Spent, Spent, Spent.


Kicking a pint glass of water over a pile of receipts wasn’t the most auspicious start to pulling together my records for my tax return this morning, but it was a start nevertheless.

I actually managed to get a surprisingly large amount done, after stopping briefly to carefully hang the receipts over a clothes airer one by one. This was my second attempt at drying them out, which was more successful than the first (taking a hair-dryer to them resulted in an improvised leaf-blower effect). The fact I had to cancel a casting today as my vertigo was playing silly beggars may have made for a less potentially lucrative end to 2017, but it did at least allow me to make a self-assessment head-start; HMRC would be proud of me (if I’d had my records in order in time for the end of the tax year last April).

One thing I hadn’t accounted for was the Cat Effect; no sooner had I sat on the floor to go through my receipts in more detail than I felt a paw tap me on the shoulder. I turned around to see my cat on the sofa next to me, looking at me expectantly.

A few minutes later, we ended up like this:


Still, at least this was better than having her keep walking through my piles of receipts, inadvertently knocking them into one (that came later, more than once) and while it’s fair to say having her on my lap while cross-legged wasn’t the most comfortably position to be in - when I got up I walked like I’d just been riding a horse - it was nice to have the company; I didn’t mind having her there, really. Does this make her tax deductible?

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