Can I have my computer back, pretty please?

Well I am back at the keyboard but I had to fight Nobby to get it. I thought it was safely mine once the kids are in bed (and we adults have eaten and the kitchen is cleared and the general toy explosion downstairs has been tidied up etc etc). But no, the tax returns are due to the accountant in a couple of weeks so Nobby had my nose to the filing cabinet the last two evenings to get them done in good time. I mustn’t grumble, I should be glad that this number crunching can bring out the dormant accountant in him; he is still qualified after all. I had hoped that when I caught him throwing out two CIMA magazines unread the other day that he might revert to my technique of doing the taxes - which is to leave it till the night before the deadline then panic when I can’t gather all the paperwork. I’ll just have to face it that I am numerically challenged. I used to like maths at school, until I signed up for the A Level and all the actual numbers disappeared. At the time I was more interested in Duran Duran and electric blue mascara, I really didn’t give a stuff what ‘x’ equalled. I remember to this day reading through the first horrifying question on the exam. I was already a wobbly mess before we turned the papers over and I wasn’t sure I could even get my name spelt correctly. Then question one was along the lines of ‘If a train leaves Euston station at 9.14am and travels at 83 miles per hour for 126 miles, what did the train-drivers mother-in-law have for breakfast?’. Luckily I scraped a pass; I’m not sure how I’d do these days, although they say the modern A Level is near impossible to fail(!). Throw a few equations at me and I’m sure I’d manage it.

So hooray for Nobby, even if he did start talking all funny about ‘expenditure above the line’ and ‘unapproved ordinary shares’ – the taxes are done. And all I had to do was get my name right.