Apologies – missed last week. Day job got in the way.

Mind you, I was reading recently that one shouldn’t start a blog or an email or similar with an apology. For which I’m sorry.

Ha ha.

It’s difficult to explain (let alone understand) where last week went. First it was there, then it wasn’t. A glance back at the diary highlights:

• too many appointments in the last week of the month (mind you – one was a presentation so I think we’d have kept that one come what may). Not getting at my PA, we’ve discussed that for future months and put a few ground rules together.
• colliding deadlines – no matter how many systems and alerts you have, there’s always something that slips the net. What DOESN’T help is when the one that slips the net has an unexpected problem. Something that under normal circumstances I would have expected to take 10 minutes max took in excess of SIX HOURS! Ending up having to export figures from a computerised accounting package into Excel to try and work out what was going on… Cracked it eventually – all hinged on what happens when a transaction is mis-dated forward into another period and how that affects the reports that were coming off. Did my head in. Felt like my bl**dy skull was going to explode about five hours in. Still – all done. Eventually.
• add to this mixture a retrospective calculation that settled a long outstanding issue between a pension scheme and its sponsoring company where the settlement involved taking some monies already received and allocated and treating them as a part payment of a proportion of the total amount in issue with the period under question being over six years. S’easy. Isn’t it???
• my osteopath would have a fit if she saw what I put my body through straight after she has put the joints and tendons back in working order. Time between appointment and wrecking my back again was probably less than two hours. Please don’t tell her…

S’life, innit…

Then came the outbreak of volunteering.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t do just so I can whinge about it afterwards. And I do do what I do willingly and without coercion but – just like colliding deadlines – colliding volunteering.

Friday evening – Fareham Music Festival. Continued Saturday all day and Sunday until mid-afternoon. I’m treasurer (there’s a surprise), photographer, social media expert, catering assistant and front of house if we can’t get someone else to do it. Lucky we hold it on a bank holiday weekend or Lorraine and I would have had no down time at all over the weekend.

Monday bank holiday.

Tuesday evening. Town Council held its annual assembly (I’m chair of finance – bet you’d never have guessed). We have a very different style of assembly compared with most towns and parishes locally. A lot of others involve boring speeches about how well the council has done over the previous year. We have the choirs from a local primary school and three groups from a local secondary school, minimal speeches and free food for attendees. We get around 100-150 attendees compared with single figures with others…

Wednesday afternoon. Young Enterprise Hampshire county final. Seven schools in the final. Displays and a competitive presentation in front of their peers and three judges from the world of business. Say hello to the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. I certainly did. One lad in particular I’ll not be at all surprised to meet in a business setting in very few years to come.

Add networking this morning and the time for doing this week is fast vanishing. Two VAT returns to file by close of play tomorrow plus a couple of complicated questions to think through and respond to.

I’m sure it’ll all work out.

I hope so anyway!