Had to go and restart the wind turbine this morning - the wind was a bit too much for it at 6am. Had to wait for it to be light before restarting. Then caught by my father in law who wanted a chat so a 20 minute job turned into an hour
Had to go and restart the wind turbine this morning - the wind was a bit too much for it at 6am. Had to wait for it to be light before restarting. Then caught by my father in law who wanted a chat so a 20 minute job turned into an hour
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It’s Christmas and I’ve just received an e-mail, purportedly from Screwfix, telling me I’ve won a prize. Yippee, were it not that it’s from my spammy friends somewhere on this planet. They keep trying I’ll give them that 
Next week it’ll be Argos or some other well-known name.
Just finished this;
Latest setup for marimos. I’ve kept a minimal look, the white/blue aquarium glass gives a slick modern feel and was pleased to source a background to match my rock and white sand. Full spectrum high ratio rgb to w lighting, circulation pump and dechlorinated water. The lighting is on a timer and the maximum power is on for only 5 hours.
I did have them in a small globe with a single white led in the lid above them. Contrary to some opinion, I don’t think marimos are that easy to get to thrive. I studied how they reacted to different waters, lighting, timers for 6 months and now in their new home, they’re so much better. If the globe is too small, the light intensity difference is too much from top of the water to the bottom. If you have the light right, they rise up during photosynthesis and they then get too close to the light and can go brown. They also like a gentle current flowing, regardless of them floating.
Old globe;
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I don’t know quite why but it reminds me of Prince Harry facially.
The proportions of the head to the body look too small for a baby, or maybe the face looks too old?
Maybe it’s intentional? (Noticed HHs subsequent comment on similar art).
I have little background knowledge of art/art history but I’m often stunned by these achievements through the ages.
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Given that it’s by Raphael, one of the greatest painters of the High Renaissance, it’s probably intentional. To look at it from a couple of feet away is really something. It’s indescribably beautiful. Maybe you should visit some galleries, as the paintings always look so much better than in photos or books.
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I do occasionally visit galleries, but don’t travel much, and as you say seeing such things a few feet away is something you can truly marvel at.
I really enjoyed seeing artwork at a few sites in Vienna a few years ago, there was a Klimt exhibition at one (new artist to me at the time) with a rather unique style I’d personally not encountered before.
At the same gallery I was as stunned by the detail in far smaller/tiny portraits as I was by the scale and beauty of larger paintings.
You mean he’s grumpy looking ?
No, it was just something that immediately sprang to mind which is then difficult to shake.
I sometimes wonder if we all see facial characteristics in our own unique way or prioritise different ones - not infrequently I’ll comment that someone looks like someone else or a celebrity but others disagree intensely saying they are quite dissimilar.
Have finally come to accept, what I’d suspected for some time, that Mrs Willy should not be allowed to go shopping unless accompanied by a responsible adult.
When asked, she replied, “it was either that or a badger and badgers are quite common, I can get one of those anytime”.
Willy.
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This morning I was mostly making a Christmas mix tape for a friend who very recently got his cassette deck working again. That’ll teach him 
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That sounds much more enjoyable than cleaning and sealing the granite worktops, and taking bottles to the bottle bank, which is what I was doing.
A good friend of mine still reminds me of a long-ago trip to my local Waitrose. She claims that as I put each bottle in the bottle bank I gave her a tasting description and described the meal the wine had been drunk with.
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If her memory is right, then it’s a lovely story.
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Having thought I’d come to equilibrium with HMRC, with some reasonable deductions to my tax code for 22/23 and into 23/24, late yesterday I got delivered another ‘Notice of Coding’, with a £19000 deduction to my code flagged i.e. I went negative (K?) £1500.
Turns out that a SIPP drawdown from AVIVA had been flagged in to HMRC’s ravenous computer system, such that computer said, in effect, you’re getting £10k of untaxed income (wrong), when the payment isn’t due until end of this month and AVIVA take the required PAYE from it anyhow (at the correct BRT). Of course, there was no indication that once AVIVA report the PAYE in to HMRC my coding would be adjusted back - and if that were to miss a cut-off date, it would have severe impact on running income over the last 3m’s of the TY.
Managed to get my code adjusted back on HMRC web-chat, but talk about ‘shoot first and ask questions later’!
I’ve heard major criticisms of HMRC’s new ways of working, but this event is incomprehensible, and I hope it doesn’t happen to others who may not be so ‘on the ball’.
@Jamiewednesday – may be of interest to you? AVIVA said they followed standard reporting procedures.
Further, the turnaround time to get a new UTR for SA is now 60 working days not 45. I understand HMRC will not look to levy fines for lateness caused by this.
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Yep, the whole thing has become absolutely atrocious. For example: Pre Covid we advised emergency tax would be applied on income drawdown but a P55 would get that back inside 2 or 3 weeks as although a pain initially, the whole thing worked pretty efficiently, if you knew how.
Now it’s frankly appalling. Trying to even speak to HMRC is a waste of time and the P55 thing can take months.
Shambles.
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Thanks – I hoped I was wrong, but I feared not – and the seriousness and damage an errant NoC can cause shouldn’t be under-estimated (as you know).
One cannot help but think HMRC’s new processes are causing more issues than they are solving – today took ~ 2 hours.
And they want to move people away from SA via their new thresholds etc, when their systems (poorly designed it appears), simply mangle one’s relatively simple affairs, almost in real time. Lordy.
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Part of the problem is that barely anyone works there anymore. IMO, by 2019, they’d done a reasonable job of building up numbers with at least some people who knew what they were talking about, so you’d get referred to them in relatively quick time.
Post Covid, they work strange shift patterns, sort of work from home a lot of the time and in short get nothing done. Unless, unless they want to really stick the knife in to a small business who they view as an easy target…
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Celebrating the best day in a Northern Hemisphere horse owners calendar.
The shortest day (technically it 3am GMT but I’ll be damned if I’m getting up at that time).
Roll on Spring.
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We’ll be enjoying the longest day the southern hemisphere.
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The shortest… and the windiest !
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