Regarding Henry

Henry Allingham's funeral yesterday reminded me the time I briefly met him in April last year.

It was the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force and, together with some other local councillors, I was kindly invited to a ceremony at RAF Odiham. Nine trees, one for each decade, were planted at the base.

"Officially" planting a tree is a bit of a laugh. Someone else has done the hard work and, with the usual RAF meticulous organisation the soil was neatly piled beside the hole and the sapling placed inside, exactly vertical. So all I had to do was take the gleaming shovel (one per hole, handed over by perfectly presented personnel) and formally shovel in two or three spadefuls. I felt honoured and it was a bit of fun.

The real VIP was, of course, none of the councillors but Henry Allingham. He was 111 years old at the time, and wheelchair bound. It was a chilly spring day and he was wrapped up warmly. He was also a fund of cheerfulness and my abiding memory is what happened as he started shovelling soil onto the tree. We were all watching this World War I veteran with awe when he burst into tuneful song "I talk to the trees, but they don't listen to me."

If this was a cameo of his life, then what a remarkable life.

Dear Henry, you'll be missed.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

I heard recently that the amount of information in the world doubles every two years. I don't know if this is true, but it seems possible.

Faced with this, people often have difficulty in sorting the wheat from the chaff. What matters? What's true? What information can I trust?

Fortunately, there's a great source of simple information about scientific matters, including health. Sense About Science doesn't claim to cover everything but it does have good and easy-to-read information about Bird Flu, Detox, MMR, Radiation (mobile phones) and many other topics.

Just click the picture above to have a read - and make sense of the information deluge.

Sunday Photo Of the Week (SPOW)

When I turned 50, I had planned to play a couple of songs on the guitar at my party. However, I found it was just too difficult to rescue the skills I'd had 30 years earlier, even with the help of a good guitar instructor.

Russ Lane is a good friend who recently had a Significant Birthday. To my chagrin and envy, he achieved what I had failed to do, and played and sang half a dozen great rock 'n' roll numbers from his youth. Here he is, at the microphone, giving a short talk at the end to the assembled partygoers. My word, did he play well. It made me relieved, in retrospect, that I hadn't succeeded - my efforts would have paled in comparison.

I shot quite a few photos at his party. This one was one of the better ones, ironically taken when my flash failed and so it retained the great colours of the nightclub. 75mm, f1.6, 1/60, ISO 200. The original is here.

Major article on war injuries

In The Telegraph today Sir John Major has written a good article on how Britain treats its war wounded. One sentence jumped out at me

If we cannot afford to treat our wounded with generosity then we should not expose them to risk.

Exactly.

The government's approach to our military has been driven by evident contempt. Its treatment of our dead and wounded has been virtually inexplicable: politically foolish, intellectually indefensible and morally wrong.

Churchill lost the election after the war when returning soldiers turned to Labour. It's hard to imagine too many of our returning servicemen and women doing the same in the next election.

The Best Customer Service in the World

A man running a small business in the West Indies is losing money satisfying a happy customer in the UK.

The customer is me. The company makes a very spicy sauce. I bought a bottle of it when my wife and I visited Nevis in the West Indies for our 25th anniversary in 2007. Since you only use 2-3 drops at a time, it's lasted 2 1/2 years, but it's at an end. This was a case of great sadness for me: I cannot afford to travel to Nevis to buy another bottle but this is without doubt a superb sauce: the best I have come across in more than 50 years on Earth. Two to three drops blow your head off: I suspect a teaspoonful would be fatal.

I noticed that the label included an email address and, more in hope than expectation, I send off an email asking whether there was anyone in the UK who stocked the sauce. Back came the reply "my sister is going back to england next week give me your telephone # and i will give you a call on how to get some over to you glad you enjoyed it"

I emailed back my phone number and he called me from the West Indies and has indeed arranged for his sister to bring back two bottles of this sauce. This is spectacular service: the "deal" is just £10.

The man's name is Llewellyn Clarke and his sauce is shown in the photograph.

So if you are ever in Nevis, call in to the local supermarket and buy this sauce. It's just labelled "Hot Pepper and Thyme Sauce" with Llewellyn Clarke's name on it. You can buy it from Ram's supermarket, just outside Charlestown on Nevis. It's the best spicy sauce in the world and so is the after-sales service!

Swine flu and beer

So here I am at home with swine flu.

It's not a lot of fun but it is also boring. On Friday we had tickets to see Jude Law in Hamlet. Sorry I missed you, Jude. On Saturday we had tickets to an Army concert. The Dearly Beloved wasn't going to waste the tickets so she took a friend instead of me. I mean, I could have died. Today we had tickets to RIAT, the best air show in the world. Gave them to some friends. At least it was their anniversary.

Today I bleared into consciousness mid-morning. By lunch time I was zonked so I fell asleep. When I woke up about 4 o'clock I saw England were in danger of winning the Test. So I thought I would watch. This would be more fun if we had furniture in the lounge. The furniture is being re-upholstered so I am sitting on a garden chair.

This swine flu was very badly timed.

Now, I am a even-tempered man so I can adjust.

All I need is a beer.

I don't feel up to getting one from the kitchen fridge. My Younger Son refuses to get me a beer unless I can find something on the Internet that says it's OK to have a beer with swine flu.

The first Google hit is titled "swine flu: is it safe to drink beer?" Answers include "Of course beer is safe. Alcohol kills all the germs. ", "Acidity and alcohol will kill any virus that tries to live in beer" and "NonPork based beer only". MYS does not give due credence to these. As a recent graduate he is filled with an undue sense of the importance of his fatuous opinion.

So I look on the National Health Service website.

The top hits for "swine flu beer" include "Cancer-of-the-breast female" "cancer-of-the-testicle" (which I assume is male), "Herceptin", "chemotherapy" and "menopause". Now I am truly worried.

Then I come across a site that says alcohol causes swine flu. Scary.

A beer would take the edge off.

What is Love?

A few years ago I was contacted by a poor widow whose Nigerian husband had left her $10 million in cash. If I could just help her get it out of Nigeria using my bank account she would let me have $4 million. We had a pleasant email conversation for a few days before I let slip that I had given "her" details to the president@whitehouse.gov, after which she became terminally reticent.

So sad.

My family is spread around the world. We often keep in touch using Skype. Out of the blue, I've just been contacted on Skype by "Tonya". Here's how the conversation went.


I apologise for the grammar and the misquote from Twelfth Night, but I was so excited that I was on the verge of discovering love that my education failed me.

I don't know why Tonya isn't speaking to me any more.

The Man with the Melted Face

In the spring of 2008, I met a man with a melted face.

You probably think I am speaking metaphorically, but this is only partly true. To get an idea of what his face looked like, imagine it a copy of the original was made by Madame Tussauds waxworks and heat was applied. That's how his face looked except what had happened had affected a real face not a wax one. I think it's probably impossible to imagine the agony he must have endured to real his skin and flesh and blood.

He was a British soldier and he and I and another 40 people were guests at the launch of a fund-raising programme, Music on Fire. One of the stars of the show, Hayley Westonra, was at the launch and met and spoke to the soldier, as well as others who had been wounded in the course of duty. To her immense credit, she smiled and did not flinch when introduced and seeing his horrific injuries for the first time.

We can't do much for those soldiers who have lost their lives, other than to remember them with respect and support their families. For those who return grievously wounded, we ought to do our utmost to care for them. I remain incensed at how little the Government does and I hope the next Government will fix this.

In the mean time, we can do more ourselves. The leading charities are, of course, quite happy to accept cash donations but in addition they also organise events at which you can have fun while raising funds.

Help for Heroes helps the servicemen and women wounded in Britain's current conflicts.

The Army Benevolent Fund regularly holds fundraising events, as do the RAF Benevolent Fund and the Royal Navy Benevolent Fund Trust.

Don't wait for the government and bureaucracy to act - do something yourself now and let the man with the melted face know he and others like him won't be forgotten.

Who will defend the defenders of the realm?

I see that Lord Mandelson of Foy is leading Labour's spin on how to handle the recession. No "cuts" of course - only Conservatives do cuts, it would appear. Instead Labour's guiding light (if that is the phrase I need) talks of "constraints" and "efficiency". My word, are we sure he isn't a Tory?

Sadly, in one respect I find myself agreeing with him. In the second paragraph of the BBC report, he says that "sustained investment" in areas like healthcare and defence would continue.

It's the defence bit I'd like to focus on. The list of what the armed forces need is large and growing:

• More helicopters (and probably newer ones, too).
  
• More body armour.
  
• Better protected vehicles,
  
• More radios.
  
• Better transport to and from war zones: I am astonished that part of our transport fleet consists of aircraft (the Lockheed 1011) that civilian airlines got rid of in the last millenium.
  
• Back home, better treatment for the families of servicemen and women; at the current rate of expenditure, it will take decades to make their accommodation decent.
  
• Better care and rehab for the wounded.
  
• More money for ammunition and fuel: if we are to have armed forces, we need to train them properly.
  

Most of the above should be uncontentious. I am not raising here the matter of supersonic aircraft, nuclear deterrents or aircraft carriers.

Nor should we expect that we can avoid all deaths on duty. Any decision to take part in a conflict carries a real risk that our forces will die or be badly injured. However, we owe our soldiers a duty that their lives are not risked recklessly and that their home life, which will never be luxurious, is at least decent.

I hope that's what Lord Mandelson of Foy meant. Even more, I hope it's what the next Conservative government will do.

The true coward

According to today's Sunday Times, the Labour Government is in conflict with the Army about Afghanistan.

Labour's actions in sending our armed forces, especially (but not only) the Army, into battle underequipped and undermanned is appalling and shameful. When they were deployed to Helmand province in 2006, John Reid expected no shots would be fired in anger. Today, with more troops having lost their lives in Afghanistan than Iraq, we have an anonymous Labour minister quoted as saying "General Dannatt ... is playing a dangerous game."

This was in reaction to a report that General Dannatt had said at a dinner with Tory MPs that 2,000 more troops were needed in Afghanistan.

One can't help contrast General Dannatt's forthright speech with the cowardice of an anonymous briefing. The people playing the dangerous game are those politicians who callously risk our soldiers' lives.

It is utterly shameful.

Literally

I have a good friend in California. She works for Sun Microsystems and writes a blog on the subject of writing. Recently, she discovered that "factoid" meant something different from what she (and probably you) thought it does.

I must confess I'm a bit of a pedant. Leaving aside why this is (it's all about me, right?), the result is that I listen very carefully to what people say and wonder if it is true. Yesterday I was driving to a customer and listening to the BBC's programme In Our Time (this link will expire in mid-July), which is normally very interesting. The guest on the show was talking about the proliferation of life just before the Cambrian period. (If you are not familiar with the Cambrian period, look it up on Wikipedia. Suffice to say, the Cambrian period was quite a bit before Julius Caesar invaded Britain).

During this period in the Earth's history, there were life forms called Ediacara Biota which, in the absence of much competition, flourished. According to the presenter "the world was, literally, their oyster."

Really?

The world was an oyster? Literally?

My word. How we have come along.

So my request for the day - even the month - is this: please can we use "literally" only when we mean it?

Aviva - au revoir!

For many years my wife and I have insured our cars with Norwich Union. They weren't the cheapest but they weren't the most expensive either. Their prices were roughly competitive.

More importantly, they were easy and pleasant to deal with. When we phoned them up, the phone was answered promptly. I could understand the person easily, and they could understand me. When something went wrong, they were quick to help.

Recently Norwich Union has been rebranded Aviva, apparently a "global brand". I don't know if that's really important to them (people quite happily buy Cape apples, Champagne and BMWs for example) but I didn't really care.

What I did care about was the sudden plummet in quality of service.

My wife tried to add our son to one of the car insurance policies last week. When she initially phoned, she was asked to complete the request online. Well, we both have degrees in computer science, so going online is no big deal. It took ages, however, to complete the form and just as that was done, the application crashed. Mmmmm. There goes half an hour.

So my wife called back.

They have these wonderful computer based telephone systems that you have to speak to. The problem is that they didn't understand my wife's accent. She was nearly driven crazy trying to enunciate in such a way that the computer would understand what she was saying.


Our surname "Haffey" for example, could not be recognised. We have been Norwich Union customers for more than 10 years and the policy had been found based on the policy number, but the voice recognition system could not tie up my wife's pronunciation of "Haffey" with the surname on the policy. Each of the three times she tried she got a maddening, patronising message saying something like "Here's some help. What we are looking for the last name of the policy holder. Please say this name now."

Eventually she got through. We added our son to the policy (which, incidentally, cost dramatically more than previously).

In the past, Norwich Union handled our insurance in one phone call of five to ten minutes. This time Aviva took over an hour of frustration. In the past Norwich Union was reasonably competitive on price. This time Aviva was expensive. In the past, when we renewed our policy Norwich Union had our loyalty because of good treatment. Next time it's likely to be "Aviva - au revoir."

Is the NHS really sacred?

Both Labour and Conservatives believe the NHS budget should remain inviolate. But is this right?

It's difficult to find accurate data on how much money is spent on alternative medicine by the NHS, although estimates are around £500m. But whether it's £50m, £500m or £5bn, the fact is that the money is wasted.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine is medicine that doesn't work. So why are we paying for it? And if we are wasting money here (and we are) how much else is being wasted in this enormous bureaucracy?

In the extraordinarily tough economic times in which we live, no government budget should be inviolate. And wasted money can't be afforded.

I have a complaint

A few years ago I was not happy with Crystal Holidays, so I wrote to them.

Dear Sir

May I apologise for not sending you a handwritten letter? Unfortunately I have a fractured wrist and am dictating this to my wife.

I have been a great supporter of Crystal Holidays since I took my family skiing in the USA in 1997. Determined to repeat this pleasant holiday, we recently picked up your latest ski brochure. After hours poring over it and arranging for a second mortgage, we decided to spend (spend being a key word here) 11 days at Mont Tremblant in Canada.

Fortunately you have telephone booking lines open over the weekend so my wife, Colleen, phoned this morning about 10.30. However, after the phone had rung for a considerable time without it being answered, we had to go to church.

On our return, I decided to read the Sunday Times. I settled down into an armchair, sitting sideways with one armrest supporting my back and my legs slung comfortably over the other. Colleen said she didn't want to spend ages holding on to the phone so I offered to phone your booking line instead.

The phone rang and rang. After a while it was answered by one of these machines. It assured me that calls were being answered in strict rotation, a phrase I've never quite understood. Does it mean your customers go around in circles? Perhaps they are dizzy blondes? However, I was assured I was the first caller in the queue.

So I waited with my neck cricked around the phone. I quite enjoyed the Tchaikovsky muzak your system plays. And many other musical numbers. I pretty nearly worked my way through the paper, including the main News, Sport, three magazines, Business, Travel and Money sections which is really not bad considering that in order to keep a hold on the phone I was reading everything sideways. I suppose the people ahead of me must have been booking very complicated holidays for me to wait so long but memories of happy days in 1997 kept me waiting.

Who knows? Perhaps I was on the very verge of being answered by a human being when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something moving. It was Gary, my son's pet guinea-pig. The funny angle of my neck had, I expect, precariously altered my centre of gravity. The movement of my eyes did the rest and before I knew what was happening, I found myself toppling out of the seat. Gary was in danger of being squashed and I frantically contorted my body to avoid him, catching my right arm on the tea table and smashing it as I fell.

Unfortunately, at this point I dropped the phone, cutting off the call. I didn't really notice however since there was clearly something painfully wrong with my wrist, which the emergency room staff told me later was a complicated fracture.

A friend said I should sue Crystal, but I've never thought suing anyone is a lot of fun, especially as I so much enjoyed holidaying with your company last time. However, it would be nice if you paid my phone bill when it arrives. And get more people answering your phones. You clearly need them.

Yours sincerely

Sean

PS I am sure you will be relieved to know that Gary the guinea-pig is physically fit, having better reactions than I do. Mentally, I can give no reassurance, as he did leave a small smelly stain on the lounge carpet.

I did not hold out much hope of hearing back. However, eight days letter a parcel arrived. It contained the following letter from Andy Perrin, the Managing Director.

Dear Mr Haffey

Thank you for your letter of 20th September regarding your unfortunate fall whilst endeavouring to reach us by phone and please accept my apologies for the delay in replying to you, following a period of absence from the office.

It is an unfortunate fact of life in the ski business that occasionally injuries do occur in the pursuit of sport. I had always thought that the gentleman who sprained his ankle tripping down the aircraft steps on arrival at Salzburg airport in 1983 was the most unfortunate customer I have ever met.

Until now that is.

To sustain a ski-holiday-related injury before so much as placing a booking is surely a record which will never be equalled. Please accept the enclosed in recognition of this truly remarkable feat. (But please remain seated, with both feet firmly on the ground while drinking it!)

With best wishes from all of us here for a full and speedy recovery (please also pass on to Gary) and my own thanks for bringing this matter to my attention.

The serious points of your letter have not been overlooked. I have investigated the telephone waiting time on the Sunday in question and can confirm that we had sufficient staff on duty to handle normal Sunday calls. Unfortunately a combination of an Air Canada strike and the impending hurricane in the Caribbean sent call volumes soaring - hence the delay. We are reviewing emergency staff back-up procedures as a result, and I have arranged for someone to call you to assist with your ski booking, should you still wish to pursue this. Please let me know the call cost when you have it.

Yours sincerely

Andy Perrin

And enclosed with the letter was a lovely bottle of wine. And his PA did call me to help book the holiday. What a fine businessman Mr Perrin is!