Grindley Brook

The last two days I’ve not stepped off the boat, the weather hasn’t been that inviting with strong winds and rain showers. Tilly however has enjoyed this as it’s meant that she can come and go at will and the staff have been on hand to open and close doors and hatches when required!

With Mick heading back to Shrewsbury to return the car yesterday morning I decided it was time to get my accounts up to date (well, for last year!) and do my tax return. Having very little income helps make this job a lot easier than it used to be. Long gone are the days of employing an accountant to do the job, one was only taken on so that we could get a mortgage as I needed an accountants reference, so tax returns don’t scare me. Much of the day was spent downloading bank statements and reconciling them, might as well do it properly. In the old days I’d have kept on top of my receipts but it would still take me a whole day to put those left into the computer, today a whole years worth took five minutes. By the end of the day everything was ready to fill out the form on line. This would have been done sooner if I hadn’t been on door duty all day!

After dropping the hire car off Mick was given a lift into Shrewsbury so that he could visit Maplins. Reception on our TV has been a bit hit and miss of late and he’d been wondering if it was the aerial amplifier. We still have the one from Lillian, but we didn’t have the right connectors for it. With new cables bought he caught the train back to Whitchurch and then walked back along the towpath. At least someone is getting some exercise round here. As I sorted numbers Mick tried sorting signal, but nothing seemed to be working for him. Maybe we are just in one of those places.

Today I spent a few hours on the Government Gateway inputting my small figures and getting nowhere near my personal allowance. No tax due for this year, just a matter of paying Class 2 National Insurance voluntarily to ensure getting benefits and pension in years to come. All up to date and paid. I may get the current year up to date if we have more bad weather, I quite enjoy doing accounts!

Micks task today has been to finish sorting out our emails. The poor chap has felt a bit like he’s been back at work, but doing the bits he didn’t enjoy. My domain that we used to get my email from is no longer available, so Mick has moved it elsewhere, which caused allsorts of problems. We could send emails from the laptop but not from any other devices. Then any email he sent looked as if it had come from me, not ideal. Once I had finished my accounts the boat had to be quiet again for Mick to concentrate this time. But by the end of the afternoon all seems to be sorted.

I’m glad they’ve both finished, maybe they’ll move the outside again. It was quite good here yesterday, but today I’ve started to use it all up! The wind has been blowing my bottom which gives me a Mohican and bushy tail, I don’t like that. Running around made more use of the outside, but I had to climb to the very top of the trees and dig holes to find new places to explore. I kept coming inside to give them the opportunity to move the outside, but that didn’t work, maybe tomorrow.

0 locks, 0 miles, 3 times last year, 2017 tax return completed and returned, 0 tax, Class 2 NI paid, 1 TV being temperamental, 1 cat being loony lala, 21 door openings, 35 hatch openings, 20+ feet of tree top climbing, 4 hours of cat indecision, 2 fingers crossed that emails work, 1 button down hat completed.