[The Philpott]

Nothing more spectacular than a golfing umbrella- now 30yrs old but I can't grumble at the quality- I retired it once in favour of a replacement, which turned inside out on its first outing, victim of a force 3 breeze. The old one came out of retirement and has a habit of always finding its way home. In the nineties it got left in 3 pubs, one office party, shops, etc. I guess it doesn't look worth stealing.

I copped a expensive free meal and as much red wine and cigars as I could take courtesy of a salvage company back in the day, then found out later that the invitation shouldn't have been extended down to 'grunts' and I had effectively been invited by accident. (Expletive deleted..)

I and 12 others were left as a skeleton crew in a decaying office block designed for 250 bods, in charge of a portfolio that a different branch had 'refused' to take on until 12 extra weeks had passed. We then found out that all the other departees had arrived at the shiny new stalag to find a gift of a bottle of Moet and a box of chocolates on their desks. Did we get freebies..? Yes we darn well did, but only after the union rep did his stuff.

This hollow building became more sinister as the smell of rotting started to be noticed in the lift, especially first thing in the morning.. There was fun to be had speculating about the possible cause, and the smell started to worsen day by day.

It turns out that the cause was quite mundane- the canteen staff had been laid off when we moved buildings and on being told they could not take the leftovers from the freezers simply....switched the freezers off. Amongst other comestibles, several pounds of frozen prawns were fighting to get out by the time the cause had been discovered.

I still recall the security guard looking on in silence as fire extinguishers, clocks and anything that wasnt bolted down made its way out of the building in the last few days.

Sorry to lower the tone.