Category Archives: Thoughts on the World

<Rant>

I woke up at 6am this morning looking forward to my day off and my cookery course which was one of my Xmas presents

and I thought I’ll just do my VAT return, then I’ll sort out some photos before breakfast

and I go into my VAT software and it says that my subscription has expired and I have to pay for another year

and I complete the purchase form and go to make a payment, and I have to authorise the card payment with my app

and I unlock my phone, and it gets really confused with different prompts and locks up, and I have to reboot it, which for some reason always takes ages

and when it has rebooted I find that one of the prompts is a message from my credit card company saying they have detected a potentially fraudulent transaction and have blocked my card, so the payment to the VAT software company is declined

and I have to go and get another card and at least this time I can run the VAT software

and I submit my return, then notice that in the confusion I’ve missed an error and I’ve effectively overpaid HMRC about £800

and you know what, once you’ve submitted a return there’s absolutely no way to either correct or resubmit it, the official HMRC instruction is “sort it out manually next time”

and I write myself some notes so that hopefully I’ll get it right next time

and while I’m writing my notes the phone pings again and it’s the cookery school saying the chef has been suddenly taken ill and they will have to postpone the course, for which I’ve taken a day off

and I go into my email and there’s an email from the cookery school saying the chef has been suddenly taken ill and they will have to postpone the course, for which I’ve taken a day off

and I’m replying to the email to confirm I’ve received it and I get a phone call from the cookery school saying the chef has been suddenly taken ill and they will have to postpone the course, for which I’ve taken a day off

and at least we manage to agree a replacement date, but it’s in November

and I’m now no longer in the mood to sort out photos, but I think I’ll just re-rip a track from a CD which didn’t play properly last time I listened to it

and while the re-rip has worked Windows Media Player has decided to rename some of my songs so they have different filenames when I sync up to my phone

and I have to go through all my playlists and fix the problems with missing songs

and it’s now breakfast time

and I just want to sit in a corner with a blanket over my head and moan

and I’m not convinced about this nice day off business.

Bollocks!

</Rant>