We have been watching a thing on Netflix on the television. It is a film in lots of parts, a sort of cross between a series and a documentary, and it is especially ace because I have read the book and so nothing surprisingly upsetting happens because I am already expecting it.
It is about the American police learning how to understand criminals in the nineteen seventies, and is utterly gripping, astonishing to remember how very recently we understood almost nothing whatsoever about the workings of the mind. All of the policemen on the television seem to be astonished to learn that abused children might grow up to become unhappy adults, which obviously must have been true because it is on television.
You can tell that the film is about the nineteen seventies, because one of the policemen looks exactly like Barbie’s boyfriend Ken, and the other like a slightly elderly version of Action Man. I do not think you can get Action Man dolls any more, which is a sad thing, because they were ace, especially the ones with the gripping hands and the rolling eyes. Ritalin Boy would like them very much, it is a pity that they are no more.
It was a relief to sit down and watch the American police driving about in old-fashioned cars for an hour, because I have had a superlatively horrible day.
It is April, and I have been doing my accounts.
I thought that I would do this because when we took the dogs out this morning the day was so dreadfully cold that it was not nice to breathe. I kept my mouth closed because of the old-lady difficulty of sensitive teeth, but the cold came down my nose anyway, and I had to keep trying to lick my teeth, discreetly, to keep them warm. I hope nobody noticed because it must have looked very odd.
Mark chucked poor Roger Poopy in the beck because he had done a wee all over himself. This was not quite as dreadful as it sounds because Pepper was in there entirely voluntarily, galumphing about chasing a tennis ball under the bridge. Roger Poopy jumped out pretty quickly, and I didn’t blame him, but he did smell rather better afterwards.
I did not want to do anything outdoors. I pegged the washing in the garden with fingers so cold they were numb and clumsy, and after a while it snowed on it all. I left it there anyway, and by the time I brought it in it had all dried, so that was all right.
Thus, instead of doing anything satisfyingly creative in the garden, I set about addressing the horrible muddle of our financial comings and goings.
I have to do this every year. The financial year ends, for the self-employed, or even the self-unemployed such as your author, at the beginning of April. The Government kindly gives you until the end of the following January to explain yourself to them, and I confess that in the distant past there have been some last minute midwinter panics.
That was a less organised person who was just masquerading as me. Also it was a person who had got to run a PAYE system and arrange VAT returns every month, and who was secretly drowning under a colossal tsunami of incomprehensible arithmetic.
These days it is very much easier, and especially this year. This year I did not need to hunt through piles and piles of mismatched receipts to recall my various probably ill-judged purchases. This year I had merely to scroll through the Amazon Past Orders page and look up the Autoparts bill.
Also there has not been any cash. Practically every penny that has dribbled through our fingers has also passed through the bank at some point, like an out-of-date prawn curry through a person. When I came to look at my carefully-written ledger of cash comings-and-goings, it was completely empty for the entire year.
All I needed to do was to read the bank statements, add things up and take other things away, and it was done.
By the end of the day I had practically finished.
Also I was feeling very glad and grateful to have had so much cash sloshed in our direction from our very helpful family. Without endless propping-up from my parents, and Number One Son-In-Law’s helpful business venture, we would have been in such an unspeakable mess by now that we would certainly have had to sell the house. I have been grateful for ages, but there is something humbling about seeing it in front of you in actual endless columns of numbers. We have been monumentally, unbelievably fortunate.
I was cross-eyed from squinting at the screen by then, and so fed up of the computer that I could not even be bothered to write to you.
I went downstairs and we celebrated with a glass of wine, and then another, and then we collapsed in front of the film about policemen.
It was Asda’s Rich And Fruity Red Wine, for about twelve quid a gallon, so probably I will have another headache in the morning.
It doesn’t matter. Have a picture of the seaside.
