Thursday, August 31, 2006

In praise of the charity shop..

Never has so much fun been had by two children for so little outlay...well cardboard boxes excepted. On a budget of £2 per child we now have a show jumping arena and a whole haulage yard/firestation setup in the respective bedrooms. I also got 16 Key Words Ladybird books all in A1 condition for 39p each, you can't beat that, even on Ebay.

Soo have now had 3 hours to catch up on paperwork as the kids have been heavily occupied with their new purchases. Paperwork is now in boxes waiting to be processed, but at least I have looked at all the paperwork now. It was developing into two worrying heaps (we have two limited companies) and I wasn't too sure what was in each one as the summer holidays have got in the way of anything like a weekly review. This should mean that I can zip through all of it on Monday when the kids go back to school :-)

My new hard disk is quietly formatting on my old laptop. The laptop has been dying for the past month or so. I finally got round to getting the hard disk and then left it for 3 weeks as the kids demanded my attention whereas the laptop could only beep and ask silently to be rescued (soundcard is off too).

The tax man is writing me letters chasing payments that I've already made. Their phone doesn't seem to work in Cumbernauld, and neither does their email, so I've resorted to a letter quoting bank reference numbers and dates. That took me an hour to sort out. I should start adding up how much time I spend on admin for the revenue people. If only I could charge them for the time I spend filling in forms. They are very nice on the phone, if you ever get through to them. I hate overdue notices though, much better to be able to deal with them immediately. Hence I find it highly frustrating that I cannot get an instant result and have to resort to the post.

It has taken 4 mini bars of chocolate to get through the afternoon. Good job I only have mini bars available. My balanced diet today = 1 large latte and 4 x 40g bars of chocolate and a snack sized Cadburys Twirl (which was breakfast). I am convinced I could lose weight this way. Trouble is everyone else in this house seems to expect an actual meal three times a day. I did once lose over 2 stone by just eating chocolate, fruit and diet coke!! Hey ho those were the days.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I seem to remember the chocolate orange diet - there are 900 calories in a Terry's Chocolate Orange, so one Chocolate orange provides sufficient calories for the standard 1000 cal diet plus a glass of wine and as it is orange it has the added bonus of vitamin C! Okay, so we didn't believe it either but it was better than 4 weeks of steamed cod LOL!

If you get through to Cumbernauld perhaps you could tell them that I sent it all to the accountants .. !

As the girls are away I am clearing their rooms, you could bypass Oxfam and just come here and pick up all number of interesting items (and save me the bother of taking them down to the hospice shop)!!

Jenny said...

Hi Gillie, I'll happily adopt any ponies (plastic) you happen to have. Entering a certain child's room is getting to be dangerous due to the 'jumps' on the floor!