Adrian Garside

Mostly, when insurance companies tweak their definitions of illnesses, the differences are more technical than genuinely useful.

This is different.

Breast Cancer has by far the highest number of claims in the world of critical illness policies – the definition is usually along the lines of having malignant cells – here is a typical definition I’ve just cut from a brochure – “Any malignant tumour positively diagnosed with histological confirmation and characterised by the uncontrolled growth of malignant cells and invasion of tissue.”

That’s quite a high qualification level, and is pretty standard across all companies.

The news that has caused a ripple in my pond is this: Prudential have just added even more illnesses to their list that qualify for a payout and they have included Lumpectomy in their ‘proportional payout’ range.

So, any woman having a lumpectomy qualifies for a 10% payout on their critical illness cover.

Anybody thinking about buying a critical illness policy needs to look beyond the premium and give thought to the quality of cover they wish to take – for some clients the Pru are very cheap, but they are not always cheapest. It is very easy to see a league table of premiums and think all policies are the same so take the cheapest.

For me, the Prudential are very different, so for clients we need to consider the cheapest policy, but we also need to consider the premium with the Prudential and also the premium with Bright Grey who have some unique features to their policy as well.

We finally arrived at the house at about 7.30pm, frazzled to say the least.

The house is 50m away from the parking area, across a causeway which is a sea defence wall…but the tide was out, so we could park on the beach to unload the car, which was easier – this added to the holiday feel to the house.

The house was marvelous – Jonathan and Kamani have been coming here every year for 7 years they love it so much. They have made a tradition of inviting friends to stay, on the proviso that they provide one breakfast and cook one supper. Mark and Kay, the other couple had, by coincidence actually stayed here before as well, they have also been coming to Parrog for years, but staying in different places.

The house itself sits as close to the sea as is possible – the front graden is about 6ft long, there is a wall, a footpath, another wall and the sea laps against this second wall at high tide. At low tide, there is a  beach here, leading down to a river…on the other side of the river is a massive beach, it must getting on for a mile long with dunes at this end and spectacular cliffs at the other end. Looking left is open sea, looking right, is an estuary, with what must be an ancient port, a few boats and birds!  OH..at low tide the road runs along this beach, it’s funny to see cars and dustbin lorries just driving over the beach…at high tide, the road is impassable. We had a chat with the dustbin man…apparently they schedule their run by checking the tide at the depot and doing the round either backwards or forwards based on what they see…this isn’t very scientific and they have had some amusing close calls!

So, our new day 1 is Wednesday…behind the house is a decent sized hill – since we are virtually at sea level, it is a 337 meter climb…I have looked up the definition of a mountain and sadly, that is 600m. Nevertheless, it is a pleasant and reasonably strenuous walk. I wore my hiking boots in anger for the first time in 10 years or more – it turns out they are pretty uncomfortable…another item for the shopping list!

On Thursday we went looking for seals. I knew there were seals because, in an attempt to find some more interesting places to visit I had visited the geocaching website – there was a location 4 miles from the house with seals. We went, and saw 1 seal. Sweet!

On Friday, morning before breakfast we went out on Marks’ little RIB and explored the estuary and the coast towards Dinas Island – we saw another seal. The boat ride, over the surf was exhilerting and certainly brushed off our cobwebs better than coffee! After breakfast we walked around the estuary – inland on our side of the river, finding two geocaches on the way – and down the other side for a close look at the caves and geology over the other side. We then walked directly back to the house, through the river, which we had been assured was ankle deep at low tide. We carefully timed our walk to coincide with low tide…but chose a place that was thigh deep to cross! Fully clothed, this felt ‘forbidden’ in a ‘something adults don’t do’ kind of a way!

On Saturday, we went home, via Chippenham to drop off Bill’s Land Rover and watch Chippenham’s fireworks from his house, which overlooks Monkton Park.

Lunch on Sunday was interesting – St Hubert is the Patron Saint of Hunting and it was St Hubert’s day last week. The Sylvanus Lodge is a Hunting, Shooting and Fishing Masonic Lodge, so has a celebratory meal at this time of year to which we were invited. It was very pleasant and enjoyable and although steeped in tradition, it wasn’t too stuffy. When we arrived at the Masonic Hall, the stairs were locked off with a secure looking gate – we surmised that the Temple was upstairs (correct) and assumed that would be out of bounds to visitors.

But, after lunch (delicious), speaches and toasts and an enjoyable presentation on ‘The Hunting Horn’, we were invited up to look around the Temple, it was fascinating and a privilage…. and very demystifying!

Although the Freemasons have secrets, they are only really the secrets of the ancient trades – and those secrets were set as a wages setting process – your ‘level’ as a stonemason would set your wage…so, as your proficiency rose, you were told the secret of the next level by the master stonemason. When you went for a new job, the person hiring you knew what wage to pay you based on the secret knowledge you had.

Freemasonry itself isn’t a secret organisation, indeed,  there is a book published annually listing the names of every high ranking freemason in the country and it’s not hard to get hold of. But it is an organisation with some secrets which are based on old traditions of secrets set for wage setting… and some ceremonial style of it’s own that is centuries old. It’s fair to say too, that some lodges are sticklers for ceremonial formality, and some are more relaxed.

Anyway, 8pm and home, pizza’s ordered and 1200 e-mails of varying degrees of importance to look through…

We were staying with some friends in West Wales – over towards Fishguard. It’s about as far west as you can get in South Wales. So, something of a drive to get there.

We had a cunning plan.

We set off at 6.30am with a view to taking breakfast at Leigh Delamare Services on the M4 at 8am, setting off again at 9pm and missing the rush hour completely. We’d get to Parrog at about noon.

What could go wrong?

Well, it went perfectly to plan until a wheel came bouncing (picture a World War 2 bouncing bomb, big bounces at say 50mph…) over the central reservation from the other side of the motorway. And hit us.

Fortunately it hit the wing of the car just behind the front wheels, so miraculously Di kept control of her car and pulled up on the hard shoulder…had it hit the front wheel, or worse, hit us at head height…or gone through the windscreen this could have been a shorter story. Anyway, I now know what I do when faced with imminent death – I hunker my shoulders and shut my eyes… I didn’t have the life flashing before my eyes business…either or that or my life has been wheel shaped

Anyway, the reaction of the insurance company was…notable…and we spent the following 2.5 hours on the hard shoulder…Elephant.co.uk…not longer on my recommendation list. Anyway, the car was a likely write off and as far as elephant were concerned we could walk home from there (breakdown recovery to home? Not on accidents it seems) (courtesy car? Not on write offs it would seem!)(courtesy car on repairs – yes, but they take a few days to sort out) (taxi home? well, yes, but they kept that a secret until after it didn’t matter) (2.5 hours on the M4 hard shoulder – perfectly acceptable to the ‘elephant handler’ on the day)(taking all our luggage out of the car to leave on the M4? We didn’t, but elephant wanted us to)(telling the accident repair shop that we were paying everything ourselves and had cancelled our claim…we didn’t, but Elephant told them we did)…

Good things about the day?

The traffic officer who was first on the scene was reassuring ….”Oh, that should T-cut out”…was his immediate comment on the devastated drivers side of the car…

Di’s dad, who stepped up and not only collected us from Swindon, he leant us his car so that we could continue our holiday

Our friends we met in Wales – to a chorus of jokes … ‘You’re Wheely late’,  ‘You must be wheely tired’ etc etc

The many other M4 drivers who called the police to report a tyre bouncing down the M4

Oh, and we both survived uninjured and without involving other cars – it could have been different if Di hadn’t reacted so calmly. You may be wondering why she didn’t dodge… our aggregate speed was around 130mph. That is 50 meters a second…I don’t suppose it was a whole second between seeing the wheel and it hitting us.

This year I didn’t really get into the spirit of Halloween until the last minute. So, we went off to buy some pumpkins.

Now, since Di has lived with me I have slowly become more interested in my artistic side, and so, this year I thought that rather than create a jaggedy face with a carving knife, I’d try something requiring a bit more effort… enjoy!

photo credit: zadeus

Following my release from the all consuming and soul destroying mental prison that is ‘dealing with Abbey’ I grabbed a book. I’ve not had time to buy a new book for ages, so I am re reading a book that I last read 7 or 8 years ago and at that time it was fascinating,  influential and enjoyable – I have recommended it many times to people, but I know of no one who has taken up the recommendation! Anyway I seem to be enjoying it even more this time around.

Shantaram is a story, but based on the true experiences and events in the life of the author.

He escaped from Prison, in Australia, made his way to Bombay and lived there, becoming integrated in Bombay life and culture.

Indian culture is different to English, so way different that many people struggle to understand and accept certain aspects of it – this book goes tells the story of the authors assimilation into Bombay life and the culture shocks he had along the way – he wrote his notes for the book as he went so his story is vivid and detailed. For instance I have just read about a conversation he had with one of the characters he met,  where they discussed what bribes were OK, and it’s all to do with honesty. The reasoning went that every country has the ‘dishonest bribe’,  but only India has the ‘honest bribe” -  where everyone accepts bribes and offers  bribes and everyone knows the going rate of a bribe, so there is very little underhandedness about the system.

Interestingly, in the book, they call bribes ‘baksheesh’  – I first came across this word in Egypt and there it means “gratuity or tip” – it has a slightly different emphasis that is less perjorative than ‘bribe’.  So, in India, or at least, in the author’s experience, the police pay baksheesh to get assigned to the best police station…the best police station being the one that gets the most baksheesh…

There are plenty of other aspects to Bombay that he has mental tussles with – so far and I’m only 100 pages in, but they include the slums, the back street slave shop and the quite  extreme consequences of a car crash – not the crash itself mind, the consequences.

I love this book, and recommend it!

My job isn’t very hard, yes, there is alot of burocracy, and yes some of the rules are a bit silly, but it’s not often stressful. Most of the providers try their best to provide a good service and most do, and correct issues as they arise.

You’ll have noticed no posts for roughly a fortnight…and scarcely any for a while before then.

That’s known in my industry as the ‘Abbey effect’.

Abbey are the sole cause of significant, blood boiling, head banging frustration in my world, and I have been dealing with them for the past 5 weeks and that means the last 5 weeks have been horrible.

They have the most hideous, illogical systems ever. The application of common sense is void. I thought they may have improved since the utter lunacy of January to March this year,(I have boycotted them since) but they haven’t and this week has seen my dealing with the Abbey reach a point when they asked for information that, while I could provide it, would commit a client to a mortgage that he wouldn’t want, unless the Abbey approved his mortgage.  But, the Abbey refused to commit to approving his mortgage until they had the document. I was able to provide an identical printout, accurate to within £1 over 25 years, using my mortgage sourcing software, but Abbey wanted it printed off the other lenders website. Ahh, you are thinking, a simple problrm to overcome with a small greasing of wheels with some common sense.

But no, Abbey wouldn’t budge, the other lender had no facility to create a document without 100% commitment from the client.

Happily, yesterday a solution came to hand.

I sacked the Abbey, and transferred the clients to Halifax. In 1 day, Halifax approved the mortgage and instructed the surveyor…something Abbey couldn’t do in 5 weeks.

In other news, another client has come to me and I’ve been helping him negotiate his way through an incredible gzumping situation on a lovely house in Winchester. We won, using every tactic in the book – including me ‘knowing people’ and his other half charming the next door neighbour. I had his mortgage agreed with Abbey… warning claxons are going off in a big way… we switched to Halifax this afternoon!

I’m now making my way through a well deserved South African white from the lovely people at Virgin Wine club. this is the 1st time in 5 weeks that I have not had Abbey induced stress on intruding into my thoughts from the moment I have woken to the moment of going to bed.

I have been talking to a client about Kayaking – barring my tennis elbow, it is a recreation I fancy and you can fish from a kayak too, which would be fun.

Anyway, he has just e-mailed me two links to websites I didn’t know about previously:

http://www.bramblemet.co.uk/(S(kmpz402cvpnvpcfc2qoxpej1))/default.aspx – which links to real times wind and tide charts

and the more exciting and complex looking

http://www.windfinder.com/weatherforecast/solent_mrsc

I love this kind of thing, I always have, even at school.

At school during a Geology A’level lesson my teacher called out – I’m just putting entrants in for exams, does anyone fancy doing Meteorology O’level?

I raised my hand immediately – I like the stars… then thought “oops, it’s weather, not stars” but my hand stayed up. Since I was the only one, Mr Merritt said he’d sort out some lessons for me. As the exam approached we discussed lessons more frequently, but never actually had one. On the Monday before the exam, he told me that he had no free time before the exam on Thursday afternoon, but I should show up in his classroom at 9am on the Thursday and he’d give me an intense meteorology lesson and hope it was enough.

I was in his classroom at 9am, he bustled in at 10 past saying “Adrian, I’ve made a mistake, the exam starts at 9.30, come on, quickly, you’ll miss it!”

So, I sat Meteorology O’level with no lessons or revision other than what I knew. I knew a little, my father was a navigator in the RAF and weather is/was his thing – if you were in the car with him he’d often say things like “ooh, look at that fantastic Cumulo Nimbus” in much the same way as normal dad’s would say “oooh look at that shiney lorry”.  It was enough for me to know a few cloud types, I could read a weather map (not like on the BBC, a proper one) and that was about it.

I passed with a C. I thought that was alright!

photo credit: Mostly Dans

When I stopped being employed and became self employed I had to leave the company pension scheme.

The old scheme was based on my final salary – 1/60 of my salary will be paid as pension for every year that I was a member of the scheme – yes, it was was of the old fashioned schemes, I was very lucky.

Last year, out of curiosity I asked the scheme how much they’d give me to transfer out of the scheme – essentially I am a liability as they are obliged to give me alot of money when I am 65.  Many schemes are quite generous when it comes to letting members go, but my scheme offered quite a paltry amount that I felt undervalued my pension.

If I’d taken their offer, I’d have had to invest it,  achieving growth of 11.9% just to match the amount they would be contractually obliged to give me when I am 65.  Now, that seemed daunting, even to me – in some years maybe, but not every year. So, I left it with them.

This weekend they have written to me asking if I’d transfer away from them if they gave me some cash.

1. Ethically, I wonder if is it right to encourage me to transfer by offering me cash – the amount intimated was £3000. I know what I’m doing and will judge the final offer on it’s overall merit.  Many will not, and may make a bad decision purely based on a handy windfall.

2. I’m in the odd, possibly unique position of knowing the ‘old figure’. It will be interesting to see how the new figure compares – will it be £3k lower than my original figure, but with £3k as cash?

3. They have appointed an IFA for people who don’t have one. Clearly that isn’t me, but presumably they wouldn’t be recommending transfers if people need to get absurdly high growth rates to just break even, so maybe the old employers have ‘seen the light’ and will be offering proper valuations.

I am concerned about this offer. While I would welcome the cash as much as anyone, I can’t help but feel that a ‘sweetener’ is being offered to offset the bitter pill of transferring the good, guaranteed pension into a potentially less good one.  Or, putting it a different way, they wouldn’t need to offer me cash if they were offering a good deal on the pension.

So, while I hope the deal is good, I don’t expect it to be. And, if it is poor, I really hope that people don’t take up the offer. But I expect they will.

photo credit: LOLren

I was glancing over the movements of the FTSE 100 share index today. It’s been going up recently, at the time of writing it is at 5760.

On 12th August (around the time the coalition was announced) it was at 5269 and looking back through the press at the time, there were warnings that it could be well down by the end of the year.

Well, it still might, it only takes a moment, but so far so good, it seems to be happy with the way of things at the moment.

Soon – this week I think,  George Osbourne’s ‘Spending review’ will be unveiled – where we get to find out what will be cut and by how much. Actually, I can already answer the ‘What’ part of that – pretty much everything.

So, it’s just the ‘how much’ that needs answering.

But, even with this pretty momentous announcement to come shortly, the FTSE is trending upwards…

At times I worry, just like the rest of us, but the ‘Money Men’ seem to like the way the coalition is going about things.

Fingers crossed!

I had a load of spare blackberries and didn’t want to make any more jam so  for inspiration I thought I’d look for a recipe. In the old days I’d have scanned through a few recipe books, these days I sit at the kitchen table on my laptop looking for recipes on the internet. Usually I’ll find a few options and create a recipe that includes the best parts of each of them.

Anyway, I found this Blackberry and Apple Crumble Cake recipe on the BBC Good Food website. Actually, this is the first time I have referred back to it…I’m suddenly pleased with my photo!

Anyway, the recipe calls for you to make the crumble topping at the 1st stage – well, I know the ingredients for crumble, I just needed the quantities. The trouble with a wide screen laptop is that you get a very ‘short’ page, so I looked at the recipe and saw  175g butter…150g sugar, 200 g plain flour and although I was thinking ‘that’s alot of crumble’ I made it anyway. Then I noticed that the crumble section of the recipe was further down the page – 50g of butter and sugar and 75g flour. Doh!

Ah, so, at this stage, I had options, but I didn’t consider any of them – I read the recipe and decided that my Crumble cake was going to be a pretty crumbley crumble cake.

So, I followed the rest of the recipe with a degree more accuracy (except for forgetting to peel the apples) and the result was a very tasty cake. It wasn’t the lightest cake you’ve ever eaten, more of a dessert cake than a cake to be eaten with tea, but delicious nevertheless.