10th May

More rain first thing in the morning. Very quickly becoming the norm now. I think I might start a graph of rain versus morning journeys.

As I get to my desk John tells me about a broken hadle on the ground floor hot water dispenser. We provided these in all tea points so that people could make their hot drinks direct from hot taps. The one on the ground floor is the newest but the handle has broken off. At first we suspect that the people have been a bit heavy-handed in its use. We discuss replacements withe Steve and come up with an idea to use the one from the second floor and replace that later as there is a real need to have the hot water available to people - no alternative available. As we do more research i change my opinion. I now think that we had a faulty boiler and that people were being heavy-handed in an attempt to make it work.

The Essex County Council agent comes over to inspect the for they will be renting from us. He's doing an initial snagging walkaout. We stroll round the floor. I think he's a bit of an ass - met him before and he's a it pompous' hence my dislike -  and this visit completely reinforces my view. He doesn't find much but I suspect that I'll have a very detailed list soon.

I spend a couple of hours with Steve walking through the work still outstanding. We've got the usual suspects to worry about: windows, floors, engineers and windows - OK, I know I said that twice but they're very, very, very unreliable.

I go through the finances and sign-off invoices and paperwork. I then notice that my figures are different to the management company's and decide to check and see where the discrepancies lie. I state pulling together the info.

I round off the afternoon by writing up appraisal meeting notes.