Foskett's Day (July 2003)

Friday,  12.45pm
"Is it okay if I go now, Peter" Gracie calls from the front office, "it seems pretty quiet and I can get the banking done before my lunch?"

"Yes, go ahead" I reply.  "I've just got to finish amending this blasted Laburnums inventory and I'll be off for a bite too".  I hear derisive laugh from my staff, as it departs, leaving me on my todd.

(For the record her name is really Anne Fields; but, with that glutinous Lancashire accent, unmodified by half a lifetime here in the deep south, to me she's been Gracie from the day I hired her, three years ago.  As receptionists/ secretaries go these days she's pretty good.  I've rarely had to cover my ears in embarrassment at her dealings across the counter with prospective tenants, nor often felt obliged to run from my inner sanctum and snatch the phone from her hand, to protect Foskett Property Management's reputation with one of its clients.  she doesn't cost me a fortune in wages either;  a hangover from the old North-South divide, I guess.)

The inventory in question, and the reason for Gracie's laugh, was for one of the few furnished properties still on my books.  A historical accident, The Laburnums is a bungalow inherited by four sisters from the shires, originally full to the eaves with unsuitable furniture, their "birthright" perhaps, which they refused to jettison.  For once, I 'm grateful that modern legislation provided me with justification to get shot of the non-compliant beds and upholstered furniture.  But that still left cupboards full of clutter.  With each change of tenant, usually a six-monthly event as The Laburnums is no one's ideal home, I've packed up another crate or two and hauled it up into the roof space.  But still the remaining quantity seems to take an eternity to check;  not least because, despite my threatening notes to incoming tenants about the crucial importance of putting every item back in its proper place before they leave, somehow I always find myself hunting in the "left hand storage cupboard above the worktop" for the" Moulinex meat mincer with accessories" only to find it in the conservatory, while the plastic cake box containing assorted candles, light bulbs and shoe-cleaning kit is never correctly located in the under sink cupboard, but more likely in the garden shed, or, memorably, in the boiler cupboard, where 7 tins of Kiwi and Cherry Blossom had melted, and, since the central heating had by then been off for a couple of months, formed an inch-thick crust on the bottom of the box in which the assorted candles, light bulbs and shoe brushes were now trapped.

Even as Gracie goes out of the door I'm thinking "Sod's law, her 'pretty quiet' spell will come to a sudden end any minute now".  Then the sky falls in:  the bell on the fax machine rings, followed by the phone itself ringing:  at which moment I hear four or five voices in the outer office.  "Oh hell", I say to myself, "now the bloody Laburnums will have to wait for another day.  Unless somebody out there is looking for a job as a part-time inventory clerk!"