Yesterday my sister sent me this photo, which she took in a hostel in Thailand:

It reminded me a little of this one, which features my mum’s computer and was taken several years ago:

Today I finished turning a messy pile of receipts and a half-filled-in spreadsheet into a Tax Return, which I submitted online, as I have for the past four years. Actually I should say ‘attempted to submit online’. It didn’t work. It gave me a fairly incomprehensible error, insisting that various boxes ought to add up to something formulaic which I would’ve thought was programmed into the submitting software itself. In the error, the boxes had names. On the form, they didn’t. So I don’t even know which boxes they were supposed to be. And I’m sure I hadn’t done it wrong. I did exactly the same as last year, and the year before, when it all worked fine.

Anyway, after two more tries it still wasn’t working, so I did what the error page suggested I do if the problem recurred, and phoned the online help desk. I was put on hold for a while, and a helpful recorded message suggested that I email the help desk instead, if I didn’t want to be in the queue.

So I emailed the helpdesk and explained the problem.

An hour or so later I got an email back telling me to phone the help desk.

Have a feeling that the Inland Revenue are just procrastinating.