Conversation with God. David C. Wilson

pressure. It is interesting to note that as I write, I do so to the anguished squeals of pain from policyholders of the famous, non-commission paying office, the Equitable Life, many of whom were led to believe (by an antagonistic media) that a life office’s financial strength lay in its refusal to pay commission to sales staff. In any event, the result was brutal, and in the decade commencing in 1986 fully ten thousand financial services firms went out of business. From the politician’s viewpoint it might have seemed that the sacrifice of such a ‘small’ lamb gave great political gains without actually damaging the wider public interest. After all, the same financial products would still be available from the same financial services companies, the only difference being that the financial advisors dealing with the public would now be ‘accountable’ employees. Events have shown the error of such thinking, for at the turn of the century the financial services industry bathes in a sea of blood, as companies cannibalize each other for a bigger piece of a shrinking market. The efforts of these companies are now almost exclusively directed towards the five million people who hold capital of fifty thousand pounds or more—not including their domestic properties, to the detriment of those of more modest means.

      The death throes of the small ‘grocers’ of the financial services industry lay as a backdrop to our own problems. Unfortunately, it was an interactive backdrop, for not only did it impose punitive increases in our costs, it pervaded the atmosphere of the industry and distorted all planning for the future. It was about this time that Chris first became ill, and it is arguable that the additional stresses imposed upon us by the regulators contributed significantly to that illness.

      2

      When Illness Strikes

      A long and complicated buying ‘chain’ delayed the move to the new house, and it wasn’t until the late autumn that we moved in. We had moved to the foothills, some four hundred feet above the town, and we soon discovered why towns are built in sheltered valleys as we experienced the first of two of the hardest winters we have ever known. Although the house sat in the lee of one end of a hilly ridge which protected it from the prevailing westerly winds, it was thoroughly exposed to the many easterlies which blew during those winters. Exposure to weather is, of itself, not a great problem, but when the blizzards came from the east they found ready access into the house because of its history and construction. The house had belonged in the past to a silk mill owner, and was essentially a Victorian extension of a pair of older cottages. Unlike the solid floors of the earlier cottages, suspended wooden flooring was used in the extension, and the floorboards used, although three inches thick (8cm.), were unrebated, that is, were simply laid side by side. Subsequently, modern air-bricks had been fitted to the east-facing walls of the extended part of the house below floor level, presumably in an attempt to remove the smell of dampness, with the result that an easterly wind could blow directly up into the house. The net effect was surreal, for we would often find ourselves sat in the lounge clad in overcoats, watching the carpet rise and fall in the centre of the room, as if by levitation. It was an experience we will never forget.

      Burning the Candle at Both Ends

      Mortgage multiples are not theoretical calculations done by building society managers in their spare time, rather, they are designed to prevent financial hardship, and we found we simply couldn’t afford that house. At least, we couldn’t afford to renovate it at that stage in the growth of our business, and we were obliged to do major building work ourselves on a DIY basis, which should more properly have been undertaken professionally. This work would be conducted at the weekends because the weekdays were occupied with the business. In my own case the business required the making of house calls for the selling of financial products in the evenings, thus lengthening the working day, but in Chris’s case the situation was far more complex. Although I had failed to notice, Chris was now wearing a number of hats including those of secretary, receptionist, typist, bookkeeper, and debugger of our newly installed and very expensive computer system. In addition to this unfair distribution of work, the business was reaching a critical size, for an experienced business friend had told us, that when a venture of any kind exceeds three hundred clients, it becomes difficult for two people to manage it alone. Chris clearly needed extra time to complete her many tasks and decided to do the bookkeeping at home, after the office had closed, and while I was elsewhere seeing clients.

      Unfortunately, this proved not to be a solution, since the bookkeeping simply became another hat for Chris to wear in a different arena. Whilst I was elsewhere, the domestic front involved Chris in numerous activities, including those of mother, cook, and of course housekeeper in a house four times larger than the previous one. To complicate matters still further, we had at about this time, become involved with the local Sea Cadet Unit. Both our teenage sons had joined the organisation, which was a small one run largely with the voluntary help of the parents of the children. Sadly, however, one of the individuals involved in leadership had an unerring talent for alienating many of these helpers, and as is so often the case in such circumstances, the workload begins to fall on fewer and fewer shoulders. We soon found ourselves amongst the few and whilst I became a committee member, Chris picked up two more hats becoming both the secretary and an officer in charge of the girls section. The competition for Chris’s time was now severe both during the week when the Unit met twice in the evening, and most weekends when either parades or outward-bound type activities filled the time. In such a pressured situation it was inevitable that something would suffer, and as any self-employed businessman will confirm, it is frequently the bookkeeping and accountancy side of a business which bears the brunt of such pressure. Both of us, but Chris especially, now found ourselves on a seven-days-a-week carousel from which neither could alight, and subject now, to the background stresses of neglected bookkeeping and the fast encroaching and pervasive regulation of our business. Time was borrowed from everywhere and even our sleep was not sacrosanct, as our frenetic social life frequently found us locked inside public houses until two or three in the morning.

      Post-Viral Syndrome—“Yuppy Flu”

      When we did get time at home, the refurbishment work on the house would progress to a pattern, wherein a room would be ‘gutted,’ and this would often be followed by structural alterations, before finally being redecorated. As a consequence, the house was continually filled with house dust, cement dust, mites, horsehair (in the old plasterwork), mould, condensation, and paint. Moreover, the first job had been the application of a kerosene based pesticide to all exposed timbers as a woodworm preventative, causing one family member to remark that Chris was ‘never the same from that time onwards.’ Additionally, throughout this whole period, the oil-fired Rayburn cooker was burning continuously, and would blow back fumes into the house under certain weather conditions. This, we later discovered, was due to another peculiarity in the construction of the house, in particular the construction of the chimneys, which were all built below the level of the roof apex. The net effect of this was that negative pressure across the chimney pot under certain wind conditions caused blowback. In summary, almost every conceivable allergen was present in large quantity at Springmount at this time, along with toxic fumes and chemicals, all of which were present together in a cold and damp environment. It is my belief that Chris was sensitized by these substances during those early years, and that this permitted the later development of food allergies and food intolerance.

      In hindsight, the picture of this period which comes to mind, is one of a stage performer trying to keep a dozen plates all spinning on canes at the same time. Clearly, the plates represent all the various activities undertaken, and there is a quite definite and practical limit to how many of these can be attempted at one time. Chris, however, had become the motivator of the totality of our lives, the initiator of new ventures and would admit of no such limit. When the first virus struck her during the Easter of 1988, Chris was obliged to drop everything, if only because it had settled on her chest, activating her asthma and leaving her completely breathless. It was of course merely the flu, and should respond eventually to the cocktail of steroids and antibiotics the doctor had prescribed, provided Chris rested and allowed herself to recuperate. Rest she did and for almost two weeks she was a captive of the lounge sofa, scarcely able to move, and taking little, if anything, in the way of food.

      After two weeks the courses of medication came to an end, and although the asthma emergency was over, the flu symptoms