Friday 9 May 2014

Friday

Spent yesterday working in Brighton, at the end of the day I had a meal at Bankers Fish and Chip shop on Western Road - I had the vegetarian option, it's roughly across the road from my old house. I first went in there when I was about 28 - they still have the same staff. I quite like that - I'd probably still be in there regularly if I hadn't sold that house. I have 2 weeks of solid work to do, and then nothing. More about that later.

On the way home the station was part cordoned off because there was a football match - I ended up hiding in WHSmiths - the Brighton and Hove Albion crowd are actually fairly friendly and passive, but terrible singers. The Police managed them really well - in the end they let us 'civilians' onto the train first - and allowed the supports to clamber on - The stadium is only 4 mins away - but it was the longest 4 mins of my life - after they had all left, the train smelled terrible. BO, beer, chips, vomit - everything in one ugly smelly soup. Afterwards, there was a very drunk man left on board all the way to Eastbourne, wearing a pinstripe suit and a very strange and elaborate full length coat with a fur collar - he told the ticket collector that he's just had his dog put down - and it was in a black bag in his fridge 'next to the milk' - the guard informed him politely that he still needed to buy a ticket. Still getting lots of hits on here for no reason - this is the stats for yesterday - I don't know anyone in China - but I'm a bit perturbed by the number of the beast.




Also, my most popular post of the last month with 1800 hits, was one from 2 years ago where I said nothing except that I'd had a haircut and someone rang to try and sell gym membership - perhaps someone is compiling the most banal blog posts of all time.

I managed to get a fairly large invoice paid this week and cleared all my bills, paying a few things forward, I also gave the inland revenue quite a bit - my tax bill is down by half - and I've already earned and invoiced enough money ( and invoiced ) to pay almost everything off. However - I've now had 5 early morning phone calls (usually at 8.20am ) from someone claiming to be the Revenue getting increasingly aggressive phone calls ( I'm only 8 weeks late FFS!) The one yesterday was really nasty - so bad that after I'd managed to get him off the phone ( Difficult ) I called the revenue and made a complaint. They were very apologetic, partly because of how I'd been harassed, partly because the person who called me hadn't identified themselves in any way - and had repeatedly gone past his remit - but mostly because there was no record of anyone having called me.

I know 3 people who, despite having very large cash sums, cannot get small mortgages - I spoke to someone last night who owns a successful business has just sold 2 properties, wants to downsize, pay a large cash sum and intends halving his mortgage - but cannot get a mortgage, and apparently since the 'rules' changed - even the banks and building societies are struggling to award mortgages to anyone, what disturbed me most is that this seems to apply to people with longstanding, fixed rate, secure, portable mortgages - meaning that I really don't have any security whatsoever - and that really pisses me off. Additionally, It's clear that I don't claim enough in expenses when I do my accounts, Ive always done this because I want to keep my earnings high on paper so I can get a mortgage when I sell this house - but there really doesn't seem to be any point - so from now on, and in the light of how the revenue have behaved towards me - I have every intention of paying as little tax as possible and to hell with it.

After this month - when I'm fairly square with the revenue - I need to get more work in, the house still needs a new roof, I still need to spend money on it, have a tiny amount of disposable income and just pretend to have a life for a change. I still need new glasses. Might buy a lottery ticket.


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