I am not going to write much.
This is because I have had a whole day of writing things.
I started by writing the article I had promised to write for the Cambridge college magazine, which took me half of the day, which was an entirely rubbish performance just for eight hundred words, but it did.
After that I had some college work to do. We have got an afternoon class tomorrow which needed several hours of reading and prep, so I read and prepped.
In between prepping I sent our documents off to the insurance company, wrote an email to the council, and gazed longingly at an email eBay had sent to me about a new teapot.
I did not even get round to the ironing or mopping the kitchen. I will have to do those things tomorrow, either before or after class. The student experience is very different when you are nearly sixty instead of the sort of student who is twenty one. I do not think that Oliver cares in the least about floor mopping, teapots, ironing, or what the Council thinks about anything. He is going to do some studying with our next door neighbour tomorrow. Our next door neighbour will probably be marking Oliver’s A Level papers, by a mysterious stroke of good fortune, and has volunteered to teach him how to write the sort of stuff that will earn him lots of ticks.
I had also been sent a lot of documents from our stockbroker about American tax which were lurking menacingly on the desk for my attention today. These were an alarming task, and came with an attached threat because it appeared that I was supposed to have filled them in weeks ago, but I have been ignoring their emails. This was true because I did not even understand the letter explaining what they wanted me to do, so I filed it in my mental Too Difficult File, and forgot.
Today they had even added a red label to the top of the page. We do not have to pay American tax because all of their shares are rubbish and we have not earned anything, either in or out of America, but there were a lot of complicated documents to be filled in all the same. They wanted to know, mystifyingly, whether I was resident in a Model 1 IGA jurisdiction with reciprocity, if I was a publicly traded NFFE affiliation, in which case I must also complete Part XXIV, and if I was certified deemed-compliant limited.
I got as far as my name and address, which I could manage with relative confidence, but that was it. I added, in response to their terse questioning, that I was quite sure I was not a quantitive derivatives dealer, nor was I bound by a distribution agreement that contained a prohibition on the sale of securities, and signed it at the bottom.
I do not know what a quantitive derivatives dealer is, but presumably if I was one I would have noticed.
Frankly, I could have signed anything. If the CIA turn up on Oak Street next week, accusing me of being an arms trader or cocaine smuggler, then probably it is because I have just declared it on their form. You will just have to come and visit me on Rikers Island.
Trying to persuade the scanner to work was just as challenging as filling in the form. You have got to switch the printer on and then open and close another document, after which it will allow you to scan something. The world is such a complicated place. I had to eat four pieces of fudge whilst I was thinking about it.
Lucy went home, and Mark and Oliver went off to the farm. They decided that this was the safest option after I got cross with Mark’s gestures towards helpfulness. These were well-meant but took some clearing up.
It is almost midnight, and I have only just finished it all. I am entirely fed up of it all, and am going to go to bed.
I am articled and documented and prepped, but I have not mopped the floor.
You can’t have everything.
I can’t even have a new teapot. Perhaps I should have just gone to work instead.
