Saturday 2 April 2011

Busy busy busy.

Appo-polly-logies for my aloofness of late, O my droogies, but I have been horrorshow busy and no mistake. Aside from the Merry Census and all its strange and pointless questions, there has been the matter of the Endowment, for which I had to send off photo ID to prove my identity to people who have never seen me in order to get the money paid into the same account it's been coming out of for 25 years. No, I don't understand it either.

Then there is the imminent end of the tax year. Naturally, I want to get as much expenditure as possible on this side of it, and all future income the other side of it, to reduce the tax I pay this year to the absolute minimum. Those taking this tax are entirely mindless and will waste it all on nonsensical plots and schemes. Minimising the amount they get means minimising the amount they can spend on nonsense. It's a public service.

Work, the real stuff, is beginning to fire up now that hibernation is over. Also, the Book is out on April 7th unless you are in America in which case it's out now in paperback. The American one is much cheaper than the UK one but Amazon UK might well cut that price further. I hope so because no bugger will buy a paperback for a tenner! Less per sale is far better than no sales at all. The Kindle version isn't up yet and I don't have a price on the PDF version on the publisher's site until the official release date.

I thought the Kindle version would be out first, but apparently the publisher wanted print versions to take to book fairs in the US, which is encouraging. Soon I will have copies to send to those I owe for helping to spread the word.

All this is combined with a shed in need of a clearout, a greenhouse whose time has come for firing up, a garden half-sorted and the contents of my junk repository (garage) still occupying a lot of the house. So I have been remiss in responding to Emails and comments of late, and have even missed days of posting. This is likely to continue for the next week but should improve after that.

I hope so. I'm knackered here.

12 comments:

JuliaM said...

Excellent news! I bet you feel like an expectant father, waiting for 7th April..? ;)

Smoking Hot said...

Hope the book goes well. l await the 7th ... of April that is, not cavalry.

Dioclese said...

So you are now officially outed! Best of luck with it and isn't it a good job you never said anything on here that would make people want to chuck bricks through your window. Have a smokey drinkey to celebrate...

...I'll wait 'til it's on Pirate Bay ;-)

Anonymous said...

The question is, do I really want to risk another brush with the Mauve Zone?

I will consider my options.
Rose

george said...

Did you get any compo on your endownment LI ?
I got some money as it failed to meet it's promised target.
You write to the company that sold the policy ( not necessarily the policy provider) and they send you a form to fill in. Quite straightforward. Explain you're single and didn't require this type of life policy and were persuaded away from the standard mortgage against your better judgement. Which was true in my case. There's no 'time expired' to claim either. That's just made up.
I cashed my endownment in recently as it kept giving the same value year on year.
I thought about the online endownment surrender companies but felt safer with my policyholder. Took 3 weeks from phone call to cash in bank. No photo required. Just sample signature and bank details being the same as when I started paying in. Maybe you've changed banks or something ?

george said...

oops just noticed it's the same bank account for refund of your endownment. So don't know why they want photo ID either :)

sixtypoundsaweekcleaner said...

An elderly relative of mine wanted to sort out some financial stuff just recently, including making a will. The various hoops he had to jump through, via a solicitor, drove him potty. He had to provide a photograph, birth certificate and all sorts, to prove who he was. All to do with money laundering, apparently.

David Davis said...

Old fellow, if you just feel you can't write for a day or so, take a break. We won't mind. I know what it's like. Don't worry. Relax. I have the same prob.

And the thingy says "lacerra"...wonder why....but don't flagellate yourself though!

sixtypoundsaweekcleaner said...

Well, the thingy now says *smongs*. Says it all really....

Hope you're getting blistered on Laphroig or something similar.

Leg-iron said...

JuliaM - I feel more like a naughty schoolgirl but there are none available.

Smoking Hot - I hope tonight's excesses have cured your ailments.

Dioclese - I was never hard to find.

Rose - it's okay, this one is set in the past. There will, naturally, be a follow up set in the present ;)

George - I've extracted the maximum ;) As £60aweek says, the checks are some bizarre thing about money laundering. I get that every time I pay cash into the bank - 'where did you get this money' is always the question, as if I'm likely to say 'I nicked it'.

Leg-iron said...

DD - I should stop for a while but I can't help myself.

£60aweek - I'm not drinking at all. I only have beer and red wine tonight. Soft drinks for working.

Chief_Sceptic said...

Leggie - let's hope the Kindle version comes out soon ! ...

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