Pete Ashton’s Blog

Popped out in the garden today to mow the lawn and generally get some exercise after a rather debauched weekend and noticed with glee that the four potatoes I stuck in the ground a few weeks ago have turned into plants. This may not seem like much but these are the first things I’ve planted from seed for over 15 years, so I’m a happy bunny. However, on closer inspection the area was infested with ants. As with the compost bin I’m again wondering whether this is a good, bad or indifferent thing. The ants are probably nesting there because I’ve dug the soil over making it nice and tunnel-able, but could they be feeding off my tubers? And if they are, is there anything I can do about it? I decided not to worry about it and planted some Spinach seeds. Lets see if we can go two for two…

(Cecil the Nice Wasp, a comic by Gary Northfield)

I’m pooped. Gigging on a school night is not terribly recommended but it was worth it. First up were Kill Keneda who were very good. Second up were Yourcodenameis:Milo who were very very good. Headlining were Ikara Colt who were very very very good indeed. Gig was at the Medicine Bar at the Custard Factory where the beer is expensive but the sound was keen. Gig put on by Chicks Dig Jerks who were a little disorganised but were so sweet and enthusiastic it didn’t matter. Crowd was so young! I felt old and craggy but in a good way. Was complimented by the door staff on my Betty Page t-shirt. Music was the tops. Three for three which doesn’t often happen on a £6 ticket.

I was going to write a big long review of the whole thing but, like I say, I’m knackered. Suffice to say Ikara Colt are my new favourite band of the moment.

I think I may investigate this odd job man career further…

Matt Haughey points to an interesting weblog phenomenon where a blogger posts something innocuous and gets thousands of hits from Google about it. Writing for Google is something a lot of bloggers, myself included, do from time to time but sometimes it just goes way out of control when you add a lack of context, a lack of intelligence and an open commenting system into the mix. To quote Matt:

If you’ve been reading lots of blogs in the past year or so, you might have noticed that sometimes people searching the web mistake a blog post about a subject for the actual subject. Someone makes a post about Prince, and you see a comment that starts out “Dear Prince” and in all sincerity, people believe they are talking to the subject of the post.

He points to two quite spectacular examples of this - a brief observation on a car-makeover show (of all things) prompts a stream of letters to the show asking if their cars can be madeover. Even better is a post about going to see some TV guy called Maury who must be the kind of inspirational guru lifestyle personality who appeals to the lost, lonely and tragic judging by the hundreds of “Dear Maury” letters posted as comments to the site. It’s jaw-dropping stuff, not just that people continue to write this often deeply personal stuff to a public website thinking it’s going to their hero but that they actually write this stuff to their hero. I dread to think what their actual mail-bag looks like…

This has happened to me though never on such a large scale. Ages back I stuck up an article on BugPowder by Toby Tripp called How to get an ISBN and what to do with it. It was actually genuine Google fodder though only relevant to the UK market though it’s attracted a fair few comments from non UK people asking about their own local situation, and for a while I was getting emails as well. What’s of note is that some of them think we’re the authority on the matter. Actually that’s quite a sad example. Where’s my army of morons? Maybe I should write about daytime TV or something…

I’ve never had to worry about tax before, or rather I’ve never bothered worrying about tax. Either I was working full time for one employer and it was all dealt with by head office or, from 1995-98, I was a student and paying no tax at all. Late last year it was pointed out to me that I would probably be able to claim back a substantial amount this year and so, today, I did.

When I was on the farm last summer I was earning no cash at all, trading my labour for food and accommodation for three months. In fact I lived on £500 for that entire period, most of which went on storage, travel and website hosting. This is probably why I’m now able to budget for the first time in my life. When I quit the farm I started temping and have done so ever since but never for more than a few weeks at a time and for various agencies. The end result is that I earned £5408 in the last financial year of which £947 vanished in income tax. Because I worked for six different companies in that time, some for only a few weeks, my tax codes were all over the place even before taking my three month gap into account.

Today my P60 tax summary came through from the agency so I took it and my pile of P45s to the Birmingham tax office After waiting about 20 minutes to be seen I explained my situation. The Ps were photocopied to be sent to Wales (where my records are held apparently) and I was told I should get a cheque soon. How soon is “soon” in tax terms? Oh, about 3-4 weeks - there’s a delay due to the budget but it shouldn’t take too long. Can I expect anything? Ooh yes.

Painless and lovely. I must reverse-engineer the government more often.