The financial adviser

came to see us yesterday.
It is a once a year visit. He's a very nice person and it was his suggestion that he come to us rather than we go to him. He actually made this suggestion about five years ago. 
It's a bit of a tradition now. The secretary in his company sends out reminders that the annual review is due. I send him a message saying it has arrived. He suggests a time and I send a message back promising to make him coffee.  He arrives early or on time. He has never been late.
Our affairs are simple. The only reason we have an adviser is because of the complexities of superannuation. He deals with those. Apart from that he and the Senior Cat will have a little chat about other things. 
A waste of his time? No, not according to him.
    "I don't mind in the least," he told me again, "You rarely call on me. If you do I know it is for something I will need to handle."
It is immensely civilised and made me think of the way that "house visits" have almost entirely stopped. I don't know of a single doctor who now does house visits. There was one but he has retired. 
When the Senior Cat needed to update his will after our mother died he went to the solicitor. When the solicitor retired and we were advised that the business would be taken over by a large, impersonal firm the Senior Cat asked someone else he knew to take on his affairs. She did come to visit but she happens to be a member of the same congregation and he had helped her children with study skills. It was not quite the same thing - and certainly something she would normally not even consider.
My paternal grandfather, a tailor, went to his customers. That even involved visits to Government House - in order to make uniforms for the Governors of the state - and on to the ships in the nearby port to make uniforms for the naval officers. 
My maternal grandfather, an engineer who specialised in making, repairing and even occasionally designing precision tools, went to his clients and brought back their tools to work on. They did not come to him.
It all seems reversed now. A friend of mine needed her sewing machine repaired recently. Once someone would have come to her. She is much too frail to even lift her machine. Fortunately her favourite taxi driver, a man she knows well, took the machine to the repair company without a murmur. He carried it into the business in question and then stood there and waited while she spoke to them about the problem.
    "He told me he wasn't going to let them cheat me," she told me later, "But how rare is that?
Rare indeed.
I know it is all too rare. It is why I sent our visitor back to the office with home made shortbread for everyone.