Monday, February 04, 2008

Wrestling with the tax office and a treadle machine

Oof, have just rung the tax office. Been putting it off for... well, until about a week before they'd fine me for not having told them I'm self-employed! And, as ever, the chap on the end of the phone was very helpful, not at all scary and it was all fiiiiine. Don't know why I get so worked up about dealings with the Tax Office - I always get in a tizz and put it off for ages and ages, and then it's never as bad as I think! I shall let that be a lesson....

Been rather busy with work after a downturn over January, when I sorted out all the cupboards in the kitchen and various other worthy and boring things like that. Got called in to do an emergency eleventh-hour translation by the rubbish agency who have never given me any work before (I'm basically so unmarketable as a translator that I've given up responding to their emails), which required me to get up at six in the morning and do it in 'real time' online so someone could proof-read it simultaneously. I felt somewhat naked, sharing my rather idiosyncratic work processes with total strangers who might be judging me and my warped brain.

Still plodding away with my dressmaking course, though, have to pin and press the hem of my skirt for tomorrow and then I should be able to finish it off, with a bit of help. The sewing machine is almost working - I had it at the stage where the mechanism was fine, but I couldn't thread it, and now Nik's mum has shown me how to thread it, and something seems to have gone wrong with the belt.... Grrrr......

The veg box sent us a mixed fruit and veg box instead of just a veg box, which means no sprouting broccoli (one of my favourite vegetables) and a surfeit of bananas this week. Hohumm.

Anyhoo, have hemming and shopping to get on with. I'm having a 'freelancer's weekend' today. We've run out of almost all dry goods imaginable, and I feel rather vulnerable not having a well-stocked cupboard. There might be a nuclear holocaust or something.

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