Counting the cost

You know how it is when you are away on holiday or business. You glibly invite everyone you meet to come and stay with you if they are ever in your area. You never really expect they will so you can imagine my surprise when a coach party of Japanese umbrella enthusiasts rocked up to my house in Blacbury over the weekend. They were people I had apparently met during my launch tour of JUBBLIES in Japan a month or so ago.

What could I do? It would have been extremely rude to have turned them away so that was obviously my initial plan. But they ended up crashing on my floor. And then ate all of my croissants. And fishfingers (raw).

One good thing came out of it, however. A few years ago BUBB developed a full cost recovery toolkit to enable umbrella manufacturers to calculate the true cost of making umbrellas and the resultant value of them to society to ensure that they then charge a fair price. We had millions of these things printed and have not even come close to recovering our costs on producing it despite ceaseless plugging of it at conferences. As such, I have boxes of the wretched thing in my shed.

Luckily I was able to do a deal with the Japanese on them taking them off my hands. Apparently, the type of paper they are printed on is ideal for origami. Result.

Today I am back in the office unfortunately but on the plus side it is BUBB's annual "bring your pet to work day" so Barkles will get a chance to terrorise Fab Jobsworth's rare breed pig (Oxford Sandy & Black, naturally). I expect Geof Sachell will bring in his pet snake (and then pretend it has gone missing in my office) while Hector will doubtless bring in his parrot to repeat everything I say. The rest of the staff will bring in their sheep (Oxford Down, naturally) which will then unquestionably follow me about the office all day. Should be fun.