Fifteen minutes with an old mate
On Tuesday, driving about my business, I received a chasing call (on my hands-free system, obviously) from someone in my accountant’s office.
I had not yet returned to them a signed copy of the paperwork they’d sent a fortnight previously regarding my 2016/2017 Income Tax form and the deadline for submitting it to HMRC was now only 24 hours away.
Responsibility for this cock-up lay entirely with me.
Approximately ten years ago – when I was writing a book – I had deliberately set myself up a Googlemail (now ‘Gmail’) email account on the fond and subsequently-proved-to-be false assumption that doing so would enable me to keep what I’d describe as any future ‘business’ emailing relating to the marketing and sales success of my book separate from my personal equivalent.
To all intents and purposes there wasn’t any. Business emailing relating to my book, I mean. Said item sank virtually without trace.
Reprints, radio and television appearances, annual William Hill Sports Book of the Year awards, BBC documentary series, Hollywood movies, vast incoming revenue streams requiring offshore residential status and clever tax-avoidances schemes came there none.
Before long, the only incoming mail arriving to my Gmail address – apart from that generated by producers of junk and scams – was coming from my accountant, to whom I had given it as a point of contact on the basis that annual income tax returns came vaguely under the heading ‘business’ rather than ‘personal’.
Sadly, after driving down the M3 at the beginning of January to drop in the supporting paperwork at my accountant’s office so that he could prepare said tax return, I had experienced a huge sigh of relief that this annoying little annual task was over …. and promptly forgotten all about it.
Since habitually I visit my Gmail account less than once a month simply in order to clear out the inbox crap I felt no urgency about going to it. Which is why I had never found out that a missive from my accountant with an attachment requiring swift attention had landed.
Anyway, that is my prologue.
For operational reasons, yesterday was the first opportunity I had to do anything about my tax return form. I printed said 16-page item off, looked through it, and – partly because I couldn’t see exactly where I was supposed to sign the blighter (and indeed how often), partly because I figured this was also the best way to get the form back to my accountant in time to meet the 31st January deadline for submissions – decided to jump into my car and arrive at his office as near as dammit to 9.30am when it was due to open.
Which I duly did.
My accountant came to the door himself, whisked me inside and thereafter we had a fifteen minute chat about this and that – he and I have nearly thirty years of history as do many of my former work colleagues, before getting down to the business at hand which was then dealt with in less than 60 seconds.
Our conversation before that had covered exchanging news about ourselves, our families and mutual friends/acquaintances.
Inevitably the ravages and vicissitudes of progressive old age as experienced by both ourselves and our relatives came up.
My accountant announced that for some time now he had been operating a policy of avoiding being photographed at all costs.
I asked why.
He said it was because, whenever he was photographed, e.g. in a family group, somehow – just before the snap was taken – some fat, bald, elderly bastard had apparently rushed in from stage right and stood right in front of him.
We enjoyed a good laugh about his tale and I then shared my own version of it.
Recently I and a brother had been looking at a framed group photograph of a family reunion that had taken place at a big hotel in America.
Sitting at the front in it had been the most ancient members of our extended 40-member clan and then, arranged behind them in rows – the first standing upon the ground and the second standing upon benches behind – had been the rest of us in no particular order.
I had commented to my brother that what upset me about the photograph the last time I had looked at it was noticing that our Uncle Simon – a slightly-eccentric and confused-looking portly gentleman possessing but wispy whisks of snow-white hair on his head, mostly around his ears – had somehow managed to appear twice in the photograph: firstly, in a chair almost in the middle of the front row beside my father; and secondly, third in from the left in the top row.
Upon closer examination I had then discovered that the latter was in fact me.
On the drive back home afterwards yesterday I had reflected upon what a fun episode my little expedition had been.
And also for a period upon something else that my accountant had said – i.e. that an essential truth of Life is that the human body was really only designed to last three score years and ten.
On that basis I’ve got four years left.
What was that mantra of Robin Williams’ character in the 1989 movie Dead Poet’s Society that he tried to drill into his students?
Ah yes, ‘Carpe Diem’ …
