T-Bird Anni Rides Again

I just got my latest TMA back and I got 74%   Could possibly have got more if i’d read the unit properly first as I missed a whole passage that related really well to the third part of the essay!  Typically, I’m going to miss the next tutorial (again!) cos I hvae better things to do with my Saturdays than take the train into Manchester and sit in lecture with a bunch of grown ups who take life seriously when I could be drinking tea with friends!

It’s taht anual tax credt debacle time of year again.  I have obviously blanked out the full glory of last year’s debacle as I don’t remember certain pertinant points as raised by the supercillious prat I spoke to just now.  I don’t, for instance, remember being told that I was breaking the law by not having provided information on who we are both working for although aparently this information was requested and (to quote him) "it looks like the conversation didn’t end well last time either" by which I assume I am on file as being a stroppy cow (coo, even people who don’t know me have worked that one out!)  Although I do remember when Duke was in and out of work, being permenantly on the phone to this most delightful of agencies to update tehm on who was employing him on what salary for that particular week, or not, as the case may be.  I quite distinctly remember having them on speed dial.  I also quite distinctly remember receiving tax credits last year in proportion to our income and thus would assume that therefore they are perfectly capable of processing a claim without these details.

Aparently this year they can’t process my claim without up to date and also fully backdated to the beginning-of-time employment records.  There is no reference to an employer on my current circumstances detail sheet for me to check and confirm or deny the correctness thereof, although if you plow through the copious notes they send it does say taht you need to tell them when you change job.  What they have on file is not any of the employers I can remember him working for over the past several years.  Not that they will tell me what employer they have recorded because that would be breaking the data protection act, neither will they disclose the date that this employment started other than it was longer than 2 years ago.  When I pointed out that under the very same Data Protection Act of which he spoke I had a right to know any details held about me he sounded vaguely surprised taht I would know about such petty details and said I could write requesting a full disclosure of all the data they held.  Funny how he offered that info only after I threw the law back in his face and not when i asked for it politely  so that I could at least sort this out (and I asked in several ways ranging from "oh, right, what details do you hvae then?" to "well, is there any way I can get hold of the information so I can check if it is correct or not then?" all of which were denied.)  In the mean time of course, Duke’s money has gone down from a half decent £22k last year (working 2 jobs) to around £13k this year.  Funnily enough, it was when I mentioned that huge money drop that suddenly it became important that they had employer details, presumably they need to contact them and say "how dare you pay such crap wages and make the government top it up to a livable wage" (shall we gloss over the fact that if they made the national minimum wage a livable wage then they wouldn’t need to? although, naturally, if both of us were good little workers on NMW it would actually be almost livable) or maybe more like "is your employee lying about his income"

But you know, what really pisses me off is that this is part HM Revenue and Customs.  That’s the people who gather our taxs and thus the people who know, to the last penny, how much any person in the UK has earned in the past 12 months.  Not to mention they know who anyone is working for at any one time (assuming the company is above board, not paying cash in hand etc obviously)  So how is it that the information can’t go from one office to another without all this pratting about?  I mean, I can do my car tax on line, they check on a database of insured vehicles and on a database of MOT’ed vehicles instantly and seemingly effortlessly then plunder your bank account (which is, in effect another database for them to access) to take the money for your car tax, how then is is so hard to look on just one database for a person’s income  and top it up accordingly FFS????? 

I have spent a very pleasant day basking in the sunshine, in front of the little tent, whilst all around me 100+ Rainbows had one huge party.  They played games, did crafts, ran around, did the biggest hokey cokey you’ve ever seen and generally enjoyed themselves.  I had the tent set up just in case either we needed somewhere to shelter from the rain or if we had a hot and bothered Rainbow so we had somewhere to get them out of the sun.  Thanks to Petty Pool being mainly woodland though they were all in the shade most of the time so it wasn’t a problem, apart from me of course who was in one of the camping fields, being fanned by a gentle breeze and thus not noticing the sun gently frying my arms   

Aprilia got "seconded" into  one of the groups as a helper and aparently was very good with the little ones.  She also saw her Brown Owl who told her it’s her enrollment on Friday and confirmed that she could have the full traditional toadstool and pond job which utterly delighted her - she was bothered that a lot of units don’t do that any more as she really wanted to do it that way.  She’s even more excited taht she can now start getting LOTS of badges!  Don’t anyone dare read Punishment By Rewards to her…… I just love watching her trying new things taht she wouldn’t consider doing just because there is a bit of cloth awarded to her at the end of it!

Been to a family wedding today (yes, on a Friday, confused the life out of me!)  I found myself mentally blogging it as it went on which of course means I’ve forgotten waht i wanted to say now   I’ve not been to a civil ceremony type wedding before and it seemed a little lacking in the usual ceremonial element somehow.  the whol thing was only about 10 minutes long I think which was good as it was stuffy in there but odd somehow.  The whole event was at Stockport Town Hall which, being in the centre of a town, doesn’t have much scope for outdoor fresh air type reviving of flagging children so by 9 pm it was getting a bit wail-y in there as it just wasn’t cooling down.  So we escaped on the premise of us all 3 being busy tomorrow so needing early nights.

I was thwarted earlier on in the day, was after some blue trousers for Rainbows as jeans are a bit hot for this weather.  Grabbed some on town that were on a hanger with the right size on, got them home and realised they were big enough to fit two of me in them as they were a totally different size!  So they are going back next week then….. serves me right for not taking the 5 minutes to actually try them on really.

And I’ve lost my specs (wot? again?  I her you cry) so I’m signing off before all the words start doing that funny thing where they leap wildly round just to annoy me (sigh, if anyone ever invents a very small homing device suitable for attaching to specs I’ll offer to test it for them!!!!) 

Today seemed to rush past in a bit of a blur.  There was "schooly bits" in the morning complete with some puzzles and a discovery that I have broken my previous record…. this time I got to week 19 before I got totally out of sync with the Sonlight Instructor guide and gave it up as a bad job.  Maybe by the time we hit "senior school" we will have cracked this whole following instructions thing.  We ahve really enjoyed the Greek Myths book which has been our story book for the last few weeks but now, intead of pushing on to A Year with Miss Agnes, Aprilia wants a return visit to Homer Price, especially the one with the donuts. I’m thinking of recording it to audio CD for her so she can have it as a bedtime book.  In fact I’m thinking of doing that for a few of her favourites and building up a bit of a better library for her, she’s grown out of the faerie story CDs now really and it costs a fortune to keep buying new ones, although dad does his best to remember to buy the Telegraph every time there’s a CD in it.

I also had to build a new desk today.  Duke has revamped his "office" and has lusted after my corner desk for long enough, he was going to get one for himself from Ikea but it appears it’s discontinued so in a moment of weakness I said he could have mine as when we revamp our room I want it a bit more bedroom-like and less office cum storeroom cum general disaster zone (I’ve mentioned this before I’m sure)  So yesterday I emptied not only the desk but all the stuff arround it onto the bed so taht Duke could run off with my desk, thinking we could then assemble Duke’s old one in it’s place and get stuff back off the bed before bedtime.  Didn’t work though.  I made do with an upside down crate so I could finish my essay (which was due yesterday, not today after all!!!) whilst I waited for him to be ready to give me a hand.  This is what it all looked like at this point.  i feel I have to point out that a lot of the stuff there is because, in trying to get his desk area just so, Duke had strewn a lot of the stuff that was previously stacked by his side of teh bed to find specific cables, gizmos and gadgets, but there is a lot of clean washing (usually stacked just by the desk) stray Rainbow books and more books than I have any right to keep on a desk!

By the time the corner desk was out of the bedroom and reassembled in his office and he had fastened various gadgets and gizmos to it, installed all his stuff on it and sat admiring the effect for a short while it was too late to start putting anything together for me.  So we slept on the sofa bed, which claims to be a double and once more we remembered that actually it really isn’t.  So today I put the desk together myself and managed to do it with remarkably few problems besides actually finding the bits (how can one desk spread itself out over so much house?)  I’ll get used to it I guess.  Trouble is, of course, that now he’s back to one job the revamp of the rest of the house is on hold so who knows when I’ll get this.  I sort of liked teh minimalist effect of the up ended basket but it was a bit hard on the joints to sit cross legged for the 2 hours it took to write the essay

Oh, and it was Rainbows, and I couldn’t think what we were supposed to do nor find the book we are using so I declared it a parachute game meeting, took them onto teh field and pretended that I’d planned it taht way.

And then, being as it’s Duke’s birthday, we went out for tea.  

All of which probably explains why today was a bit blured round the edges, looks rather busy now I look on it from this end  

Just realised it’s 11pm, the back door is still wide open, chairs are still in the middle of the lawn and the cat is still out, we don’t let her out at night cos we are mean and nasty owners (in her eyes anyway!) and think that balck cats are not things to allow to roam around after dark when tehy can’t be seen and risk being hit by cars!

Off to rattle the food bag out the back door then! 

This was a SuperBike weekend at Oulton so I was there on the overnight cover for 3 nights.  Now, usually this involves much sitting about drinking coffee, watching telly and gossiping (beleive me, if you think women can talk, you need to meet a paramedic.  they make me look positively withdrawn a lot of them!) then going to bed "with one ear on the radio" at about midnight once the folks have dissipated from the bar.  We may occaisionally get a scraped knee to deal with but that’s normally it.  This weekend we have had

1 "teenage girl syndrome"  (got all upset and hyperventilated - it seems to be a teenage girl thing)

1 pyrexic, projectile vomiting baby 

3 brawl injuries plus a further 2 not injured in another incident but needed a cuppa and TLC

1 indecent assault

1 spousal assault (who didn’t want to involve teh police but security had already called them and Cheshire has a zero tollerance policy so they refused to cancel the call, took a statement of anyone willing to give one and hauled the offender away for a night to "think about his actions")

1 choking incident which could have been very nasty had someone else not been very quick off the mark - he was at the far end of the site and it would have taken us too long had there not been a Good Samaritan handy

1 lady not looking where she was going and walked into something 

which all adds up to more incidents in one weekend that I have delt with in the other 15 or so sets of nights I’ve done over the past few years.

Then there was Aprilia’s friend from Rainbows who came round for a play date on Saturday when we pitched the "small" tent on the front, discovered taht half of it is missing (pegs, 1 ground sheet, 1 pod) somewhere in the garage.  Sunday she went on the return leg of the play date whilst I did 1/3 of my essay (due in tomorrow so I’d better get on with it!)  Monday she didn’t look too well so we got the sofa bed out and watched the entire MIHigh day thing on CBBC followed by last week’s Dr Who that we had recorded or at least, she watched MIHigh, I slumped next to her and napped most of the day and still managed a very good night’s sleep last night (ah, you apreciate your own bed when you have slept on an examination table for 3 nights!)  Today we JJ-ed in the morning and went for a walk to the park in the afternoon which restored some colour to her very pale face.

So there it is, all caught up again and if you are still with me at the bottom of all this I’m impressed! 

but 3 very busy nights have sucked my brains out so I’m going to sleep very soundly tonight (you may hear me snoring from where ever you live!) and see what I can remember by tomorrow!

Hlep! I’ve taken to housework in an attempt to avoid a TMA!  Someone shoot me now!

(edited to add…) Mind map done and transfered as an essay plan of sorts to Word.  Only 750 more words to find with 2 full days to find them!  So I make that basically putting some grammar around teh phrases and writing a conclusion.

And there’s not a grubby finger mark left on any door frames round the house  

Can’t access Googlemail!  It’s been down all morning as, it would appear, has Yahoo mail (co-incidence?)  Which is a bit of a pain as I’d planned on checking my mail one last time before dismantling  the desk (thus meaning nowhere to put the PC to use it) ready for Duke to run off with it and put up my temporary one until I can justify getting a decent one again.  He’s been trying to get one like mine for ages but Ikea no longer do it and to be honest, much as I love it to bits, it does sort of dominate the bedroom rather much (and provieds me with far too much space to dump stuff that would get put away if I din’t have anywhere to abandon it!) whereas it would look okay in an "office".  I want one that’s a "corner workstation with doors" sort of arrangement which means £230 and very lovely looking from Ikea or getting very second best fake wood from Argos for £100 and tacking on some sort of doors!  but I’d get free delivery from Argos and wouldn’t end up spending £££ on stuff we can’t possibly live without whist we are there!  Ah, the decisions i have to make