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?