FYI…

I’ve NOT stopped writing this.

I’ve just run up against the issue that WordPress free sites do not have the ability for people to sign up and the first level of the paying plan is £20.83 per month.

That’s more than I pay for virtually all the rest of my social media tools – in total, pretty much. One is $5.99, another is $9.99 and so on.

Sooooo, I’ve taken the step of moving Re: Accountancy inside one of my websites where I use the same tools, the same WordPress functions but I can do lots more.

And the extra cost over and above the website cost is

£Nil…

So come along to the Outsourced Finance Director home page and it’s the second from the right in the menu. Heading currently a little bit fluid so I’ll update this post once the new title’s pinned down.

A head full of thoughts

Considering it’s a four day week it’s proving both busy and a lot less busy than the week before Easter.

Don’t mind busy – as long as it’s constructively busy and I’m not turning procrastination into an art form – but a bit left over for R&R and thinking room never goes amiss…

The weekend break was welcome, although I must say I FINALLY relaxed mid-way through Monday evening which was not how I’d have chosen it but hey there we are and at least it was before Tuesday morning which would have been just toooooooo sad.

The millennial spent the Easter break in Munich and has just moved on to Vilnius (Lithuania if you weren’t sure. Baltic state if your not sure where Lithuania is. Can’t help if Baltic State doesn’t ring any bells.) which is obviously what you do if you’re a student and it’s your final year and finals are coming up soon – but what do I know and since at least the accommodation was provided in exchange for blog and Instagram posts it’s a potentially lucrative business model, assuming you get sufficient of an audience to get decent 4* and 5* collaborations and not student digs for your efforts.

If you don’t believe me, go look! And here… and doubtless many other social media channels I know nothing about – and, for my generation, I do know quite a few.

Actually I am most impressed. She has organically top three rankings on Google for both the flyaway girl and theflyawaygirl which should be the top two search terms people are likely to look for. Interestingly Google our surname – which is slightly rare (how rare? just one in the whole of the UK’s telephone directories rare) – and it’s me (43%) against her (8%) and her mother (4%) which is not my recollection from last time I looked before she went to University.

So the brand is the thing – which is as it should be.

And as I said last week I’m getting a trip to Istanbul out of it.

Contrast her mother who is nearly COMPLETELY invisible by name on Google. 164 results? You ought to get more just from your social media presence!

Weather-wise it’s a bright and sunny day which is a real novelty this last few weeks. Bit chilly this morning but I’ll take that over the unremitting doom and gloom of the last week or two. With the “iffy” back and shoulders I seem to be my very own barometer which has proved a little challenging this winter with cold and snow interspersed with rain and damp.

I do feel for parents having to keep young ones occupied this Easter vacation. Pretty certain it can’t be much fun. One of my clients’ administrator described her children as stir crazy the other day and I feel sure she was looking forward to getting back to work!

Right. That’s my osteopath challenged. I’d like to think I make her day. I don’t want to know what she thinks…

The iffy back went twang on me yesterday – bizarre sensation I can only describe as like an elastic band snapping, I said something very rude and leapt (another word the spelling checker didn’t have – presume Americans use “leaped”?) around the room – I’ve been upping the painkiller dose these last couple of weeks because of the cold and damp and excessive work load. Very achy but the work levels needed achieving so I assume this must have had something to do with it. Dropped the levels yesterday after the event and again today – probably to too low a dose in retrospect as a different twang earlier this afternoon, this one akin to getting cramp throughout my back – whole thing feels like it’s twisting round corners.

Sigh.

Ho hum. I WAS going to talk about work but too much of it this week is “stuff” I wouldn’t want blogged about – even anonymously – if it was my business.

So let’s just look forward to the weekend after next and our long weekend in Madrid. It’s things like that that make the rest of it worthwhile.

TGIT

Thank God it’s Thursday?

Well it is Easter and a few days vegetating never did anyone any harm…

Not actually got anything planned. Lorraine is having a cataract operation as I write so it didn’t seem sensible to plan anything until we know how she has reacted to it.

Sort of suck it and see I suppose.

Dang – we need emojis on this platform!

There is a temptation to see just how many sight jokes and puns I can do before my brain explodes but I can’t see the point of it really.

Cringe.

Die Tochter has come up trumps (can’t use that word without wanting to punch something – walls, windows, you know) with a plus one on a press trip she’s been invited on at the end of May. Istanbul no less with flights paid for as far as I can understand.

Four days including travel and I will return on a Friday and go on holiday on the Saturday! Bless. Just take the laptop and it’ll all work out I suppose. Penelope initially wanted to take both of us (on a +1 so it’s good to see the school fees weren’t wasted) so she was going to take her VA but she didn’t have her passport details (but she does have her parents’. Don’t ask) so I’m going.

Why me and not her mother? Well Lorraine has been moaning for ages that I don’t go away much any more so she can’t have craft-y outbreaks (hides in her room, only emerging for meals and the loo) and being able to do it with a clear conscience does have its advantages.

Also it does mean having to share with the daughter, which means becoming a mobile talking alarm clock and sharing a room with someone whose body clock goes off on one on regular occasions – and she’s impossible to wake up – so one of us has got a good deal, just not completely sure which one of us it is!

Feeling reasonably pleased a client has let me down. Don’t often hear someone saying that but, if they hadn’t, it would have meant cramming another day’s work in a four day week so, on balance… and they can pick up any monetary problems arising as I did chase, by email, and copied both directors in.

Still the email torrent rages. Yesterday I did a big tidy up but in the period from 17.00 to 21.30 another 21 arrived. It’s getting to be an achievement to get the Inbox total under 250 where once I’d have managed 50…

I notice 50-ish are dated 2017 or before. If I’m honest about it, I can’t see anything that old ever being dealt with so maybe just lose them but you still have to file some of them so set aside an hour or more and maybe they can go.

Excellent Dilbert cartoon the other day. Spent all day doing the to do list not leaving any time to actually work. Must see if I can import it here. No I can’t but you can find it yourself here.

Communication from the operated on one. Can collect her in 20 minutes. Oddly we live within walking distance but obviously it will depend on her. Actually the traffic might NOT be too bad as lots of people will have sloped off early I suspect but we shall see…

Oh dear.

Stuff. I’m tired. A nap would be much appreciated unless the invalid (if she IS an invalid) needs attention. The yawns are coming thick and fast so prefer not driving but at least it’s not 100 miles like Tuesday. I was supposed to be going to a networking event but presciently gave my apologies. Otherwise I’d have needed to set out ten minutes before I got in!

Just had a text – Bealk. No, I didn’t either so I DID check and walk it is. Enough for one day. Just find a photo when I return.

Fake’s suck!

And other spoonerisms…

I am still too busy. That and the continuing saga from last week. Actually, the continuing saga from last week I haven’t got round to mentioning! I could have SWORN I had but it looks like I haven’t.

It’s all very well donating time rather than money. You can give a lot to a worthwhile cause without having to part with the readies so, if said readies are not overabundant, it’s a good way of making a difference.

However – and it is a BIG however – if said time starts to expand to take over one’s life, that probably wasn’t in the “job” description.

I’m treasurer, no surprise there then.

But following some unforeseeable health issues I’m also chairman. Having previously been vice-chair. And again, no big deal under normal circumstances.

But an issue from the past that we (trustees collectively) thought had been put to bed suddenly reared its head again and one of the senior management team hands in their notice.

Bugger.

So, at a time I’m doing my treasurer bit regarding 2018 budgets and forecasts and 2017 statutory accounts for an AGM that’s set in stone, we’ve not only got a recruitment issue on our hands but it seems to have upset various other parties – including ones that are the probable cause of the issue in the first place!

Which means (if I’m not careful) this pro bono involvement can suck two or three hours a day every day OUT of a diary that has no room in it in any case.

Sigh…

Just feeling sorry for myself, nothing terminal.

We are not going to get the replacement on board in time for a seamless transfer so we’re dependent on other members of the senior management team stepping up. Don’t THINK there’ll be a problem and I HAVE said we can get temporary cover for any uncovered areas but it’s all unproven so you can’t know for certain.

Fingers crossed.

One thing I do know for sure is that we’d never have coped with this a few years ago but the quality of the undertaking – staff and knowledge – is so much better now I do believe we will.

And other people are relying on the service we provide and you really DON’T want to let them down. Can’t give too much detail as I don’t want to identify the industry and wash our dirty (or otherwise) linen in public.

Fingers crossed. Again…

Wish me luck.

Actually it’s been a very pro bono week all round. Young Enterprise Monday evening and Town Council last night. Can lead to excessively long days with – twice so far this week – no formal break during the day. Not that I’d have WANTED to go for my lunchtime walk on a couple of occasions this week. Torrential rain one day. More monsoon than March showers.

As you can tell when walking down the footpath to the next road. Water cascades down our road and the “cut” is the continuation thereof. Which means you can go wading (I exaggerate but not excessively so) which means the hall carpet gets a bashing and is covering in mud (hopefully) and seeds and various other plant matter.

A few years ago I managed to use my Town Council position to get some wood gratings to divert a lot of the flow off into the adjacent woods but we do need to make sure that the channels between the planks is cleared of detritus and debris or it doesn’t actually make any difference.

We have some sort of storm to look forward to at the weekend. Anticipated temperatures plunge up to ten degrees Celsius on Saturday and Sunday and there is a threat of more snow. But it’ll be back to more normal temperatures on Monday, just in time for the business week!

You couldn’t MAKE it up…

Snow days and other disappearing time tricks

Doesn’t seem five minutes since the last post.

It isn’t of course. It’s a week but the expectation in the previous paragraph is that time will go more quickly than expected…

Which is what it did.

The sickie turned into two “snow days” – partly because no client (that I’m aware of) was doing anything but partly because of hitting the (marathon runner’s) wall.

You can borrow forward so much for so long but be sure your body will find you out.

Sit there and look to do something but body (and mind) says no.

In all honesty I did serious damage to the email backlog but look at it today and it’s like I never bothered!

We seldom get weather issues in this part of the country so it always does catch people out. I was SERIOUSLY glad I’d cancelled my Friday appointment when I discovered the road I would have been using had been snowed in overnight and there were people who had been stuck for twelve hours in the drifts.

Recovery took much of Friday and was helped in no small part by the Armed Forces and local farmers. Sooo glad not to have experienced THAT!

So me with bad back was noted walking (shuffling in my big hiking boots) the mile or so to the local supermarket with Lorraine because – of all things – run out of potatoes!

As with most adverse weather events (and bank holidays, etc.) the place was devoid of semi-skimmed milk because that is, of course, the usual panic buy – here at least. Many places run out of bread, there they bake on the premises so that doesn’t vanish quite as quick.

But it was a conversation I overheard that left me particularly bemused.

“Ordinary” semi-skimmed was gone but there was a choice of sorts:

• Full fat
• Skimmed
• Organic semi-skimmed

WE chose organic – it  might have cost an extra 35p but it was there and available, but the gent in a couple nearby I heard saying “I’m not paying those sort of prices, we’ll do without”.

For 35p?

Run that by me again?

Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, I had an “is it me?” situation.

Sigh…

 

Wasn’t it cold? Taking wind chill into account we had temperatures of -11C and similar. That means our poor central heating boiler was trying to make up a 30C temperature gradient.

Considering this place is only a decade or so old, some of the windows and doors were remarkably badly fitted. We use a spare curtain to slow/reduce the draughts from the front door. Which pretty much faces north (actually a bit west of north like my office) so you don’t get much solar activity on the “front” of the building – wrong hemisphere…

So even with the heating running non-stop it can be cold in here. Even Lorraine said she was cold, which is how you realise you’re experiencing something really apocalyptic.

And on the Saturday it started to go. -11C to +9C in two or three days.

Memo to self. Try not to have monthly Friday off the day after your osteopathy appointment. And certainly not where much of the morning vanishes under a single appointment. It’s like a sudden dawning that I (effectively!) ran out of week yesterday evening.

For anything discretionary.

And young Miss P is putting in an appearance in the next few hours because she is dropping in from Uni to take her mother out for an early Mother’s Day dinner. So that removes the early evening as well as I’m allowed to come along.

Not that I’m complaining. Cannot remember the last time we went out that it wasn’t the parents’ bank balance that got the seeing to. In fact, even here she’s not paying for it at the end of the day as she will be paid to do a “mystery shopper” report on the establishment we are visiting! As long as her mother and I are not profligate she will still make a profit!

Where did THAT week go?

Don’t know what I’ve done to myself. Seriously sore spine and neck which is making typing this less than comfortable. Sigh…

Actually I probably do as it’s a convergence of a number of matters which, of themselves, would probably amount to nothing but, as we are all told, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Unbelievably (or maybe not, I’m not one to blow my own trumpet – it usually doesn’t cross my mind) it looks like I’ve forgotten to mention that my PR Lorna put me forward for one of the Portsmouth News’ Business Excellence Awards and I have been shortlisted. Woohoo!

I WOULD take you to the shortlist page but someone seems to have forgotten how to populate it. Hmmm…

Actually that reminds me. Lorraine SAID it was difficult to find out when they announced it in the paper! And even more bizarrely IMHO the landing page DOESN’T take you to the main News website. Nor does the News’ business page appear to have any reference to the awards.

Is it just me???

However, 150 word digression later. The why this has any relevance to a sore neck:

It’s the first time I’ve entered for something like this. It’s also (obviously) the first time I’ve been shortlisted for an award. I’m just a little strange about being outside my comfort zone and when I have the first time I have to do something this is – oddly – outside my comfort zone. No idea why. Maybe something to do with my upbringing, maybe something genetic – the daughter, when she was at school, had some serious issues when she had to do something for the first time. So I’m a little tense (future perfect maybe? Certainly not present or pluperfect.) Which leads to tension and tension, with overuse, leads to inflammation.

So I’ve got to practice a speech I may never need and at the same time have my “don’t mind if some else won” face at close hand in case I don’t. I’ve been told to just enjoy myself and treat winning – if it happens – as a bonus. And I KNOW I can blag my way unrehearsed through a minute or two. I do so most networking meetings. Generally never have any idea what I’m going to say until it comes out of my mouth. And maybe not even then. Really need some emojis (word I’ve just had to add to the dictionary. Emoji singular was there without a plural. Need an emoji for that too?) in this programme. Don’t you think too?

Add to that working your butt off moving “stuff” around in a client’s data for a less than positive response and this will predispose me to just a little nudge sending it over the edge.

And within that a diversion to the dentist and hygienist. Not a problem in itself but the journey was such that I asked the receptionists whether it was National Drive like a Dickhead day and I’d just missed the announcement. Not that they were aware of so maybe it was just me.

I’m not paranoid. People really ARE out to get me.

Sooo. Networking this morning. Good and possibly fruitful meeting. Seriously uncomfortable chair. I think the venue got a bulk offer somewhere for all their meeting rooms. They seldom fail to irritate my neck and back. Odd angle back to seat which means you don’t lean back in it or end up with an unpleasant tension in your neck. And the metal bit sticks in a couple of tender vertebrae due to an old injury – lost a debacle with a motorway crash barrier about 20 years ago.

Followed that up with a one-to-one meeting in a rattan-style chair with inadequate padding which continued irritating the heck out of said vertebrae. Good meeting I have to say. Turned into an unexpected pitch. Wasn’t expecting to be talking to someone who might be in CURRENT need of my expertise. So there you go.

Well, I’ve spent a lot longer than I intended writing this and have done the exact opposite of what is needed to calm the inflammation but whatever, that’s life.

Is it not?

Doesn’t the image look like an animal drinking?

A wet Tuesday in February

and wasn’t it just…

Having survived last week – in what I can only describe as an unexpected calm – I paid for it this week.

I have to first explain the concept of borrowing forward. Sometimes, when the workload is realistically too much, you can get through it all by using next week or the week after’s energy. I can anyway.

But it DOES come at a price.

When you get to the point that you have to repay.

Now I’d assumed last week that my day off on Friday allowed me to unwind so the weekend was – relatively, given an 04.25 get up on the Saturday and getting to bed at 01.15 on the Sunday morning – less than stressful, that I’d sneaked away with the tiredness and it had been mopped up over the weekend.

Not.

Waking on Monday was like climbing out of a deep, dark pit without a ladder. Completely shattered and without a shred of energy. Which was going to be fun with a coaching/mentoring session in the morning and chairing a trustee meeting in the afternoon and a potentially alarmingly short time between the two, especially as I don’t do hungry. As previously mentioned.

Well, the morning meeting was postponed due to external circumstances and all of a sudden my day gets easier, except that my head packs up and I’m hurtling back into the deep dark place of the morning.

So in energy borrowing terms it’s pay back. And the afternoon meeting and a couple of associated chats to do with said meeting are definitely the more complicated of the two.

S’life…

In all honesty the meeting went off very smoothly – imposter syndrome again Colin, you do actually chair meetings reasonably well! – and the gorilla in the room is addressed head on and the outline of a plan of campaign arrived at. But with prep and travel this has taken up five hours of my life so the energy cost adds to the deficit. And…

Wet Tuesday in February. 2nd Tuesday in February is always wall-to-wall mentoring and coaching (me on the receiving rather than the giving end) and I wake up AGAIN in the deep dark pit. Possibly even deeper and even darker. And the weather is ATROCIOUS. Bucketing down with rain, 30 mile drive each way to the first session along a motorway full to bursting with HGVs so got there late but I suppose it was best to get there at all.

So, the week continues with, when I’m in meetings or doing something I’m good and when I’m not, boy am I not!

Not helped at all by some sort of sinus issue. Having had man flu before Xmas and return of the man flu earlier this year I now have massively blocked sinuses. And phlegm in the back of the throat. P-h-l-e-g-m. Who ever came up with that word? And why!

The glasses bear down on the nose and aggravate the sinuses and I presently seem unable to breathe through my nose most of the time. The net result being waking up or finishing my walk with a seriously dry throat. Difficulty swallowing dry.

I’m guessing it’s all part of the overdoing things thing.

Learn to breathe through my ears.

So it’ll go, eventually but it’ll prolong itself by the disruption of my personal life. And no one has yet shown me how to divorce that from my business life.

And the bl00dy computer’s acting up too!

Last Windows update. Overnight Tuesday/Wednesday. Reboots and stops. Probably a driver issue – they normally are – but it does mean having to remember how to start in Safe Mode, F8 key in rapid fashion before Windows kicks in and hangs (again) and it rolls back the updates, tries again, rolls back once more then restarts without the updates. All told, once you’ve restarted all the programmes, about an hour’s work.

That you can’t be elsewhere for much of the time because you’re watching what’s going on in case you need to intervene.

And then…

because it’s not posted the update, it does the same thing again today!

And, I presume, will do tomorrow unless one of my geeky friends can lend a hand?

Got to go now. Day’s almost vanished and I need to try and remember what I’ve done with it. Try the back of the sofa? I lose lots of things down there…

It’s February – for me as well

Funny old week.

What with all the tax returns, then billing then VAT returns – mine as well as clients – it was really only yesterday (7th February) evening (18.15) that my head accepted it was February for me as well as everyone else.

Had a discussion with my PA Louisa – law of unintended consequences, I live through it year after year so it didn’t cross my mind to ask her to ease up on the meetings, I just do – for the future we will have a moratorium on appointments for the first couple of days of May, Aug and Nov and a whole week for Feb.

Just to give me an opportunity to get my head back (lost property department at London Waterloo I expect) and catch up on the expletive-deleted emails that build up when there’s important “stuff” to do… Only around 350 so nothing major but that is after ridding myself of the ignore and delete and read and delete ones so that is a measure of ones I actually:

• want to save for future references (synchronised backside covering if nothing else),
• have to do something with – you know, clients expecting you to do things and so on, as well as
• blue sky WANT to do something about – nothing’s going to happen if I don’t but an opportunity to gain a contact, learn some useful, etc. fill in your own wish here is wasted and those don’t necessarily come back later.

And then it’s Thursday, blog time and I’ve got the day off tomorrow because that way I don’t fall asleep in front of the computer – I fall asleep on the sofa instead, so the week has nearly gone and a morning’s concerted work has merely reduced said backlog by 50, net of new ones received. 128 gross a pretty quiet day.

Enjoyed my billing for January I must admit.

Something has to make it all feel worthwhile. Doesn’t it?

Didn’t enjoy my blood test last Friday though.

I haven’t fainted for a long time but that doesn’t stop me feeling squeamish and it was a fasting test which I do dislike even more – have you heard of “hangry”? It’s when being hungry makes you grumpy/angry and it certainly does. It all started with the last prescription repeat being refused because I hadn’t had this test. Odd because I eventually found the paperwork and it’s been outstanding since November and I’ve had a couple of repeats since then, so it suddenly goes from not a problem to all your meds being refused until it’s pointed out that I’d run out completely before I could take the test at which point – begrudgingly – I get a fortnight’s worth to tide me over.

Blood pressure was high that day. Can’t imagine for one second why… But we get it done, even though the nurse cannot find why a fasting test had been specified (just to wind me up?) and it transpires I’d managed to miss November 2016’s as well and no one had noticed.

Hmmm.

The surgery system and other medical appointments are not designed for the business owner and other self-employed persons are they?

This – subsequently – has been thrown into stark contrast following the death of a diabetic “self-employed” DPD delivery driver who had previously been docked £150 for a doctor’s appointment as he didn’t go in to work. Makes me angry. How about you?

The gig economy may suit some people but I rather suspect the number of people in that sector who are there for their “employer’s” (the wrong word from a strictly legal perspective but I’m sure you know exactly what I mean) benefit is rather greater.

But in the main, the average employee will take whatever surgery appointment is given them as will the school age and the retired in most cases. But where you’re juggling your own diary and the surgery, that’s a very different matter.

Talking of which, osteopath time.

Never knew that. She’s off windsurfing in Morocco in a couple of weeks. Would never have guessed…

Flung from the hamster wheel of life

Flung from or flung off? Can’t really decide but this will do for now. You sort of know what I mean don’t you?

Actually this week hasn’t been quite that bad but you gotta love that title. Made me smile… which doesn’t often happen on a cold Thursday in February.

Whoa! (or wow!, having trouble with thinking today) that was a really bracing walk this lunchtime. Driving in the car it said 9C, not too bad, then warm office and lunch then a quick look at the weather app on the phone and you decide -4C windchill is nothing to get worked up about. Certainly not compared with New York, Mid West USA or Russia.

But then again I’m a namby-pamby southerner in UK terms and I DON’T do cold weather.

Period.

Which means I froze. 18mph NW winds, not even North or nor’ east and it was biting cold. I could have worn the gloves and the woolly hat – nay, I SHOULD have worn – but I thought I’d prove it was getting nearer spring. No one to blame but myself then.

Hamsters. Have you seen that wonderful video on Facebook? Hamster stops, wheel doesn’t hamster continues. Soooo funny. Tears weeping from the eyes funny.

For me. Not sure how the hamster saw it.

All the !*!* tax returns that could go in did go in. Not without their little foibles but it got done. As of yesterday first thing, four awaiting filing, three without client go ahead and one unstarted but the information to hand (last bit received late-Tuesday) so I’m basically looking at a busy-ish morning and maybe put my feet up in the afternoon.

Fat chance.

As it was something other than income tax returns that caused the aggro.

Corporation tax (CT) no less. Which is actually a more straightforward regime than income tax (IT). CT is payable 9 months and a day after the company year end and the tax return (CT600) must be filed by the first anniversary. So, from an accountancy firm’s point of view, it spreads out through the year so no last minute panics – just twelve minor ones instead.

Okay it does clump a bit as you always seem to have excessively greater numbers of clients with December or March year ends than all the rest but still pretty much achievable.

Until the irresistible force of the deadline meets the immovable object of the software and, just occasionally I will admit, the wheels come off. So, 31st January year end and 31st January filing date meets IT deadline. Client gets things done in good time, or it would be if it wasn’t income tax season so it’s file on the deadline again this year.

Give me my dues, I TRIED to file late-Tuesday. Only to receive my first rejection, so log a ticket with the support team at after 23.00 that evening. E-mail response early-ish Wednesday with solution. Which isn’t. And eventually a member of the support team contacts me and dials in to see what I can see.

Apparently corrected (like all computer programmes, if it needs to have the same description in two places and it doesn’t, or there is an unspotted blank, or it’s Wednesday (sorry, made that one up) it fails some internal test and you have to guess what the error message means, which might as well be in Belgian for all the sense it makes. At this remove from the actual experience I find myself wondering, if it wants the bl00dy thing to be the same, why doesn’t it pre-populate from one place to the other and save ME the trouble of having to do so?), saves as an iXBRL file correctly and imports without trouble into the CT programme. Passes the validation checks at this end so off it goes.

For my second rejection. And the third. Small revision that could have cleared the issue didn’t – by now it’s midway through the lazy afternoon I’d been hoping to get and I’ve just started my billing. Gotta love January bills but would prefer not to have the extremes of effort. Carefully list out the fees and cannot shake the feeling that there are one or two I’ve missed but nothing obvious so another email from software support with some HTML code to overlay on the template and – FINALLY!!! – goes through a little before 18.00.

So much for the downtime.

Sigh…

So finally I question whether the template needs updating and this morning I get instructions on how to update said template to the newest version.

Which begs the question. THIS IS A CLOUD BASED PRODUCT. Why doesn’t it update the templates itself???

It’s not just me is it?

Oh. Quick shout out to my antipodean reader Damien, though I might well have to tell him I’ve mentioned him on LinkedIn because the free version of WordPress doesn’t give me the ability to sign up readers, you have to remember to go look each week or spot my post on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. I have no problem with paying for this but the entry level subscription is currently £20.83 per month! As it happens we’ll migrate it to within the OFD website which has a free sign up routine (now just about working properly – little problem between Zoho and the site, HTML again funnily – which has held up the move) so it’s cost me nothing in the end except a lot of aggravation…

Stocktake first thing caused the morning to vanish and I’ve got a shortened afternoon today because of a blood test tomorrow. FASTING blood test which is why I’ve been ignoring it. Last year I got away with it but this year they’re getting stroppy and won’t renew my tablets until I do. Twelve hours without anything other than water from 20.50 this evening. I get “hangry” so I guarantee I’m going to be major strop until I return tomorrow morning. In fact I can feel the irritation raising my hackles as I type. Grrrrr.

Now I have to try and work out what I’ve put off from January because I could do so (like the second half of my bills – and I DID miss a bill or two as noted above. In fact I missed FIVE. How the feck can you miss FIVE BILLS!), what is on the horizon that needs doing (like VAT returns) with short-term deadlines – with the potential of a minor tiff in one case where we are being accused (might be too strong a word but will do for now) of not telling them the VAT due but where they could look it up themselves (and I know that they know how to) but is going to cause a cash flow hiccough. And so it goes…

Peaked too early

Today is a struggle.

Apart from two particular sets of income tax returns, which are reasonably easy and always last minute, I’ve done all bar two of the returns I’m due to do with nearly a week to spare.

As you may well imagine, this means I’ve relaxed – slightly – and a month’s worth of tiredness has engulfed me. Which is not good as I’ve still got this other two to deal with.

This should be called premature something or other but I cannot think of a phrase to fit at the moment!

Back to tax returns.

And, of course, the two that are left are not a couple of straightforward ones, are they?

That would be nice, but extremely unlikely.

One is a client who I always have difficulty getting one piece of information to complete his accounts, which just encourages me to leave putting the figures together until I’ve got the info, which then means – when the inevitable happens, more years than not – IF all the components in the figurework don’t hang together properly, it’s a much more complicated journey than I might wish. Which it duly is.

The other, you might not be surprised to hear, in my own.

It’s my own fault, it just looks as if I’ve made a concerted effort over the years to have an entry in every bl00dy box on the return! Actually that’s strictly impossible because some boxes are mutually exclusive, tick one and you cannot by definition also tick the other.

But I HAVE done my best. Sigh.

It is also one of the most difficult to get the information together for. This MAY come as a surprise unless you are my wife and running the filing/administration function but I could not possibly put any blame there, could I now? More than my life is worth.

I know my return and accounts will take me a day to do (and that day is tomorrow, lucky me) but it’s SOOOOO easy to do something else, anything else. Even cull emails.

The sooner I outsource THIS the better!

Sad face.

On a slightly unrelated topic, why does my right shoelace always come undone?

Bizarre but true.

It is a source of much mystery to me but the right one unravels ten or twenty times more than the left. I’m not aware I tie them any differently but there is frequently a little ritual within the daily walk of trying to do the full circuit WITHOUT stopping to hop about trying to retie the lace.

For a while it seemed that lots of younger people had a habit of NOT tying their laces and I’m aware if it does come undone and I don’t stop it could be misconstrued that I’m trying to be retro-trendy but it’s not, I’m just trying to save falling over trying to do it up rather than falling over tripping over the damned thing.

I might be accused of overthinking things here I do understand.

It’s nice to have had a rather sunny day to have my walk today. The contrast with yesterday when I didn’t even get out of the house due to excessive precipitation (it bucketed down). Still a bit blowy but a bit of sun on the skin is most welcome after a few thoroughly dull and miserable weeks.

And the days are getting noticeably longer as we trace the long march to midsummer.

And then back down again.

Sooner I can choose what the day length ought to be the better… Chase the sun in a virtual economy.

Mind you, conversed a while ago with an Instagram “chum” I follow. He’s in Svalbard. The sun will next peep over the horizon sometime in February. Not sure I could cope with that I have to say. 2-3 months of permanent darkness (and 2-3 month’s permanent day at the other end of the year, don’t forget). Visit – DEFinitely, live there – no way.

This time next week will be 1st February. If a return is not done by then, it’s tough.

Back to the return I suppose. Procrastinating again.