This is the view I was treated to when I returned to my old office.

After two weeks in the new office, I had cause to go back to the old office. I was greeted by a sight if devastation, the general consensus was that the office furniture would be reused, as can be seen from the picture that is far from what happened. The furniture had been reused, just the same way it would have been reused in Beirut. All though not the best office furniture in the world, these were perfectly serviceable desks and could easily have been recycled into something better than match sticks. Anyway, I decided to have a quick wander round the offices and take some pictures, this after all will probably be the last time I’m in these offices. The following pictures were taken on the 15th of June 2010, this as I have already said was thought to be my last visit to the old offices. Things didn’t quite turn out the way that I thought they would, I was to be back for several days to sort out this or that.

Oh look how clean it is!

When I returned to the office a few days later, all the debris had been moved and the office had been cleaned from top to bottom. The transformation was amazing, the cleaners had done an outstanding job – in fact the office looked cleaner than I had ever seen it. The whole floor of the building had been gutted and all the desks had been removed along with all the cupboards, filing cabinets and the associated rubbish accumulated over the almost 30 years that the office had been unchanged. Before I move on from this post I would like to say that the pictures have been taken using the camera in my mobile phone, so the quality may not be all that it could be on these pictures.