It is three years since Connie died. Yet I seem no nearer gaining legal title to my inheritance. Perhaps it is time to lift the curse laid upon me around the time of my daughter’s birth in Nairobi Hospital on 8th January 1973. I have the email address of the Indian guru who informed my daughter of this interesting fact.

Meanwhile The Vemara Saga moves forward at a duck’s pace with worrying echoes of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. Two weeks ago I instructed Brian Walker to agree the date at which ownership formally passed from the Connie Lindqvist Estate to myself. Once this has been agreed we can finalise matters with Mr Roud and the double entry book-keeping he employs for collecting his mooring fees. Can this be so hard?

The Provident Accident Claim Saga is a complicating factor. There are two separate issues. The first is settlement of the claim from the accident itself. The second involves a judgement call on whether to link the accident on 27th March 2001 with Connie’s death from a massive brain haemorrhage on 7th November 2002.

On 25th January 2002 ten months before Connie’s death I had written to Provident Insurance who were handling the claim to say that we were happy for Connie to undergo examination and to agree that arrangements were best made directly with her by their Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon. The examination duly took place and copies of the report were submitted to Mark Turner, Team Leader ( MIB ) at the Technical Claims Department of Provident Insurance plc. at P.O. Box 498, Crown Street, Halifax, Yorkshire HX1 1FF.

There is a three-year statute of limitation involved in hit-and-run accidents in the vain hope that the driver might be overcome by guilt and walk into his local police station and confess to his crime. So we told the insurers that we would be keeping our powder dry and postponing any decision on the use of the accelerated procedure being pushed at us until we could form some reasonable assessment of its implications.

On 5th February 2003 the file on Connie’s Claim for Compensation was passed to the executor of her estate: ‘Attached please find, in chronological order, the relevant correspondence between ourselves and Provident Insurance (ref: MIB/651643(01)429) concerning Connie’s claim for compensation following her accident on 27th March 2001. As far as Walker & Walker have been able to ascertain Vance Harris did nothing.

The February the Fifth letter included a second paragraph that went like this: ‘The use of professional ‘ambulance chasers’ was also being investigated following a recommendation from Mr. Stuart Osmer (Tel: 01424 882306), one of Connie’s pottery customers. This resulted in a letter from Martin Langan of Copley, Clark & Bennett in Sutton, Surrey…see attached.’ Walker & Walker asked Vance Harris to reply specifically to the reasoning deployed in their decision not to pursue this option. No response has so far been forthcoming.

As if this was not enough trial and tribulation, in August 2005 the Magpie Sagas Project stalled when its author Bernardine Fiddimore and her boyfriend took it upon themselves to remove Academic Inn Books’ stocks of the third and fourth books in the four-book series. None of the books sold over the past three years have been paid for and now Ms. Fiddimore is refusing to permit a stock take to ascertain the exact situation. Frankfurt Book Fair, AIB’s China marketing plans, the Magpie Sagas talking book and last year’s planned private share placement have been postponed pending settlement of this dispute. The first procedural step was taken last week to bring the matter within the orbit of the legal system by sending a £ 400 bill for the books and a demand for a return of the stolen books with the threat of a further bill for £18 000.

The final twist to my tale of woe came in September 2005 when Heidi and I began to plan a Connie Lindqvist Retrospective for Christmas 2005. We checked out local galleries and small exhibition halls in Rye and placed an early notice in Rye’s Own for 10th December 2005 in the Community Centre on Conduit Hall in Rye.

But then to my amazement...I am getting naive in my dotage...first Dot Sharp at David Sharp Ceramics and then Cynthia Wall, an old trusted friend, refused to hand over the artwork that had been placed in their safe keeping 18 months previously. How do we know it belongs to you? Brian Walker is seeking to cobble together something convincing with the signatures of the executor of the Connie Lindqvist Estate Dr Tom Price and Kevin McDonald of Vance Harris prominently displayed. I am still waiting. We cancelled the exhibition.

Over in the Dark Continent South African jet airliners are failing to give Tony Blair a rousing take off. The place is crawling with military aircraft able to fly our cherished leader to the Houses of Parliament. Perhaps he needs a stopover in Kenya after John Githongo claimed two more scalps. While busy making poverty history he should take a look at Lake Victoria while it’s still there. There is no truth in the rumour that Uganda is in breach of its treaty with Egypt despite the amount of water removed from Lake Victoria to feed the voracious appetite of the Nalubaale Dam turbines being 55% above the treaty’s ‘agreed curve’.