If it was wet two days ago, it is even wetter now. The puddle that forms in the drive after heavy rain was more than half way across the gravel this morning, and the ground by the chicken run glistened with moisture when I went to let the hens into their run. The grass by their house has not quite gone to mud yet, but each tuft of grass looks more isolated and beleaguered day by day. It went on raining intermittently through the morning, then once it had stopped the Systems Administrator went for a walk in the afternoon, and reported that the Tenpenny Brook was as high as we've seen it in twenty years, practically up to the level of the footbridge.
It was not the weather for gardening. Instead I went out to buy more layers' pellets, and some Easy Start. I suppose that modern cars are more reliable than cars used to be, and I'm not sure Easy Start even works on them. I certainly wouldn't know where to squirt it into the engine of my Skoda. At any rate, Tesco seem to have delisted it from their car accessories section. I did not actually want it for a car, but for the old lawn tractor, which struggles to get going in the damp, and has been marooned in the same spot on the turning circle since before Christmas.
Then I thought I had better make a start on my tax return. HMRC has been advertising on Classic FM, and promising me levels of peace and bliss if only I would submit my tax return akin to those I thought I might have expected if I'd spent an entire week on a Buddhist retreat. In case this was not incentive enough, or I happened not to be a Classic FM listener, they also wrote to me personally. Alas, I am only too well aware that I need to file a return. I had a brief moment of hope a couple of years ago that by now I might be exempt, since my income is tiny and mostly taxed at source, but when I looked at the terms and conditions I found that I still just fell within the category of those needing to file. Once the government machine has got hold of any part of your life I fear it is reluctant to let go.
The tax return has not got very far, because my P60 was not in the box of tax things where it should have been. Goodness knows why not. I didn't throw it away on purpose, so it is probably somewhere, though there's always the nasty possibility it could have got accidentally mixed up with the recycling. Or slipped down behind a cupboard or somewhere really inaccessible, where it won't come to light until we move house (or at least have some reason to move all the furniture). In fact my March 2013 payslip gives me exactly the same information, income in the tax year to date (small) and income tax deducted (nil), but something compelled me to spend an hour faffing around looking for the wretched right official form.
The good news is that my kind volunteer scrutineer for the beekeepers' accounts emailed to say that they were fine. Originally I was planning to go and collect the file from her before the meeting, so that I could prepare myself fully to meet the members' searching questions. At the last committee meeting the Chairman said he wished each of us to speak for no more than two minutes, so I have decided not to look at the file in advance, since if I can't remember very much about the accounts I won't be tempted to go on about them for too long.
No comments:
Post a Comment