the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

It now looks inevotable that this lock will go past 52 weeks now. I had a feeling back at the start that it might take more than a year to get things at least under control and get no satisfaction from probably being right. At least with a vaccination now available we have a chance on moving on.

Boxing Day today and a day off for me, the middle one of three days and I am taking advantage of the break to do as little as possible, especially as I worked oil Thursday when I would normally have been off. My diet has been abandoned for a couple of weeks and I am spending much of this leisure time reading. I still get up at 5 am as my body clock is attuned to it and so get a couple or three hours to myself to spend as I like.

I am also relaxing my exercise regime for a few days as I passed the 1020 km target on Christmas Eve with a 13 km effort. Next year IU should be able to double that and will be starting the year with that target on my mind. I am sure to have gained little weight during this break (I am not weighing myself until the first Friday in January), but a return to the diet and resuming exercise should get me back on track.

Something else that I am taking a break from over the holiday is social media. I try hard not to rise to the bait, but the EU exit agreement brought out the wqorst of the Remain camp with some very puerile comment and I duo not want to block people just because I do not agree with them. Instead I just take a break from their assault on my timelines: The ostrich approach again.

It has not all been slacking off though for on Christmas Eve I did my corporation tax return and annual report and accounts, all on-line through the HMRC web site. This is a relatively easy process now and I applaud the advances that have been made. It is about 15 years since I fired my accountant and started doing these things myself and it has got progressively easier as the systems have been improved. On Thursday it took me less than an hour from start to finish including pulling the required figures together from my Excel spreadsheet into a format that suited the input requirements and sequence.

<p value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">I did not get the usual email acknowledgements to my submissions and initially thought that not might be due to the proximity of the holidays plus Covid-19 effects on staffing, but it dawned on me today that I had not had any other emails into my business address for a couple of days. On checking I had been subjected to one of those occasional spam attacks and my mailbox was full so today I have had to do some complex file editing on line to undo the logjam and things are now working again.I did not get the usual email acknowledgements to my submissions and initially thought that not might be due to the proximity of the holidays plus Covid-19 effects on staffing, but it dawned on me today that I had not had any other emails into my business address for a couple of days. On checking I had been subjected to one of those occasional spam attacks and my mailbox was full so today I have had to do some complex file editing on line to undo the logjam and things are now working again.

Out in the garden I have had a walk around to make sure that everything isa secure ready for the high winds that are forecast. The first of the two water butts on the new shed is almost full to the connecting tube with the second butt and so, with the heavy rain forecast for tomorrow, I should be well on the way to having both butts full and available for when the watering season starts.There are some bulbs showing shoots above the ground already and some of the new leaves on shrubs are starting to burst early. I hope that we do not have to severe a Winter now.

I hope that you have all had a successful Christmas, if you celebrate it, and are all safe and sound. See you agin next week.