Brace or Fell

Jean Pettifer’s kitchen has a table you could land a helicopter on and one chair that is hers, and at half past nine on Tuesday morning there were six of us round it and a man called Barry on speakerphone from an office in Ipswich.

“Right,” said Jean. “Miss Maddox has done us a report. Miss Maddox, how long is it?”

“Nine pages.”

“Barry, have you read it?”

“I’ve read the summary, Jean.”

“Read the whole thing before Thursday or I shall come to Ipswich.” Jean folded her hands. “Go on, then.”

I went on. I did it in about six minutes, because Jean Pettifer is seventy-four and has chaired that Trust for nineteen years and does not need the same sentence twice. Decay at the seaward buttress, quantified, roughly thirty-eight per cent of the section at three hundred millimetres. A fork at six metres with bark inclusion and a…