William Shepherd

Still freezing. I was up with the light at seven fifteen and got rained on walking into town. Thawed out at Jempsons Coffee House reading the newspapers over a cup of coffee before going across to PC Hut to sign up for five hours of computer time.

The Isle of Man is seeking to attract entrepreneurs with new rules that would mean no resident would have to pay more than £100 000 in income tax. As the highest rate on income tax is 18% this will be attractive to anyone earning more than half a million pounds a year. The island already offers a zero corporate tax rate for businesses involved in e-commerce, space technology and insurance. From 5th April 2006 this will apply to all other industries except financial servces which will continue to pay a ten percent corporate rate. No wonder that Brussels wants to harmonise tax regimes across Europe.

The policy I have always wanted to see on income tax is the one that ignores the tax rate but sticks with Isle of Man style percentages. If I was King of England I would wield my Royal Prerogative to force the government of the day to remove 90% of the working population from the income tax net within the life of a single parliament. Income tax was supposed to be a temporary tax when first introduced by Lloyd George to finance his trench warfare with the Kaiser.

I suggested to the owner of PC Hut that he should ask someone who wanted to use his computers to look after the shop so he could get away. I wondered whether to offer my services but decided not to. Tony Payne’s second tenant had been booted out making two bad experiences in six months. So the apartment above PC Hut is vacant. I offered to rent it for March and April money up front. He said he would talk to his wife Alex and come back to me. But unbeknown to me my relationship was not the only one on the rocks. Tony was ordered out of the family home and needs the apartment for himself. When not mending computers Tony draws… under the pencil name of Tony Coven.

I changed my e-mail signature on leaving Llangolman from 2-3 days response to 1-2 weeks. I am now at the outside limit so I checked through my five hundred e-mails deleting at speed and hoping that I didn't delete anything important. There were a few needing a response...Helen Dew in New Zealand for instance who was wondering whether I was still expecting her to send me the back files from Fourth World Review to post onto the website. I was.

I spent an hour or so with my friend John Pierce at his house on South Undercliff and then returned to the boat, lit the fire and put in some time on the Gilbert & Sullivan. Sunday and Tuesday had told me the places where I was exposed to the full glare of the audience...and the places where I could lurk in the shadows at the back of the stage. Very helpful. This tells you which words you really must learn...and which parts you can get away with by offering up standard Gilbert & Sullivan harmonies.

The final run-through of Iolanthe at the Rye Community Centre in the evening went well. A warm hall in sharp contrast to Sunday. Just the final practice of the musical and choral details in the Methodist Hall...our normal choir practice location...tomorrow evening and then we are live for the first of our two performances on Friday evening.

It was an absolutely filthy day...the wind howling through the rigging and me shivering in my shoes. I took the 0950 train to Sevenoaks. So much for water shortages in the south-east. The fields were flooded after a downpour the previous night. Every river and ditch that I could see from the train had overflown its banks.

I was with Brian Walker from noon until half past one and then took the train back to Rye...with a stopover in Ashford. I gleaned some kinding on my way home from the double glazing firm on the Old Winchelsea Road. Old windows burn well. A Lidls dinner in the evening...sweet & sour cicken with rice...and then a Schumacher Briefing. On this evening's agenda was Richard Douthwaite's Ecology of Money. Heidi called at ten and we had a forty five minute discussion about the proposed trusts following my meeting with the solicitors.

I used my time at Ashford Library to draft the minutes of the meeting. I always like to get minutes done as early as possible while the meeting is fresh in the minds of all the participants...and to make sure everyone knows what is expected of them. Here are some edited extracts.

It was decided that Vance Harris would be asked in writing (with telephone follow-up) to hand over all relevant documents including medical reports and explain the failure to pursue the claim. Brian would talk with some personal liabilities experts establish the size range of any pay-out and any statutes of limitation with the next steps to be agreed at next meeting once these facts have been established.

My main task will be to call a meeting of Friends of Connie Lindqvist for Friday 7/4 or Monday 10/4 in Rye Town Hall with the following agenda: Introductions; Will; Problems arising; Trusts; Exhibitions; Publications; Questions. Apart from that I was charged with the task of sounding out the trustees. Here is what the minutes had to say about the two trusts.

David Hutchings Trust document to be drafted for next meeting. Opening Date: 16th April 2006; Closing Date: 16th October 2011; Trust Purpose: to be determined at next meeting; Trust Beneficiary: David Martin Hutchings; Trust Assets: Vemara; Accident Claim; Good Yacht Guide; Trust Income: Retained except for Good Yacht Guide business expenses...ie net profit to the DMH Trust; Vemara's expenses...Harbour Dues, Mooring Fees and Maintenance Costs; Trust Manager costs; Professional Fees.

Connie Lindqvist Trust document to be drafted for next meeting. Opening Date: 16th April 2006; Closing Date: None; Trust Purpose: to be determined at next meeting; Trust Beneficiary: to be determined at next meeting; Trust Assets: Rye Maritime Heritage Partnership Assets; Connie Lindqvist's shareholdings in certain Academic Inn Books pblishing partnerships; Trust Income: to be determined at next meeting.

As for Vemara Brian Walker was instructed to agree a date with Vance Harris for the transfer of ownership from the Connie Lindqvist Estate to myself so that we can settle up with Roud and then transfer ownership to the David Martin Hutchings Trust on 16th April 2006...six and a half years before his 25th birthday. We set the date for the next meeting as Monday 6th March 2006 at 12 noon in Sevenoaks and noted that I would be travelling up from Wiltshire.

I decided to spend a few hours putting together the week of texts and e-mails with Heidi into a document labelled A Valentine’s Day Dialogue. Here is the epilogue. In a relationship the first commitment should not be to material things like careers, houses, social sanding, money etc but to the person. ‘Yes. You are the person I want to share my life with’. For me everything else is so ephemeral and transient. From this affirmation everything else flows. It is not possible to be really happy alone. Of course one makes the best of it. We all do. But having one special person in your life is something of a very different and higher quality. Family ties are not a substitute for this.

My time in Sweden is intended to serve at least three quite separate purposes. Firstly it gets me away from Rye and gives me a deadline to wind up everything to do with Connie’s Estate which has been bedevilling my existence…and my relationship with Heidi… for the past two years. Secondly it allows me to finish my fil. kand Swedish degree in Business, Development & Financial Economics which is vital for the next stage of my academic career.

Thirdly it is the most sensible route back onto the ‘scholars residential circuit’. Once I have an apartment in a (top) university town anywhere around the North Atlantic I will have the freedom to live wherever I wish by exchanging my place with anther academic moving in for the six months period normal for such exchanges. Lund is one of Sweden’s three ancient universities and rents there are half what they are in Cambridge. But this is almost entirely due to the exchange rate which I am predicting will change dramatically over the next 12 months…see http://williamfranklin.blog.co.uk. So there is a window of opportunity.

The main business of today was a full dress rehearsal for Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe in the afternoon so I stayed on the boat all morning. It was bitterly cold so I cranked up my coal-burning stove, drank coffee and lived better than any king.

After finishing my editing of the Valentine Dialogue ready for the re-opening of PC Hut I investigated the true nature of kingship by browsing through a book of the letters of Henry VIII borrowed from Ashford Library. He was quite besotted with Anne Boleyn. Indeed his determination to marry her seems to have been his principal concern. I came away feeling sorry for Cardinal Wolsey who had the unenviable task of translating this obsession into a foreign policy that would benefit rather than harm the interests he represented in the never-ending balancing of dynastic power that passed for diplomacy in those days.

Ryesingers are putting on their annual performance of Gilbert & Sullivan at the end of next week. This year it is Iolanthe. I spoke to Lesley Brownbill when I got back to Rye at the weekend to offer my services. ‘Of course you can learn the tenor part in two weeks!’ Of course. And so I have been drafted in to strengthen the House of Peers. We peers of the realm strutted around in our hunting 'n shooting garb... well-wrapped against the inclement weather inside the Rye Community Centre.

Not so the poor fairies who spent the afternoon tripping hither and thither in the freezing cold. There is heating in the hall but someone somewhere had forgotten to instruct the person that mattered to switch it on. No shortage of witty repartee. Iolanthe should have stayed at the bottom of the stream with the frogs; if you think that it's love that makes the world go round then you've never been in a freezing cold rehearsal hall in the middle of winter etc. Everybody survived. Hardy bunch the British.

A meeting was scheduled with Walker & Walker at noon the following day so I spent the evening preparing myself. The first thing was a note to myself outlining my priorities. Next a letter to my daughter outlining my plans. Finally a series of small briefing papers for my solicitor Brian Walker. The key part of the plan is a quasi-public meeting a week before Easter for the Friends of Connie Lindqvist.

I hope to get one of the rooms in Rye Town Hall. I drafted out an agenda for this Valhalla meeting. After spelling out my obligations under the terms of Connie's will I would brief them on the two trusts being set up and the two publishing projects scheduled for Christmas 2006. The meeting would then be open for discussion and end with invitations to sign up to help make the various projects happen.

Heidi and I have been trying to patch things up between us but have now given up the unequal struggle. Here are the some of the things that Heidi e-mailed during the final sad day of our relationship. Part of me is not sure of what I want but I know I don’t want to jerk you around and at present I have not the energy to crank up the feelings and the relationship after all that’s been said only to be back at the same point as before. I am not sure we can settle our fundamental differences…or I just don’t love enough to risk the journey. I appreciate that you are wanting to make it work somehow but while I do fear a break up what I fear more is our repetitive arguments which eventually result in the bottom line that our idea of conduct in a relationship is very different.

Both of us have thought that several times we made enough concessions to make it work and yet here we are again. My way makes you unhappy which creates stress on both sides and your way…to get enmeshed as you wish…makes me feel unhappy which also creates stress on both sides. The things said can't be washed under the carpet. They mean something to each of us and not talking and not saying how we feel would create problems.

I just can't see a way forward…at least not at the moment…a quick patch up isn't going to work for my part. From what you said I understand that if I can't give you what or how you want it is the end so you feel free as a single person to look for another woman who can be in a partnership as you want. I understand that too as you have a lot to offer. You ask what you can do? I would not ask for you to change what you need and what you need to do as in the end the unhappiness would surface anyway and one should not change a partner but be able to accept where they are at. While we accept certain things about each other there are fundamental characteristics that press our buttons and love is just not enough to overcome, I feel. Breaking up is hard to do. But now for quite a different subject.

Prince Charles has his private journals are all over the tabloids this week. Far from harming his reputation they will do it a power of good. On Tony Blair: 'He is a most enjoyable person to talk to. He gives the impression of listening to what one says, which I find astonishing.' Just so!

I spent the day in Ashford doing chores like checking out prices for Camping Gaz heaters and battery radios at Argos. Since losing my electricity I have actually got used to living without noise so showed only passing interest in replacing the tiny battery radio that we always used to have aboard Vemara for weather forecasts.

In our trip to Gotland in the summer of 1998 on our Linnaeus Journeys Project we discovered that calor gas suppliers became extinct once we got got to the far side of the Kiel Canal. So we went over to Camping Gaz in the Baltic. The result is two full Camping Gaz containers under the port bunk. It seems a shame not to use them.

My Ashford routine starts with an hour of Kent County Council free computer time as the public library is en route between the railway station to the town centre. Upstairs in the reference library they have two computers capable of taking my USB dongle...you get to know about these things. Number 20 and 21.

During the previous week...since our Valentine Row in fact...Heidi and I had been conducting quite a classy text exchange...the lady has a good mind. One of the problems with texting is that unlike e-mail there is no record of the text messages...or rather most people keep just a temporary record until their storage space runs out. This is changing as the increasingly abundant forms of electronic communication get themselves hooked up together. Alan and Malcolm for instance who are serious working businessmen...unlike me who's more of a dabbler...can send and receive almost anything almost anywhere.

But for the time being neither Heidi nor I are in this league. We also have a tendency to mix e-mail, text and hand-written letters...and open and respond to them somewhat erratically. Anyway I spent my library hour in the morning transcribing our text exchange and adding in the e-mails. To my surprise when I went back to the library again on my way back to the station at four the system let me on for a second one-hour session so I was able to complete the transcription leaving me with just the editing to do. Is this work?

I love book stores and there is a good Ottakars in Ashford. But I dare not go too often as every title is tempting. Not only could I buy a lot of books but I’ll waste a lot of time dipping into titles that tickle a momentary fancy. That’s the way it is with e-mails too. If you get say 40 - 100 e-mails a day it’s like being given 40 -100 books. You are tempted to open all of them.

But if you do you blow 3 - 4 hours reading them. You’re forced to answer some out of politeness. You can lose half a day. It is the bookstore syndrome but at least with bookstores you have an option. You don’t have to go daily. With e-mail you don’t have a choice. It’s thrown in your lap/face. You must look at every title to see if it might be urgent/important.

Much of the time you can tell from the titles. Most e-mails from friends/family are interesting or funny so you just sit there and read and the clock runs. With newspapers you can skip most stories after a four second glance at the headline. No such speed/luck with e-mail. In self-defense, I now don’t open most e-mail no matter who they’re from if the subject doesn’t tell me what it is and if the subject isn’t really necessary to read.

Most businessmen have a love/hate relationship with their e-mail but cannot avoid using it in today’s business world. Insteadthey have strategies like ducking non-urgents e-mails until they pile up as thousands of unopened e-mails which they then delete. If you want your e-mail opened it’s best to identify you and the subject clearly. E-mail is a part time useful tool but if it is not identified and understood the downside can be a tyrant and a half-day time-killer.

The blabbermouth aspect of e-mail is another annoyance. We have good people saying good things but they can’t shut off their mouth. They use 8 pages of copy when 1-2 would suffice if they’d cut the waffle. Excess verbiage is carelessness. People must edit down for the printed word but for e-mail there’s no space limit. As with everything in life if there are no limits people will go to excess. E-mail is like a relative who comes to see you daily and though you love her she never stops talking and drives you crazy. You don’t know how to handle her. You can’t shut her out, but don’t enjoy a talk torrent.

E-mail’s worst aspect is that government invented it…for military use at the start…and allowed it to go public, knowing it enables them to tap into everyone’s conversations. E-mail is the least private form of communication on the planet. It should be used very sparingly out of respect for your precious time and privacy.

Between bookshops, chores and computers...and a side trip to Lidls to spend £1.52 on eight cans of dessert rice at 19p a can...I settled doen in Starbucks and did things...although for the life on me I can no longer recall what things these might have been...although reading The Times was among them. But I have no doubt that I was gainfully employed.