16 JUNE 1990, Page 18

Ill wind and wave

BUSY days for my friend the barrister — a commercial silk whose arrival at a com- pany's sick-bed tends to signal that the case has been diagnosed as terminal. He is cancelling his social engagements, as pap- ers flood in from every side. Life has not been so hectic since the property and financial collapses of the 1970s. 'Once again', he says, 'we are riding on the trough of a wave.'