There is something deliciously naughty about working in just a pair of shorts while pacing up and down in the flat. It's 30C outside. But ultimately, work is work, wherever you do it.

Here comes the sun

2010-06-29T10:15:00.002+01:00

After a fairly dreary week last week, summer has arrived with a vengeance this week. It's going to be 30C most of this week, which makes having a swimming pool a very valuable luxury.

We have a houseful this week. As well as Brian and me, we have Brian's sister June, his nephew Rodney and his fiancée Olive, his niece Donna and her husband Lyndon, and their two children Rogan and Erin. Donna and Lyndon have our bedroom, with Erin in with them and Rogan sleeping in the den next door. Brian and I have retreated to the small house.

When we took the group round the house, Rogan was amazed to see the pool. He said: "I didn't believe that you'd got a pool until I saw it". He has thoroughly enjoyed its benefits already.

Today we're off to Tihany and Balatonfured.

Being important

2010-06-27T11:03:00.002+01:00

One of the drawbacks of being head of group is that it's practically impossible to switch off completely from work. Since arriving in Hungary last Saturday, I've spoken to work colleagues on four out five of the work days. But Friday's was the coup de grace.

A client has insisted that I call them from holiday. They have a large, urgent project and no one but me will do. The assistant suggested that another partner might do, but the client was comfortable only with discussing the matter with me.

At one level, it's hugely flattering - "they need me". At another, it's rather frustrating, because it's hard ever to get to switch off properly. Ah well, I'm not going to complain. In the meantime, I'll try to avoid Brian's meaningful looks.

A couple of losing bets

2010-06-24T08:32:00.003+01:00

Well yesterday was better than the day before. Our sump pump is now fixed, though water continues to need to be pumped out at an alarming rate. The ground must be absolutely sodden.

Yesterday was a big football day. I had bets on both the England v Slovenia match and the Germany v Ghana match. I laid England at 1.48 and Germany at 1.55. Effectively I was backing Slovenia to get at least a draw at 85/40 and Ghana to do the same at 15/8.

England and Germany both won. I have no regrets, however, about my bets. It took a super goal from Oezil to break the deadlock against Ghana and England only won by one goal (though they should have got more, but for their wastefulness in front of goal).

Anyway, it's set up an England v Germany last 16 match, which should be very entertaining. Neither of these sides is as good as their supporters believe, but both are enterprising. It could be the match of the tournament so far.

A couple of disruptions

2010-06-22T11:06:00.003+01:00

We got to Pécsely on Saturday and at first glance there were far fewer than the normal number of irritating problems. One was immediately apparent - no internet access, hence no posts for a few days. A phone call on Monday morning put that right (they hadn't received the last payment of the bill, sigh).

This morning we woke up to a bigger problem. We've had quite a lot of rain over the last day and Brian went down to the swimming pool basement to find that it had flooded to a depth of a couple of inches. The sump pumps had both failed. Cue panicked running around with buckets, hoses and a search for a hand pump, so far unsuccessful. Brian has been having full scale dramas all day.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Two days to go

2010-06-17T10:16:00.001+01:00

I'm off for three weeks holidays on Saturday. Inevitably that means that I have to shift a lot of work in advance of then. I was in the office at 8am yesterday morning and back home at 10.15 yesterday evening. I was on the road again at 7.30am this morning and probably won't get home until 11pm this evening. Still, I am being productive.

Boris v Ken 2

2010-06-15T10:12:00.002+01:00

There are certain rules that one must abide by in order to create a successful sequel. Number one: the body count is always bigger. Number two: the death scenes are always much more elaborate - more blood, more gore - *carnage candy*. And number three: never, ever, under any circumstances, assume the killer is dead.

With a week to go before nominations close, the only candidates for the Labour nomination are Oona King and Ken Livingstone. I can't see Ms King - most famous for losing her safe seat to George Galloway - beating Ken Livingstone. Which means that we are shaping up for a repeat of the last Mayoral election in 2012.

At this distance, it's hard to work out the dynamics. The Tories will almost certainly be less popular in general terms than they were in 2008, but Boris Johnson looks less of a figure of fun and Ken Livingstone looks more diminished. It should, however, be a lot of fun to watch.

Restaurant review

2010-06-13T08:41:00.003+01:00

Last night Brian and I went to Odette's in Primrose Hill. Brian had booked the table before realising that England were playing last night. He was worried that we might not get a taxi, but we got one quickly and then raced along the roads as if they had been specially cleared for us.

Everything about Odette's breathed local restaurant, from the tables on the pavement to the maitre d' fussing around. It was set in a converted house or small shop and tastefully decorated in that way that only local restaurants attempt.

The food was good. Not great, but perfectly good. I had an excellent terrine of pigs' cheeks and black pudding while Brian had a good plate of scallops which I think he could have equalled. For the main course I had a decent saddle of rabbit (not that you could have ridden it) and Brian had a very good plate of lamb done three ways, though it was rare rather than the medium that he had specified. For pudding, I had an updated version of an arctic roll that was rather close to the original really and Brian had a selection of cheeses, which he obviously enjoyed. The wine menu was decently priced and the wines we had were good value for the money that we paid.

We had more trouble getting a taxi back but when we eventually did, we again shot back in very quick time.

Would I go back again? If I lived in the area, no doubt. It's not so good as to justify the trip from Old Street on a regular basis.

Budgetary matters

2010-06-12T10:47:00.003+01:00

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been maneouvring to buy a repossessed house. It is next door to the house of one of Brian's brothers just outside Worksop. There are two others bidding against me and last night we were all asked to put in our best and final offers. The asking price is £79,950 and my previous bid was £77,000. I have upped that to £78,750. We shall see shortly, I guess.

If it doesn't come off (and Brian, as usual, is very distrustful of the estate agents), I shall make a pension contribution before 22 June when the budget comes out. This may be the last opportunity I get to get any higher rate tax relief. The Chancellor is going to be shaking down money from every direction that he can, it is Lib Dem policy to reduce tax relief for higher rate taxpayers and this may help keep the coalition together. It wouldn't be very helpful for me.

Work duties

2010-06-10T09:51:00.002+01:00

Today I am going to my single largest client to give a talk. I shall be speaking to 40 lawyers of differing specialisms, levels of experience and interest about a very nasty pitfall associated with selling or buying a business. While I have a lot of experience of public speaking and this is a topic I know very well indeed, I still get jittery before giving a talk. I have a much bigger talk to give at the end of the year that I rashly volunteered for in February. I'm already regretting it.

Next Labour leader: update

2010-06-09T15:34:00.001+01:00

Both Diane Abbott and Andy Burnham got through, though only by manipulation of the nomination process by the big three candidates. I don't think either will trouble the scorers.

Picking the next Labour leader

2010-06-09T10:12:00.002+01:00

The nominations for the next Labour leader close at lunchtime. Already through are David Miliband, Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. Andy Burnham looks certain to get to the magic number of nominations today (the Guardian is reporting that he has the last nominations that he needs) and Diane Abbott might just make it.

The first thing to note is that the first four of these are rather identikit: all are 40-something middle-class white men with a background as policy wonks. Diane Abbott is different, but on this occasion different is not better. So the line-up is going to look very samey. That is not a good thing. There is no voice of experience, no old pope for young cardinals to vote for. None of them have any experience of opposition.

However, it's one thing to lament the unappetising line-up. The choice has to be made from the options put in front of you. You can't ask for steak in a vegetarian restaurant.

I'm not a Labour supporter, but the country needs a strong opposition. That means that the opposition party needs a party that can oppose effectively and is led by a leader who looks like a credible Prime Minister.

It's early days so far, but only Ed Balls has so far recognised that Labour is no longer speaking in the language of its own traditional supporters. If I had to pick today, he would be my choice for the most effective leader of the opposition. I shall keep an eye on this throughout the coming months.

European decadence

2010-06-08T12:00:00.002+01:00

What do all of the following stories have in common?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10261567.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10254462.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/10129624.stm

The answer is that all three show that the citizens of many European countries have champagne tastes and beer money. This behaviour is literally infantile: an expectation that somehow the debts that have been run up by governments that have spent too much should be waived without consequence for the populations of those states.

I find the response of the opposition parties to David Cameron's speech yesterday profoundly depressing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10250603.stm

They are pandering to the belief that cuts can be made that don't hurt anyone and that tax rises can be introduced that somehow don't draw blood from anyone. This is economic nonsense. We need a plan to get this back under control (the market turmoil means that we can't wait even if it would be objectively better to do so, which I doubt). The time has come for politicians of all sides to accept that they have colluded in a culture of overspending.

Voting reform

2010-06-07T09:25:00.004+01:00

A perennial favourite subject for discussion on political betting is the subject of electoral systems. I have to say that this is a subject for which I have no enthusiasm at all. It's a bit like arguing about the rules of football when you're in the middle of a game. However, it is firmly on the electoral agenda, so it's worth writing about.

The essential problem is that there is a conflict between representing everyone's views in proportion and allowing clear accountability. Under an electoral system that tends to produce absolute majorities, the parties can be judged against their manifestos in a meaningful way. Under an electoral system that tends to produce hung parliaments, there are two processes: the vote and the horse-trading. At the end of the horse-trading, the voters are presented with a government that will have a programme that may be quite different from their hopes and expectations. The manifestos would be yesterday’s chip wrappings.

For example, if you were a Conservative voter who was very keen on raising the inheritance tax threshholds, you would be downcast at the outcome of the last election. Worse, if you were a Lib Dem voter who voted Lib Dem to help to make Britain more left of centre, you would be appalled at the turn of events.

Ultimately, I do regard electoral reform as not just inevitable but desirable. It is wrong that Labour got an absolute majority with a vote share as low as 36% in 2005. In 2010, the largest party got 37% and it is right that such a vote share should not command an overall majority. If the days of parties getting over 40% are past, then we should accept that the thread of accountability has been broken and look to produce the most representative system possible, while keeping a constituency link. That for me is the Single Transferable Vote system.

News Digest

2010-06-06T09:55:00.001+01:00

The BBC has gone tabloid today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_and_canada/10247832.stm

That is one hell of a headline.

Chessington

2010-06-05T17:23:00.001+01:00

I take each of my nephews and nieces for a daytrip for their birthdays. My youngest nephew Joe had asked to go to Chessington World of Adventures so - heavily delayed from last October to get the weather - we did it today. He brought his friend Chris (the idea was that the two of them would do the rides while my sister and I relaxed, but since Chris didn't like rollercoasters, it didn't work out like that).

The weather was glorious and I did the log flume (twice), Tomb Blaster - a shoot-em-up on the move, Dragon's Fury - a rollercoaster where the carriage rotated as well as rolled and coasted and Rameses' Revenge - an elaborate way of spinning me upside down and squirting water in my face.

I'm exhausted, but it was good fun.

New Blackberry Day - update

2010-06-03T17:33:00.001+01:00

I have my new blackberry. It's shiny. It's sleek. Its rollerball is almost too smooth-rolling. It has poker. I am currently a very happy man.

New Blackberry Day

2010-06-03T09:56:00.002+01:00

After a false dawn on Tuesday, today is to be new blackberry day today. In truth, it's long overdue. The rollerball is very sticky, the casing is battered and it just looks, well, naff. But it means that I'm going to be deprived of a blackberry for four whole hours while our IT department do all the necessary synchronising and magic. And I've just been told that they have an "issue" with making the connections, so it's unclear when they can start.

I haven't seen my new blackberry yet, so today is a day of anticipation. I've been told I will be pleased with it. The joys of technology.

National bloody Express

2010-06-02T13:49:00.002+01:00

If a blog is to be about anything, it is about personal experiences. This morning I had a terrifically annoying personal experience. It involved King's Cross station and a moron with a badge.

I was due to catch the 7.35 train to Leeds today. I got delayed and arrived only just in time at 7.33. But where was the train? It was indicated nowhere. I ran up and down the concourse looking for it, but it was gone. I went to customer information who told me that the trains are routinely taken off the noticeboards two minutes before they are due to leave (the logic for which entirely escapes me). They advised me to speak to the ticket office since my ticket was for that single train.

I went to the ticket office, where the low-charm customer representative told me that she would have to consult her manager. I waited and waited, and after 15 minutes, a rather self-important man with a trim beard called Keith Hayward emerged from back office.

I explained the problem to Mr Hayward. He was unmoved. He was not interested in helping me, despite the fact that I had been able and willing to catch the 7.35. I would have to pay for another train. I pointed out the unfairness of this. "With the greatest of respect..." he sneered. That was enough. I told him that he was being rude and stupid and I had no more use for him, that he should return to his office to learn some manners and be more polite to the next customer he dealt with. The look on his face was almost worth the £111.50 that I had to pay. Almost.

Back in the office

2010-06-01T11:48:00.002+01:00

After a weekend away in the sun, coming back to work is always a struggle. It's been made doubly difficult for me because I've come back to my billing (always a lawyer's most boring job) and a client has rung up telling me that I am probably needed as a court witness in relation to things that I advised about in 1994.

Right now, my head is full of Hungarian architecture, swimming in my pool, sunny weather, crisp rosé wine from the local cellar and new ideas for the future. Sitting at my desk on a rainy grey day in London is less appealing than usual.

Budapest architecture

2010-05-31T20:55:00.003+01:00

One of the joys of taking visitors around a town that you know well is that you get to look afresh at things that you otherwise take for granted. We showed Robert and Glynn the Secessionist architecture of Budapest and realised again just how fantastic it is. Look at these:

Eurovision - the aftermath

2010-05-30T10:05:00.002+01:00

We are in Pécsely with our friends Robert and Glynn for the weekend. Naturally, we had to conform to stereotypes and watch Eurovision last night. We agreed to have a competition where each of us could pick three countries and the one with the best track record would have the glory.

The first challenge was finding a tv channel with it on. Hungary for some reason didn't seem to participate this year. After some internet research, I found that it was on a German satellite channel Erste, so we watched it in German.

The Norwegian hosts were a little disconcerting. A younger version of Niles from Frazier hammed it up while an ice maiden took charge of the scoring. All attempts by the hosts from other countries to interact with her were met by a chilly smile and no repartée.

We all had our different approaches. Brian chose Azerbaijan, Moldova and Belgium - largely on appearance, as far as I could tell. Glynn went for the Europop approach and chose Denmark, Iceland and Albania. Robert went for Norway, Iceland and Israel. I thought Denmark's song stood head and shoulders above the rest as a Eurovision song, so chose that with France (which I suspect will be a big hit, though not a Eurovision winner) and Serbia, which was appalling but had the potential to spring a surprise. All of us agreed that the UK entry was a second rate Rick Astley song sung by a guy who couldn't actually sing. It deserved its last place in my opinion.

Particular highlights: Iceland's volcano in their green room; Iceland's statuesque singer; the Belarus butterflies; the Serbian haircut; the Moldovan make-up; Niamh Kavanagh looking distinctly untroubled by the wind machine.

The voting was satisfyingly predictable: Greece and Cyprus giving each other 12 points; Romania getting 12 points from Moldova; Portugal doing the same for Spain. The winner was a German Kate Nash soundalike. This didn't sound good on the night but the song has been on heavy rotation on MTV around Europe for weeks. Familiarity appears to have bred success.

Feet of clay

2010-05-29T10:47:00.002+01:00

I've just caught up with the story about David Laws. What an idiot. He sounds as though he has all kinds of unresolved issues to deal with regarding his sexuality. But it isn't his sexuality that will bring him down, but his expenses.

This is 2010. There are openly gay MPs of all parties and David Laws has a big majority. There are plenty of openly gay men with strongly religious backgrounds in ordinary life: me, for example. This is not an impossible position, not now. I don’t believe in outing as a general rule but I do believe in exposing expenses scandals. The guy has been a complete idiot and he has displayed internalised homophobia.

I wonder whether the best solution might be for him to hold a by-election. In olden days, new appointments to the Cabinet had to submit to a by-election. He could resign his seat, ask for his constituents’ forgiveness for his idiocy and if re-elected resume his position. The coalition could then claim electoral sanction for his retention in post while honouring the idea of a recall election.

I may be harsh because I had to do exactly what David Laws could have done. My parents are very devout Congregationalists, but I felt that not to tell them of my sexuality would be to insult their intelligence.

My parents did not take it well at first. We spoke on the phone twice a week, but about nothing more substantial than the weather. My mother was particularly distraught. However, in time she has come to accept me for who I am, likes my partner and was thrilled that we were getting cped. Assuming that older religious people can’t accept discordant information is a little patronising. The bible is stuffed full of passages to give solace to the downhearted and confused, and churches provide structured support when it is needed.

It seems appropriate to give a plug for an extremely worthwhile charity, the Albert Kennedy Trust. It works with children and young adults who have been disowned by their families because they are gay. Its work is as important as ever (immigrant families often bring less enlightened views on homosexuality with them). It is a charity worthy of support.

Pécsely

2010-05-28T14:14:00.002+01:00

We've arrived in Pécsely to the usual round of minor problems. One of the swimming pool windows is broken (Brian described as broken on the outside but not on the inside, which sounded very Irish but in fact is true - only one sheet of the double glazing has been damaged). The garden is looking a bit tatty, Feri could have mowed the lawn more. But generally, things are good, the swimming pool is getting warmed up and I'm looking forward to a good break.

Abroad thoughts from home

2010-05-27T01:46:00.002+01:00

I'm flying to Hungary at 11 tomorrow morning with Sleazyjet (curse the striking BA crews). I haven't been there since Easter and I'm really looking forward to getting out there again. But work follows me and my big challenge is how to switch off. At the end of June I'm going to take three weeks off to relax. It'll be interesting to see how easily I can cut the apron strings of work - and how easily they can cut mine.

News digest

2010-05-26T07:55:00.002+01:00

Right, let's start this again. I have been busy. And I'll start right away with a new feature, Alastair's news digest:

A quote that a chap at the British Waterways Board may on reflection think was poorly judged:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8705079.stm

"Communities across Britain now use their canals, rivers and towpaths in ways that their original builders could never have foreseen" - Robin Evans, British Waterways

The gay community across Britain has been using towpaths in such ways for decades.

A sad insight into benefit consultants' ideas of quality of life:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8704630.stm

Fair play to Mercer for getting free publicity every year, but a top three of Vienna, Zurich, Geneva? And elsewhere in the top 10, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Bern? At least Vienna has some nice museums.

Return

2009-10-23T10:03:00.002+01:00

I've had a few weeks off blogging, having been ill and then busy with work and then ill again. I'm now on some fairly powerful medicine which earlier in the week had the effect of about 15 cups of coffee. I'm not drinking coffee, mind, still less alcohol.

The medicine has kicked in and I am now feeling a bit better, though I am told to expect it to take a few weeks to have its full impact. It is affecting the amount of work that I can do and I do get very tired in the evening, but it's good to be feeling better.

Head of group

2009-09-30T07:38:00.003+01:00

It was announced officially to the group that I am to take over as its new head as from 1 November. I'm very pleased, though the workload is inevitably going to go up. So far, it's meant I spend an extra hour a day in the office already.

A big day

2009-09-29T08:57:00.000+01:00

Today is a day with big news for me. I'll be able to say more later.

Working on a Sunday

2009-09-27T14:18:00.002+01:00

is oddly enjoyable. The office is deathly quiet and I can actually get on with what I need to, undisturbed.

Yesterday evening Brian and I went to Matsuri (Holborn) for teppenyaki. I had the black cod, a fish neither of us had tried before. It was sensational, buttery, very satisfying. I always enjoy teppenyaki, but this was my most enjoyable night at Matsuri yet.

Handling assistants

2009-09-25T14:32:00.002+01:00

Today is a little quieter than the rest of the week has been. I have been able to get my breath back a bit.

Yesterday was particularly frustrating because as I tried to knuckle down to work, another assistant disrupted my concentration by sending me an email or coming through the door (which was closed, which is not its normal state). I am thinking about posting rules of engagement for my assistants for when I'm very busy, which will consist of the following:

1) Is the matter urgent? If not, don't disturb me.
2) Is the matter important? If not, don't disturb me.
3) Do you think that I will think the matter urgent or important, even if you do? If not, don't disturb me.
4) If you have to disturb me, consider whether you can gather all the things that you might need to disturb me with together so that the disruption is kept to a minimum.
5) If you have to disturb me, come through the door.
6) If I'm too busy to speak to you, I'm too busy to read any email that you send instead of speaking to me.
7) I decide my order of priorities, not you.

I realise this all sounds very stroppy, but when I'm trying to get work done there's nothing more frustrating than being interrupted unnecessarily. I'm sure I won't issue these but it feels very good to get them off my chest.

Reaping the whirlwind

2009-09-24T08:49:00.002+01:00

I got back and my feet have barely touched the ground. Each and every one of my clients has been in need of legal advice, and I still have a backlog of 500 emails to go through. Any benefits I had of going on holiday are long gone.

Back to work

2009-09-21T21:02:00.003+01:00

Bah. I've had a week off blogging (and three days to recover from visitors) and was just about ready for a proper holiday. Of course, that means it's time to go back to work.

When my computer fired up, I had 800 emails to plough through. I'd got this down to about 580 by the end of the day. There's a lot of progress to be made yet.

Three of my clients were in panic mode, one especially so. I had a rare argument with a fellow lawyer on the other side, who was monumentally rude. I don't mind that particularly - it gets the juices flowing and though I flatter myself I can be as rude in print as anyone when I choose to be. I chose to be.

Eventually, the other side conceded the point. I have a meeting with them at 9am tomorrow morning. I shall try to ensure that I am gracious.

Back to Budapest

2009-09-14T22:46:00.002+01:00

Well, I survived the weekend with my parents without blood being spilt. I achieved this largely through being quite ill, which meant that I was allowed some peace and quiet.

I came back to Budapest with my parents today by train from Veszprém. It was supposed to be only two hours, but with the train being 10 minutes late and then stopped for 45 minutes with engine trouble, it took pretty well as long as it would have taken from Balatonfured. On the train was a young guy with his music so loud that I could have sung along with it and a guy who was about 6'8 and c25 stones. I haven't seen anyone so physically big in ages.

We got to the flat in BP at about 8pm. After a quick wash, we headed out for dinner at Café Bouchon on Zichy Jeno utca. This is always good, but it excelled itself tonight. We came back very satisfied indeed. It was the most relaxing evening of the week with my parents so far.

On not killing parents

2009-09-11T08:47:00.002+01:00

Two days in and my parents are both still alive. Brian and I are being driven mad by them.

In the kitchen, my mother fusses around while Brian likes to have sole command. As he put it, "In Ireland, if you tell someone that you don't want any help in the kitchen, they go away. Your mother takes one circuit round the table and pops back up again."

Meanwhile, my father has excelled himself. Yesterday he went into a bank to get money out. He came out agitated - "it's swallowed my card". I went into the bank and explained this. The cashier came out and looked in the ATM. "The card is not in the machine." Brian asked my dad to double-check, and sure enough there was the card in his wallet. He must have put it back in automatically. He couldn't get money out because his was a Maestro card and the machine didn't take Maestro. Words failed me.

Today Brian and I are going up to Budapest overnight to pick up Brian's nephew and his girlfriend. I think all four of us can do with a night's respite.

Holiday update

2009-09-09T17:51:00.002+01:00

Well, my plans for blogging every day have gone up in smoke. We spent all day travelling on Monday, then had guests on Tuesday. Today we picked up my parents from the airport and drove them back to Pécsely.

We decided to put my parents in the small house. My mother is not obviously in raptures about this, but she's gritting her teeth. She is looking forward to going in the pool but is refusing point blank to go in the sauna (she doesn't like the idea of being hot and sweaty). My father appears to have figured out his game plan for secret smoking.

Holiday delayed

2009-09-06T16:27:00.002+01:00

It's Sunday and I'm sat at my desk in the office - pah. I couldn't clear up all of my work on Friday night and so I'm having to sort it out now. I'm staring at a 200 page document that I have to go through today. Since I'm on a plane at 9.30am tomorrow morning, I can't really put it off.

Brian and I spent most of the weekend at Dunston Hall Hotel just outside Norwich at Amanda and Debbie's civil partnership. I shall write more about this tomorrow when I have time, but for now I want to note that the hotel was less than 5 miles from Poringland, a village where I lived for 7 years up to the age of 8. It felt like going back in time. I felt oddly emotional about it.

My movements

2009-09-03T17:36:00.002+01:00

This is the last week for me before I go on two weeks' holiday. I shall still be able to post while I'm away (most of the time anyway), so there won't be much of a hiatus in posting.

Tomorrow looks like being a busy day. I have a meeting at 9am, another halfday meeting from 9.30am, 11 things I absolutely positively have to do before I go on holiday and I have to be out of the office by 7.30 at the very latest.

I'm off to Norwich tomorrow evening for a lesbian civil partnership on Saturday. I'm praying that I can still fit into my dinner suit trousers (I'm not that sleek a star). A full report will follow on Sunday, when Brian and I return to London.

Important fact discovered today

2009-09-01T21:11:00.001+01:00

My name is an anagram of "I am a sleek star". Further comment seems superfluous.

Cambridge

2009-08-31T14:09:00.004+01:00

Brian and I went up to Cambridge on Saturday lunchtime. The train only took 45 minutes from King's Cross, which was a very pleasant surprise. Beforehand we'd bought a bunch of flowers and a candle from our friend Wichet's shop on Caledonia Road (possibly the best florist in London). This went down well as a present for Ruth and the Venus fly trap was also a big hit with Alice and Joe. Alice had taken exams for her GCSEs, the main batch of which are due next year, and got 5 A*s and an A. She was pleased and just the right side of smug.

We had an indoor barbecue in the afternoon (the weather wasn't good enough to have the outdoor one that we'd originally planned) but a lot of the day was spent with Joseph walking through Super Paper Mario, the Nintendo Wii game that I'd passed onto him a few months back and which he was stuck on. The next morning Joe introduced me to the delights of Raymonds Rabid Rabbits, which was shamefully enjoyable.

Joe is blond-haired and blue-eyed - the very opposite of me - yet his parents insist every time that I see them that he has facial expressions that are the dead spit of me. I can't see it at all, but I suppose that I wouldn't.

We came back to London yesterday afternoon and after a short rest went to another barbecue, this time outdoors even though it was still cold, at Hywel and Aidan's house.

Today, I've been working.

Chores

2009-08-29T07:50:00.002+01:00

Today I have to:

1) buy a birthday present for my sister, Ruth
2) put a suit into drycleaning
3) draft a pro forma agenda for my department's strategy committees' meetings
4) put down a deposit on a television for the spare room (Bang & Olufsen, because we're shallow like that) and look at the whizzy new remote control that they have - Mikael would be most put out if we got that before him!
5) put in freedom of information request with Islington Council
6) draft an agenda for the block's house meeting

After that Brian and I are off to see Ruth and James and their two children just outside Cambridge.

No bank holiday for the wicked

2009-08-28T18:47:00.002+01:00

Well, my post this morning was prophetic. I was called to a meeting this morning and all hell has broken loose as a result. One of my pension scheme clients has been told that its employer can no longer afford to sponsor it and will want to renegotiate its commitment to the pension scheme. This will result in many people's pensions being cut back substantially and will involve a LOT of negotiation with the Pensions Regulator and the Pension Protection Fund.

Meetings like that are interesting in a morbid fashion. I went with a suspicion that we weren't getting good news and we didn't. As the lawyer, I'm called upon to give snap general advice and since the clients are usually in a daze, I often have to speak on the trustees' behalf while they gather their thoughts.

This client has been a long term regular client but now the workload from it is going to increase enormously. I'm going on holiday at the end of next week and I have to give very careful thought as to how to manage that in my own absence.

The August lull

2009-08-28T08:58:00.002+01:00

Has so far been more or less non-existent for pension lawyers. It would be good to say that was a reflection of the rude health of the economy, but it is not. The deals that are taking place are fire sales, many employers are looking at how to bring their pension costs under control and some are struggling with insolvency, with the consequent effects that has for their pension schemes.

In this firm, the pension group is the most successful part of the firm at present and the group is more or less flat out. Good news for us, not such good news for the wider economy. This trend looks likely to continue for the next few months at least.

Betting update

2009-08-26T20:46:00.003+01:00

I've found that I'm rather good at betting on football. I'm currently averaging a £30 profit each football day. Comes in handy, as you can imagine.

I'm developing a new political betting strategy. I'm still thinking it through. I'd rather spend a lot of time and miss the very best bit of the market than leap in and get it wrong. In the meantime, I'm putting all the money that Paddy Power will permit me to on a May 2010 election. That works out about £80 a week. At 4/7, that seems like a steal to me.

"Tomorrow morning" slightly delayed

2009-08-25T18:52:00.002+01:00

Another very busy day. Time enough to catch up on the weekend though.

On Friday evening, after finishing work and a quick trip to the doctor, I flew with SwyanAir from Stansted to Belfast City. Only one flight in Stansted was delayed - no prizes for guessing which one. The flight was fairly uneventful, and despite the doctor being almost certain that I would have health problems with it, I felt reasonably ok. I got off the plane and Brian was waiting for me in the arrivals lounge.

I always like landing in Belfast City airport. It was a clear evening and you get a fantastic view of the coast and the lough. Belfast is in a beautiful setting and if the city fathers invested in good architecture, it could be one of the most beautiful cities in the world in 50 years' time.

We drove to Brian's sister June's house. June was waiting for us and a bottle of wine was opened (my first wine in two weeks). Inevitably, the conversation turned to the trouble in Rasharkin. The whole weekend was taken up with that subject at one time or another.

The next day we drove from Ballymena to the east Antrim coast and along the glens of Antrim. The glens of Antrim is quite possibly the most beautiful stretch of coastline in the British isles. Almost no one in England has even heard of it.

We meandered along the coastline and went in search of somewhere to eat in Portrush, only to find out that there was a marching band competition. There wasn't a parking space to be had and opalescent flesh was draped in more tartan than you could shake a bagpipe at. We drove on to an American-style diner called Charly's. A Maserati sat in the car park. As Brian said, it was probably the owner's.

We stayed that night with Brian's niece Donna and her husband Lyndon just outside Ballymoney. Brian's nephew Rodney and his girlfriend Olive came over as well. We had a takeaway and a few drinks. At the end of the evening, Brian and I mercilessly teased Rodney and Olive about when they were going to get married. They played a very straight bat.

On the Sunday, we went for lunch at Brian's mother's house in Rasharkin. Brian's mother shamelessly spoils her grandchildren and you can see their parents gritting their teeth. All was quiet in Rasharkin though there were quite a few tales of unseemly behaviour from the republicans in the village on the Friday night parade. The mood was dour.

We flew back on the Sunday night. SwyanAir ran more smoothly and the bag was second off the carousel! Brian wasn't even out of the toilet by that point. We got home for about 9pm. The phone was ringing as we walked through the door - my mother's timing was impeccable as always.

Back from Northern Ireland

2009-08-24T21:37:00.001+01:00

Brian and I arrived back late last night. I've had a very busy day's work. I shall update properly tomorrow morning.

Filthy Leeds

2009-08-21T12:01:00.002+01:00

Yesterday afternoon I had a work trip to Leeds. For some reason I am unable to blog on my blackberry, so all blogging is interrupted when I don't have access to a computer.

The train up to Leeds was more or less empty, a sign of the recession I guess. The few people on the train were all very visibly working on their laptops (not me, I just take paper and my blackberry). However, I did get a crafty sidelong look at the laptop of the guy sitting on the next set of four seats and he was in fact updating his facebook page.

Our Leeds office is directly opposite the station, which is really convenient. I stayed in Quebec's, which I can thoroughly recommend for anyone needing a good hotel near Leeds train station. Because I was on internal firm business, I can't yet blog about what I was meeting for, or what I did. No doubt I will in due course. It means big changes for me.

Betting update

2009-08-19T21:27:00.001+01:00

I've started the new football season quite well. I'm a conservative better on football but it stands me in good stead. Betfair is very helpful in that if you are observant about betting patterns, there are times when you can make reasonable sums for relatively low risks. If goals get scored in those periods, then you do have problems, but it is after all a gamble. So far this week I've won on Celtic v Arsenal, Timisoara v Stuttgart, Birmingham v Portsmouth, Liverpool v Stoke, Wolves v West Ham, Everton v Arsenal and Spurs v Liverpool. More than enough to buy a few drinks.

Tomorrow is the start of the fifth test. The third and fourth were both disappointments for me, so I'm hoping to do better for the final test. Set against that, I have a very nice position on the series as a whole, where I win substantially if it is drawn and cover my face if it is not. Since the series is tied and I am laying the draw for the fifth test, I shall win come what may.

Alone again, naturally

2009-08-19T06:57:00.002+01:00

Brian flew out to Northern Ireland yesterday morning. I'm joining him on Friday night but in the meantime I have to work while he is spending the week in Donegal with three of his nephews (I am aware that Donegal is not in Northern Ireland, but Brian's family is based in county Antrim and he's going with them on holiday to Donegal).

We saw two of the three nephews, Luí and Enrí, at the wedding last week. They told uncle Brian that he had to bring old clothes, because he would be climbing a tree. Oh, and Rogan (the third nephew) had told them to tell uncle Brian to ask Alastair to get us some lego. Lego has indeed been bought.

Listlessness

2009-08-17T22:34:00.001+01:00

Iain Dale is currently unveiling a bit at a time his readers' lists of favourite blogs. Fair enough, you might think. But since he insisted that every entrant entered at least 10 blogs, his lists will be heavily biased to the familiar (which the vast majority of readers who read few blogs will name to make up the numbers) and to those preferred by geeks (the few rather odd readers who really do read 10 or more blogs regularly). What a complete waste of time.

9.58

2009-08-17T10:01:00.002+01:00

One story towers above all others today: the astonishing world championship 100m run by Usain Bolt. How wonderful it must be to excel so far above all competition in that way. What is so remarkable is not just that he is so fast, but that he is so relaxed. He ambles up to the starting line for all the world as if he is walking into a nightclub. He grins at the camera and acts up, seemingly completely immune from tension.

His approach seems to have infected other runners as well. We are used to seeing the 100m line-up look tense and urgent, straining at the leash. This time, most of the competitors (with the exception of the unfortunate Tyson Gay) were smiling as well. They knew what was coming so there was no point in feeling tense.

And then he runs. He doesn't get the quickest start, but his legs seem to be powered in a way that other men just cannot begin to match. Over the course of 100m, he first catches then surges away from men who would leave almost all of humanity trailing in their dust. By the end, having checked that he has comfortably won, he is visibly slightly easing. The time seems incredible - surely no one running so easily can run so fast? To shave 0.11 seconds off the 100m world record belongs to a different era. It has not been done since the athletics authorities started to time to the nearest 100th of a second in 1977.

The most astounding thing is that he can definitely run faster. What a superb sportsman.

Town mice and country mice

2009-08-16T09:29:00.002+01:00

My mother came to London with a coach party yesterday to visit Buckingham Palace. After they'd looked around, they were dropped off in Covent Garden, where I'd agreed to meet her.

The actual process of meeting my mother was not straightforward. She rang me when she arrived (I was waiting in a coffee shop) and I asked her where she was. "I'm just walking towards Covent Garden now..." Knowing how crowded Covent Garden gets, I told her to stay still, it being more difficult to hit a moving target. "OK". What street are you on? "Russell Street, just near Drury Lane". OK, I said, and where on Russell Street are you? "Well I'm just approaching Covent Garden..." Keeping my patience, I asked her not to approach anything and to stand still. I eventually found her, hiding behind a phone box.

We walked around Covent Garden because mum fancied a look at the shops, but it was too noisy and crowded for her - she realised then why I had been asking her to stay still. On the way through, we bumped into mum's friends Doreen and Rona, who had decided to walk around Covent Garden rather than wait to meet me. They too were unimpressed with the noise and I whisked them away to a coffee shop. All three had a cup of tea.

Refreshed, and after fighting off their attempts to pay their share of the bill, I decided to take them for a short walk around quieter areas. We walked through Lincoln's Inn Fields, I showed them the view into New Square, walked down Carey Street and round the Royal Courts of Justice, showed them St Dunstan's (Rona nudged Doreen and pointed at the sign on the side of the building next door that proclaimed "People's Friend"), then back along the Strand, around a few of the side alleys to show them the older buildings, then back to Drury Lane.

I deposited them safely on the bus. My mother phoned at 7.45 to let me know how much they'd all enjoyed that and how much better it was than it would have been in Covent Garden. Unfortunately, like usual, she had phoned when we were eating dinner. It had, however, been a very enjoyable interlude.

A little bit of politics

2009-08-15T12:51:00.004+01:00

I can, for once, post with some personal knowledge of a story that has been in the news this week:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8196482.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8200942.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8202887.stm

Reading these stories, you might think that Rasharkin was a plucky Catholic village holding out against the fiendish forces of Orangeism. There may indeed be areas where that is so. But not Rasharkin.

Rasharkin is a genuinely mixed Protestant/Catholic village, and always has been. Brian grew up in it, his parents having moved there when they got married. Brian's mother was born Catholic and his father was Protestant, so the mixed background was important to them.

The Orange Order is active in this area of county Antrim and has been for many many years. Suggesting that this is in some way an iniquitous request is simply wrong. Brian is of the view that most of the trouble is being kicked up by non-residents. Of course, it is the residents who will have to live with the heightened tensions after the march has passed off.

Aegrotat

2009-08-14T23:31:00.001+01:00

Another day with me feeling pretty rough. More blogging tomorrow.

Dieting

2009-08-13T18:22:00.003+01:00

I need to lose weight. In an ideal world I'd lose about 2 stones. I'd be happy to lose a stone and a half. But resisting the chocolate machine at work is proving very hard indeed.

I have dieted before, but I seem to have lost my self-discipline. I know that I just need to get on the treadmill of dieting and then I find it much easier. In the meantime, at least keeping off the booze is meaning that I'm not putting any more weight on.

Achievements

2009-08-12T11:41:00.002+01:00

This morning on football365, one poster set out a list of his achievements with the boast "I am the nuts". He got ripped to pieces - rightly so, since most of his achievements were travel-related - but it got me to thinking what my achievements are. This is the list that I have come up with so far:

1) Qualified as a solicitor
2) Won third prize in the office karaoke
3) Became a salaried partner in my firm at 29 and an equity partner in my firm at 32
4) Opened a village fete
5) Secured several changes in the law
6) Been kidnapped by the Hare Krishna
7) Written a published book
8) Had my flat in Budapest appear in a home style magazine
9) Chaired a national association
10) Written an obituary

My main thought on reading this list is that I need to do more; I need to set new challenges for myself.

Another day

2009-08-11T14:10:00.002+01:00

I'm not feeling much better but I am at least in a better mood. Brian and I have travelled down from Harrogate to London and I'm back in the office now, having just taken my latest stedemil. They make me drowsy but they're not having the huge impact that the first tablet had.

In general, I'm not normally a believer in taking medication. Some friends will take a paracetamol at the drop of a hat. Before Sunday, I don't think that I'd taken any kind of pill in at least two years and possibly longer. In A&E, I'd been prescribed Stedemil, which I picked up from Boots. I got home and sat back in the chair, swallowing it with a glass of water. I was just drowsing off when after five to ten minutes I felt it kick in, and ping! I was wide awake. I paced up and down for a while, then after a while, I felt as if I'd been thrown down like a dishcloth gets thrown onto the floor. It was exhausting and I couldn't do anything.

I couldn't face taking those three times a day for seven days, so I skipped the evening dose. However, Brian made it very clear that he thought I was wrong and the next day I felt that I owed it to him to give them another go. It seems like my body adjusted quickly, because I had no problems with any of the three pills I took yesterday and no problems with either of the pills that I've so far taken today. I hope by the end of a week that I shall not need any more.

More bloody hospitals

2009-08-10T19:42:00.002+01:00

Brian and I have spent the weekend at his nephew David's with his girlfriend Alison. On Sunday morning I had another attack and had to be rushed to Newark A&E. I was seriously dizzy and lightheaded. I went white as chalk and a line stood out on my face, livid. I was having difficulties breathing and standing up straight. Alison, who works in the NHS, didn't mess about and took me straight to A&E. I was fearing an all day wait, but after I'd got past the "computer says no" receptionist, I was seen by a nurse in 5 minutes (normal blood pressure, normal blood sugar) - he was a Newcastle fan and sympathised with me about Norwich's start to the season (7-1 loss at home to Colchester, words fail me). The doctor saw me within 10 minutes after the nurse and suggested labyrinthitis, which sounds to me like a made-up disease which he claimed was an ear infection. The longest part of a 2 1/2 hour stay was caused waiting for an ECG scan which in the end showed nothing very much, which was strange, given the last one had shown an arrythmia. The doctor prescribed a couple of pills, one of which I have to take three times a day, makes me very drowsy and I can't drink alcohol with it. Today I've been at the wedding of one of Brian's nieces, Joanne - Brian is one of 14 brothers and sisters, so there are plenty of nephews and nieces to go around. The bush telegraph has been in full force and I've had to endure a lot of sympathy and no champagne to alleviate it. I'm writing this in a hotel room in a rest period, with a keyboard which has a faulty return key. You can guess my mood all round.

Mani redux

2009-08-08T13:02:00.002+01:00

Brian and I went to Mani's birthday party last night. It was held in Floridita on Wardour St, which neither of us had been to before but which turned out to be what used to be Mezzo, the Conran restaurant.

We found Mani downstairs in a very Latin-styled bar/restaurant. Jayne and David were there and Jayne was already suffering from her mojitos to the point that she needed the help of an adjacent pillar. The bar service was abysmal and the prices were adventurous. Needless to say, the place was rammed.

The clientele could largely be summed up as 20 and 30 somethings looking for fun. The bar was like a furnace. We didn't see much of Mani, but the women in the party certainly did. Once again, it was a good night.

Brian returns

2009-08-07T06:11:00.002+01:00

Brian finally got back home last night. He was glad to be back - 10 days cooped up with Mikael had (I get the strong impression) tested the resolve of both of them. Neither is exactly flexible and both have firm views on how things should be done. Looking back, it is an achievement that the trip passed off without murders.

For all that, he'd had a good trip. He'd been particularly impressed by Krakow and the scenery in Slovakia, and had thought Gdansk was an attractive city, if a bit scruffy at present. I heard an awful lot about how bad the roads were in Poland, and how the best roads anywhere were in Hungary.

I was really glad to see Brian again: it's stupid how much you can miss someone that you talk to on the phone every night while he's away.

A virtual life

2009-08-05T18:55:00.002+01:00

Iain M Banks in his book Feersum Enjin was, I think, the first person to illustrate in detail the possibilities of the internet as it would affect the lives we lived. The concept of us having two lives, one in the real world and one online, was radical at the time. Now it seems normal. It is certainly the way I live.

Originally, when I first started surfing the net, I would visit websites that were information posts. The BBC website would be a good example of that. I like absorbing information and I would surf far and wide in search of it. That is not the way that I use the internet any more.

I would estimate that upwards of 90% of my time is spent on one of two sites: www.2politicalbetting.com and forum football 365, and most of that is on the former. My forays away from these sites are to look at links that I have been directed to or for specific missions (to find train times or specific information). Otherwise I am participating in an extended series of interwoven conversations.

Take today. Late last night "stjohn" posted an analysis of the impact of changing odds, starting here:

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/08/04/whatll-labours-share-be-when-the-votes-are-counted/#comment-1168497

There then developed a slow burn triangular conversation with "Peter from Putney" and me (I'm antifrank) where we consider how the maths works and what this means. "Mike L" makes a further observation later on, and this morning when I got up I replied to stjohn's late night comment here:

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/08/05/was-the-2007-election-u-turn-because-he-couldnt-beat-blair/#comment-1168645

In turn, stjohn came online this evening and corrected my maths:

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/08/05/is-this-mori-polling-bad-news-for-ukip/#comment-1169281

I commented further and then Richard Nabavi (I'm guessing that's his real name, though I've never checked) joined in with a different perspective.

Meanwhile, all around, separate conversations are taking place all the time, some of which I join in, some of which I watch quietly with interest and some of which I skip over. I have never met any of these people on the site and there is a high probability that I will not. But these are people that I have got to know over time and whose thought processes I understand. As in any crowd, there are the even-tempered and the wild, the wind-up merchants and the humourists, the louche and the serious. And each of us, otherwise atomised, meet on this site and nowhere else.

On reflection I was wrong as to who first saw these possibilities. It feels like how I imagine the characters in John Wyndham's book the Chrysalids felt.

Month's highlight

2009-08-04T10:08:00.002+01:00

I got home from playing bridge last night and logged onto politicalbetting to find that an article that I'd written for politicalbetting2 (the overflow site on which a few regulars post their own articles) had been transferred to primetime:

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/08/03/political-betting-a-rumsfeldian-perspective/

I'm simply delighted that my favourite website was led for a few hours by an article that I had written.

Before the christening

2009-08-03T11:52:00.003+01:00

Well, the trip to Chesterfield turned out to be more eventful than I had bargained for. My train arrived just before 7pm, so after freshening up I went out to the Thai restaurant where we'd agreed to meet. It turned out that there was quite a big gang of Jayne and David's friends, most of whom I knew well. It was an excellent night - good food, good company and a collective yen to let our hair down (those of us who have hair, anyway).

After the meal, we went in search of a pub to continue the night. Chesterfield has a small centre with a lot of pubs, and all of north Derbyshire's finest were out for the night. The pubs were heaving and very noisy, and we wandered around for some time looking for somewhere to go that we might actually be able to hear each other talk. Eventually we found a pub which was a bit quieter - there was what sounded like karaoke on the go, so these things are relative. We went in, and shortly after we arrived, the crowd changed subtly but unmistakably. With our spider senses, we had walked into the only gay bar in town.

Since more than half of the party was gay, this was hardly a problem, but one of our party, Mani, looked like someone had burst his balloon. Mani is a little younger than the rest of the group, being in his early 30s, and he's single. He also has a justified reputation as a ladies' man. He's Indian by background with dark skin, tall (6'2 or so), with thick long black curly hair and bushy chest hair. He moves lithely, like a cat. He is a very handsome man and was on the prowl. He was casting his seed on stony ground in that venue.

Around 11.30, the party started to break up. Mani, however, did not want the evening to end. He and I were staying in the same hotel (no one else in the party was) and somehow I was persuaded to go to a nightclub with him.

It's a long time since I've been in a straight nightclub. Escapade is in a converted cinema and on several levels. I have to say it was a really friendly crowd. The main room is like a school disco for adults, with such cutting edge music as Pink's "You and your hand" and Guns n Roses "Sweet child of mine". Mani moved through the crowd like a shark with blood in the water.

As a general observation, most men are rubbish at chatting up women. Women aren't very good about letting themselves be chatted up, but I must say that most of the fault lies with men. As a general rule, you don't ask, you don't get. You see groups of men on the sidelines, getting tanked up with their mates or dancing hopefully near women, but few actually having the balls to make a move.

In a packed nightclub Mani was the only Asian man and being tall and dark, he stands out anywhere. His mistake on Saturday night was that he locked onto a target too early without establishing his chances properly. When he eventually made his move, he found out that she was married, which was game over. The two of us went back to the hotel at 3am, drunk and without company. For Mani, the Pink song no doubt bitterly echoed around his mind.

I woke at 9.45am and the first thought was "shit". We needed to be 2 miles away for 10.15am and I needed to shower, dress, check out and order a taxi. Somehow we managed it (though Mani was still in last night's clothes). On the way, the taxi driver cheerfully told us that Chesterfield had been Britain's third most violent town centre.

Mani and I both found the church service a bit of a struggle. Full credit to him, after the service ended, he started chatting up the 16 year old choirgirl. A leopard won't change his spots.

Weekends alone

2009-08-01T13:17:00.002+01:00

Without Brian around, I feel at a loose end. He's been out of the country for such a long time that although I saw him for a long weekend last weekend, I feel rudderless.

I am shortly going to catch a train to Chesterfield, to attend the christening of the daughter of friends tomorrow morning. I'm glad of something to fill the time, if I'm being honest. I'm tired of looking at work administration and feeling guilty that I'm not pressing on with it.

News from Pécsely

2009-07-31T21:53:00.000+01:00

Brian's road trip with Mikael sounds as if it has strained nerves a little. They had two hard days' driving and Mikael's insistence on overruling the satnav drove Brian to distraction. Equally, I know just how tough a passenger Brian can be, so I expect that Mikael has his own side of the story to tell.

Brian and Mikael arrived at the house in Pécsely late on Wednesday evening. The roads through Slovakia had been much worse than they had expected (I'd had my suspicions) and they arrived in darkness. The house was in good shape, with only minor irritations. The plumbers had come to fix the dishwasher, which they had done, but they had turned off the water to the kitchen sink, which was annoying. The weather was good and the garden was looking in good shape - Feri has been doing his work well, Brian said. They had a good swim in the pool both yesterday and today.

Brian, being super-organised, had arranged for deliveries to arrive for the two days that they were in Pécsely. Today, the infrasauna that we organised 6 weeks ago was installed. The plumbers came back to fix the boiler in the small house and Brian thought they'd done a good job.

This evening, Mikael needed to dance around his handbag (or something like that) so they headed for the flat in Budapest. I think Brian is looking forward to a quiet night while he's out on the tiles.

Alice

2009-07-30T20:57:00.005+01:00

I found out today that I am not the only blogger in the family. I had lunch with my younger sister, her husband and their two children - they were in town for a day of their staycation (some Americanisms are useful), so it was a pleasure to see them over a pizza.

Conversation with Ruth and James was limited, because my nephew and niece, Alice (14) and Joe (12) were both in top form, even though Alice's DS broke last night. It's amazing what is seen as a necessity of life nowadays. Joe was so excited that he went round the revolving door to Pizza Express three times and can-canned down the road. He and Ruth were heading to the London Dungeons. I heard this evening that Ruth's hand was gripped tightly on several occasions.

Over lunch, I found out that Alice was writing a novel, though she is only up to chapter 3. "But she had published fan-fic online, and had more than 7,000 hits". Through some cunning lawyerly questioning, I found out her username and to her horror, located her webpage on my Blackberry. I was persuaded not to look at the table, though Alice accepted that I would look later on.

Of course, as soon as I got back to my desk I had a look. To my surprise, the first word that greeted me was "Crap". It turns out that Alice runs her own blog and she had wasted no time in posting about her expired DS. Searching further, I learned that she is not exactly a fan of the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme and that she has a wider vocabulary than she would be allowed to express in front of her parents.

Still, she's had 8,000 hits to her main page and has a rating of 9.5. She's the most successful blogger in the family on that account, so kudos to her.

Hard times

2009-07-29T14:44:00.002+01:00

It's no secret that the legal profession is going through a tough time at present. It isn't immune from the deep recession and nor is this firm. It seems almost incredible that as recently as two years ago we were at the height of a boom. It's hard to take on board just what a deep turn-around there has been.

Subtly, attitudes have changed. Partners look more careworn. Assistants are much more flexible. No one talks about pay rises, still less demands them. Trainees are eager to do your bidding and visibly worry about where they will qualify. Everyone takes care to be seen in the office as long as possible and everyone talks loudly about new client wins or new business.

In my area of law, business remains very strong (see, I'm doing it too). My own group's figures are well ahead of target for the financial year to date and look likely to stay that way for a few months at least. Of course, with other areas suffering much more, that will only make a small difference to firm profitability. I am likely to have the frustrating experience of working much harder this year and taking home less money. I should count my blessings. One or two firms are rumoured at present not to be making any money at all.

Breaking a duck

2009-07-28T14:17:00.002+01:00

I have often left comments on other people's blogs before, but today was the first day that I posted a guest article. I have been a regular poster on www.politicalbetting.com. Our host, Mike Smithson, has opened his second channel up to others and I have decided to give it a go:

http://politicalbetting.blogspot.com/2009/07/labour-polling-in-icm-we-trust.html

Having written one article, I am awestruck that Mike Smithson turns out two or three articles of consistently high quality day in day out. The amount of time and thought that even a relatively straightforward article took makes me realise just how much effort he puts into his website. I'm planning on writing one a week for pb2 and that will take quite enough of my time.

A Swedish interlude

2009-07-27T11:07:00.003+01:00

Well, posting turned out not to be so much intermittent as non-existent. I had a very good time though. I flew to Stockholm on Wednesday evening and was immediately picked up by Mikael and Brian, and whisked to Mikael's summer house in the country. We had an idyllic weekend, marred only by an invasion of hyper-aggressive blond mosquitoes which attacked us in broad daylight and with none of this whining preamble that the traditional black variety treat us too. At times it was like being dive-bombed.

Mikael insisted that Brian and I used the sauna in the time-honoured fashion. This consisted of a spell in the sauna, leaping into the lake outside then retreating to the verandah of the sauna for a cooling beer. This sounded daunting, but in truth the jump into the lake was refreshing rather than bracing after the heat of the sauna.

It was only after two days of doing this that Mikael admitted that his father never jumps in the lake, thinking it stupid.

Childish giggle of the weekend was supplied by the chemist's. While I was buying cream to alleviate insect bites, I saw a product strikingly named "fuktcreme". "Fukt", it transpires, means "moisture".

We headed back into Stockholm for the weekend. Finding a restaurant was a non-trivial matter, since Sweden closes down for the last two weeks of July. We fetched up in a restaurant where the waitress spoke English with a fantastic natural northern accent. Brian and I complimented her on this, to find out that she was in fact English and was brushing up her Swedish. That would explain it. Mikael spared our blushes by commenting that her Swedish was also excellent.

I flew back with SAS (no free sandwich or drink - grr), which was marred by three children running up and down the aisle constantly. How the parents have the nerve to let their children disrupt an entire flight is quite beyond me.

Working before a holiday

2009-07-22T11:46:00.003+01:00

In one of our more complicated manoeuvres, Brian and I are going to be reunited this evening - in Stockholm. Brian is flying to Stockholm from Budapest while I am flying there from Heathrow. Why are we going to Stockholm? To visit an old friend, Mikael, and stay at his summer house. Brian and Mikael are then going to drive from Stockholm to Hungary and back, while I go back to London on Sunday. Posting is likely, therefore, to be intermittent.

I have just finished reading The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson, which has a climax in a Swedish country house that is a little offputting for those travelling to one for the first time.

I'm off work, of course, for Thursday and Friday. That doesn't mean that I get to do much less work in a week. Clients still have urgent problems, administration still needs to be done. Which means that today is about three times as busy as a normal work day. I'm going to be packing non-urgent stuff in my bag and working on it in secret (Brian gets annoyed if I work on holiday). I am looking forward to a few days of serious rest, though. I need it.

Treats

2009-07-21T08:31:00.004+01:00

One of the curiosities about office life is that you spend so long in the company of a group of people who you would probably not otherwise have met and may not have selected as friends if you did meet them. I see far more every day of Charlotte, who I share a room with at work, than I do of Brian or she does of her fiancé Ben. It's a curious bond with work colleagues - at the same time closer and more distant than friendship, more and less intense.

In truth, I have general ideas what each of my colleagues does outside work, but only general ideas. That is as it should be - everyone needs private space. But equally, everyone needs their life to connect up. This leads to strange dividing lines around the edges.

One of our office's practices is to bring in holiday and birthday treats. These can, to be candid, vary in quality. I once brought back some avant garde chocolates from Hungary with flavours like star anise and chilli. Those were slow to disappear. Darren, one of my assistants, is just back from his honeymoon in Canada and brought in maple syrup cookies. So far the market in them has been slow, though I am enjoying them myself. On top of these, we now have Christina's offering for her birthday - M&S cakes and bite-sized chocolate rolls and so on. I have some fudge from Devon from my mother from the weekend and I shall be looking to offload that in the office in the next week or so.

There are 30 or so of us in the department and the majority of us are enthusiastic eaters (dieting in this department can be a torment). So this practice is much appreciated. It's a small thing, but one of the things that makes the office feel less clinical and more like a social environment.

News from Pécsely

2009-07-20T08:15:00.004+01:00

I speak to Brian every night when he's in Hungary. He's spent the last few days at the house in Pécsely where unusually it has been all go. This week is the week of the village festival and for the first time one of us has managed to go. It sounds as if it has been a pretty big event with processions and parades, opera singing, a fete and general revelry. I could hear the opera singing in the background when I phoned last night.

Brian has been enjoying the house as usual. He likes to stake out the grounds each morning, to patrol the garden and inspect what's happened overnight. At present, the apricots are in season and he has been gorging himself on them. He told me on Friday night that he was surprised that he wasn't hungrier, having forgotten that previously he'd told me that he'd eaten about 2 kilos of apricots. He's spent the weekend making apricot jam. He's been practising swimming in the swimming pool - until last year, he hadn't been in a pool since he had a nasty accident and almost drowned at age 11. He's very out of practice, but feels he is making very good progress. He has a very stately swimming style, surprisingly graceful for such a burly man.

Tomorrow he heads back to Budapest, in preparation for his flight to Stockholm. I'm looking forward to seeing him again on Wednesday night.

Betting update

Well, Tom Watson didn't quite make it. I traded in a couple of my speculative bets from yesterday morning to cover my investments and ended up with a profit for the tournament of just under £100. Not as good as it might have been, but them's the breaks.

Betting update

2009-07-19T09:53:00.003+01:00

In my absence, the cricket didn't go well for me. Australia now look phenomenally unlikely to win and a draw has again become a serious possibility. Yesterday morning, 5-2 between an Australian win and a draw seemed fine, but by last night, it did not. So I closed out my position and will make a tiny amount of money on any outcome.

I also stuck a tenner on the Ukrainian against Amir Khan. That didn't work out.

The golf was a much happier story. I had despatched my mother and niece on the train in time for all the serious action in the golf. The great advantage of betfair is that you can close out your position at any time. Because Tom Watson continued to do so well yesterday, his price came in very rapidly. Miguel Jimenez did well for much of the round, then fell apart at the end. I managed to lay bets on Watson and Jimenez so that in each case I withdrew much more than I had bet, while still leaving me with a three figure profit if either should win - not very likely in Miguel Jimenez's case, I have to say. I took some money out of my Kuboya bet as well (not enough to cover the initial stake, but there's always today if he puts a half-decent start to the round in).

I kept a close eye on the leaderboard. The British public have a natural bias towards British golfers, which means that Lee Westwood and Ross Fisher are very short-priced. That means opportunities arise elsewhere. I spotted that Matthew Goggin was well-placed yet at 20-1, so I stuck some money on him. To my delight, he then joined Tom Watson at the top of the leaderboard for a while and his price came in sharply. I laid off the bet completely (because I don't fancy such an inexperienced player to handle the pressure to win the tournament outright) for a substantial profit.

So I'm in profit come what may today on the golf - unless I mess it up with bets that I make today. Overnight I considered the leaderboard. It remains very tight. Tom Watson is on 4 under and there are 26 players within 6 shots. It is fairly unlikely but not impossible that a player could win from that far back (or even further).

Neither Ross Fisher nor Matthew Goggin are experienced at this level and I expect neither will win for that reason. I do not propose to bet on either at their current odds. Tom Watson is two shots ahead of Lee Westwood and Retief Goosen, and I see those three as the serious contenders, though it beats me why Tom Watson is at longer odds than the players he is two shots ahead of.

The longer shots, however, cannot be ruled out. It is absurd - for example - that Jaidee and Molder are each at odds of upwards of 50-1 when they are just four shots off the lead (and I have placed small bets accordingly). In all probability, one or two players in the chasing pack will have a good start to the day and their odds will come right in. I have stuck a few quid on a few of the players in this batch as trading bets, with the idea of laying them off if they start to come good. I got 299/1 on Robert Johnson, who is only five shots off the lead and 41/1 on Angel Cabrera who is on the same score - though on reflection I think he is too short-priced and that this was not a good bet. I put a small sum on Justin Rose at 150/1 - his odds are longer now, but if he makes a good start, watch the patriotic gamblers drive the price down. I still have my bets on Mark Calcavecchia (who I ill-advisedly topped up on during the day), Vijay Singh, Miguel Jimenez and Kenichi Kuboya to trade, in case either of them put in a stint. I'm not holding my breath on any of these. I've already made plenty out of Vijay Singh and Miguel Jimenez.

I have no illusions that this evening most and quite probably all of these bets will have turned out to be worthless. But it only takes one of them to come good for me to cover all of these bets. Even if none of my selected players come good to a tradable point, I am still in profit thanks to my trading yesterday. Of the serious contenders, I make good money on Tom Watson winning. Personally, I make him favourite at the start of the day and given I got him for such long odds yesterday, that's a very satisfying ticket to hold.

A day out

2009-07-19T09:19:00.002+01:00

I took my niece Catriona for her annual day trip out yesterday. My mother came along too - Catriona's parents have what I shall politely term timing challenges, so it is less fraught all round if their children come with my parents, who live in the same town as my elder sister and brother-in-law, than if they come with their own parents. Catriona is 13, very proper and at that breathlessly sweet stage that some teenage girls go through (and some older women feign in the hope that it makes them seem young). So it was a very nice day.

I had agreed to take Catriona to the Science Museum. Since I live near Liverpool Street and the Science Museum is at South Kensington, that's quite a long trek round the circle line, but of course the tube journey is part of the excitement for children.

I have visited the Science Museum quite a few times and I have to say that I find it very frustrating. It has loads of good and interesting stuff in it, but absolutely no coherence as to how it is laid out. Finding anything is nightmarishly difficult and the organisation is haphazard. A scholarly exhibition on science in the 18th century is right next door to the children's hands-on experimentation area. It badly needs a good head to reorganise its exhibits. It strikes a good balance between accessibility and serious content, but its disorganisation means that it fritters away the benefits that should flow from that.

The contrast with the Natural History Museum next door is telling - the organisation of its exhibits is so much more coherent and intuitive for the visitor and it is easy to go between the different areas. The Science Museum feels like the neglected step-child.

In the Science Museum, I achieved a first: I got my mother on a simulator. Two years ago she lost four stones of weight and she has kept it off: it has given her a whole new lease of life. I found out that she had never been on a rollercoaster before, so she did the next best thing when we went on a virtual rollercoaster.

We spent a long time in the hands-on area; my mother and I enjoyed this every bit as much as my niece. And you get to see other parents frazzling: one appalling mother vigorously scolded her son, aged about 7: "READ THE NOTE FIRST. YOU ARE NOT JUST PLAYING HERE. I SHALL TAKE YOU HOME IF YOU DON'T START BEHAVING BETTER". I expect that she was putting her son off science for life with that attitude.

Neither my mother nor my niece had had tapas before, so I took them to La Tasca for lunch and ordered them a selection of dishes. These, my niece told me, were "delicious". We came back to my flat, where I gave my mother some of the cherry jam that Brian and I had made in Pécsely. While my niece was in the toilet, I told my mother that Brian and I would be getting a civil partnership next year.

A sideline

2009-07-18T08:08:00.003+01:00

One of the pastimes that fills up my fairly limited free time is casual gambling. I bet what for me is a balance between being enough money to be significant and nothing that is remotely going to get me into financial trouble. Since I am well paid, that means I can stake a couple of thousand a month if I wish. I don't usually bet anything like that and usually some of that is hedged so that I am producing certain winners. In practice, it would be unusual for me to have more than £500 a month at risk - I shall explain my strategy for the general election another time.

In the main, I bet on political events (I'm a regular at www.politicalbetting.com) but I also sometimes bet on other sports. This weekend sees the second test at Lords and the Open, both of which are big betting events. I have money on both.

To gamble effectively, I find that you need to have a lot of accounts with a lot of different bookmakers. The odds can vary markedly, and can shift around a lot. There's a lot of legwork to be done. Betting has become much more interesting with the advent of the internet - Betfair means that ordinary members of the public can lay bets as well as place them. That opens up many more possibilities.

One big skill is not betting. I try to restrict myself to a few thought-through bets or tips from people I trust. Generally, my losing bets are ones that I have made on the spur of the moment.

So, what are my weekend bets? Before the Open started, I saw Vijay Singh on Paddy Power at 75-1. I rate Vijay Singh as a classy golfer, even if he has not been in brilliant form. As they say, form is temporary, class is permanent. So I put £15 flutter on him each way at those odds.

Vijay Singh did well in the first two rounds, so I partially laid the bet on Betfair around the 30-1 mark (I did that too soon, he's come in quite a bit further since, but that's one of my betting flaws, to hedge too soon). I'll still make over £1,000 if he wins.

Last night I took stock. There are a surprising number of older golfers and unknowns near the top of the leaderboard and Tiger Woods has missed the cut. The punters don't seem to fancy the older golfers or the foreign unknowns (the British golfers as always are very short-priced), so on Betfair I scooped up bets on Tom Watson, Mark Calcavecchia, Miguel Jimenez and Kenichi Kuboya. For a net outlay of just over £50, if one of those four or Vijay Singh wins, I shall win a minimum of £400 and a maximum of £1,200. Since all five of my bets are in the top eight at the halfway stage, I'm fairly happy with that. And if Vijay Singh finishes in the top seven, even if none of the others win it, I still pick up my each way bet. We shall see soon enough I guess.

Watching cricket betting is almost as exciting as watching cricket. The Betfair market on the second test is very active - £12.8 million matched already before play starts on day three. When the match is in play, the markets move hypnotically, odds slowly creeping up against a bowling side as batsmen continue to resist, punctuated by sharp adjustments when wickets are taken. Bets can be placed and laid off (or vice versa) at a profit, regardless of the ultimate result.

England were all out for 425. Overnight, Australia were 152-8. At present, the Betfair markets make England 8/15 favourites to win, Australia 17/2 to win and the draw is just over 3/1. With a bit of help from the excellent Peter the Punter on Political Betting, I have been nudged into a starting position for the day where I win heavily if the Australians win (over £500), win enough to buy me a nice bottle of wine if England win, and lose heavily if the teams draw (over £200). I'm reasonably comfortable with that, because the odds on a draw look quite remote - we're expecting three good days ahead and the bowlers managed to find something in the wicket yesterday. My own assessment is that the odds on an Australian win are not much worse than the odds of a draw.

In a market this active, it would really do best to be monitoring it to make adjustments to strategy as we go along - if I were at home today, I am confident that I could be in profit on any outcome by lunchtime, almost regardless of how play goes, because of the way the markets move. However, I'm out all day today with my mother and niece, so I'm going to have to let these ride, at least to the early evening. There's always tomorrow to sort things out, if things need sorting.

The good hospital guide

2009-07-17T09:59:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I went for another test, this time an ECG at UCL Hospital. In contrast to Barts, UCL Hospital is light and airy - and huge. It had a concierge at the reception to guide you, and I had to ask for his help.

Stupidly, the only obvious way to get to the first floor seemed to be to take a lift. That was highly inefficient (especially at a time when the Government is encouraging us to think of going upstairs as a sport).

I found the ECG area easily enough and then spent 10 laborious minutes telling a friendly but slow receptionist how to spell my name and what my flat address was. Oddly, the waiting system was very unsophisticated, with the forms just slung in a pile for the nurses to pick up as and when.

The waiting area was clean and bright (but no reading material other than Metros, which last all of 3 minutes). The seats were, incredibly, even more uncomfortable than the ones in Barts. I wonder how much they paid external consultants to achieve that level of discomfort.

I was seen in 10 minutes. I was told to strip to the waist by a kindly nurse - when I moaned about being overweight she told me "there's not a pick on you". She claimed to be astonished that I was in my forties quite convincingly. I had eight or ten pads slapped onto my chest, which were then plugged in to monitor my heart.

Then came the nasty surprise. I had been expecting this test to be purely routine, but it turns out that I have a significant arrhythmia. My heartbeat was varying from 49 to 67 beats a minute. The doctors would have to look at this and consider what to do next.

The nurse reassured me - "don't worry, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be roaming the streets". (There are of course many other reasons why I shouldn't).

I left the hospital, my mind mulling this all over. I got in a taxi, and the taxi driver said before I got in "if you're going west, I have to tell you, it's chokka". I wasn't and at that time the state of the traffic really wasn't uppermost on my mind.

Alone

2009-07-16T12:27:00.002+01:00

Brian flew out to Hungary yesterday morning. He'd wanted to change the dates of his flight because I wasn't well, but I insisted that he went. Part of me (the meaner bit) wishes that he hadn't gone.

He hasn't let the grass grow under his feet. Owning three properties sounds great, but they do take a fair bit of looking after. He has organised a delivery of furniture to the house in Pécsely for Saturday morning, is organising the installation of the infrasauna (with luck, on the same day) and has commissioned new furniture - it's a newish house, it's quite big, we've only been in there a year and there is still setting up to do. Today he's had new broadband installed in the flat in Budapest and has excitedly emailed me to let me know that it's much better than the rubbish ADSL we used to have and that we now have a television picture there that we can actually watch.

He told me last night that it's 30C, which was a big difference from here. He ate outside and he was thinking of going to the Szechenyi baths this afternoon, with their outside terraces and pools to cool down in.

Meanwhile, I have a stack of work and I'm not feeling particularly well today. I'm off to the hospital for another routine scan in a bit. I'm missing him.

Pitching

2009-07-15T08:56:00.004+01:00

Yesterday afternoon, I was part of a pitch team. Three of us trotted off to the offices of a prospective client with the aim of persuading the prospective client that we are brighter, whizzier and altogether more congenial than any of our shortlisted rivals, so that it would give us its work.

I have to say that in the main I am not a fan of pitches at all. As a way of choosing the best team of lawyers to advise you, I rank them slightly ahead of sticking a pin in a legal directory (a technique which I have seen work quite well). I get to see pitches as an observer from the other side of the table quite regularly and I am completely unimpressed as a general rule with the way that they are handled.

At this point, you are probably thinking that I decry pitches because I have a poor record of winning them. In fact my track record is fairly good and I won my biggest client through just such a process. That doesn't make me more enthusiastic about their merits.

Prospective clients are often far too influenced by superficial matters such as appearance and mannerisms. Very often internal office politics plays a large part in who is shortlisted. What this means is that lawyers end up gearing their presentation not to what we believe the prospective client actually needs but to what we think is most likely to bring home the work for us.

I must say, however, yesterday's pitch was rather better organised than usual. The prospective client had taken the sensible precaution of thinking very carefully about what it wanted advice about and had prepared a detailed paper for the advisers to think about in advance. This paper was, refreshingly, very carefully thought through to a very high standard. This gave the client the opportunity to test real technical knowledge (something that clients wrongly take for granted) and gave a structure to the meeting.

Will we get the work? I don't know. But for once I felt that it wasn't a pantomime.

There will be blood

2009-07-14T11:11:00.002+01:00

I'm back this morning from a field trip to Bart's. The pretext: a blood test for the quacks to rule out green monkey fever and other unlikely ailments as the cause of my recent illness.

At Brian's recommendation, I left the flat at 8.10, even though the centre didn't open till 9. I got there at 8.25 and was eighth in the queue (the hospital had installed one of those machines that you get at the delicatessens in supermarkets). For some reason, they had a number 000, so my ticket was, pleasingly, 007.

I sat down on the customary plastic chairs specially designed not to support any part of your back or to be comfortable to sit in and waited. I looked around. The walls, as always in hospitals, were painted that insipid green colour that brings to mind vomit even though vomit isn't green. Everyone sat around looked weary, bringing to mind the line from the U2 song: "faces ploughed like fields that once gave no resistance". In the background, BBC Breakfast News blared out.

I fiddled with my Blackberry for most of the time, surfing the net. After 10 minutes, I saw two signs banning use of mobile phones in the area, but by that stage I thought I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb and carried on. No explanation was given why I could not use my mobile phone.

The clinic opened promptly at 9am. I got called to cubicle 5 at about 9.15am and was met by a tiny friendly Filipina. She was surprised to find out that I had not had a blood test since I was 15 (I'm pretty sure that's right, unless I've blotted the memory of intervening jabs out of my mind). She had ordered me to wash my hand with that slippery disinfectant but seemed to forget, because when she touched my hand, she thought I was sweating and was getting ready to make me lie down. I had to work hard to persuade her that I was entirely comfortable with the process.

She told me that things were a lot easier now, just one jab (which was true, and more or less painless). She filled up three vials in succession - odd how vivid the colour of blood is. I was in my office by 9.25am.

Being ill

2009-07-13T09:02:00.001+01:00

I had a rough weekend. Usually, I quite enjoy being ill (you might as well make the best of any predicament and like all men I can revel in feeling under the weather) but this was just too plain unpleasant for me to see the plusses. I was very shaky and dizzy for all of Friday, intermittently on Saturday and occasionally on Sunday. I was exhausted after minor exertion on both Saturday and Sunday and was not up to any exertion at all on Friday.

I have been to the doctor and have been given a provisional diagnosis. Fortunately, it's relatively minor but it has shaken me up a lot. I'm told there may be repeats.

The most irritating thing is coming back to work today to the backlog of work. It was just so inconvenient to be ill on Friday - I had an important appraisal to carry out, a report to get out and a succession of clients give me interesting and fairly urgent work. I'm now going to have to work twice as hard today as I otherwise would have had to work just to begin to catch up. Meanwhile, I still don't feel A1 and I have medical tests to get today. I also have a load of personal admin relating to the flat that will have to wait another day.

Alastair is ill

2009-07-10T14:04:00.001+01:00

I'm feeling dizzy and shaky. I'm going to the doctor later. I've been resting in bed and ministered to by Brian. Normal posting will resume when I feel better.

Institute of Actuaries Dinner

2009-07-09T09:27:00.004+01:00

Last night I enjoyed an excellent dinner, courtesy of the Institute of Actuaries. One of the perks of the job is getting invited to such affairs and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Actuaries have an undeserved reputation for being nerdy, which in general they are not. They have a unique mindset and are thoroughly good company.

Squeezing into the black tie (these things shrink in the wardrobe somehow), I made my way to Staple's Inn Hall, the actuaries' residence. I had a very enjoyable time with old actuarial friends and made some new ones too. The hot topic at the moment is whether the Institute of Actuaries, the English body, and the Faculty of Actuaries, the Scottish body, should merge. Both boards have agreed on this, after two years of negotiation, but now the proposal is going to the vote. My sense is that it is 50:50 whether both boards will pass it.

Initially, most of the resistance came from Scotland. There is a perception that members of the Faculty regard themselves as superior (both in training and nationality), and certainly the rising tide of Scottish nationalism has swept Scots actuaries with them. Now, however, the suggestion is that the proposal might be vetoed by the Institute's members, some of whom resent the generous terms offered to the Scots, don't see the necessity of merger and - most oddly to this outsider - don't like the new name.

It's not really my business, but for what it's worth, I think it would be a shame if the merger doesn't go through. The nature of the actuarial profession's work is changing rapidly and internationalising fast. The professional bodies have already been sidelined to some extent by the Government requiring them to give up much of their regulatory power. They will need to change and work more closely with other national actuarial bodies if they are to retain their importance.

Staying calm

2009-07-08T12:44:00.003+01:00

I've waited until lunchtime to post today, so that I don't overstep the mark. Yesterday afternoon I attended a meeting with Islington Council and the office next door to discuss the excessive noise from the fans from the next door office. The facts are complicated and this is not the place to go into them (not least because there could yet be litigation about this), but it was by far the most significant thing to happen in my life yesterday, so I have to say something. I think it's fair to say that everyone left the meeting unhappy.

The meeting was hosted by Islington Council. However, their contribution was minor. It consisted in large part of a conversation between the office representative and me. It was clear that the representative was uncomfortable (it can't be easy, being the representative of an organisation accused of a statutory nuisance facing the person who is doing the accusing in the office of the council that agrees with that assessment). It did rather show in his manner: he very much led off the front foot. I did respect him though for turning up. We had a vigorous discussion - I think each of us thought the other was being aggressive at times, but we managed to hold it together reasonably civilly. At the end of the meeting though, no clear time commitment was given for ending the nuisance. I made it clear that I was considering all of my legal options: which I am.

My real beef is with Islington Council, who have completely failed on this (as on so many other fronts) to take charge of the matter, deal with it in a co-ordinated manner and just get it fixed. I have yet to get a clear steer from them as to how long they will let this state of affairs continue. I left them in no doubt of this opinion, which seemed to ruffle a few feathers. The three council representatives collectively had all the personality of a dishcloth. At least the office representative was doing his job to the best of his ability.

Without work

2009-07-07T09:01:00.002+01:00

Brian has not been able to get new work for his business for 6 months now. He had expected to have a period without work (he works in the construction industry, so when a recession hits, that's to be expected), but it doesn't make it any easier for him. We don't have particular money worries, but he's an energetic man and to be kicking his heels at home frustrates him beyond measure.

He's been filling the time usefully. He's regularly been going to Hungary to sort out problems with the flat and the house over there - he's achieved far more than we could have done had we both been working. All the same, he's 44 and he wants direction in his life. It brings it home to me how work provides more than just money.

Wishing

2009-07-06T06:39:00.004+01:00

I wish that I was fitter. It's not that I'm out and out unfit, but I'm about a stone and a half heavier than I'd like to be and my body won't turn any heads in the street. It never did, mind. I was never sporty or particularly co-ordinated at school. I was least bad at rugby, surprisingly.

The pressure to be a bit fitter comes entirely from within. Brian never says anything about it (in fact, he gets more hacked off when I'm dieting, because he likes his food and feels bad if I'm eating lightly while he's tucking in). I've reached an age where I'm not expected to have a body beautiful and I'm not looking to impress anyone else.

I've become too set in my ways and have too many time commitments to take any real action about it though. With Brian not working at the moment, I don't have the free time in the morning before work to do anything. After work, I always feel too bombed out - and that's assuming that I don't have a work commitment.

Then there's the question of what I'd do anyway. I love swimming, but I'm not very good at it. The choice is either to go to a serious grown-up swimming pool like Ironmonger Row and annoy the much more able swimmers who can go much faster than me or to go to a family pool and get unreasonably annoyed with the kids messing around. I solve this problem in Hungary by getting an indoor swimming pool installed in the house. It's a luxury, but one I really value. I come back from a week away feeling much fresher than I did before. However, I'm in Hungary about one weekend in six, so that's not a solution.

When I was a teenager, I used to love cycling. That certainly gets you fitter, but it doesn't do much good on the "look good naked" test. Besides, cycling in London is strictly for the suicidal only. I walk a fair bit, but London's air can hardly be described as fresh. Running is a bit too public.

Hell would freeze over before I went to a gym - gyms cater for the fit, not the unfit. In fact, that sums up the way that we approach exercise in this country. We concentrate on the fit, the very fit and the dangerously unfit, but the broad mass of people who are not very fit or really quite badly out of shape are left without any good options.

Pride

2009-07-05T07:42:00.007+01:00

Brian and I went to Pride yesterday. We don't normally - it's not very important to us - but our tiggerish friend David, a purser for BA, bounced us into it. I'm glad we went.

We started on Old Compton Street. It was stuffed full of forty-something gay men carrying a few extra pounds, so we fitted right in. After two pints, David dragged us to Regent Street to watch the parade.

I have complex emotions about the parade. On the one hand, it's very important that gay men, particularly those from closed-minded backgrounds, get an opportunity to express themselves fully. It's not something I feel I need to do, as I'm very comfortable with my daily life, but I can understand that this may be very important to others. As Brian pointed out, the parade was stuffed full of Latin Americans. On the other hand, London's large Polish population was nowhere to be seen, nor was its African population. London is full of immigrants and many immigrants bring their attitudes to homosexuality with them. When I met some of those involved in running the Albert Kennedy Trust a few months back, I was told that they had more cases of gay teenagers being thrown out of their houses than ever before, with many cases from various immigrant backgrounds.

On the other hand, footage of the parade does tend to emphasise the exotic and give a freakshow element: the trannies are always very over-represented, and the wilder fringes of S&M will always be good for a picture. No one that I saw did the march in a suit and tie (yesterday was very hot, so I can't say I blame them). Public images of gay men in Britain continue to stress the camp and flamboyant. Does the general public understand how aytpical this is yet?

On the other hand (Fiddler on the Roof style), the most exotic elements are precisely those which have the least public acceptance. You still routinely hear people say that they don't mind gay men, it's those men who speak gay who they can't stand. Transvestites still get a hard time. Those men are men too. As it happens, it was their precursors who stuck their heads above the parapets when men like me were keeping quiet and hoping not to be found out. The parade remains very relevant for them.

All these thoughts are bound up for me in the figure of one man: Boy George. He was the first gay man I can remember who talked openly to teenagers about his sexuality. At the time, I was horrified - I knew that I didn't want to be anything like him. But looking back, he showed me that it was at least possible to be openly gay. No one else was doing that then. George Michael, Elton John and even Neil Tennant all shuffled out or were dragged out of the closet awkwardly. They put their career ahead of changing the world.

Boy George is obviously not a perfect man, far from it. But he is a bit of a hero of mine for what he did as a gay man with Culture Club. He was on the float with the transvestites. Somehow that seemed right.

A start

2009-07-04T07:27:00.004+01:00

It's not important for you to know my name, nor I to know yours, as the Jam said. But in practice I'm happy to reveal my name, Alastair, so welcome, whoever you are (watches tumbleweed roll by). I have held out for a long time against keeping up a blog, on the grounds of time constraints. I had, however, previously had in mind writing a political blog, which requires proper thought if it is going to be done properly. My intention with this blog is simply to record my daily thoughts; a diary, if you will. Of course, the author reserves the right to omit or edit some details. I don't intend living my life out on the net for the entertainment of others. Not all of it, anyway.

Anyway, let me introduce myself. I'm a lawyer, working in a large partnership based in London. I specialise in pension law, and am well-known in the area. My career to date has been as successful as I could have wished for. No doubt I shall write quite a bit about my professional life, but I shall need to be discreet about matters relating directly to clients and to my firm's internal structures. Since the information I have already disclosed in this post makes me directly identifiable by anyone who cares to do some 0nline research, you will appreciate why.

I live 5 minutes walk from the office. I live in a two bedroom flat near Old Street that in the 1980s would have been known as a yuppie apartment. I've lived there since 1999, and I'm very settled there (though living among offices has some drawbacks, as will become apparent). I share it with my other half, Brian, who I've been going out with since 1997. We also have a flat in central Budapest and a house in Pécsely near Lake Balaton in Hungary.

This message was only ever intended to give some background, so with mission accomplished, I'll post my first message.