22 Foxhole East

Daily interest now £5.93

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } Busy little weekend this one.


Finished scraping the wall of evilness. Finally!


Went to the gym 7-8 on Saturday morning, then all the food shopping and nonsense that goes along with it. I had a list, and DS1 with me, so ended up throwing everything in the known universe into the trolley. Even with the wanton abandon with which he filled the trolley, it still only came to £60. I can't even do gay abandon now! It still ends up less than the average family of 4's weekly shop. I even have blueberries!!


I lifted a load more of the horrible hairy floor tiles in the kitchen, and found that where the floor is not level between rooms, they used placemats to bridge the gap. No, really, they used placemates to make the floor seem more level. Utterly bodged bizarreness.


The kitchen does seem bigger though, without red and orange hairiness. So I took myself off to the local carpet warehouse on the way back from the dreaded grocery shop and had a look at some nice light white wood effect lino (sounds horrid, looks good) which I think will lift the light level in the kitchen – it is quite gloomy.


With my success on the whole flooring front, I wandered off down to The Best Shop In The World Ever (second hand furniture warehouse down the road – it now has TWO more rooms opened up!!) and I think I have found a chest of drawers that will house my entire wardrobe – I had to give my tiny wardrobe up to house DH's overspill from his massive linen closet- so I only have three small drawers to keep my clothes in, so I have been looking for a larger set of drawers. I found 4 that fit the bill, but wanted to remeasure the alcove, and I am glad I did, as I had it in my head the space was 98cm, which it is at the top, but only 96 at the bottom because of the skirting boards. So I will go back on Monday, and see which one I will get.


In further financial news, the unexpected £80 cashback from the car insurance is somewhere between the cashback site and my bank account. Hooray!! I never count on it until I cash out, and I did two at the same time with two different companies, one paid out, the other has declined. Bums!
Ah well, £80 is £80. I might get a second hand TV as well while I am there. They are from £30 and we are currently one down as DS2 seems to break everything he touches.
The swine just knocked my cooling double chocolate cake off the table onto the floor. Luckily it was still in the tin so I carved the topmost 1 cm off it. Still enough left to make a sandwich cake and iced the new 'top'. He was testing his food tech recipe so he knew what to do for his lesson in a fortnight. We now have a two person apple crumble he thinks will feed the six of us. I will get the smallest teaspoons we have.


Went a bit mad this morning, I was going to go to the gym but I woke up sad. Doesn't happen often, so I have cleaned nearly all the house to within an inch of its life. I have done seven laundry loads this weekend, and dried all of it on the line. We got drownded on Friday coming back from school, so all the uniform is clean now even the blazers, but I think I am going to need new Airtex shirts for the 2 smallest. They are not washing as white, even with the whitening in-wash towel things. Still, they are not expensive, shame they have to be white though. White and my boys do not mix.
Did I tell you about the last time I bought DS2 new white shirts? The second day he had them he was measuring out powder paint in his art lesson and sneezed. The paint was red, the shirt was forever pink.


I am very aware we are on the downward slope to the Summer holidays. Two weeks left until Whit week half term, I am going to book us 4 days in Norfolk at t'seaside. DH needs a break from work and it might even be warm, the first few days of June. Not cheap, £80 a night, but it is for the 6 of us, and we do get to use the self catering kitchen – it just happens that I got the same place for £30 a night last year in the Summer holidays. I did find a hostel in Penzance for abot £50 a night, and they had the entire school holiday free, but DH refused to drive that far. I will have to work out which hostels are on the way down to Cornwall and do a stop over somewhere he wants to visit. That way we can do it in the summer holidays, he needs to learn to go on holiday. It is not something his parents ever did. So he is bemused by the whole idea and utterly unconvinced about the process. I will teach him yet!


Stuck the top floor skirting boards back on the walls this afternoon. Ridiculously easy job, I put it off for way too long. Still, done now, and I only had to take one door off to thread the board down the back of the radiator – a much simpler job than removing the radiator, and I didn't have to ask DH to help, so he is chuffed.


I have still done nothing about getting quotes for various bits and things.


And in the weight loss round up, I have been going to the gym now for three whole weeks and have lost a pathetically poor 2lbs. Not sure what is going on, as I have stopped the crisps and biscuits and cakes. The fruit bowl is now overflowing and majestic looking, and I am trying to drink more water. Hopefully the scales will start to shift soon, or I am going to have to return to the dreaded W8Watchers, and nobody wants to pay for that – it kills any interest and enjoyment of food but it does seem to work for me. Well, it has worked for me twice, but without making two sets of meals a night, it is not sustainable in the long term.


Right, off to do some other stuff now, see you later.

Oh heck, it all starts again. It's that time of year again folks!!
The Child Tax Credit people have just stuck £60 in my account for no clearly apparent reason. My pay day is usually a Friday, and as this Friday is not a bank holiday anywhere in the UK, it must be time to renew the tax credits.

Bit of back story - I have always been obsessive about keeping the Tax credit people updated about changes, and all the time for the first 7 or so years, it was all very simple. I am not working, DH was working, gave his salary, job done. Then he gave up work to finish his PhD as his new line manager decided to change the agreement he could do day release one day a week and work back the time by going in early and staying late (he was working in a University!). Long story, it ended up with him coming home one day and saying 'I am thinking of handing in my notice - I am not putting up with this', but I had a notion it was coming so I was not surprised. He handed in his notice, worked his 30 days and was then voluntarily unemployed, and a full time student, and had 5 dependents. So, tax credits stepped in, we lived and paid the mortgage, all the numbers added up, not a problem. He started picking up work doing teaching, I think the first year he earnt 6k - it was not easy peasy, but the mortgage was paid and the bills were paid, and I never had any worry that he would not get a full time job, but that when you are a junior lecturer/ teaching associate you get a contract for a term, then you sit panicking for the holiday, and a week before term starts you get a phone call and get given more hours for the next term. In the three years he was a jobbing associate, he was unemployed for a total of about 12 weeks, and they were all when the uni was shut down. So I was ringing the tax credit people every 3 months, telling them of any changes, they were brilliant. Never cocked up once. Every April somewhere between £1500 - £1700 appeared in my account due to underpayment, which was nice. And then we moved to Sheffield. So I rang them to tell them we had moved, blah blah blah, all going well, the money was a bit less as the salary became more, and then in April/May did the renewal on the phone. And the money started pouring in. So I rang them up and they asked if I had received the letter yet, and I said no, and they said wait until I got the letter and then ring back. So suddenly they stuck £2k in my bank and started giving me £400 a week. So I thought 'ta very much but there is something fishy going on here'. So the 6% kids bank accounts started, cos there was no way |I was going to be spending it!! No letter came. All very odd, and so it continued until we left, and we moved down to Leicester, changed addresses, it came to the time to do the renewal and I got a letter telling me I had been overpaid £17,000 and that I was on the system as earning £26k and being in full time employment. They had obviously merged someone else's claim with my account. So I was very not happy. Rang them up, got total nonsense. The people on the phone were horrified that someone else's details were on our account. Probably not as horrified as the poor person who was wondering why their tax credit application was taking so long. So I had to dispute it, and the onus was on me to provide them with proof of their ineptitude. So I sent them all the tax credit renewals for the last decade, wrote them a scathing letter, and received a letter back in about a fortnight telling me they had miscalculated and I owed them £1,400 and they would be dropping my award to £8 a week in order to claw it back.
So, luckily DH was earning good money by then, but still, how many other people do they do this to? So I went through about 7 months of less than £10 a week for 4 kids, and then, when it came to renewal date, they refunded me £1,200 due to underpayment.
I think it may have been when the company who was doing the checks was taken over, and they reviewed all of the disputed payments/complaints, and I got the money back as it was blatantly their fault.

So when the tax credits get paid on the wrong day, and the amount is not what it should be, and it is coming up to renewal date, it is never good when they pay money into my account that I am not expecting. And I know I can do nothing about it until I get the renewal letter to try and make (non)sense of what they think they are doing this time..... anyway, I have a surprise £60 today, and who knows what will be there tomorrow, as they do like to make multiple payments - sometimes multiple payments on the same day - without a 'Hello!' or a 'Hi there' or 'Surprise!'.... so now I am anxious.....