Posted by DMC on Mar 6, 2009 in
Diary Returned home today having had a great time. I managed, just, with Michael’s help and some understanding stewards on the aircraft.
Apart from resigning from the golf club I have also resigned from my last arbitration. It was a very heavy case and likely to go on for some months. Being unable to write legibly, without great effort, I could see no way that I could run a hearing with two heavyweight lawyers appearing before me. It’s not so much a question of giving up as readjusting. I am, after all, approaching 75 so I suppose that it is no shame to want to take things a little easier. As President of the Arbitration Club I shall continue to attend lunches in London as long as I am able to adjust my dress after going to the lavatory. I’ve had 40 pairs of trousers fitted with Velcro, instead of buttons and clips, and fitted my zips with key rings.
At least, to date, despite continuing violent fasciculations, my legs are still working perfectly well and I’m able to walk several miles at a time. I am now well over a year since diagnosis so it doesn’t look as though I’m going to expire in the average 14 month timescale.
(Indeed, one doctor said that fasciculations were observed in a medical check-up as far back as 2005, so it may well be that I am already some years into the disease although it did not manifest itself until 12 months ago.) Anyway, I was told that one in 10 MND sufferers can live for 10 years, so I told the doctors I would take that option! So we will see.
Tags: arbitration, Arbitration Club, golf, lavatory, prognosis, velcro
Posted by DMC on Jul 30, 2009 in
Diary Dropped off my Australian friends mid-morning. Michael heading for Gottenberg and Kate for Paris.
This was the evening of the dinner given for me at the Atheneum Club in Pall Mall, organized by my good friend John Tackerberry QC and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
There was a wonderful turnout of 50 plus in a beautiful private room. We had drinks in the garden which it shares with the Travellers Club and one other. The food and wine were delicious and the John’s speech kind and flattering but most important he quite rightly acknowledged Alice’s very important role in my life and therefore her contribution to whatever modest achievements I am said to have made.
My humble contribution seem to go down extremely well, I was lucky, I felt in particularly good form and had a very receptive audience. I cannot resist repeating here the two anecdotes, relating to the Athenaeum, with which I started my talk. I do hope the second one does not give offence to anyone but it was meant to have happened. (Allegedly!!)
“When Sarah, John’s PA, told me that the venue would be the Atheneum and not Willes Road Chambers, which I initially suspected would more than adequately accommodate the number of interested persons, I was reminded of the possibly apocryphal story of F.E Smith ……(who) was the conservative Lord Chancellor and personal friend of Winston Churchill’s, whose habit it was to lunch at Whites and on the way back to the House to drop in to the Atheneum to relieve himself. After the fourth or fifth visit the hall porter said, “Excuse me sir, are you a member?” “Oh,” said the Lord Chancellor,” is this a club too?”
F.E Smith, was a renowned wit, as a 1924 entry in Evelyn Waugh’s diary records. When an English High Court judge presiding in a sodomy case sought advice on sentencing from Lord Birkenhead. “Could you tell me,” he asked, “what do you think one ought to give a man who allows himself to be buggered?” Birkenhead replied without hesitation, “Oh, thirty shillings or two pounds; whatever you happen to have on you.”
It was a lovely evening and I was greatly honoured and flattered by so many kind and important people turning out to acknowledge the modest contribution I have made to arbitration.
Tags: arbitration, dinner, friends
