Saturday 30 January 2016

Saturday Evening

I'm at home, vaguely considering watching a film later or going to bed early - I'm probably going to be at work tomorrow - I have stuff to do - so I took it easy today, just cleaned the house.

Yesterday was full on - in the evening I had to meet up with a friend/colleague and talk through some stuff, I also seem to have picked up a new job - seeing them on Monday. In the afternoon, I had lunch with a couple of friends at the All You Can Eat Chinese restaurant - I didn't pay. I just bought coffee afterwards. I had quite a few other jobs to do and earlier in the week I had a few full-on meetings and have sorted some stuff out going forward.

Most importantly - I had my 'big' conversation with the Inland Revenue. The trouble is - when I get stressed or nervous, I still start stammering and forget what words to use, I'm kinda resigned to the fact that it's not going to get any better and I was dreading talking to them - fortunately - you can nominate someone to talk on your behalf and I spoke to my brother about it - he was happy to help, and just knowing that probably gave me enough of a boost to be able to manage (mostly) - I spent nearly 2 hours holding alltogether and using the automated 'speak now' robot was a disaster - I started stammering right away and forgot my postcode, and national insurance number - even though it was written down - I just couldn't get the words out. In the end I had a long conversation with someone was surprisingly sympathetic. I'd already spoken with my bank and mortgage company and had collated all my medical records and various bits and pieces - I won't have earned enough to pay tax next year after allowances, expenses and tax paid at source - losing 6 months income does that - so I've been given a month to put arrangements in place and then I have a year to pay - as work is starting to get back to normal and I can always remortgage - I think I'll be OK. It's not ideal - the accident is going to end up costing me roughly £10k in expenses and loss of earning (that's the most conservative estimate possible - the reality will be twice that, at least) and has probably kicked my career into the dustbin - but I'm not dead, don't actually look too bad and at least I have no memory of it all. The woman from the Revenue is calling back in a week to see how it's going but I feel more relaxed about things.

Talking houses - a really ugly post-war terraced house opposite me that backs onto the COOP is on the market for £209k - that's at least 30k more than I would have estimated - I really hope they get it - I need the boost.

I may have mentioned that the University of Brighton is considering pulling out of Hastings. This is the front page of our local paper - read the headline... and wonder why they bothered in the first place, how many eyes must have seen this before it went to press - it's beyond embarrassing.



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