The good news is that there are just over five working days till our main holiday.

The bad news is that there are just over five working days till our main holiday…

Sigh.

It’s that time of year when, in addition to a to do list, I start drafting up a to don’t list for things that can or ought to wait for our return…

Otherwise the list seems to grow exponentially the closer one gets to downing tools.

Not that it works one iota.

My writing can be small enough to do the main list on a post-it note and at one time I could have probably written it all on a postage stamp, so small was the scribble. God help anyone if I was run down in the street – it is reasonably neat but would anyone else work out the abbreviations to suss out what I meant?

It is a also bit high level – if I started to break it down into steps it might take up a lot more room – but that’s good, until the tasks with third party dependencies start to be the only ones of substance left.

I’m starting to be able to spot the elephant(s) in the room.

One’s down to me and has been subject to active procrastination – I’m bu99ered if I know what I need to do but I’m sure if the deadline gets close enough it will ALL become clear. Always does. The lack of time overrides the unclear knowledge and all becomes blindingly obvious – just scrambles my head a bit doing it.

The other one’s MUCH more interesting.

I’ve probably alluded to this one in previous posts – charity which has been gifted the shares in a trading company. Well the property valuations I have are at the date of death rather than the date of probate and I’m going to need to put a number together at the date the shares became owned. A small matter of £10M or so so nothing complicated… We then want to work out what we are going to do with the valuations going forward. S’easy – annual index(es) with periodic full calculation. Who shall we use? Why not the person who did the valuation we already have?

But he was on holiday due back Tuesday. Ah, no. Thursday (today) after all that. But he’s out all day and isn’t picking up.

Tick tock tick tock.

Actually I’ve been having a fun day with phones. ‘Not there’s, not picking up, and best of all – (unless it’s changed) the dialing tone is from memory number unavailable – and HE asked ME to call!!!

Sigh (again).

So pleased with myself too:

Managed to come up with the following – email is like the many-headed hydra of Greek mythology. Unsubscribe from one list and two more take it’s place.

Simile or metaphor? Dunno but I liked it anyway.

Will I be blogging on holiday? Depends I imagine on how much spare time we have. If the evenings are long and quiet there won’t be the build up in emails so I’ll be more relaxed and so on. So not much chance there then. Only joking…

Wish me luck. Next week may get written but it may not. Depends if any to dos have not become to don’ts!