Tidying up

A good start. I have accumulated a dreadful amount of paper and a lot is just rubbish. Downstairs in the cottage is a mess, upstairs even worse. Got rid of quite a bit, cleared the stairs and vacummed for the first time for weeks. Looks a lot better. Most moved upstairs, though, so still a lot to do.

Both Middlesex students are thinking about stopping their studies. Aoi is one of those girls who simply takes on far too much and hates to give up but I think my not passing her last term was a bit of a wake up call. She should, though, be able to do sufficient to pass the Project Planning module this term and I made an effort to persuade her to do the fairly simple bits of work required and get that module finished. After that then I reckon her husband's diplomatic duties, apparently expected to take him to Afghanistan, will result in her taking some time out. The other, Laura, is off to Sri Lanka until late August so hasn't got much hope of doing the more complicated module. I can get that deferred. In a way, that's quite good and saves me having stuff to mark. I've been paid for both anyway!

Chatted to AT and gave him some advice re his student's project which was not exactly an inspiring piece of work. AT is also dealing with a Commander level chap who had hoped to sign up a good number of people through the MOD scheme on CFBA modules but in the absence of any confirmation of accounts or status of CFBA that's pretty unlikely to happen now. With CT and crew acting the way they are we're quite pleased. Kept the door open if the MOD people want to do Middlesex modules direct which we should get some tutor work for.

Peter's gazebo has a roof and I published an amended version of his photo of progress to date to include a giraffe which was fun. Belatedly posted my acceptance for the wedding on 30 July.

HM Inspector of Taxes annoyingly still seems to think I owe £3000 or so for the period when my tax code was NT during bankruptcy. I paid the consequent increase in net pay - effectively the PAYE element - to the Receiver's accountant people so, whilst there may well have been a couple of months when the code was left at NT and shouldn't have been, I cannot imagine that I can possibly owe that sort of sum. Wrote again to that effect but didn't give any details of the Receiver or the arrangement as, should it all go wrong for some reason, the longer I can string out the correspondence the better. It really has to be something they haven't spotted but it's difficult when you tend to feel that official bodies like HMIofT can't be wrong. It's an unusual case and I'm going to keep arguing unless there's something I've missed but I can't believe it's that vast. I'm sure I only paid about £360 a month and there's no way the NT code lasted an extra 9 months.