A Midland Odyssey - Part Eight - Technical Irregularities

How often do you write a cheque? Not very often, I'd guess. From the days when writing one was the most common way to withdraw cash from your bank account and the most usual way of paying for many goods and services, cheques are now approaching something of novelty status. From a peak in 1990 when Britons issued four billion cheques, their use fell to 558 million by 2015, and speaking for myself, I probably write less than a dozen each year. Val tells me it is at least a year since she wrote a cheque and I don't think that either of my daughters even have cheque books. In 1978 it was very different...

Like many people who joined Midland Bank (and probably most other UK banks) during the 1970's, I found that my first job was by turns bewildering, boring, nerve-racking, mundane and actually quite important, despite my very junior position. Most of it seemed to involve cheques in one way or another. First task of the day was listing the incoming cheques, i.e. those drawn on our branch's customers and presented at other banks and branches, which had arrived in the clearing. Then throwing them out into three sections, which at Gants Hill were (surnames) A to K, L to R and S to Z. Other branches had more sections, and some would have whole sections dedicated to a single corporate customer who issued large numbers of cheques. Then each section would be fine sorted alphabetically by surname, then initial. Next, each section had to be cancelled, which means identifying which cheques could not be paid, either due to lack of funds or because of a technical irregularity, and which ones could.

An example of a paid and cancelled cheque, complete with Paid and Crossing stamps and cancelled (initialled through the signature in red ink). This is actually for sale on eBay, though why anyone would want it escapes me.

The ones where funds were an issue would be identified by the manager (at Gants Hill in 1976 a bluff Yorkshireman named Mr Hindley - I never knew his first name, and had I known it would not have dared used it). The Control Clerk would pull them out and return them with the reason, 'Refer to Drawer' or 'Refer to Drawer, Please Represent,' the latter meaning that if the payee chose to pay the cheque in at a later date, it might get paid (fingers crossed). Cheques could be returned for any number of technical irregularities; for being unsigned, for being undated, because the amounts in words and figures differed, because it had been stopped by the drawer, because it was mutilated, because it had been crossed by two bankers, and so on and so forth. Cheques that were paid were 'cancelled' by initialling over the signature in red ink and being stamped 'Paid.' Coloured biros were an important part of daily banking life; red for cancelling cheques, green for checking account numbers and blue or black for everything else.

What you couldn't do, of course, was 'bounce' a cheque for lack of funds if it had a Cheque Card number on the back. Cheque guarantee cards demised in 2011, but in 1978 they were highly important. Shops and tradesmen knew they could accept a cheque without worrying it might be unpaid, and they were sought after by customers, not all of whom were deemed credit worthy enough to have one. Amazing when you think that today Debit Cards are almost ubiquitous, yet by 1976 standards a significant number of customers would not be granted one.

After listing, sorting and cancelling the clearing, most of the rest of the day was then spent dealing with cheques paid in over the counter. Separating those drawn on our customers from those drawn on customers of other Midland branches and other banks, listing them, encoding them with the amount and sending the latter two categories off to Head Office. Manual processing was the order of the day when I started work; over the years automation and centralisation resulted in many of the jobs that I learned in my first few years being centralised or disappearing altogether.

If you could look around Midland Bank, Gants Hill in 1976 you would understand why banking then was so labour intensive. There were few automated processes and most work harked back to the days when hand-written ledgers were the norm (and there were some members of staff there for whom those ledgers were fresh in the memory). In short, what you would notice would be the limited amount of technology and how primitive that technology actually was: the legendary Burroughs TC-500 was the most sophisticated piece of kit we had. We didn't even have a photocopier; any copying we needed to have done involved someone trotting over the road to a firm of solicitors, whose machine we could borrow. The number of copies we made would be recorded in a washing book and the solicitors would invoice us every quarter for their costs.

The legendary Burroughs TC-500. Picture:acbm.com

Not that everything we wanted a copy of could be photocopied though. There were many, many documents that we were not allowed to remove from the premises, ledger copies of customer statements being one of them. Every time a customer had a statement issued, a ledger copy would be delivered to the branch. These did not arrive in alphabetical order - goodness knows why they could not have been delivered in order - perhaps it was to give the branch junior something (extra) to do. It always seemed that laborious, manual tasks were considered 'good for the soul.' The ledger copies had to be sorted and then filed in bins held in a wheeled trolley. Half-yearly (or was it quarterly?) these would be bound up and filed. The ledger copies could not be removed from the branch, let alone photocopied, so it was with a sinking feeling that I would have to deal with a request from a customer for a duplicate statement. That process would involve typing the details from the ledger copy onto a specific card. This would then go off in the overnight bag to Head Office. A few days later the duplicate statement would arrive. But this could not be sent directly to the customer yet because for reasons that were probably due to the limitations of the technology available at the time, many details would be excluded from the copy statement, such as the first three digits of cheque numbers, and these would have to be typed onto the duplicate.

The height of technology in 1976, the microfiche reader!

 A rare example of labour saving came in the form of microfiche copies of statements; Gants Hill branch were chosen to pilot the process and instead of a wad of ledger copies arriving each day, a single fiche would be delivered, reducing filing time from an hour or so to about thirty seconds!

Everything that a customer now receives from their bank, from new cheque books, paying in books, credit and debit cards, is sent from a central location. In 1978 all of those things were first sent to the branch. Huge boxes of cheque books would arrive periodically: naturally these were not in any sort of order and had to be sorted and filed in cabinets awaiting a request from the customer for a new book. And paying in books were received in blank and had to have customer details added by the use of an Adrema plate printer, the repetitive thumping sound of which was a daily soundtrack to life in a small branch!

There were fourteen staff at Gants Hill when I worked there, many doing jobs that would today either not exist or have been centralised; were it still open today, it would probably have no more than five or six staff. But while a lot of the work there was labour-intensive and monotonous, I learned things there that stayed with me throughout my thirty-six years. I reckon I could still fine sort and cancel a section of cheques to this day!

A Shiver In The Dark

I don't recall going to a rock concert between 1992 (Genesis at Earls Court) and 2008 (Porcupine Tree, indigo at The O2) and in that period the means of getting tickets for such events went from the traditional method of queuing up, phoning the venue or going to a ticket agency to booking online; and we all know what a frustrating experience that can be.

Inevitably it seems, tickets for concerts go on sale at nine o'clock on a Friday morning and at one second before the appointed hour the website says tickets are not yet on sale, yet one second after nine (having worn out your finger pressing F5) they are sold out! It is all very different from the days when I first started getting tickets for gigs, way back in the 1970's, the first decade broadcast in colour.

In 1978 I was working in the City of London for the first time, at Midland Bank, Queen Victoria Street. Between Queen Victoria Street and Poultry there ran a lane (it isn't there now, since the whole block has been redeveloped), in which stood The Green Man pub and a record shop that had a ticket agency. On many a lunchtime I would find myself in that shop, perusing the list of upcoming concerts at London venues, and often would join the queue to book tickets. The counter was manned by a chap who had a phone permanently jammed between shoulder and ear, sourcing tickets. You made your booking, took a receipt and hey presto, a few days later would return to pick up your precious tickets. I don't recall ever being disappointed and not being able to get tickets for whatever it was I wanted to see - unlike these days when trying to book tickets online can be fraught and ventures into the secondary market may be a necessary evil.

The corner of Queen Victoria Street and Poultry, as it was before redevelopment.

One of the first concerts I booked tickets for back in those days was for Dire Straits, who I'd gotten into thanks to a girl I worked with (I think it was Denise Haskins). She recommended them, suggesting I must listen to Sultans of Swing. On first hearing, I wasn't terribly impressed, but after a few listens it grew on me and after buying the band's eponymous first album, it was off to the Hammersmith Odeon to see them play live. I also saw them at The Rainbow, Finsbury Park when it was (temporarily) a music venue. Nowadays The Rainbow a Pentecostal church.

"You get a shiver in the dark, it's raining in the park but meantime..."
Picture: Helge Øverås

The Hammersmith Odeon (now the Eventim Apollo, but forever the Odeon as far as I am concerned) has always been my favourite venue. I saw Ian Dury & The Blockheads there in what I would describe less as a concert but more as a raucous party with a live band, and also saw Jasper Carrott doing his stand-up routine in the days when he was just finding fame. Dressed in trademark rugby jersey and jeans, he berated the 'cabaret set' comedians who, resplendent in DJ's and bow-ties, played to a scampi-in-a-basket audience. Ironic because years later I saw him play at the Circus Tavern in Purfleet, where he wore a dinner jacket and bow-tie and performed to an audience that had just munched its way through just such a meal.

Ian Dury

The thing about getting tickets for concerts -and this is stating the obvious - is that if a band are playing a number of nights at the same venue, it's much easier than if they are doing a one-night stand. And a one-night stand is effectively what a sporting event is, hence the fact that for cup finals and the like, tickets are at a premium. Which they were back in 1979 when Essex county cricket club reached their first one-day final, in the Benson & Hedges Cup. Prior to 1979, Essex had had a pretty poor record in both one day and county Championship cricket (actually they were a bit of a joke), but that year the county had a chance of their first major honour. Having qualified from their group, they beat Warwickshire in the last eight, and then defeated Yorkshire in the semi-final. I was at that game, having bunked off for the only time in my thirty-six year working life. I wasn't the only one: the game was televised and I, like many others in the crowd at Chelmsford, was trying to keep a low profile in case I was captured by the cameras - explaining that at work the next day would have been tricky.

Naturally my fellow Essex supporting friends and I wanted to be at Lords to see the final against Surrey, but this proved to be difficult. The ticket allocation was such that there were more club members than tickets, so getting one through Essex was out of the question. We tried Lords, we tried the MCC (no chance if you weren't a member), we tried the ticket agencies; it was no good. Then someone suggested trying Surrey. This seemed pointless since their allocation was the same as Essex's and they had more members, but more in hope than expectation, I phoned them. Have you any tickets available? I asked. You may imagine my surprise when I was told, "Yes, but they're limited to four person." I got hold of someone and we went to The Oval that lunchtime (it's only a short tube ride from Queen Victoria Street) and bagged eight tickets.

Essex won the Benson & Hedges Cup Final, their first major honour and I - with a host of friends - was there to see it, sitting on the grass in front of the Lords Tavern. It's hard to imagine these days that spectators at a major sporting event were once permitted to sit on the grass just yards from the pitch and chat to the players as they fielded on the boundary. After the obligatory celebratory pitch invasion, a crowd of us went directly to Brighton for a week. Happy days.

The reason for this week's nostalgia-fest (apart from a desire to get away from the EU referendum) is that I've been reading Danny Baker's excellent autobiography, Going To Sea In a Sieve and since Danny is roughly the same age as me, I could relate to a lot of what he has written, and a lot of what appeared in Cradle to Grave,  the TV adaption of his book. 

It has to be said of course that Danny Baker's formative years were more adventurous, exciting and much more likely to end up in a book or on TV than mine were. While he was serving Elton John and Marc Bolan in a Soho record shop, I was serving secretaries and solicitor's clerks in a City bank. We both lived in council flats and saw Ian Dury in concert though, we at least have that in common.

The Sick Man Of Europe

Both sides in the EU referendum debate have been issuing dire warnings of the consequences of not voting their way on 23rd June. Earlier in the week I speculated on what might happen if we vote Remain. In the interests of balance, here's some guesswork on what the outcome could be if we vote to Leave.

This is a work of fiction but Donald Trump could be POTUS come November.

Carefully, Brian put his glass down on the table. Despite having been in The Bell for the best part of half-an-hour, he had barely blown the froth off the top of his beer. Well, at nearly ten quid a pint, you had to make it last.

"Can't believe it's only been five years," Brian said sorrowfully. "I remember all that euphoria, all that hope. And look at us now. I just hope Johnson and Farage are pleased with themselves."

I nodded. Five years after the decision to leave the EU and once again Britain was being called the sick man of Europe. Of Europe, note, because we're still part of Europe if not the European Union. Unemployment hit six million last year and shows no sign of slowing. Brian noted dolefully that we were probably the only two customers in the pub who actually had jobs. Mind you, there were only a half-dozen or so other punters, and those of them who weren't stretching their drinks out to last as long as they could were drinking tap water. Our town used to have five, maybe six pubs, all doing a good trade before 23rd June 2016. Now there's only The Bell, and how that keeps going is a mystery.

I asked him how his job was going and he made a sour face.

"Lucky to have it, I guess. Did sixty-five hours last week," he said. "I was right with Jeremy Corbyn when he opposed the Tories doing away with the Working Time Directive, but thank goodness they did. If I couldn't work all the hours God sends I'd never be able to keep my head above water."

"Yes," I acknowledged. "And when Labour got in last year, everyone expected them to put some sort of workers' rights bill in the Queen's speech, but there was nothing. Was a funny old Queen's speech too, what with the royals decamping to Canada and her delivering the speech by Skype."

Brian shrugged. "Say what you like about Corbyn, and I've said plenty, he's a pragmatist. Workers rights are all very well but there're no good to if you've got no job."

"I know," I said. "All those strikes when the Tories did away with paid maternity leave and sick pay and the unions confident Jeremy would see them right, and what did he say? 'Sorry chaps, no can do, the country can't afford it.'"

" Everything's gone up in the shops and what with interest rates up where they are, most of my money goes on the mortgage," Brian moaned.

"Perhaps you should downsize," I suggested.

Brian snorted derisorily. "Have you seen the housing market? Prices are lower than a dachsund's swingers; I've got negative equity and no flipping chance of moving."

Bob, the landlord wandered over, collecting empty glasses and wiping down tables. "Closing at nine tonight lads," he said.

"Oh it's not power cuts again is it?" moaned Brian.

"Yes, 'fraid so," said Bob. "Three days a week, power off at half-nine."

"So much for the cheap energy from Hinckley Point," I said. "When we pulled out of the EU, China pulled its investment. And gas from Russia's a joke, it's so flippin' expensive. If I didn't have to cook with it I'd have it cut off."

"Yeah, me too," said Brian. "Oh, before I forget, are you going to the bank this week?"

"Yeah, on Thursday," I said. "I've got a day off and I want to talk to them about my pension. Why?"

"Oh, I've got a cheque needs paying in. I'd go myself, but what with the branch closures after all the big banks took their head offices to Frankfurt, I can't find the time or the petrol money to drive fifty miles to my branch. Why do you want to talk to them about your pension?"

"Well, turns out Osborne was right," I said. "Annuity rates are pathetic. My lump sum is going to get me naff all, it's worth about a tenth of what it was before we voted out of the EU. At this rate they'll take me out of work in a box before I can afford to retire. George said it would cost us all thirty-two grand, turns out that was optimistic, more like double that."

"This isn't what Farage and Johnson promised us, is it?" said Brian. "And whatever happened to those two anyway?"

"Boris has got dual American citizenship,"  I said. "Went over the pond and took to the after dinner speech circuit."

"And Farage?"

"Well, you know his wife is German," I replied, "He took off with her to Berlin. I understand he's working for some organisation out there that wants Germany out of the EU. The Deutsche Freiheit Partei I think it's called."

Brian nodded...and winced. "You OK?" I asked.

"Not really," he said. "My back's killing me. Went to the quack last week, he's referred me to the hospital for tests, but apparently what with all those health service cuts and staff shortages after all those nurses were sent back to Europe, there's a six month waiting list."

"Oh great," I said. "Boris and his crew reckoned what with all the money we would save, the NHS would be better off. Ha! What a crock that was!"

There was silence for a while. Brian sipped his pint; I just gazed at mine.

"How's Harry?" I asked. Harry is Brian's son, coming up to eighteen and about to leave school. "Is he going to university or what?"

"He wanted to go to Oxford," said Brian, "But the fees are crippling, especially now you have to pay them up front. Oh for the days of student loans! Then he talked about a gap year, back-packing round Europe, but what with the new Exchange Control regulations, he wouldn't be able to take enough dough to get him much further than Calais, even if he could afford it."

"I wouldn't go to Calais anyway," I said. "Too dangerous, what with the French shooting all of the refugees trying to get into France from Britain."

"I know, ironic isn't it? One thing we were really worried about before Brexit, all that unfettered immigration and now the beggars are queuing up to leave and they can't get out!"

We fell silent again. Behind the bar, the TV was showing the news channel. America President Donald Trump appeared on screen.

The sound was off, but no words were needed to appreciate the fervour with which he was speaking. The ticker at the bottom of the screen said, 'Trump announces start of Mexican Wall construction.'

Brian turned to me, gestured toward the TV, and smiling for the first time that evening, said, "Oh well, it could be worse you know, we could have him in charge!"

"My Fellow Europeans..."

Both sides in the EU referendum debate have been issuing dire warnings of the consequences of not voting their way on 23rd June. Later in the week I'll be speculating on what might happen if we vote Leave, but first here's some guesswork on what the outcome could be if we vote to Remain.

Remember, this is a work of fiction, however EU Directive 89/686/EEC is real, and yes, it does cover oven gloves.

I was talking to my neighbour, Brian, over the garden fence the other day. He's approaching fifty, married, with a son called Harry, who is just coming up to his eighteenth birthday. We were reminiscing about the referendum.

"Hard to believe it's been ten years," I said.

"Yes, a lot of water under the bridge since then," he replied. "I saw that David Cameron on TV last night, flogging his new book and boasting about the brilliant deal he got for Britain when we voted to stay in."

"It was close, wasn't it?" I said. "What was it, 52 to 48 percent? And it wasn't such a good deal in the end either, was it?"

"Something like that," replied Brian, "And no, it wasn't such a good deal."

Brian has been seeing his doctor recently, and I know he's worried. Since the NHS outsourced all GP services to Pfizer (mention TTIP to Brian and he goes a dangerous shade of puce), medical fees have soared, and once he lost his job, Brian struggled to pay his appointment fees.

"I need a scan, apparently," Brian told me. "Trouble is, I can't afford one."

And Brian needs the money for a going away party for Harry anyway. Harry is being conscripted into the European Army in a month or two for his two years of Military Service, and Brian wants to give him a good send off. Naturally Brian is worried about where Harry will end up.

"A nice cushy billet on the Swiss border is what we want," Brian told me. "Not those bloody Turkish-Syrian margins." He shivered theatrically, remembering the body bags and the casual cruelty of the Kobane offensive of 2022.

"I'm sure he'll be OK," I said with more certainty than I felt. "They say it'll all be over by Easter."

Brian snorted, "That's what they said five years ago."

I asked Brian what he was up to now he was out of work.

"Got a voluntary job at the election office this week," he said. "You voting in the local elections on Sunday?"

I looked at him askance; "Got to," I said, "Compulsory now isn't it? EU directive whatever the number is."

"Yes, of course, I was forgetting," said Brian. "Been so many changes, it's hard to keep up."

Compulsory voting came in just a couple of years ago, on pain of a 50 euro fine for failing to attend, vote online or by proxy.

"Mind you, I'm not sure there's much point," I said. "The Greens always win round here, what with Labour and Conservative packing up."

"Remind me, why did the Tories and Labour jack it in?" Brian asked.

"Well, when Brussels accelerated economic and social union they disbanded all national governments. Domestically, what we have now is the equivalent of the old metropolitan or county councils. When they took all of the control to Brussels, they left Westminster with the power to set local community charge rates, how much to fine people for dog fouling and not much else. Johnson and Corbyn tried to carry on, but it was hopeless. No power, no point"

"What year was that? My memory's not what it was."

"2019," I replied. "The same year the pound was abolished. I remember all that kerfuffle with the euro coming in." I smiled, fondly recalling the race to get all the cash handling machines in banks and supermarkets changed over in time for e-Day.

"What happened to Boris and Jeremy anyway?" asked Brian.

"Boris has got dual American citizenship,"  I said. "Went over the pond and took to the after dinner speech circuit."

"And Jeremy?"

"Went off grid, as far as I know. Think he moved to Scotland. Of course, they would have given him a visa, no problem. No immigration checks for people like him."

"Bloody Scots," Brian said. The duplicity of Scots politicians, Nicola Sturgeon in particular, always made his blood boil. "The day that woman convinced us all to vote Remain, then drew up the drawbridge, declared independence and crowed about the North Sea oil revenue was a black day in British history. Still, you'd retired by then hadn't you?" he said, bringing the conversation back to e-Day.

"Yes, not for long though," I replied. "Had to go back to work when that pension pot of mine lost three-quarters of its value when the economy crashed and Brussels introduced those controls on pension funds. The extra European Income Tax didn't help either."

"So what you doing for a living now?" Brian asked.

"EU Directive 89/686/EEC enforcement," I said.

"Oh," Brian replied. "Which one's that again?"

"Oven gloves," I said. "Well, it's more than oven gloves. Basically, I inspect commercial and domestic kitchens to make sure that all PPE - that's personal protective equipment - meets EU standards."

"Interesting, is it?" Brian asked.

"No, it's as boring as sin," I said. "Not found a single non-compliant piece of equipment these last five years. Thought I had found a non-compliant rubber glove last week, turned out to be a false alarm. Still, I do get a company car, nice Volkswagen diesel."

"Didn't diesel's get banned?" asked Brian. He looked puzzled, "I'm sure there was something about emissions."

"They were talking about it. Old Jean-Claude Juncker was spitting feathers apparently, then he came back from a weekend in Wolfsburg and suddenly the EU had signed up for a fleet of Volkswagen diesels for the next thirty years."

"Nice car, is it?" Brian asked.

"It's OK. Mind you, I had the devil's own job learning to drive on the right!" I smiled; "I'll never forget that day we switched from driving on the left to the right! What fun that was!"

Just then, Brian's wife Marion came out, "Brian!" she called, "Mr Bissengaliyev from next door is here, he wants to pick your brains about the election."

" Bissengaliyev?" I asked, "Russian?"

"No, I think he's from Kazakhstan," Brian replied. "Mind you, I could be wrong, what with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan all joining the EU this year, it's hard to be sure."

"What's he do for a living?" I asked.

"Works for Sports Direct at that warehouse down the road apparently. He was telling me he wouldn't have come if he'd known how bad it was going to be. Barely makes minimum wage and he's been on a precarious contract since he got here."

"Precarious contract?" I asked, "What's that?"

"Similar to zero-hours," said Brian. "He's on 24/7 call out, but last week he only worked fifteen hours by all accounts. Got called out four times, twice they sent him home."

"I thought zero-hours contracts got banned?" I said.

"They wanted to," said Brian. "Those employers' groups lobbied Brussels and the opposition evaporated. Typical! Anyway, I'd better get in and see Mr Bissengaliyev. I'll catch you later."

"Yes, see you," I said and went indoors. Walking across the living-room, I turned the television on. And was greeted by the grinning visage of George Osborne, President of the United States of Europe.

"My fellow Europeans," he began...

Chicken Pox And Euro '96

Euro 2016 kicks off tomorrow with France taking on Romania in Paris, but twenty years ago the European Football Championships were held in England, and I ended up watching more of the games on the television than I had originally planned. That year, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner were singing about "Thirty years of hurt" and the nation was hoping that England could add to the 1966 World Cup triumph, but I was preparing to go on holiday the weekend that the tournament started.

Val and I had married in 1995, and at the time she was working for P & O Cruises. As you might expect, heavily discounted prices for cruises were one of the perks of the job, so the first holiday we had together was a Mediterranean cruise on board SS Canberra. We paid the princely sum of £12 per night, each. The total cost of our cruise was significantly lower than most passengers were paying per night. "Whatever you do, don't tell anyone what we are paying," Val implored me on that first trip, the reason being that other passengers tended to be competitive on price and would quite often brag about the discount they got when booking their holiday. Obviously none would have got a deal anywhere near staff rates!

SS Canberra. Picture: cruisehistory.com

Having enjoyed my first cruise (a dose of sea-sickness while crossing the Bay of Biscay apart), and what with prices being so competitive, it was inevitable that we would book another cruise for our 1996 holiday. The only drawback (as far as I was concerned) was that it coincided with the first two weeks of Euro '96. Nowadays I would probably be a lot less bothered, but back then I admit that I was torn between the prospect of an inexpensive, but luxurious, holiday and sitting in front of the TV watching wall-to-wall football.

The holiday itinerary involved driving to Southampton on the day after England kicked off the tournament with a game at Wembley against Switzerland, so at least I would be able to watch that one. By the time we got back to Southampton I expected England to be out of the competition, and how many games I would see while we were away was anyone's guess: mine would have been not many.

But on the Thursday before we were due to depart, I was feeling distinctly peaky; washed out, no energy. I put it down to the weather (it was pretty warm for June), and I went into work on the Friday as usual. By lunchtime I felt terrible. I could barely move and was sent home. By some miracle, I got an appointment at the doctors and went there on the way home. "It's a virus," the doctor told me. Which one, he couldn't tell, nor could he give me any useful prognosis. I went home, feeling like the proverbial "death warmed up," and prayed that come Sunday I would feel a bit better.

Saturday morning dawned and I felt pretty much the same, except now I was covered in blisters. So many blisters that they appeared to be erupting before my very eyes. Now it dawned on me...chicken pox! Looking back, it is a wonder that I didn't realise that was what it was earlier, after all my daughter had just had chicken pox (about two blisters and little in the way of other symptoms), and one of my work colleagues was off sick with it too. That put the tin hat on the holiday, which fortunately cost us nothing to cancel (although we had paid for the car parking upfront and couldn't get that back), and Val cancelled her leave and left me at home to fend for myself.

"Smile," said Val when she took this picture.I didn't think I had much to smile about.

But first, things took a slight turn for the worse. On Sunday morning I awoke feeling a bit wheezy, a bit short of breath, and that worried me. Chicken pox (proper name varicella), is generally quite mild when contracted as a child (witness both of my daughters, whose cases barely registered beyond a few blisters), but can be serious in adults. In fact I knew that a friend of my father caught chicken pox when he was in his 30's or 40's, developed complications when it affected his lungs, and he subsequently died. As you might imagine, this troubled me somewhat, but a course of antibiotics cleared up the problem. In the event that you ever contract chicken pox and develop any sort of breathing problem, please contact your doctor, pronto!

But the antibiotics could do nothing about the blisters. And the most troublesome of them were the ones on the soles of my feet. When Val returned to work, leaving me marooned on the sofa and spending afternoons watching football on the telly, the occasional trip to the kitchen to make a cup of tea was accompanied by much wincing and cursing. Sales of calamine lotion in my area soared as I applied the cool pink liquid to pretty much every part of my body; it would have been easier to bathe in it to be honest.

After a few days I ventured into the garden, hoping that the sun would be good for the blisters - by now I was at least feeling a little more human, even if my nightly ritual still involved anointing myself with calamine lotion before sleeping in the lounge (Val, having had chicken pox as a child, feared the possibility of shingles and banished me from the bedroom).

England 4 Netherlands 1. Picture: Daily Mail

Having to stay at home rather than go on the cruise - and how fortunate was it that the chicken pox made itself known before the holiday, rather than when we were actually aboard ship, in which case I would have ended up in isolation in the ship's hospital - did mean I was able to witness England's progress in the Euros. The stunning 4-1 win over the Netherlands, the nail-biting penalty shoot-out win against Spain, and the almost inevitable defeat by the same method in the semi-final against Germany.

Predictably, England were eliminated by Germany...on penalties. Picture: BBC

By that time I was feeling well enough to venture out (I was no longer infectious), but in an attempt not to attract attention since I was still rather spotty, I wore a hat and dark glasses as Val and I walked to one of our local pubs, where I kept a low profile and sat in the beer garden.

The Harrow, Hornchurch, where I tried to remain inconspicuous in the beer garden. Picture: beerintheevening.com

It would be nice to think that England can at least match their performance from 1996 in this year's European Championships, but even if they don't, at least I shouldn't get chicken pox this time round - or anything else, I hope!

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Rarely has the aphorism, "there are lies, damned lies and statistics"  been more apposite than among the multitude of facts and figures being pumped out by both sides of the EU referendum debate. Even on the rare occasions where both side agree on a matter of fact as a starting point, they then extrapolate and manipulate to reach wildly different conclusions.

U-turn? What u-turn?

A central plank of the Leave campaign is that we currently pay £350 million per week into the EU budget and that withdrawing would free up this money, which is enough to fund the building of a new hospital every week and pay for 600,000 new nurses for the NHS. Nonsense, claim Remain campaigners. Not only does this figure fail to account for Britain's rebate, it also fails to consider payments made by the EU to the UK. Some claim that our net contribution to the EU actually amounts to 'just' £136 million per week, a still not inconsiderable sum but whatever figure you chose to believe, there are no guarantees on how any money saved would be spent.

The Remainers will point to a report from the independent  research group, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who say that although withdrawal from the EU would improve UK public finances by £8 billion[1], Brexit could mean two further years of "austerity,"  with a reduction in GDP leading to an increase in our deficit of between £20 billion and £40 billion in 2019–20. But this is just so much speculation; no country has yet exited the EU, there are no precedents to draw on and the effect of Brexit could just as easily be an increase in GDP.

If the value of Britain's contribution - which ought to be verifiable, but clearly isn't - is debatable, then yet more contentious are some of the other figures bandied about, particularly those projected by Chancellor of The Exchequer, George Osborne. Brexit would mean every household in Britain being £4,300 worse off per annum by 2030 according to George, since Britain's withdrawal would cause the economy to shrink by 6% over the next fourteen years. Except of course there is no evidence to support that claim and the £4,300 figure is a representation of how GDP could shrink per head of the population. It is total misrepresentation to claim that everyone will be over four grand a year worse off. It is equally possible that the economy could grow by 6% over the next fourteen years; experience shows that economic forecasts are rarely accurate, there are simply too many variables.

Would you buy a used statistic from this man?

Osborne also claims that Brexit would cost pensioners as much as £32,000. This is based on the assumption that having left the EU, Britain would be faced with rising inflation, falling asset prices and other economic woes which would erode pension values. On the other side of the coin there are pensions experts who predict that pensions would fall if Britain remains in the EU since regulations on the value of cash reserves that insurers are required to keep would drive down the rates on the annuities purchased from pension pots and similarly, final salary pensions schemes would lose out as Brussels introduces controls on them, increasing costs and causing some schemes to close.

When Britain voted on the EU in 1975 it was membership of the Common Market that we were considering. The Common Market was little more than a glorified trade bloc, but one that had delusions of grandeur, and having transmogrified itself into the European Union, it is now an organisation that its detractors claim interferes in too many aspects of our daily lives. EU supporters will claim that it has protected and improved workers' rights throughout the continent with directives such as The Working Time Regulations, however trade union officials both in the UK and outside  consider the EU to be anything but a workers' paradise. Enrico Tortolano, campaign director for Trade Unionists Against The EU says that the case for Britain to leave is stronger than ever, while Norwegian trade unionists believe that they have enjoyed many additional rights and privileges as a direct result of Norway remaining outside the EU. In Sweden workers who saw their terms and conditions of employment deteriorate found that their case went unsupported in the European Court of Justice, who according to the Morning Star, "made it explicit that business and employers’ freedoms trump all workers’ protections."

"A resounding No to continued membership of the EU should be coming from the working-class socialist movement"  Enrico Tortolano.

Ah, say some, but remaining in the EU surely must be good for the NHS, which remains one of this country's most prized assets. NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens has warned that Brexit would be extremely harmful to the NHS, with a possible recession damaging investment in the health service. It is possible, however that our continued membership of the EU might force the break up and privatisation of the NHS through the implementation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

Last week an article in the Evening Standard suggested that Britain could lose control of Gibraltar in the event that we vote to leave the EU, if combined with a victory for the centre-right Partido Popular in the Spanish elections on 26th June. It is of course, equally possible to argue that our continued membership of the EU makes a decision from Brussels to hand control of the Rock over to the Spanish just as likely.

But what about all that pettifogging red tape that Brussels insists in wrapping business up in? Is it really essential for there to be 109 EU laws regarding pillow cases, or 52 relating to toasters (if there are that many for pillow cases, I would have expected the total for toasters to be greater), or 1,200 about bread, or 12,000 concerning milk? Who knows, because is it really possible to keep abreast of that number of directives? Freed from these bureaucratic shackles, which apply whether a company trades with the EU or not, British companies could flourish. Or that is one argument; another would be that they would still have to comply with all of these directives if they traded with the EU, so Brexit would not significantly reduce the amount of red-tape. And anyway, as successive British administrations have proved, Whitehall is equally as adept at passing legislation that companies claim strangles their business.

Unlike General Elections, whatever decision we reach on 23rd June is not one we are likely to be able to reconsider in five years time and reverse if we are unhappy with the outcome. Which is why, in order to make an informed decision, we need facts not speculation and thoughtful consideration of potential outcomes rather than the hyperbolic  purple prose employed by both sides in this debate.

Jeremy Corbyn voted out in 1975 and would be likely to do so now if he were still a back bencher claims his long-time friend and journalist Tariq Ali. Corbyn now backs the Remain campaign.

In the 1975 referendum,  it was 67% to 33% in favour of staying in the Common Market but polls suggest that this time round it will be a lot closer. As many as 20% of voters remain undecided on which way to cast their vote, and I include myself among them. Making my mind up is proving difficult, because frankly I don't know which side to believe - most of the time I don't believe either of them. The scaremongering and peddling of the most dubious of 'facts' has been on a scale unprecedented in any political campaign I can remember. If you believe some of the stories from the Remain camp, without the EU to wipe our noses and ties our shoelaces, Britain will be like a weak and frightened child in a bewildering adult land, while the Leave supporters forget that the world is a very different place from what it was before we joined the Common Market and that disentangling ourselves from and subsequently dealing with the EU may make the most acrimonious of divorces seem like a genteel tea party.

All I know is that this is the most important decision the public have been asked to make since, well 1975 probably, and I hope and pray we make the right one - whatever it is.

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[1] See http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/8296