Today, on this most gorgeously drizzly day, I turn an entire year older. To celebrate we went to visit Warwick University and trade on the Piazza near the Union. As we have always suspected students have a strange affinity for toasties, and they left us with a pleasing day and glad that we had brought extra food.
Good days, especially those that follow moderately good weekends, are what give you hope on grey days like this. That and the box of all mixed cereal that Barny made me for my birthday – why can’t all cereals be like this?
This month the Jabberwocky will have to pay Barny for the first time. This means I need to understand and be able to use the majestically complex systems put in place by HMRC to find a way turn the Jabberwocky’s money into our money. Having just enjoyed a fairly busy weekend the Jabberwocky is financially a lot more stable than he was two weeks ago, but he hoards the cash smaug-like in our bank account, and only with the One Ring, a band of alcoholic dwarves and Ian McKellen can it be retrieved.
As it happens I have the guidance of the internet and a pressing feeling that our mortgage will be due at some stage, coupled with the reassuring knowledge that I can just shovel it all off to the accountant if it gets too much. After a conversation with a sales person for some commercial payroll software today I have a feeling that may happen sooner rather than later. He had a check list with questions, at the end of which he naturally tried to sell me the updated, better-than-sex/more-expensive-than-mortgage full version. I didn’t even understand the questions.
Having now thought about it I can see where the sales pitch was going: Make it sound like an informative questionnaire and then, when the unsuspecting birthday girl admits ignorance, pounce with your integrated solutions and full scale reporting. It was probably lucky then that he called me as we were driving to Warwick Uni, as his pounce came just as I needed to hang up and navigate. I was also in such magnificently good spirits that I really wasn’t in the mood to take him seriously, and perfectly happy to believe that things will work themselves out.
This theory was then supported by the excellent takings, brief spells of sunshine, some lovely presents and messages from people who mean a lot to me and steak for dinner. Take that, payroll sales guy.
Leave a Reply