Weathers – by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly:
And the little brown nightingale bills his best,
And the maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,
And citizens dream of south and west,
And so do I.

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply;
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,
And meadow rivulets overflow,
And rooks in families homeward go,
And so do I.

Regarding pastry, do try to make your own, but if you’re crap at it or are simply short of time, then buy a packet of ready-made and freeze the leftovers for another time.

EASY SALMON AND CREAM CHEESE TART

Utensils:
1 x large bowl
1 x rolling pin
1 x medium saucepan
1 x 8” / 22cm flan dish
Baking beans (for baking blind)
a bit of greaseproof paper

Ingredients:
Pastry:
8oz / 240g plain flour (plus a little extra for flouring the flan dish)
4oz / 120g butter
a pinch of salt (don’t leave this out)
3 tblspns (approx) cold water

Filling:
1 medium onion – finely chopped
1oz / 30g butter (plus a little extra for greasing the flan case)
1 x 5oz / 150g can of pink salmon (approx)
1 egg – beaten
4oz / 120g cream cheese
2 tblspns double cream
1 tblspn fresh parsley – finely chopped
a good twist of black pepper

Method:
Preheat the oven to 200 / 6 / 400
Grease and flour the flan tin
Pastry
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl
Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs
Add the water a little at a time until it forms a dough
Roll out onto a floured surface and line the flan tin, trimming off the excess
Prick the base with a fork
Cut a circle of greaseproof paper roughly the size of the flan dish and place it on top of the pastry
Put the baking beans on top
Bake for about 5 minutes or until the pastry is just starting to form a crust
Remove from the oven and remove the baking beans and paper when they are cool enough to handle
Reduce the oven temperature to 180 / 5 / 375

Filling
Melt the butter in the saucepan
Add the onions and cook on a gentle heat until softenend but not brown
Take the pan off the heat
Add all the other ingredients and mix well
Spoon the mixture into the pastry case and bake for about 20 minutes until the filling has set and is a nice light golden brown
Remove from the oven and let it rest for 5 minutes before serving

Basic book-keeping is not difficult for day to day income and expenditure.  The most important thing is that you have a structure that is easy for you to follow and you mustn’t ignore things or be sloppy about your record keeping.  HMRC will give you loads of help if you need it but they will also fine you to kingdom come if you don’t submit accurate records or pay your tax on time.  So don’t bury your head in the sand – it’s just not worth it.  Have files and keep your receipts.

I have loads of receipts and invoices and this is what I do with them.

I have typed up a form which reflects the self-employment tax codes and broken it down into the different types of expenses. The ‘Class’ and ‘Mark’ codes listed are pertinent to my accounts software which is Money Manager.   In my case, the expenses categories are:

Cost of Sales: stock, visuals, photographic etc

General Admin: stationery, postage, telephones, misc office expenditure, research materials, newspapers, office costs ( % of heat, light, rent etc).

Motor Expenses: petrol, parking & tolls, maintenance

Capital Allowances: equipment, furniture

Travel & Subsistence: subsistence, public transport, accommodation

Advertising/Promotions: Pr, Marketing, Advertising, client entertaining

Receipts:
I would advise you to keep all your receipts in a small, sturdy box  and put everything in there to start with, even if you’re not sure whether it’s claimable.

Diary:
Keep a careful diary log of everything you do.  This may sound obvious but when it comes to justifying your receipts, you need to know that, for example, you visited this client on the 24^th and that’s why you have a legitimate petrol receipt for the same day.

Organising the receipts:
Sit down at a large, clear table where you can lay your stuff out.

Get 12 x A5 envelopes and label them with months and year of your financial year. Ie April 2011, May 2011 etc.

Also have to hand a calculator, sticky notes, a pen, paperclips and a stapler

Go through the receipts one by one and put them in 12 monthly piles starting in order from the first month of your financial year to the last (probably April to March) .

Now put each pile into its relevant marked envelope, so you don’t lose any or get them mixed up.

Now take out April’s receipts and sort them into piles as per the categories marked on your Expenses Sheet eg. all stationery together, all postage together etc.

Now check things like petrol off against your diary entries to make sure they match.  Discard any receipts that would lead the HMRC to think you’re taking the piss (unless you’ve been told otherwise).

Now add up all the petrol receipts, write down the amount on a sticky note with ‘petrol’ written on it plus the tax form code eg. 3.54, paperclip them all together, affix the sticky note to the top and write down the total on your expenses sheet.  Carry this on for all the other expense categories.

When you have finished, fold the receipts into the relevant expense sheet page and put them in their envelope ready for when you actually enter them on your system.  This way, you can always access your monthly expenditure even if you haven’t actually entered it into your accounts system yet (be it a large, leather-bound ledger smelling faintly of pipe smoke or an up to the minute pc package).

By using codes which reflect the Self Assessment Tax form, it should also then generate all the accurate totals you will need for the form without you having to tot them up yourself.  A good accounts package will then also give you Code Totals so that you can see at a glance how much you’re spending on petrol or stationery or whether your expenditure is too high in relation to your income and what your Profit/Loss is for any month and ultimately for the whole year.

If you have an accountant, this makes it much easier for them and a bit cheaper for you.

Calculating how much to charge for a home office:

If you have an office in your house, add up how many rooms you have in your whole house.  Let’s assume you have 8 rooms and a £50 a month gas bill.  Divide £50 by 8 which £6.25.  Therefore include £6.25 for the gas to heat your office.  Do this again for Council Tax, rent and electricity.

If you are in any doubt about anything, ring the HMRC for guidance or go onto the website http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/selfemployed

It’s in their interest to help you get it right. They also run some super courses for self-employed people and these can be accessed via your local tax office.

Invoices In and Out

These will be entered separately because you will want to give them individual reference numbers in your accounts.  Simply keep two files in different colours for each type of invoice.  If you have a regular flow of these, have a table at the front on which you can list the invoices as they come in, noting the date received/sent and later the date paid/monies received.  This makes it much easier to keep track of money owed in either direction and will show up any glaring omissions at a glance.

The Unexplorer – by Edna St Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

There was a road ran past our house
Too lovely to explore.
I asked my mother once – she said
That if you followed where it led
It brought you to the milk-man’s door
(That’s why I have not travelled more.)

Mid Term Break – by Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying–
He had always taken funerals in his stride–
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were “sorry for my trouble,”
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year

I never peel potatoes if I can possibly avoid it, in order to wrestle every ounce of taste and goodness out of them.

CHEESY POTATOES

Utensils:
1 x saucepan
1 x ovenproof dish

Ingredients:
2lb potatoes – washed and thinly sliced (about 3mm)
6-8oz Cheddar cheese – coarsely grated or thinly sliced
Black pepper
½ pint double cream

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180 / 375 / 5
Par boil the potatoes until just softening
Drain thoroughly
Place a layer of potatoes in the bottom of the dish and put a layer of cheese on top with a light twist of black pepper
Repeat these layers, finishing with a layer of potatoes
Pour the cream over the top
Place in the oven and bake for about half an hour or until the top is browning nicely

Having checked through the archive, I realise that I’ve never given you the recipe for Cheesy Potatoes.  Later this week….

PORK CHOPS WITH MUSTARD SAUCE

Utensils:
1 x small bowl
1 x plate for the chops
1 x large frying pan

Ingredients:
4 pork chops
3 tablspn olive oil
½ tablespoon of dried sage or 1 tblspn fresh sage very finely chopped
A good twist of pepper
4 floz chicken or lamb stock
1 tablspn wholegrain mustard
a splash of Worcestershire sauce
3floz double cream or crème fraiche – optional

Method:
Mix the oil, sage and pepper together in a bowl
Rub it liberally all over the chops and set aside for 30 minutes
Heat the frying pan and add the chops plus any excess oil from the bowl
Cook on a medium heat until they are cooked through and lightly browned on each side
Remove the chops with a slotted spoon and set aside in a warm place
Add the stock to the pan, stirring round well to scrape up any sediment
Add the mustard and stir together well
Heat to a gentle boil until the liquid has reduced by about a third
Add the Worcester sauce
If you are using cream, add this now and cook for a couple of minutes on a gentle heat
Put the chops on warmed plates and pour the sauce over the top

AWT is a TVchef, writer, broadcaster and presenter, as well as owning two restaurants and a pub. It would appear that he had been having some severe financial difficulties which, in 2009, resulted in his closing four out of his six restaurants, although he claims that he is not in financial trouble now, but is working long hours and is under a lot of strain.

It’s hard to say why people spontaneously steal stuff.  It’s also hard to define why people do bizarre things when they are under stress or possibly suffering from depression.  There is a significant gulf between a person who has kleptomania and someone who has a mental aberration.

‘Kleptomania’, according to the OED is “an irresistible tendency to theft in persons who are well-to-do, a supposed form of insanity.”  The Oxford Medical Dictionary says, “pathologically strong impulse to steal, often in the absence of any desire for the stolen object.  It is sometimes associated with depression.”

So kleptomania and just nicking stuff are very different.  All of us either knew someone at school or themselves who nicked the occasional thing from a newsagent or the chemist, often sweets or make-up which they either couldn’t afford or just wanted to steal for the thrill of it.    This behaviour usually fades away, either because it loses the thrill, they rediscover their moral compass, or they are caught and terrified into never doing it again.

In AWT’s case it sounds as though he is suffering some kind of emotional distress or pre-occupation as he clearly has no need to steal for financial reasons.  I have done some extraordinary things when I have been seriously stressed out and pre-occupied where I have performed actions of which I have no memory whatsoever.

When I was splitting up from my partner, there were several occasions where I would drive to a place to which I drove every day, but completely failed to recognise where I was or how I had got there.  I sat in my car feeling really frightened because I didn’t know how to get to a place that was familiar and had to ask a passer-by where I was, or simply keep driving until a I found somewhere I recognised.

On another occasion, I walked into a shop with a list in my hand and was unable to read any of the items on it or remember why I had gone to the shop in the first place.  These are the actions of a mind in disarray.  A temporary condition, but terrifying nonetheless.

When I read about his case in the paper this morning, it brought to mind an incident when I was in the Lower Sixth at school.  There was a sudden spate of stealing from our study bedrooms.  Initially it was sweets and tuck boxes but later it became bits of jewellery, money and the sort of little personal items which are so treasured by children who are away from home.

Several people were under suspicion, including a couple of Indian girls who were newly arrived from Mombassa; fresh off the boat as they say, ill at ease in an English boarding school and terribly lonely.  I liked them very much and absolutely knew it wasn’t them, but the accusations made them very miserable. No-one was ever caught.

Years later, my best friend from school was visiting me from abroad and confessed that she had been the thief.  I was so shocked I could barely speak.  She had taken all the things and hidden them in a hoard under her bed, not eating the sweets or spending the money, just guarding it like a dragon with its hoard.

She was a hard working high achiever and she had won the Form Prize every year of her school life.  She was brilliant at sport, good at art, good at music, destined for great things.    Her father had abandoned the family when she was young and her mother had struggled to bring up five children on her own.  They were not a warm family and the siblings were very critical and unsupportive of one another.

She became anorexic in the 5^th year but the school refused to acknowledge that their star pupil was wasting away before their eyes – after all she was still winning everything, so what was the problem?  Eating nothing but a bowl of All Bran and water all day was ignored, as was her obsessive exercising way into the night and her inclination to eat a whole bag of sugar before a games lesson so that she would run faster than the rest of us.

In the Upper 6^th she was offered an unconditional place at Cambridge and the school nearly wet itself with excitement as not many girls even went to University at that time.  She didn’t take it, choosing instead to go to a Red Brick university which provided a course that would benefit her chosen career.  The school’s response was to deny her the Gold Medal she richly deserved, the highest academic honour at our school, the recipients having their name in gold on a huge wooden honours board in the hall.  She was shattered.

During our conversation about the thieving, she admitted that, at the time, she had no idea why she was doing it, she just wanted to have other people’s things for herself.  After many years of therapy, she began to understand that it was about control and about taking to yourself things which represented the personal and the wanted.  She felt as though she dare not stop achieving or she would be worthless in the eyes of her teachers and classmates.  She had few friends but she had her certificates to prove that she was a good person.  She had no qualms about the other girls being accused, this only proved that she was brilliant at stealing as well.

The anorexia and the stealing were symptoms of the same thing; the actions of an abandoned and pressured child trying to steer her own boat.  Abandoned and neglected children will frequently manifest some form of mental illness at some point in their lives if they receive no help with their emotions.  Sometimes it emerges early on, but often the pain lies buried and hidden, until something happens to trigger the memory and all hell breaks loose.

I know nothing about Antony Worrall Thompson’s personal circumstances, I’ve never met him and I’m being presumptuous even talking about him.  However, having read the reports in as broad a spectrum of newspapers as I could muster, he has clearly been having a difficult time.  He spoke of the stress of moving house, the death of two close friends, giving up smoking, anaemia, long working hours, his inability to relax and his age.  He was sent away to boarding school when he was barely more than a toddler, his parents split up around the same time and his father was then absent until he was 21.

Call me an old softy, but I’m sad for him.  I hope that this episode will be the trigger that will help him return to a more balanced and happy life.  Because, like the rest of us, he is a real person and I wish him well.

Everyone Sang – by Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in Freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out
of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away … O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will
never be done.

Boy the Elder has come to the end of his first term at his new grammar school and, although his performance in class is fine, he has huge issue with homework and half the time either doesn’t do it, does it badly or hands it in late, incurring a penalty on his marks.

He is incredibly happy at his new school and has slotted in like an easily slotted in thing.  He has made friends and is a popular member of the school.  He contributes well in lessons but just can’t seem to get on top of his homework.  The new school has been a massive culture shock after the lax attitude and discipline of his last school and I expected a settling in period, but his approach to homework is beginning to affect his progress and grades.

We had a long talk tonight about how he could structure his time, making sure that he does his socialising at break and lunch leaving him free to do his homework at the homework club he attends every afternoon.  I explained to him that I had left school with negligible qualifications and consequently no career because I had also not bothered at school and never did my homework.

I also recognise that he has launched in to this new environment in Year 9 when his friends have been in the system since at least Year 7, and possibly all their school lives, so they know what’s expected of them.

I don’t think it was unreasonable to point out how fortunate he was to be able to get into the school in the first place or to mention the amount of effort on my part that went into securing the place. I also reminded him of the work we both put in to home and private tutoring in order to pass the exam.  He has been given a wonderful and enviable opportunity and, knowing how bright and capable he is, it would break my heart if he didn’t grasp this opportunity with both hands.

I told him that I would support him in every way possible, that I would help him to structure his work and give him tips on how to research and present assignments, but ultimately it’s down to him.  I gave him a list of things that will help him to be better organised and showed him how to make best use of his homework diary.

It’s really hard at 14 to grasp that, at the end of this year, he will have to choose his GCSEs and that those choices will affect what he can study at A Level and hence how his adult life progresses for the foreseeable future.  I know you can do training when you’re older but, as I know myself, it is much, much harder when may have a job and a family to maintain while you’re doing it.

I want to empower him to take responsibility for this himself, without feeling browbeaten or that I think any less of him.  At the same time, the reality is that the expectations have gone up a gear, which is exactly why I fought so hard to get him in.

How would, or have, any of you tackled this issue?  Am I over-reacting? Second-hand experience gratefully received!

http://www.wartimehousewife.com/2010/09/helping-at-home