Time…

There never seems to be enough of it. A lot of this month was spent on my tax return. Not that it was especially complex, but I really didn’t want to do it and it’s composed of a lot of tiny bits. It’s important to make sure you find all the tiny bits because TaxMan has no tolerance for failure.

Anyway it’s done at last and in hte process I have managed to accumulate a lot of next year’s return too. The last bit of council tax is also cleared and yet… the council have more silliness for me.

I closed down and cleared out my lab at the end of December 2019. The council were informed so they’d stop sending me letters about business rates, which they did, and they know where I live now because they sent those business rates letters here. Also I have to pay council tax (I have no idea why, there are no pavements out here, the road is full of holes,there are two buses a day at 7 am and 6 pm and the nearest street light is two miles away). But I pay it anyway, they’ll put me in jail if I don’t. At least I get the bins emptied.

Anyway. The council sent a letter to the place I lived two addresses back, telling me I had to fill in a form on a rent review on the lab I no longer occupy or they’ll fine me for not doing it. The best part? When I left the lab I was the last occupant of that building. A ‘temporary’ building set up in the 1960s. The college I rented it from have now demolished it. The lab I left two years ago and which I’ll be fined for not responding to a rent review… no longer exists.

I have a feeling this is going to take some sorting out. Still, it’s the last obstacle to getting back to proper work. I don’t have anything else in the ‘in the way’ pile at the moment.

Well I do have to get the phone engineers out to reconnect the landline properly. It’s still trailing across the garden but most of the fallen trees are now cleared and the walls are in the process of repair. Still, that’s not really anything I can do much about apart from a phone call so it’s not really in the way. I admit I’m tempted to just bury the line across the garden and call it fixed.

Well anyway, I’m back at work. I have some books to finish editing and the spring anthology will open mid February so it’s all systems go.

Next year’s tax won’t be left to the last minute. I still won’t want to do it but I’ll start not wanting to do it earlier.