Treating Seafarers Decently by Michael Grey

Go on, stop on

By Michael Grey

There could, I was reading the other day, be something of a societal change taking place as we emerge from Covid, to a kinder, greener and more inclusive world. This was evidenced by several of the most prominent finance houses and management consultants suggesting they would move away from their more inhuman practices such as making junior members of staff work long and antisocial hour.
Responding to objections from post-millennials, who would like some time off on their career path en-route to ludicrous rewards, it has been suggested that they might get the odd weekend to themselves. The Scots have been toying with the notion of a four-day week, although that might have something to do with an upcoming election.

Forecasts of societal change are perilous and natural sceptics will suggest that once we get back to something approaching normality, old habits will re-assert themselves. But it would be nice if the outbreak of universal kindness over the world of work could be exported to the maritime world, where there are few signs of it, thus far. True, there are all sorts of supportive messages about the need to consider the mental health of seafarers, just as long as its cost doesn’t appear on the ship owner’s balance sheet.  My old secretary, who was fond of killer put-downs, might have suggested that such are “all mouth and no trousers”.

But there is no evidence whatever that the frequently voiced complaints about exhaustion, fatigue and the dubious compliance with MLC rules, are producing any changes. Both the recent World Maritime University and Cardiff University studies on compliance with regulations on work and rest hours ought to have rung warning bells about an industry operating on the edge of legality. These reports, along with the effects of the pandemic, seem to have stimulated a certain amount of debate among seagoing professionals, mostly in the form of correspondence to their various organisations.

One rather shocking letter published in the Nautical Institute’s Seaways magazine tells of a tanker officer who suffered a heart attack after working 84 hours without a break. The same correspondent writes that on every ship he had served on, “hours of work were regularly exceeded due to the demands of compliance with other safety and operational matters”. Another, in the same issue, notes that none of his older colleagues seem to be surviving into old age following a working life of disrupted circadian rhythms and fatigue taken for granted. The old jokes about ship’s officers being woken up by officials checking up on the hours of rest really aren’t funny anymore.

It is obvious that firstly, there are not sufficient people aboard most ships to deal with the work that needs to be done, that the operational and bureaucratic burden on a few senior officers has become unbearable and that the pace of modern ship operations has become ridiculous. And none of this is going to be remotely improved by clever apps on smartphones or even software that will keep ships’ officers’ noses stuck in front of their screens inputting garbage that somebody demands ashore. Sure, we might get all the machinery wired up to transmit data to the engine manufacturer and wonderful “digitisation” that is said to be the cat’s pyjamas. Will any of this reduce the incessant demands upon a few exhausted people aboard ship? There needs to be a realistic assessment of the work that needs to be done, and the people available to do it, with proper leeway for illness, emergencies and the frequent untoward demands. There also needs to be a more rigorous application of the rules – the airlines would be an excellent example to follow, where there is no elasticity whatever. Or we could just slow down to a reasonable pace – we are not fighting a war here, but maintaining world trade and that shouldn’t be at the expense of anyone’s health. That’s what society seems to be saying, but will shipping shut its collective ears?

Michael Grey is former editor of Lloyd’s List.
 

Wisdom Isn't What You Think It Is - David Brooks

Morrie Schwartz was a Brandeis sociology professor who died of A.L.S. in 1995. While he was dying, he had a couple of conversations with Ted Koppel on “Nightline” and a bunch with his former student Mitch Albom, who wrote a book, “Tuesdays With Morrie,” which sold over 15 million copies. For a few years, Schwartz was the national epitome of the wise person, the gentle mentor we all long for.


But when you look at Schwartz’s piercing insights … well, they’re not that special: “Accept what you are able to do and what you are not able to do.” Schwartz’s genius was the quality of attention he brought to life. We all know we’re supposed to live in the present and savor the fullness of each passing moment, but Schwartz actually did it — dancing with wild abandon before his diagnosis, being fully present with all those who made the pilgrimage to him after it.

Schwartz recruited Albom to share his quality of attention. He bathed his former student with unconditional positive regard, saw where Albom’s life was sliding into workaholism, and nudged him gently back to what he would value when facing his own death.

When I think of the wise people in my own life, they are like that. It’s not the life-altering words of wisdom that drop from their lips, it’s the way they receive others. Too often the public depictions of wisdom involve remote, elderly sages who you approach with trepidation — and who give the perfect life-altering advice — Yoda, Dumbledore, Solomon. When a group of influential academics sought to define wisdom, they focused on how much knowledge a wise person had accumulated. Wisdom, they wrote, was “an expert knowledge system concerning the fundamental pragmatics of life.

But when wisdom has shown up in my life, it’s been less a body of knowledge and more a way of interacting, less the dropping of secret information, more a way of relating that helped me stumble to my own realizations

Wisdom is different from knowledge. Montaigne pointed out you can be knowledgeable with another person’s knowledge, but you can’t be wise with another person’s wisdom. Wisdom has an embodied moral element; out of your own moments of suffering comes a compassionate regard for the frailty of others.

Wise people don’t tell us what to do, they start by witnessing our story. They take the anecdotes, rationalizations and episodes we tell, and see us in a noble struggle. They see our narratives both from the inside, as we experience them, and from the outside, as we can’t. They see the ways we’re navigating the dialectics of life — intimacy versus independence, control versus uncertainty — and understand that our current self is just where we are right now, part of a long continuum of growth.

I have a friend, Kate Bowler, who teaches at Duke and learned at age 35 that she had stage IV cancer. In real life, and on her podcast, “Everything Happens,” I have seen her use her story again and again as a platform to let others frame their best story. Her confrontation with early death, and her alternating sad and hilarious responses to it, draws out a kind of candor in others. She models a vulnerability, and a focus on the big issues, and helps people understand where they are now.

People only change after they’ve felt understood. The really good confidants — the people we go to for wisdom — are more like story editors than sages. They take in your story, accept it, but prod you to reconsider it so you can change your relationship to your past and future. They ask you to clarify what it is you really want, or what baggage you left out of your clean tale. They ask you to probe for the deep problem that underlies the convenient surface problem you’ve come to them with.

It is this skillful, patient process of walking people to their own conclusions that feels like wisdom; maybe that’s why Aristotle called ethics a “social practice.”

The knowledge that results is personal and contextual, not a generalization or a maxim that you could put in a book of quotations. Being seen in this way has a tendency to turn down the pressure, offering you some distance from your situation, offering hope.

Wise people like Morrie Schwartz seem impressive in part because they have so much composure and self-awareness. I wonder if they got it by looking at other people. It’s easier to make decisions for others than for oneself. Maybe wise people take those third person thinking skills they’ve developed and apply them to the person in the mirror. Maybe self-awareness is mostly not inner rumination but seeing yourself as if you were somebody else.

We live in an ideological age, which reduces people to public categories — red/blue, Black/white — and pulverizes the personal knowledge I’m talking about here. But we all have the choice to see people as persons, not types. As the educator Parker J. Palmer put it, “the shape of our knowledge becomes the shape of our living.”

David Brooks - New York Times April 2021

See also Ecclesiatices 

A Memorial for Prince Philip at St James the Less, Litchfield April 2021

St James the Less, Litchfield memorial to Price Philip

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, died on Friday 9th April 2021, aged 99. His death provoked an outpouring of sorrow across the country, flags were flown at half-mast and church bells tolled. He had been a steadfast figure in everyone's lifetime, and as the news spread, there were many spontaneous acts of remembrance and respect including small memorials in local churches such as that at St James the Less, Litchfield. 

A Change of Style in Old Swan House Garden April 2021

There is a small change of style at Old Swan House - simply by letting the grass at the end of the orchard grow long and planting bulbs - daffodils and fritillaries - in it. And as a consequence of not mowing, leaving a chaise longue strategically placed to create a more romantic atmosphere in what is a somewhat formal garden.

I had in mind the image created by the painting (by Danish artist Peter Severin Kroyer) which hangs in at least two friend's houses.

I doubt that it will be quite a romantic as this, though the Felicite et Perpetue on the damson will provide the profusion of roses to equal that rather unreal bush!

Felicite et Perpetue suggested by my friend Jon Dodson

                                                            Rose garden by Peder Severin Kroyer

The Big Lie and How to Do It

Many Trump supporters still think that he can be reinstated. As if there is some protocol for reinstating a past president in this country. Why do you think they believe this?

I have an answer, and it will automatically violate Godwin’s Law. You see, Donald Trump and his team have basically been following the playbook of this guy:

This young man is better known to the world as Joseph Goebbels, the chief propagandist for the National Socialist German Workers Party (most commonly known as the Nazi party), and later the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda for Germany from 1933–1945. This is the man that directed the Nazi propaganda machine, turning perfunctory duties into grand displays of might and power, and to get the population to believe in what was known as “The Big Lie”. Goebbels was a master of propaganda, and in many ways he provided as many lessons to Hitler as Hitler provided to him concerning how to mould the populace to back their agenda. The best description of what the Big Lie is comes from an OSS psychological profile on Hitler:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

This is the main tool of authoritarians. They will say something that is outlandish, in hopes of the opposition wasting time in fighting the lie, while they will insist on truth of their narrative, continue to repeat the big lie over and over, and declare that anyone that counters their viewpoint or opinion is evil or against the people. Disinformation is necessary for the authoritarian, because once he can convince the populace that he is on their side, and anyone against him is also against the people, he can control the narrative, claiming what news outlets are speaking the truth, and which ones are enemies of the people. Once his targeted audience is accepting his opinions of truthfulness, then he can move on to the next step, where he introduces the concept that only he can fix the problems that ail the populace, and only he can drive them towards that solution, no matter how drastic or nasty it is.

So what does this have to do with Trump supporters believing he can be reinstated? The entire Trump candidacy and presidency focused on how to get people to follow him, and believe his rhetoric. For example, the second day Trump was in office, he had Sean Spicer hold the very first press conference of his presidency, and declare that the inauguration crowd was the largest ever. This was easily countered by photographic evidence, and WMATA subway toll counts. Why would Trump want to put that lie out so early in his presidency? To see how much he could push lies to the public, and how much of the public would accept his lies. This set the pace for his presidency and his re-election bid, when he laid down the groundwork early, basically stating that the only way he could lose the election is by voter fraud. The people primed to vote for Trump had already accepted 5 years of lies from him, dating back to his initial candidacy, and had heard Trump’s continued cries of persecution, and so were prepared to believe anything that he put out there concerning the election, no matter how much it had been disproven.

This was the foundation of the Big Lie of Trump’s candidacy and presidency: the election was stolen from him, unless he won. He was already prepared to declare malfeasance in states that he would lose, insisting that the votes were unfairly cast by mail, even though every state has a mail-in ballot program, locally limited to certain classes of voters, but still capable of working in the midst of a pandemic. Because of the issues of the 2016 election, we had put a lot of investment and personnel to ensure that the 2020 election was the most secure election in U.S. history. This is also why it was important for Trump to declare victory on Election Night. He wanted to declare victory, even though he knew most of his voters would be casting votes in person instead of by mail. If he could declare victory, before the early and mail-in ballots could be counted, he could create enough confusion to push the Big Lie.

He’s still pushing the Big Lie, and plenty of people are still listening to him, because they’ve put their trust in him, instead of understanding how the election system works. Until he is revealed as a fraud to a level that his followers will lose faith, or he is incarcerated for his many frauds and crimes, he will continue to push the Big Lie. Unfortunately, the current Republican Party understands that the only person that is able to energize their base is Trump, and are now beholden to him and his whims, regardless of his overall declining popularity. Instead, they are using his Big Lie as the reason to pass draconian laws that they can use to hang on to power by instituting roadblocks for voters that don’t vote for them.

Noam Chomsky, one of the most important intellectuals in life today, has drawn up the list of the 10 strategies of manipulation through mass media.

Give 5 minutes and you won't regret it.

If only to expand your knowledge.

1-The strategy of distraction

The primordial element of social control is the distraction strategy that consists of diverting the public's attention from major problems and the changes decided by political and economic elites, through flooding of continuous distractions and insignificant information.

Distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public from becoming interested in essential knowledge in the area of science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics. Keeping the audience's attention deviated from real social problems, imprisoned by themes without real importance.

Keeping the public busy, busy, busy, with no time to think, back to the farm like other animals (quoted in the text ′′ Silent weapons for quiet wars ′′).

2-Creating problems and then offering the solutions.

This method is also called the ′′ problem-reaction-solution ". It creates a problem, a ′′ situation ′′ planned to cause a certain reaction from the public, with the aim that this is the mandate of the measures they want to accept. For example: letting urban violence intensify or intensify, or organize bloody attacks, with the aim of the public being those requiring security laws and policies to the detriment of freedom. Also: create an economic crisis to make social rights demotion and dismantle public services accept as a necessary evil.

3-The Strategy of Graduation.

To make an unacceptable measure accepted, you only need to apply it gradually, to dropper, for consecutive years. This is how radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberism) were imposed during the decades of the 80 s and 90 s: minimum state, privatisation, precariousness, flexibility, mass unemployment, wages that no longer guarantee dignified incomes , so many changes that would have brought about a revolution if they were implemented at once.

4-The Strategy of Deferring.

Another way to get an unpopular decision to accept is to present it as ′′ painful and necessary ", gaining public acceptance, in the moment, for future application. It is easier to accept a future sacrifice than an immediate sacrifice. First, because effort isn't that taken immediately. Second, because the public, the mass, always tends to naively hope that ′′ everything will be better tomorrow ′′ and that the required sacrifice could be avoided. This gives the audience more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it resigned when the time comes.

5-Reach to the public like children.

Most publicity advertising uses speeches, topics, characters and a particularly childish intonation, many times close to weakness, as if the viewer was a few years old creature or a mental moron. When you try to deceive the viewer the more you tend to use a childish tone. Why? Why? ′′ If someone addresses a person as if they are 12 or under, then based on suggestionability, they will probably tend to a response or reaction even without a critical sense like that of a 12 person. years or less ′′ (see ′′ Silent Weapons for quiet wars ′′).

6-Using emotional aspect much more than reflection.

Take advantage of emotion it's a classic technique to provoke a short circuit on a rational analysis and, finally, the critical sense of the individual. Additionally, the use of emotional register allows the unconscious access door to implant or inject ideas, desires, fears and fears, compulsions, or induce behaviors.

7-Keeping the public in ignorance and mediocrity.

Making the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used for their control and slavery.

′′ The quality of education given to lower social classes must be as poor and mediocre as possible, so that the distance of ignorance that plans between lower classes and upper classes is and remains impossible to fill from the lower classes ".

8-Stimulating the public to be complacent with mediocrity.

Pushing the audience to think it's fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and ignorant...

9-Strengthening self-guilt.

Making the individual believe that he is only the culprit of his disgrace, because of his insufficient intelligence, skills or efforts. So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual devalues himself and blames himself, which in turn creates a depressive state, one of whose effects is the inhibition of his action. And without action there is no revolution!

10-Knowing individuals better than they know themselves.

Over the past 50 years, science's rapid progress has generated a growing gap between public knowledge and those possessed and used by dominant elites. Thanks to biology, neurobiology, and applied psychology, the ′′ system ′′ has enjoyed advanced knowledge of the human being, both in its physical and psychological form. The system has managed to learn better about the common individual than he knows himself. This means that, in most cases, the system exercises greater control and greater power over individuals, greater than that which the same individual exercises over himself.

The Oprah Winfrey Interview - a View from the Stands

The old aristocracy of Europe, the dying embers of which glow faintly in the monarchies of the West and whose blood dilutes itself in far-flung corners of old empires, used to pride itself on something called ‘noblesse oblige’ – the idea that to those whom much is given, much is expected. The idea here was to protect, teach and give succour to those in your care: An accountability for others in exchange for the privileges that fell upon you. Many wicked men failed to live up to this, but a great many more tried, and succeeded – so much so that to be called noble or a gentleman became the highest aspiration of all.

The great families’ conquests forged nations, their patronage gave us the greatest works of art in existence and their support for, or rejection of faith spurned the splintered but most populous religion on earth. There can be no doubt, even among the least charitable in modern society, that civilisation as we know it in the Western World (and the inheritance of Ancient Rome and Greece) is in large part their legacy. For a thousand years science, philosophy, the university, chivalry, human rights and the exploration of the globe are directly attributable to these families. They have, of course, their share in the deleterious business of slavery, exploitation, military domination and religious subjugation – but these evils are not unique to the Europeans – and no self-respecting history student will successfully argue that they are.

The Royal House of Windsor (or Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, or Oldenburg, by lineage) have played their part in this rich tapestry of European and world history – and they have had a starring role. The greater part of Shakespeare’s invaluable contribution to literature is a history of these sovereigns. Lately, we have come to regard them as a curiosity and a tourist-trap – with people flocking to palaces to see opulence and treasure, and then leaving with a stuffed Corgi toy or teaspoon. For most of the twentieth century, despite the best efforts of a few virtuous and dutiful monarchs, they have been largely just that – a bit of a pompous show.

When the younger son of the next king and his wife decided to engage in a full-frontal attack on the crown, they had to realise what they were doing. The royal family, the history of the nation, the language and the culture are all so interwoven that a threat to any part is a threat to the whole. Even if Harry and Meghan didn’t realise what they were doing, it’s too late to disengage now. We could talk for a very long time about how dark Meghan’s baby might be, or how racist it might be to ask that… we could weigh up the pros and cons of their mental health, their contemplation of suicide, the courting of the world’s most famous television interviewer or the nastiness of the British press. But that’s not what will be interesting in the future. What people will talk about (and what historians will write about) in the latter part of this decade will be the great culture war, not how Meghan cried or how Harry felt.

The Queen represents the old order: personal responsibility, strength of character, sacrifice, concern for others and a duty to those in need. She demonstrates this every day, and has devoted her 70-year reign to this priority. She represents family, tradition, history and service, in a country where precisely those values steeled the British spine in their fight against the Nazis. While Presidents and Prime Ministers came and went, we never found out how Elizabeth II felt about anything, or her personal politics – because she respectably kept it to herself. Many of the old dominions are now much greater, much more advanced and sophisticated powers than modern Britain could claim to be – even the America to which her grandson fled has eclipsed the old empire – and now they have their own kind of nobility.

Meghan and Harry represent this new kind of aristocracy – activist celebrities whose lives are indescribably privileged, millionaires and billionaires who have the freedoms, luxuries and access to experiences that even Marie Antoinette couldn’t imagine. They do very little for a living – some act in network shows about lawyers, others sell their life stories to Netflix. They have servants, bodyguards, award shows, holiday homes, jewels and famous friends. But they also have millions of fans and followers, access to anyone and influence over politics, their children are fashion accessories and their relationships are like Instagram collaborations. Perhaps because it’s so parvenu, the shallowness drives them to share their feelings, all the time.

Before you judge these precious snowflakes too harshly, we should note that they do have a solemn duty – to themselves – and in order to execute it, they need to assume a mantle of victimhood and persecution, no matter how good their lives actually are. The absurdity of a prince and princess talking about their difficulties with a billionaire should rankle everyone, from the most radical communist to the most unapologetic elitist. That the once-royal couple have decided to add the weapons of race, gender and class to the mix in order to start a fight shows an exquisite lack of self-awareness. And yet, in some markets, it works! It works because a victim never has to feel guilty or responsible to anyone less fortunate than they are. A victim gets to moan about how tough their lives are and show they’re just like you, right? If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

Oprah Winfrey missed a trick by not asking Meghan about her non-existent relationships with all of her relatives. We only know about her mother, and we haven’t seen her since the wedding. Why didn’t Oprah ask about her father, her ex-husband, her brother or her sister in the wheelchair? Harry seems to be heading the same way – leaving his family and country behind, along with his life of supposed service and duty (and the Nazi uniform he dressed up in). All of that takes a back seat to “doing the work” around figuring out how Meghan handles racism (which of course, isn’t work at all). Those code words are part of the language of the new elite, and all of this proves once and for all that royal genes don’t always include intelligence. We also saw that Meghan could act, but not well enough to persuade anyone but a fool that she’s an honest player.

Harry and Meghan are nothing if not the truest representatives of a generation that has replaced honesty, family, responsibility, care for others and a service to something greater than the self with solipsism, fame, ‘wokeness’, narcissism and the nihilistic need to render all institutions to rubble in an attempt to secure a grain of purpose. Harry is so directionless that he’s willing to burn the monarchy down for the plastic promises of Hollywood and “speaking his (or her) truth”.

The bad news for them is that there are many more people in the world who have only family, the pride of work and faith to guide them through a much harder day than a prince will ever have. They see an entitled, self-absorbed long whine to freedom.

The vast majority of people look at the Queen and see a woman decked in and surrounded by splendour, but they also see someone who has been devoted to her job for all of her life. They see someone who only says what she means and does what she says – someone with real integrity. An actress and her beta-male husband may rescue a few chickens, but that’s not enough to make them noble.

Gareth March 2021

How Should We Price Electricity?

CERN - another huge user of electricity

Soon - much sooner than anyone realises - one of the biggest issues we will face will be the price of electricity. If we are phasing out gas and oil-fired heating, the only power left is electricity - and hopefully that will be mainly produced by non-fossil-fuel means (I don't count uranium as a fossil fuel even if it is.... and I don't know where we will be with hydrogen).

Consequently, electricity is likely to become more expensive because it'll be in short supply and we will start differentiating between the uses to which it is put. Only today I heard a report that the mining of Bitcoin uses the same amount of electricity as all the wold's data centres combined and that the 'miners' of Bitcoin have set up in Iran where electricity is particularly cheap (as the Iranians can't sell their oil internationally). Should that activity be priced the same as heating and lighting homes, shops and offices? 

It's likely that electricity pricing will need to be split into various levels depending on use. The 'base' price will be everyone's needs, such as heating and lighting and for powering things like washing machines and cookers, air-conditioning and the internet. And hospitals will need 'base' price electricity not only for heating and lighting but also to power sophisticated kit like MRI scanners. But it will quickly become apparent that heating one's swimming pool should not take place at the 'base' price, and hugely hungry industrial processes like making cement and desalinating water will have to bear a much higher price.  Charging one's car should probably be priced closer to the price of petrol today - maybe half - to allow the government to raise tax / duty sufficient to offset the tax / duty they lose from the sale of petrol and diesel.. But vans, lorries and buses should be charged a lower rate of duty to allow business and mass transport to thrive. 

The City of London and EC3

 

The City of London seen from Tower Bridge.The Tower is not part of the City.

The City of London is unique in being the only area of any city dedicated solely to the financial industries of banking, stockbroking, insurance and law. Known as The Square Mile', it is legally a county - the smallest in the kingdom - and administered by the City of London Corporation, headed by the Lord Mayor, supported by Sheriffs and Aldermen. By tradition, even the Queen asks permission to enter the City of London. It is home to the 110 Livery Companies that are the successors to the ancient guilds that controlled business in the Middle Ages, but which are now all charitable institutions. Fewer that 8.000 people actually live in the City, but over 500,000 people work there every day (as well as many more in the satellite city of Canary Wharf).  

The Royal Exchange and the Bank of England

                                                                                  EC3

The Aviva Building and the Gherkin at 30 St Mary Axe, the site of the old Baltic Exchange
and my old office

Lloyd's and the Willis Building in Lime St

Lloyd's and the Willis Building on Lime St with the Walkie-Talkie Building at the Far End

View of the City from 90 Fenchurch St with the Gherkin and the redeveloped International House. Both sites used to be my offices and all are in EC3. 

My City Offices 1967 - 2006

I first arrived in the City when I began working at Thomas Miller in October 1967, and remained there until May 2006 when I retired. Until 1980 when we moved, my offices were at Baltic Exchange Chambers, 14-20 St Mary Axe, in the insurance sector close to Lloyd's and overlooked by the new Commercial Union (later Aviva) Building. 

Baltic Exchange Chambers, 14-20 st Mary Axe

In 1980 we didn't move far - two streets back to International House off Creechurch Lane. to a larger and more modern building that had been the headquarters of International Stores. Our old office building was pulled down with the Baltic Exchange after the IRA bombed it in 1991 (they mistook it for the Stock Exchange) and the Gherkin was built on the site. 

International House between the Sir John Cass Primary School and the Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe)

We remained at International House until just after I retired when Thomas Miller moved to 90 Fenchurch St. 

 

90 Fenchurch St

Our offices were never lavish but in the early days we did have individual offices. We didn't move to 'open plan' until 1986.

Herry in Bury St / Baltic Exchange Chambers 1979

 

Delores, one of the filing girls, outside my office in International House post 1982

What is striking about the two photos above is the absence of files in the earlier one. This is because we had a huge central filing system. My office in the first 1979 photo was much larger than in the second (when we had moved to International House) and could have easily accommodated some filing racks. 

More important, you would have seen my long-time secretary Jo Johns, as she sat at her desk outside my door. Note that by this date (1982), we had acquired filing racks in our offices. 

Jo Johns, my secretary for over 20 years, in 1982,

Later, we became both open-plan and later 'paperless' (passing through an unsatisfactory 'microfiche' stage as well). My final resting place when I retired in May 2006 looked like this. 

Herry at his desk in the 'Blue Lagoon' on his retirement. Note the bowl of fruit. 

Some photos of us in the intervening years:

My immediate colleagues in 1975 - Syndicate 1

Left to right back: Jules Taylor, Luke Readman, Peter Glover, Tony Whitworth. 
Front: Fred Efford, Herry
Photo by Herry's secretary, Marilyn Griggs
1975

 

Syndicate 1 in 1983. Back: Herry, Tony Whitworth, Mark Galloway, Nick Parkin

Front: Graham Daines, Nigel Carden, Nick Williams.

In 1984 I left the syndicates and moved to Creechurch House across the road in Bevis Marks. It's address was still Creechurch Lane. 

Creechurch House

 

My secretary, Jo Johns, at my desk in Creechurch House 1986

Herry at his desk in Creechurch House c.1986

In 190 our new insurance business, TIM, merged with another older City business and we moved to lager offices in America House, America Square. 

In 1992 we moved back to International House and remained there until my retirement in 2006.
  

                                                         ITIC at America House 1991.
Standing: Sidney, Derek, Steve Harvey, Ed Ross, Paul Smith, Stuart Munro, Julie Mavropoulos, Tony Payne, Sid Lock, Jo Johns. Kneeling: Herry, Maggie Moore

P&I colleagues in 2004: Hugo Wynn-Williams, Charles Fenton, Brian Sheppard, Stephen James, Herry, John McPhail, Karl Lumbers, Nigel Carden, Graham Daines, Luke Readman, Chao Wu

Finale: the class of 1967, taken 37 years after in 2004

The 'Class of 1967' - Herry, Stephen James, Roger Day and Francis Frost. We joined Thomas Miller together and this photos was taken in September 2004, 37 years later. Roger Day (who had been a master with Shell) went to Canada where he set up Shipowners Assurance Management which he ran until his death. 

Old Swan House Garden in Winter Jobs 2020 / 2021

 This post is about doing stuff in the garden, rather than showing the finished job. 

The grass garden with most of the grasses taken down. Only the stipa plumes still to be done. The Pheasant grass isn't cut down. 

The main winter jobs are of course the clearing of leaves and small branches from the beds and lawns, pruning the fruit trees, pruning and pinning up the roses, taking down the wildflowers and cutting down or cutting back all perennial plants - with a few exceptions. 

Stipa gigantia with about 40% of the plumes cut back. 

The most amount of work among the perennials are the grasses, which are taken down in February or March. The most time-consuming are Stipa Gigantea which have around 100 long plumes that must be cut down individually into their still green base. The green base is then 'combed through' to drag out any dead grasses. 

Pheasant grass is almost as time-consuming, as it's not cut down but the dead fronds must be cut out individually. 

Pheasant grass (Anamanthele lessoniana stipa)

The most skilfull job is the pinning up of the rambling roses on the flint wall and on the plum tree. Katya does to this in a day, and the result is a beautiful tracery

                  Katya working on Mme Alfred Carriere

The delicate tracery of rose stems on the eastern wall 

The other major job for which I have help is taking down the wildflower area. This actually happens in two stages, with Bruce cutting them down in the autumn and leaving the cuttings to drop theirs seeds.
Then in March, the area can be cleared to bare earth and fresh plug plants planted in the gaps   

Bruce using a brushcutter to finally clear the wildflower area 

The squares round the fruit trees being weeded and grape hyacinths resown

The fruit tree squares weeded and the fruit trees pruned by Bruce

Finally, some edging