18th

I've been pondering a certain passage in my young friend's recent email with an uneasy heart: "PWM basically consists of babysitting rich, pampered individuals". He doesn't quite say it, but the implication is that we generally dislike, even loathe, our clients.

Is that true? It's been bothering me. Perhaps, in general, it is. Perhaps our dislike is all the stronger because we understand that we depend on them for our bread and butter. Albeit very good quality, handmade ciabatta bread and organic Belgian butter.

All the same, it can't be universally true or it wouldn't bother me.

I've spent the weekend as the guest of a client. He's no one special, not even particularly rich. A light industry entrepreneur who sold out too early and hasn't found anything else to make money in since. Somewhere around the £4m investable assets mark. Ah, you'll say, but he must have a big house as well, and in this market... Actually, no. He doesn't even own a house. So, yes, he's a wealthy man, but as HNWIs go my client T is a pretty small fish.

I consider T a real friend.

He's a curious fellow, though. For the fourteen years that he has been my client, T has had just one enduring ambition: to give his only daughter an 18th birthday to be proud of, in a house to leave her friends speechless. His ambition has never quite been matched by his wealth, yet nine years ago T came up with an ingenious plan.

He discovered that the National Trust is occasionally prepared to rent certain of its properties to individuals of good character. I found this rather surprising, and I imagine you will too. Nevertheless, he applied to rent a particular house in the west country - a fine pile with a magnificent marble staircase - and was granted a twenty-year lease. He and his family sold their four-bedroom rhododendron-infested Barratt home in Surrey and took up their new position as lord-and-family of the manor.

His explanation to me, when I first went to visit him: "Look at that staircase. When Sarah is 18 (she was 9 at the time), all her friends will be here to celebrate her birthday and she's going to come down that staircase in the most beautiful dress money can buy, and everyone is going to be swept away by her."

So you see, it was all about the staircase.

This weekend was Sarah's 18th birthday. I was honoured to be invited - one of the few oldies. But then as I say, T and I are good friends.

It transpired exactly as T had always planned. Sarah is not particularly beautiful (please let T never read this!), but on Saturday night, as she stood sweetly hesitant at the top of that marble flight of stairs, I swear my old heart leapt in concert with all the young bowtied blades around me as we gazed up in respectful adoration of the birthday girl.

She did look so very lovely.

Was that moment worth twenty years' National Trust rent and the prospect of no house at the end of it? Perhaps it was. I find it so difficult to judge the value of things these days. Real things, I mean. All I can say is, it was a very special fragment of my time on this earth.

And it was a hundred times' that for Sarah and her tearfully proud father.