The Annual Fishy Week!

My actions the other night would have seemed strange to the casual observer. I put some receipts at the back of my desk, placed a paperweight upon them and muttered, "Lowestoft Fish."  Readers might be interested in, or at least amused by the explanation.

Many years ago now, in the days when my accounting career began - against a rural Norfolk background - my week included a number of routine jobs that needed to be done every day.  Similarly, there were other tasks that were weekly in nature, and depended upon those daily jobs being completed first.

At the end of the financial year in that pre-computerised age, one of the most boring, seemingly interminable, and yet one of the most significant challenges was the evaluation of the end-of-year stocktaking.  It fell to me to insert a price on every item of every stock sheet, so that others could then calculate the cost of each line, and the total value of each sheet.  Those of greater seniority would then compile the grand total and feed it into the preparation of the company's accounts.

One day my boss came into the office, spotted a great heap of stock sheets on the side of my desk, and asked, with feigned innocence, what I was doing.  My reply, listing those daily and weekly tasks that comprised my normal work, was met by a firm, polite, but embarrassing reprimand, stating in no uncertain terms that my single priority had to be pricing stock sheets . . . "until they're all done!"  Baulking no rebuttal, he turned on his heel, and went out.

Minutes later, his anger cooled, the boss returned, and in his hand was a flat box, rather like those seen sometimes by a supermarket check-out, having been emptied of their former contents of fruit and vegetables.  He asked me to place the regular work that I'd been doing into the box, along with anything else from my desk that related to the new financial year.  The box was then placed prominently on top of the filing cabinet and I, together with the rest of the office staff, were instructed that all new-year work that came into the office was to be placed there, and not attended to until the stock evaluation had been completed.

The box was white, and on its side, in bright green letters that linger in my memory even now, were the words, 'LOWESTOFT FISH'.  The expression quickly became a part of office vocabulary, and the box stayed with me when I moved a couple of years later to take charge of my own department in the company, where I took great pride in passing on the lesson I'd learned.

Ten years or more later, fortunes had changed, and I found myself in another situation.  Meanwhile, Keith, my former boss, had also left that company and by then was working as an accounting 'temp.'  In that capacity, he came to work for me and, during the few weeks that we again shared an office, we also smiled over the history of 'Lowestoft Fish'.

Even now, although I have no box nor the need for one, and the valuation of stock sheets is a thing of the past, I recall those days with a kind of pleasure, still remembering that I have to complete last year's accounts - at least to a draft stage - before I can process transactions relating to my new financial year.

So, how has the new year begun for me?  This week has felt good.  It began with a planned trip to a hospital in Newcastle on Monday, and then came another (less-) early start for Sunbury-on-Thames on Tuesday, matched by a late finish, which began in the mid-afternoon with a delivery to a bar near Cambridge bus station.  Afterwards came an attempt to find the main theatre in the maze of Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital, followed by unusually slow service at the nearby Little Chef.  Wednesday was a relaxing day, with two deliveries to chemists' shops in south Essex, and a couple more local jobs in the afternoon.

The big drain on the week's energy stocks began on Wednesday evening, when an 8.20 call invited me to collect some goods locally to be at Hexham General Hospital for 9.0am.  You can imagine how much - or how little! - sleep I had that night!  An early night on Thursday was also partly justified by the air pollution caused by someone moving the Sahara Desert, but I was OK by Friday morning for an interesting pair of jobs delivering to Corby and then collecting just outside March for a promotional firm in the local village of Anstey.  The week then finished with novelty.

I collected in Stevenage for an address in Redditch, with the advice that, although the firm to whom the package was going actually left off at 5.0pm, because they wanted to use it that evening, someone would stay on to receive it.  Unsurprisingly, there was a hold-up on the M1, so I phoned ahead to let them know when I would arrive, and during the course of my onward journey I received two separate texts to advise alternative delivery addresses. When I finally handed over my charge, conversation revealed that I had delivered a powerful blade that would shortly be utilised in cutting a trench in the M6, in connection with a road-widening plan!

The opening story of rural Norfolk is balance by my joyful experience this afternoon.  For the second time this season, I watched 'my' team, Diss Town, play football.  They turned out in their away strip against Haverhill Rovers.  I recalled that towards the end of last season I'd watched them play in this light blue strip and win 4-0, and wondered whether this might be a repeat performance.  Not quite, but I was quite satisfied to see them win 3-0, and gain three points against a team nine places above them in the league.