How it all began...

The 'Black Book'

Actually rather unglamorously, it all started with an argument, as it often does, disrupting the status quo. Which sometimes needs desperately to be disrupted. It was November 2014. I shouted down the phone to my mum 'for God's sake, at least bloody let me look after dad's estate!' (she rejects help for absolutely anything, shopping, tidying, painting walls etc etc. Drives me insane. Literally). To which she said 'Ok' after 14 years of saying no. Within 5 minutes I was on the phone to her financial advisor who can do no wrong in her eyes. In 2 days we were at her house, wading through the crazy debris to get to her kitchen table with her officially handing me over the estate to run. This took the symbolic form of what the Marlborough calls 'The Black Book' - an inventory and valuation done at my father's death in 2001 by Bill Jackson. All pre-digital so the pictures are sometimes a little fuzzy and/or a little wonky. Initially rather charming, eventually rather annoying. But bloody useful. 
The journey begins...