I have had a flap this afternoon.
I have had a statement from the Inland Revenue, couched in friendly enough terms, but which nevertheless had got several threats and a paying-in slip attached.
I had thought we had paid all of our tax, including the scandalous Payment On Account. This is an arrangement by which if you are self-employed, you pay your tax in advance before you have even earned a single penny. I wish we had a union, because I think this is very naughty of the Government. I can’t imagine anybody telling the railway workers that they were going to take both this year’s tax and next year’s tax out of their wage packets, and not to worry because they would catch up with themselves sooner or later, and just think of the Public Good.
We would be using Replacement Buses for the next ten years.
Anyway, we have paid it, albeit reluctantly, and hence I was very upset indeed to find a further demand in the post today.
I ignored it for ages, because of it being horrid, but eventually I thought I would take it up to my office and hide it under the desk blotter, but then I looked at it properly and discovered that actually it was completely wrong.
It was entirely and completely wrong.
When I checked against the bank statements and counted up I made the happy discovery that not only do we not owe them any money, but we have actually overpaid by thirty six pounds each.
I am not even going to try to get through their telephone queueing system. It is a very wearisome way to spend three or four hours. Instead I sent an email to the accountant asking him to sort it all out online. He can do this but I have never managed to work it out.
I was very cheerful when I went downstairs, and was only mildly disconcerted when a friend of ours brought her dog round. It has made a brief appearance in these pages before, being small and irritable with sore eyes. It was still small and irritable with sore eyes, and our friend needed some fearless assistance with squirting the cream in its eyes, which had been proving problematic for anybody who wished to retain all of their fingers.
The dog can’t be more than twelve inches tall, but it still took two of us. Mark pinioned its body and held its jaws closed whilst I washed its eyes and then filled them with the cream. Its eyes were very sore indeed, and it was not at all happy about this procedure. It tolerated it, due to having no alternative, but then rather to my amusement it bit me afterwards, by means of revenge, which is what I would do with the Inland Revenue if I could.
I gave it a thick ear anyway. I had a sore finger after that, because after the dog had bitten it I bashed exactly the same bit on the bathroom tap afterwards, and what had been a small and insignificant mark suddenly leaked blood all over the plughole.
In other news, Christmas preparations are coming along at a pace. We have put the Christmas tree up, and it is wonderful. I have bought some new Christmas Tree lights because the old ones had finally packed up. We have had these since we lived in France and they have had several rewiring bodges to make them work on English electricity, and so it was hardly surprising, and possibly just as well really, the plug used to get excitingly hot.
It took me ages to find any which did not have the irritating safety shut off whereby they prudently switch themselves off after a few hours, thus helpfully saving electricity and stopping your house from burning down. I like this safety feature nearly as much as I like the one on the washing machine door, but it has become fashionable, and it took me ages to find some dodgy Chinese lights which do not have it.
They look splendid. They have been lit all day and are hardly smoking at all. The plug is not hot or anything.
It is really beginning to feel like Christmas.
