The transient man is cursed indeed.
When I moved from Kingstanding to Bournville a few months ago I went through the whole change-of-address thing. It wasn’t a particularly big deal as I don’t actually get that much mail and it’s not like I’ve never moved house before. (If you’re new here I’ve moved 23 times, or thereabout, since birth.)
A month or so after I moved my debit card expired. I was expecting that changing my address with the bank would mean the new card would be sent to my new address, just as my statements were. But that would be too logical and it was sent to Kingstanding. By courier. And Sam wasn’t in. And they didn’t leave a note. So it got destroyed. While this wasn’t the end of the world it did mean my hosting bill for this site wasn’t getting paid so hassle ensued.
Today I got a letter from the Inland Revenue saying, in rather a lot of words, that they’d decided I needed to fill in a tax return from now on. Since I registered as self employed back in May I assumed it was to do with that, except I already knew I was going to have to fill in a return, so maybe it was about my tax refund for last year which I was still waiting for. (Still with me? Good.) In fact it was pretty much this time last year that I got a nice fat cheque through the post so if this meant it was being delayed… But the letter, while detailed, was annoyingly non-specific. So I phoned them. It was about the self-employed thing and nothing to worry about. So I asked them to check on the progress of last year’s return.
The cheque was sent out on June 8th.
To my address in Kingstanding.
Since it’s obviously been lost in the post (I don’t think Sam has been maliciously tearing up my mail) they’ll have to send out another one. And that’ll take a month or so. What’s really annoying is I clearly wrote on the form that while the 2004-5 records were for my residence in Kingstanding I had just moved and could they send the cheque to Bournville please. And you’d've thought that the whole registering as self employed might have forced a change of address on their system.
On the plus side, this does mean they processed my application and released a cheque in a matter of weeks with no queries. Of course I still don’t know exactly how much the cheque is for.
Moan over.
In other news, that Wikipedia entry on Escape Magazine is coming on strong. Needs a bit of tidying up but someone else can do that. How about you?
The article is looking good. Interesting how influential Escape was in the US. I too remember it being this interesting exotic thing & wasn’t aware that it, in turn, was (partly) reflecting an interest in a different scene – BD I mean. Deadline was another big influence. It’s cool to think that other people who went on to do cool comics things in North America were reading these things at the same time and also were influenced by it. North America is so big and spread out that you tend to be isolated from the people who are interested in stuff you are interested in. I guess that’s why they have things like FurryCon.
I started a new job in 2000, and PAYE was taken out at some standard rate. Last fall I was told by a friend that as I’ve been earning less than some annual figure, I should not be paying any tax. So I went into the city centre IR office and was informed that yes, I was due a refund of some magnitude. I had also registered as self-employed, and figured they’d send stuff to my current address, but guess where my rebate went? My old address in Milton Keynes, from 2001.
Weeks and weeks passed here, and when I finally found out where they’d sent it, I requested a new one, and it arrived within two weeks. Pronto. Keep faith. It’ll get there.
Thanks Person. That’s rather reassuring.