Category: General

So I got my tax return / self assessment back and nearly had a quiet heart attack. It worked out that I owed £2000 – minus change – for 2 of the last few years.

I ate my lunch in solemn consideration of this fact before ringing them and preparing to say “I don’t have £2000”. I explained I was surprised that I owed so much considering I’m paid through PAYE. And we went through, and then the nice woman on the phone said ‘how much were you paid by such and such’ – and I looked at my P60 and we discovered I’d put my pay for both them *and* the previous hospital in as being my pay for that employment.

So I went from owing £1,100 to overpayment in one easy step (although I need to pop a letter in the post confirming that I am an idiot). But that didn’t explain the other 900. It turns out that I should have been paying my student loan through my pay cheque, and entitled to tax relief on it, for the last 7 years. I’ve not. I’ve been paying it back via direct debit, because that’s what I’d done forever. No one ever said it was wrong, I’d no particular reason to question it.

…

…apparently it’s wrong. I’m now waiting for a call back as they’re thinking that my apparent underpayment of tax is actually due to this, and I’ve no idea how that gets fixed. I don’t trust the student loans company to do it right, but then this has gone thoroughly wrong so far, and I’ve only followed their instructions.

Lord knows if I’ve paid as much as I should’ve.

Never mind, we’ll find out.

So there’s a point after my night shifts when I run into a wall. Usually a fairly solid wall of tiredness. I’ve been a good girl so far – although I’ve watched a fair bit of TV (The Americans) I’ve also emptied and reloaded the dishwasher, hoovered the kitchen floor, taken out the recycling, taken out the composting, filed the papers that have been piling up in the kitchen, arranged taking Chester back to the garage (because his idle has gone to crap since they serviced him) and arranged my interview for the agency…

But as I contemplated going down to the garage to look at Minor seats I thought “hang on a mo, you’ve been up since 1610 yesterday, that wall is probably fast approaching”. I poured myself a glass of apple, I sat down and OHDEARGODAMITIRED.

I’ve got trouble focusing on the laptop’s screen, so I think, at this point, we’ve hit the wall. And now we STOP.

Post nights. Sleep deprived. That must mean it’s time for me to write a post.

So, tomorrow is ‘car day’. Hopefully between tomorrow and wednesday Rebecca can be returned to a roadworthy state (if not an MOT’d state, and she may still need a new battery, I’m not quite sure what state that battery is in). She also needs a wash and a polish.

Jobs for the next couple of days are:

2 Person, tomorrow jobs:
– Install the new diff (& simultaneously replace bearings in axle)
– Install the headlining
1 Person tomorrow or day after jobs:
– Respring the seats
– Install radio speakers and trim panels.

It should all be doable in the two days, and the speedo will actually read correctly again (I never got as far as installing the one corrected for the 3.7 diff).

Once the car’s out of the garage we can return to regularly scheduled house renovations – first up – make and install a set of shelves to go under the stairs. Then painting the trim (including the newly installed shelves) can go ahead. That and trimming the door to fit. That will actually lead to a second finished area in the house, which is pretty good. To be fair, apart from about 8″ of sealant, the lounge is finished. Although given the simplicity of taking the hardboard off the doors, and how much better they look without it, and the fact that we’ve not attacked any of the doors, it might come to pass that we take the door off and remove the hardboard. But ignoring that, this room is done*.

I’m quite looking forward to having more finished bits.

The other thing I’m starting to contemplate more forcefully is building our deck. We’ve had a few nice days (quite a few actually) and each time we have one and I go potter in the garden, I wish we had the deck for us to relax on afterwards. The plan remains to build the majority of it out of reclaimed pallets, so I need to get the pallet stripping bar. Having tried various methods of stripping pallets, this looks to be the most quick and effective. Most designs seem to rely on having the deck built on a layer of pallets, which I wasn’t sure about…but it would be nice to raise the deck up to roughly the same level as the floor in the house. Having checked things out, it looks like that would be a reasonable plan as it’d raise the deck up to a height that would clear the airbricks, and I’d just need to leave a gap running along the wall where the damp proof course is (I assume) with some sort of nicely tweaked finish to that edge. Mmm. I’m seeing a plan forming in my head. A plan. Yes indeed.

Also, given that we’re staying in the UK for at least a year now (see how I didn’t say ‘stuck in this benighted awful country**’) I am, I fear, going to have to insulate underneath the floors. Our heating bills for this past year were flipping terrifying, and it also wasn’t actually that warm in here, given the amount of heat poured in.

I’ve found a fairly cheap source of sheep’s wool insulation which, as we’ve discussed is not ‘nice and soft and fluffy’ but is, apparently, less itchy than rockwool. At least I won’t be grovelling under the floor mid-winter, which was the previous plan. So I shall schedule that in for the next couple of months.

And so, my dears, that is where we stand.

* Although, we’ve been talking about small people. Well, a small person. And this has brought to light the horrible realisation of just how un-child friendly our house is. It’s an “Oh, just off white walls. Gramophone records sat on the floor. My, that’s a lot of cables. Those shelves…they’re exactly the right height for someone learning to crawl to use to pull-then-climb-up” type experience. Anyhow, that’s a little while off, at any rate.
** And yes, I know other countries have problems, but if you work for and care about the NHS the way I do then watching this foul government rip it to shreds so it can hand the tattered remains to it’s rich and powerful friends to make money off is astonishingly painful. I hate it, it actually makes me cry.

So, today I’ve been a busy little bee. In fact, this whole weekend has been nicely busy although I’ve not had a chance to go and see anyone (which is a shame). Yesterday was spent on the Dead Bug Jumping podcast (not out until the 24th, but you could all subscribe… although, actually, there’s been way more access on the site than previously). I’ve still not managed to cure the hum from the record deck but I’m about 90% certain that I need to change the cable in the tonearm, which is hassle, but I think would markedly improve the situation, because I suspect from its behaviour that it’s broken or not connecting well. The problem with this concept is that I then need some kind of connector to connect to the little connectors that sit on the back end of the cartridge and I’m not quite sure what they are, or should be. At the moment they’re made from bent-brass connectors which once connected the original cartridge.

Anyhow. At some point I need to accost the lovely John and see if he’s got a dead mouse I can cannibalise for cable, because apparently mouse cable is pretty similar in weight to audio cable. Then I need to dismantle the tone-arm, and fit it.

So that’s in the future, and will hopefully cure the hum and the tendency of the deck to suddenly drop from normal audio levels to something very, very quiet. Doing the podcast took up pretty much all of yesterday. Today, in contrast, was a much more active day. Keeping to the 20 minutes a day cleaning (‘cept it’s 40 minutes-only-on-days-off and I’d ended up not doing it yesterday, because yesterday I woke up at 4:30 am for no readily apparent reason, and couldn’t get back to sleep) today I dusted and swept the lounge. Between Kathryn and I our house is creeping towards the level of cleanliness and tidyness we want. It’s not like it’s ever been horrendous (except at moments of extreme decorating action), but with both of us working shifts it’s been hard for us to hit a point where cleaning was as frequent. What tended to happen was it would get overly dusty, then we’d have a frantic cleaning frenzy, and then it would deteriorate slowly again.

This new process does seem to be making it move towards a higher level of cleanliness with less dust around. Indeed, it’s possible we’ll soon actually be cleaning before things are noticably dusty, which is nice.

The other thing I did today was spend an inordinate amount of time in the garden shredding things. I actually went out there to finish digging up the shrub* which has been sat in what is intended to be the pea bed. This actually went surprisingly well, and I took the opportunity to pull up more of the sycamore trees (I’m told that’s what they are). There were a lot of them. Somewhere in the region of 20 of the sodding things. I also chopped the last chunks off the bushes that now lie where we’re planning to have some sort of raised alpine garden type affair / rock garden. It was going to be a pond, but for the sake of cost, time and sanity (and because we’re not going to live here forever) it’s now going to be a rockery**.

I then took this pile of stuff down to the other pile of stuff and combined them (although the roots have been kept separate, as I imagine our garden shredder will not be terribly fond of stones). I pulled the shredder from the garage, the ear defenders from the house, and spent a merry hour shredding stuff. It is immensely tedious, it’s too noisy to really listen to anything on headphones, although I might give it ago. And being as it’s just a little electric shredder with very blunt blades*** I suspect it’s going to take quite a while to shred it’s way through the rest of the pile. I did about &fract14; of the pile today which it has made into quite a nice mulchy type substance. That hour or so has taken at least one load of car-to-tip-chunks of wood and made them into something useful though, which is quite pleasing in and of itself. However the battle with the bush and the shredder has left me fairly tired this evening…

Thankfully I’ve spent a little of today reading some of Gail Carriger’s Soulless. The first three books of the, I believe, four part series were in the Amnesty store (although they were only 50p less than they would have cost in The Works, new, but appeared to be new). Having read the back and a little of the writing I thought they sounded like an entertaining romp, so bought the set there and then. I’ve now got to the Epilogue of the first one, and if they maintain this standard will happily read the rest. It isn’t, as it says on the front, wit that recalls Austen and P.G. Wodehouse (I feel that’s overstating it), but they are good, and very funny. So err, that’s a recommendation. I’ve got such a massive pile of books to read though… Ready Player One was a gift from friends, which I’ve been wanting to read for ages, but which has got waylaid by not being next to the bed at the opportune moment. Now I’m tempted to read all three of the Alexia Tarabotti novels in a row, since I’ve got them, and I’m in to one of them now.

Other entertainments at the moment are Elementary which has been uniformly excellent, Heading Out which I think is terribly underrated. But then I think Sue Perkins rocks. I’ve also, obviously, been watching Doctor Who, which has left me a little underwhelmed this season, so far. Cold War was definitely stronger than the second episode (“Rings of Akhaten”), but didn’t amaze me. Rings of Akhaten had more plot holes than I care to mention, which was disappointing because I quite liked the concept of story, and I think Clara is an excellent companion, and Matt Smith is doing his usual loveable Doctor Who. Meh. Hopefully it’ll pick up. Maybe they used all their best ideas on the 50th Anniversary Episode (which better be good, god damn it). I’ve also listened to an awful lot of Sallie Ford and The Sound Outside, which I heartily recommend.

In other news, my quest for an iTunes replacement lead me to Media Monkey which looks ideal, except that it’s not available on Mac. *sad face*.

* Contrary to popular opinion, we do not require ‘a shrubbery’. Not even ‘a nice one’.
** Again, just to be clear, not a shrubbery.
*** I’ve just discovered you can buy new blades for it for 20 quid. It’s probably worth it, considering the quantity of stuff left to shred.

Vinyl albums that come with digital downloads.

Gatefold ‘limited’ editions, with high quality ‘audiophile’ vinyl and a free download that I can stick on the media server for casual listening.

They’re everywhere.

I keep seeing them.

And then my bank account runs and hides.

And I whimper, and try and restrain myself from buying things that I really, really, really shouldn’t buy.

So, we’ve had some awesome days recently.

Today for example, I spent part of the day living in the 1940/50s. I dropped off Chester for his very belated service (which has resulted in a phone call saying ‘you need a few bits’, were ‘a few bits’ actually is ‘a few bits’. I’m terribly happy about that, and the parts he can’t get – I’ve located on the internet in just a few seconds and he says they’re not deeply urgent).

Having done this not very 1940s task, I wandered back home utilising Shanks’ Pony, stopping en-route at the gramophone shop (in this case a Charity shop who really don’t know how to treat gramophone records, more than half of them were broken) and walked out with some new gramophones including a Bill Haley record and the somewhat oddly titled ‘When you hear Fritz play twiddley bits’ (sadly not as entertainingly chipper as that version – it’s some bloke singing).

Having come home, I set to making lunch (sandwiches) whilst listening to my rather entertaining new gramophones and, of course, wearing my Moskva, in our kitchen with the Bush VHF61. Mind you, I did get our nice local cheese from the modern refrigerator, which is either not very period or a sign of incredible wealth ;)

At any rate, it was rather nice. Then we spent 40 minutes cleaning (well, I spent 40 because I only do my 20-minutes on days off, which means that I do 40 on most days off, theoretically*) before heading out to the garden. We’ve started working on our garden again with the hope of getting it ship shape (and indeed Bristol Fashion) before the summer. Kathryn cleared beds today whilst I made good on a promise to one of our neighbours to go and fell the tree that’s growing out by their foundations. I can’t cut it too near to the ground because it’s got far too big, but I hacked it off, down to about 30cm, and spent a large chunk of time denuding the ground of brambles. I also felled more of the sycamore which have sprung up all over next door (and our garden). We’re hoping to use some of the felled thinner bits like willow to make raised beds (Kathryn’s made one already, which looks pretty nifty). Not sure what to do with some of the bigger bits though, which are blatantly too big for our little shredder and not large enough to give to my mum to season and burn.

Feh, something will occur.

I dug out the roots of the bush that I cut down a few days ago – when Kathryn and I had a bit of time in the garden after our other delightful day in which we had Pancakes, went to Ashton Court for a wander and a picnic, headed to the Bristol museum to look at their No Borders exhibit, then up to Lahloo for tea and cake before heading back home for Rustic Greek Pie (oh so good) and gardening.

Anyhow, half of the bed is clear, I am wrecked as it turns out that gardening is hard work (I’d forgotten), half of the bed still has the massive variegated bush which needs to come down and then be dug out, and the whole thing needs *lots* of compost dug in, but once that’s all done, we should have a home for our peas.

Other jobs we need to do are building the greenshed, dealing with last years pile of clippings, digging out and prepping more beds, and building the deck from pallets. The few days of delightful sun, and the quiet crisp evening have reminded me just how much I love being outside, and understanding that we’re stuck here for at least another year, most likely, means that we ought to have a garden we enjoy.

I did just look at creating an adobe pizza oven. Apparently you need to dig a 5 foot deep, 3 foot wide hole and fill it with gravel as the base. This seems… more work than I was intending. We may just skip that for a while. I’m assuming this is to act as some kind of air-flow thing, although thinking back, I think it had a solid base of adobe. Meh, I dunno. Need to look more.

* We’re trying this – well, a subtly modified version of it, because we both work shifts and so saying ‘On tuesdays I’ll spent 20 minutes cleaning the bathroom’ doesn’t work… Shift work really does screw with lots of things.

Arse.

No, seriously, arse.

So, for my gleeful hope yesterday that CRNNS would get back to me promptly with an assessment of my qualifications and experience, now they have I kinda wish they hadn’t. Or that I’d’ve had more than half an idea about what they’d’ve grumped about so I could fix it before hand. At least this is a more fixed assessment that they want than BC did.

See, BC said “We’re not happy with your surgical or medical nursing, we’d like you to take an assessment that will take between one and five days, and we’d like you to take it just far enough outside Vancouver that you will have no decent way to use any remaining time you might have over here that isn’t part of the assessment as a holiday. It will cost an amount that varies according to how many days of assessment we decide you need after the first day. After that assessment we’ll decide whether you can sit an exam, or whether you have to do some courses, taught in Canada, that you’ll have to personally attend to be considered good enough to sit an exam to decide if you can register as a nurse”.

Which was painful and unclear, and led to the thought process of ‘this may end up costing an infinite amount of money and there is no guarantee that I can afford it or actually ever meet their requirements’.

Which led to the painful abandonment of the several hundred pounds that it’d cost to get that far, and us deciding to stay here for a few years, get Kathryn permanent residence, and try again either there or somewhere else when we were more ready and had no massive upcoming expenses (Permanent Residence in the UK isn’t cheap).

I was pretty grumpy about that, because I’ve done enough medical and surgical nursing in my opinion. I’m not a specialist in either of those areas, but could adequately look after someone, and flag deterioration, and apply my critical care knowledge to that sort of potentially unwell person. But that’s what they wanted.

This time around, CRNNS have decided that it’s my obstetric nursing that’s not up to scratch and they’d like me to please do a general assessment of my nursing skills. Before they decide if I can take an exam to decide whether I can register as a nurse.

Let me just pause for a minute to say that Nova Scotia says they’d like nurses. And that they’re short of nurses. I don’t for a moment think that means they should just accept anyone, but I’ve 7 years experience working in a reasonably respected healthcare organisation with a MSc in Critical Care and am a specialist in my field. I think, perhaps, they should consider that my obstetrics may not be perfect, and I’m quite willing for them to say ‘come do a refresher course and exam on obstetrics and take the CRNE’ at the same time but no.

No, like the CRNBC they seem to forget that flying to Canada to do these things is not cheap and requires annual leave to be taken of which I do, in fact, have a limited time.

Let’s just pause to remind ourselves of the costs of going to Nova Scotia (where they would like nurses).

($ are all Canadian)
$575 to apply for the assessment.
$310 to get WES to do an assessment of my qualifications.

So that’s basically $900 so far.

To do the in-person assessment of my skills* (on which they decide if I need remedial courses or can just go on to do my exam) will cost a minimum of $900 in airfare. The very cheapest return flight I’ve found is $901 dollars, and rises substantially from there depending on when I go. I’ve no idea how much the assessment costs (I’ve asked yesterday, not yet had an answer) but given the cost of a four hour multiple choice exam I’m not expecting less than $500 – which basically puts the cost of this assessment at nearly $2000 (including hotels, food, etc). And that’s if just I go. If Kathryn goes as well, we’re well into $3000 territory).

Did I mention Nova Scotia would like nurses, they’re short on them.

If I pass that exam, then we get into ‘you can take the CRNE’ which is a mere $600 (at the moment, we’ll be getting on for a year at this point so it may well have gone up). Plus obviously the flight cost – so another $900, plus obviously the hotels and food at around another $5-600. So we’re looking at another minimum $2000.

Which brings us to a minimum grand total of $4,900, or for those of you keeping track in British money, £3,200 at the current exchange rate.

After which, since they provide no sponsorship, we just need to apply for a visa, get a job (possibly vice versa) – Kathryn (while I was grumping about the house yesterday) pointed out that the Provincial Nominee programme appears to be open (it was ‘closed’ last time I looked at it). I’m not sure if I can apply for a visa under that, which I could do now, which would speed things along a bit. Oh, and then we just have to move. *sigh*.

I have to say I’m frustrated (if you’d not gathered). I’d hoped that NS might be a bit more sane, look at my experience and at least give me the opportunity to sit the damn exam without this faffing about before hand.

And it comes down to how committed are we to NS.

Do we want to throw a minimum of another £2700 at a problem that’s taken £600 so far and has no guarantee of success?

Our options boil down to:

– Stay here. As far as I’m concerned that’s not an option. It breaks my heart reading the news about the destruction and privatisation of the NHS, and I, at least, can see where it’s heading. Excellent healthcare for the 1% and the rest of us can get stuffed. A sign saying “Welcome to WonderHealth Bristol – an NHS Franchise, ask us about our deluxe care options”; you know, the options where you get the care you used to get for free. So no. No, I can’t stay here to watch that.
– Knuckle down and spend the £2700 on getting to NS. NS is (well, looks) beautiful, and we can get the kind of property we’d like to have, and the space we’d like our kid/s to grow up in. The main thing attracting us there is the lifestyle and land. At least, that’s what it is for me.
– Go somewhere else. This is restricted by neither of us actually speaking a foreign language, and is such a vague notion that neither of us have particularly explored it…
– Wait and go to the U.S.A. if / when they repeal DOMA, potentially work over there doing non-nursing stuff and I can do the NCLEX there (I think that’s what it’s called) or do the NCLEX over here. Whilst I despise for-profit healthcare, since it’s coming to the UK then perhaps I should just suck it up. There’s quite a few non-profit hospitals in Washington State, so that is a possibility. Of course that does mean waiting – but my understanding from a quick look at the world is that if DOMA is repealed, then we nip across to the US and remarry a third time (If Brandi Carlile can do it, so can we), then I can go in as Kathryn’s spouse.

It’s all very complicated at the moment. I think the NS and USA options are the winners at the moment. I’ve been dreaming of Canada so long that it seems very odd to me to abandon it, especially for the sake of a mere £3000, but a mere £3000 is not a mere anything to us. We don’t have £3000 lying around under the couch cushions. It’s a lot of extra shifts, even at agency rates. But to have the carrot of an easier route out of the UK and the depressing mess it’s making of itself is very tempting. And to be near the awesome friends-of-Kathryn who do seem (every time I’ve met them) to be utterly lovely is also a tempting prospect – especially given my general ineptitude at making new friends.

I’m trying not to feel deeply negative about the whole thing (I did that for several hours yesterday and awoke this morning continuing the negativity), but it’s hard…

…on the plus side, by the time that we can actually make a decision about it (because it’s going to take a while to sort out costs and when I could take the CRNNS tests) the DOMA decision might well be ‘in’ and that will at least let us make a decision with ‘more material facts’.

* Which given that it’s a focussed assessment of my obstetric and midwifery I’ll probably need to do a refresher course on, in which case I’ll do one here before I go, which will cost around £350, potentially, if I do it. This is because in 7 years I’ve been present for 2 births. At both births midwives have been present and really my most important job was doing observations, my second most important job was ‘holding the ultrasound so they can listen for the fetal heartbeat’. The next of these courses is not until November…