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So, my tax affairs are handled through a teeny tiny office, special I am, apparently. No particular idea why. This came to pass at the same time as Her Maj’s Revenue and Customs had a new computer system installed. I have no idea if this new system is excitingly better than the old one, or is like our systems at work (there are multiple separate patient systems none of which is capable of talking to another – the poor reception staff often enter patient’s details three times*). At any rate, the new system going in meant that only ‘urgent’ tax stuff was getting done leading to a mahusive backlog of tax stuff for those of us who are not going for urgency.

After a few painful phonecalls I managed to get to the point where we’d grasped that my letters had gone to the Portsmouth office before they moved my tax stuff, and were sitting in a mountain of unsorted and unfiled paper which could take months to get through.

I’d resigned myself to resubmitting my claim for Laundry expenses (does that include a new washing machine?). I’d accepted that I would probably never, ever see my P60s** again. However, as it’s a non-urgent task it’d got pushed to the bottom of the list of things I really ought to do.

Then, out of the blue, my P60s returned, along with a nice letter saying “we’re reviewing things”. Ooh – or so I thought. Then, as I’ve whinged on here, came the bizzare underpayment/overpayment letter. Apparently I’d underpaid by 430 odd quid, and overpayed in other years by 380 quid – and had – thus – 50 quid to pay them. Less some kind of overpayment credit – meaning I had 40 quid to pay them. I was confused.

I looked in ever decreasing understanding at the figures in the letter, accompanied by a hand scrawled note, and at the end just thought ‘fuck it’ – it said “we’ve adjusted your tax code so you don’t have to pay us this year, it’ll magically disappear from your wages”. I remained in my state of confusedness because as far as I was concerned I’d suddenly gone from a 600 quid rebate to a 40 quid bill. And it made no mention of my Laundry expenses.

I put it on the ‘to sort’ pile, but with no particular expectation of doing it in a hurry because, well, it was non-urgent.

Then I got a new letter saying ‘YOU OWE US MONIES!” which had some of the same calculations on and said ‘we would like it before the end of January”. So I finally rang them today.

Apparently, out of the blue, and with no accompanying paperwork they received my P60s from Portsmouth and so have done what comes naturally to tax offices; a tax assessment. And lo, they found that I’d underpaid…and overpaid… and sent me a bill. Why I suddenly got a new letter, that’s unknown. What they still don’t have is any claim for Laundry expenses.

And so, we are back to I need to re-send them a claim for Laundry expenses. More annoying because I’ve lost the original one, so I need to go back and look at my payments and bank account stuff. It’s a job that takes a couple of very dull hours.

And now they have adjusted my tax code so I don’t have to pay the spurious bill. Well, not spurious, but it seemed silly to send them 40 quid for them to then send it back again (instead they can deduct it from my expenses claim and I get the interest for the 40 quid. Woot).

On the plus side I have, finally, sorted my allergy clinic appointments. Well, I should receive a phonecall or letter about them. That’d be good.

* Once to find their NHS information on the NHS database, once for the hospital records system and once for the A&E system. A fourth system is used to book patients clinic appointments. The clinic system can, at least, pull up patient details from the A&E number. The hospital system can’t. The NHS database is completely unrelated to any of the other systems and appears to have a web based front end. Integration is something we can’t have…
** P60s are your ‘end of year’ tax return. For reasons that escape me they’d asked me for them. I foolishly assumed they’d actually have some kind of record of such things. P45s, incidentally are your end of job tax returns and come up in British culture now and then.

Senior managers in the NHS should have to spend one month of every other year shadowing nurses or SHOs (FY2s) in ‘busy’ departments*. They should endure the joys of shift work, endure the joys of nights, understand what it’s like to work when a department is staffed by 70% agency due to sickness**. It might make them treat the clinical staff better***.

Incidentally, it’s not that I have anything against agency staff**** – one of the things I like about where I work is that we treat our agency staff decently, it’s a very friendly department; but when you know where everything is, you know how everything works, and you – at least theoretically – have a commitment to your department it makes a big difference to the deparment’s running. On two consecutive nights we had similarly high patient numbers, the night with high agency numbers was painful and exhausting. The night without was just tiring.

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So those of you who know me, know I did nights over the entire Xmas week – Xmas, for me, this year, falls on the 30th of December :)

It’s been interesting. Perhaps nights are different than days, or perhaps because of the recession, but I saw far less dumping of unwanted relatives than I’ve seen in the past. Much less of “granny can’t cope at home” or “Oh, no, we can’t come and collect him…” – which is always one of the most awful things about Xmas in the health-service. However, despite the pleading of the NHS we still had a lot of people rock up with stupid ass things. My favourite was a bloke with a cough who came in by ambulance. I didn’t quite understand why the normally sensible tech had brought him in.

I kept waiting for the ‘short of breath’ (apart from when coughing), ‘low Sats’ or ‘sharp pain’ in the hand-over, but it never came. He’d had cold like symptoms and now had a nagging dry cough. His SaO₂ was 98%******. Nor was there any suggestion that the tech in question had suggested that hospital might not be the best place to take his cough, or that he’d demanded to come in. So I don’t know why he came in, I know he got a set of obs (all normal) and a listen to his chest and got sent home – whereupon he whined about how he was going to *get* home (no, we won’t pay for transport). It’s rare that a patient comes in to Majors in the hospital and doesn’t get bled… he was one of the few.

Boxing day was the worst though. Here’s some advice for people next year. If you don’t like your family, don’t go and spend the day getting drunk around them. It seems to lead to an exceptionally high level of assaulting each other. Also, that hard white stuff that the snow turns into when it melts and refreezes. The stuff that’s all shiny? That’s called ice – it’s slippery. Your shopping can *wait* until it’s gone. No one died from a late Xmas present.

Oh, and if you’re caught breaking into somewhere (when drunk), get beaten up and come to A&E – please don’t try and charm the (lesbian) nurse. It just makes her uncomfortable.

Thanks.

* Medical/Surgical admissions wards (the wards that usually take the brunt of emergency admissions), A&E, ooh and elderly care (just because they’re almost invariably run on minimum staffing with extremely demanding patients).
** I’ve worked a ward which was being run on 100% bank staff – so all staff who knew the hospital, just not that ward. It’d been open for a day, having been closed for 6 months, it was quite…interesting. Felt bad for the patients.
*** This also comes about from watching an entire season of Cardiac Arrest – it’s interesting because it’s written from a doctor’s perspective – I wonder how the current crop of doctors sees nurses (and whether it’d be different if it were commenting on A&E nurses who, largely, are part of the same team as the doctors).*****
**** I do agency, so I can’t really complain.
***** A&E and probably ITU, and possibly theatres (and maybe medical/surgical admissions) have a bit of a different relationship with doctors than wards. Most wards the doctors trundle through on their rounds and only come back when they have a job to do. A&E, ITU et al, all have a different relationship because the doctors are there all the time, and so when (on those depressingly rare occasions) it’s quiet they chat. It certainly feels different, the relationship.
****** A measure of how saturated your blood is with oxygen. Flawed, in so far as if you’ve lost most of your blood what’s left can still be saturated with oxygen… But for most things an adequate and useful measure.

I thought that adding 15 feet of extra shelving would more than replace the existing shelving even, perhaps, allowing space to move the books that are spilling off the end of the bookshelves, and crawling out of the corners of the rooms a place to live.

I was wrong.

Depressingly, 15 feet of shelving turns out to be almost exactly the same amount of shelving as is provided by the nasty pine shelves I’m endeavouring to replace. Still, it’s taken the load off the bit of floor I’ve been quietly worrying about.

I am now going to attempt some filing.

[Hours awake: 22]

Dear Hotpoint,

Whilst my mum’s washer managed to last from 1978 until 2008 (and then only died after being submerged in 3 foot of river water) it has come to my attention that the WD series washer/drier I bought having moved into the house in 2007 has become ever more unreliable, and today has decided that switching on is beyond it’s pathetic capacities.

I’ll grant that it has, for it’s entire life, been the most useless washing machine I’ve ever encountered, growing mould in the detergent drawer, producing ‘dried’ items that were almost as wet as not using the drier function, periodically opting to illuminate all it’s little lights instead of drying at all, and when it did deign to do any drying turning my uniforms into trousers with more pleats than my school uniform skirt. But if, as it appears to be, it’s stone cold dead after 3 years do you think I’m likely to buy, or recommend, your brand to anyone ever again?

When a repair engineer goes “Oh, one of those” (not that I’d asked him to fix it, he’s a friend); you can probably assume that it’s not a good start.

Anyhow, I’ll try powercycling it later (difficult, because the switch is behind it, and moving it out involves unplumbing it). Perhaps then it’ll be persuaded to work a while longer.

Yours with No Love.

Kate.

…for steam engines.

They’re very…emotive…things. And this, well, this amuses me:

Old things, they’re just better

That is all.

Yesterday my commute to work was very long. It normally takes between 30 and 45 minutes. Yesterday it took 5 hours. 5 hours, door-to-door traveling just over 13 miles.

Seriously, people need to learn how to drive in the snow. It’s not *that* hard. I’m not exactly stellar, but if I can manouver a 20 year old rear wheel drive Volvo on 10 year old tyres, you should be able to get your traction controlled, shiny front wheel drive box in a fairly straight line down the road.

Highlight: After an hour of queuing to get out of Slough, I came to a point where traffic was splitting to get around an apparently broken down car. The odd thing? No hazards. As I pulled up next to him I noticed that there was a bloke in the car, lying back, either asleep or…I feared…collapsed. I put the Volvo into Neutral, handbrake on, and gingerly hopped out onto the ice. A tap on the window, the bloke woke up, looked puzzled, looked around and then waved gratefully and drove off.

Obstruction cleared :)

Ah well. Sleep now.

So, work is progressing on ‘becca, Jonathon’s sent me more photos – which show just how completely knackered she was, and how much of the previous restorer’s work has had to be cut out to make a structurally sound vehicle. Thanks to yesterday I’m not really taking this in the positive light in which I should be.

Unfortunately, after running like a dream all the way to work, on my way home yesterday Charlie (the bike) decided to die. Completely and totally. In a very civilised way, thankfully. In fact, initally – given the 2 Degrees C in-town estimate and the -4 degrees C possibility I assumed I had some carb-icing going in. This, for the unaware, is something you only generally get on air-cooled vehicles and is where the air being drawn through the carb is so cold, the water in it freezes and forms ice when it contacts the carbs innards. This as you might imagine fubars the mixture/throttle/everything else settings and the engine, in general, dies.

Thankfully, the warmth of the engine will normally thaw out the carb and you can set off again, often somewhat more gently. My counteraction to this is to try and funnel warm air over the carb in the winter.

But anyhow, that was my assumption – as I limped to the side of the road. A few minutes later the bike perked up again, and off we went. For a mile. Then it died, and this time would restart and rev, but applying load killed the engine. Fortunately, I’d been prepared prepared and dashed for the hard shoulder, yanking on the anchors mere feet from an SOS box.

I called the illustrious AA. One and three quarter hours and several increasingly cold calls to them later, a recovery truck pulled up. He looked at the bike with the air of one considering fixing it, until I pointed out that it now had a flat battery in addition to whatever was wrong with it before (the battery having held the lights illuminated for about an hour and a quarter) at which point he decided to load up and take me home – despite the AA’s protestations that they should take the bike to a ‘place of safety’ and then I should await a repair vehicle.

I don’t know, because I’ve not looked, if it’s something simple (like it’s oiled it’s spark plug – but then it’d normally not start at all) or something more complex. It runs and idles fine. Starts adequately. Lord knows if it’s the replacement carb, or if this is something that was coming anyway.

But it leaves me in a frustrating position. The DAF is currently ‘for sale’ – and someone is vaguely interested in ‘er. That leaves the Volvo – which is meant to be for Kathryn to use, and the Minor – which is very much not ready yet. Do I drag the MZ down the road to the bike shop (if it’ll come); do I take the DAF down to the ‘air-cooled specialists’ a few streets away… Gah.

And to top it off, I slept like crap last night. I was frozen after the near 2 hours in -4C (25 degrees F) and it took an age for me to warm up enough that my body would stop announcing it’s need to be warmer to me – even then I couldn’t get to sleep and in the end swigged some night nurse because my brain wouldn’t shut up. When I finally got to sleep I got 3 hours before, for some reason, I got agonising stomach cramps for about an hour. I promised Kathryn I’d take her to work this morning, but she looked at me and said “you’re falling asleep sitting up” – and I realised I probably wasn’t really safe to drive. I feel like a zombie I’m so tired – which makes the idea of making a decision somewhat harder…

So, Kathryn mentioned (in the nicest possible way) while I was whining about computers that I am, potentially, a little bit spoilt. I am a geek, and in geek terms, I’d say I’m not spoilt. Were I spoilt in Geek terms, the Ent.Mac would be every bit as shiny as possible, and probably a real mac. However, I’m not spoilt to that degree.

But I’m fully aware that I live with a degree of privilege which extends from my parents and my education, and my middleclassity, but that doesn’t necessarily stop me whining (as you’re all very much aware). And while I have had my whine on here (haven’t I?) about wanting to upgrade the Ent.Mac, mostly because it’s incapable of handling Blu-Ray and HighDef Video; not that I have anything to play back high-def video or blu-ray on, because the CRT most definately doesn’t do more than 625 lines. But should I ever *get* such technology I’d like to be able to take advantage of it, and the fact that the Ent.Mac needs new hardware is the kind of excuse that tempts a fading geek such as me to want to take advantage.

I’m currently holding off, perhaps considering the potential expenses and potential shift work, that’s where I should be at. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll switch and have a much nicer machine with OS X 10.6 on it, rather than my aged 10.3 machine with it’s ancient (in computing terms) hardware. Or maybe I’ll just throw a new DVD-Writer in and call it good for the time being.

I’m also wanting a new camera, although as a stand-in for the minute I’ve bought some film for my SLR – which has lain unused for a looong time. My Digital Prosumer model has died, having chomped through another set of expensive NiMH batteries, the zoom lens has died, and I took out my ‘point-and-click’ digital (I suppose point and shoot, really) – today (post to follow) and was quietly depressed by the ‘quality’ of the pictures. I remember it being better than it is, I suspect it possibly was better – because I tended only to shoot in bright light.

Still, I’ll play with my SLR for a bit, and then when I’m screamingly dissatisfied with the quality of the ‘scanning’ service (usually the quality I’ve got back from these services has been depressing) – it seems very difficult to get information regarding the resolution at which they’ll scan the negatives (or in some cases they scan the prints (*sigh*). Still, I’m quite looking forward to it, although lugging the AE-1 up to the Lakedistrict will probably put a crimp in my joy ;)

So, yes, the other way in which I’m spoilt is that I can spend money on restoring a Morris Minor which, well, is frankly way beyond what it’s worth. It’s depressing that I can’t spend as much as would return a car in brand-new condition with e-coated, resprayed shell. But it’s pleasing to see people who care working on her. I spent a very pleasant couple of hours in the company of Jonathon and Martin of JLH, who have stripped out the engine bay and who both seemed endlessly disappointed in the quality of the previous workmanship. Apparently she’s going to be shown as an example to someone else who was asking about the quality of Charles Ware’s restorations.

Things like… the new chassis legs they fitted, they didn’t weld them in correctly, (the tie plates weren’t correctly welded to the chassis legs – in-fact, one long section wasn’t welded at all, they just rested together); the hose that ran from the master cylinder to the brake fluid reservoir just rested on the brake pedal – so every time you braked you wore away the pipe. It would eventually wear through and fill the chassis leg with brake fluid. It’s rust bubbling up along welds which weren’t painted or protected well.

It’s sad, really. It’s sad that they chose to take my dad’s money to do a shoddy job, it’s sad that now 8 years on I look at her and know that the only true solution is way out of my pricerange at the moment, and it’s sad that I’m having to pay a company to rectify things that should have been done properly 8 years ago. What is enjoyable, however, is watching someone who cares. Who points out the minor details and says ‘do you want that fixed’. Who wants you to come to the workshop to see progress, and who takes time to explain what’s wrong and what can be done to fix it.

And frankly, to see a repair section put in to the rusted away tie-plate so neatly done that when she’s painted I won’t remember it’s there.

Hopefully, all the rest of it should come together okay… I’m looking forward to having her back, although without any drama*, Jejy took me there and back. There’s a distinct smell of petrol at idle, which is quite unpleasant, which I need to look into; and I need to sort out the *other* leak, now that one of them seems to be fixed…

Anyhow, since the weather is chosing to be horrifically unkind to me (I swear it said it’d be dry today) I’ll move on and do the abandoned building photos…

* Apart from the near complete descent to flatitude of one of the tyres. Seriously, I pulled off the motorway and was shocked, because it looked fine when I left this morning.

So, it’s been a productive week:
– Floor tiles laid & grouted in the hallway (still need cleaning and coating though)
– G-Wiz recommissioned and taken to my mum’s
– Much art measured, framed and hung
– A new bin in the kitchen that smells less like it’s filled with many dead things
– CV Tweaked and sent to Canada
– New DVD Burner ordered for the EntMac

…and today, in a staggering turn of events I actually got off my arse and out into the cold and switched the possibly faulty BvF carb for the Bing one. After lunch I shall pootle on out and see if we can at least go the same speed as before (although faster would be nice).

Now, soup.