Nigel leaving my employ at the end of August was a catalyst for change… that change being I don’t want to work so hard anymore. And also, HMRC can fuck right off.
Going back to being a one-man-band means there’s not a lot of point in my taking on the (hated) brick-breaking jobs, so all that dust-snorting from grinding walls, ear-splitting from chasing in backboxes and poo-string straining from forcing-up floorboards are now largely thrown under the bus.
Of course, I haven’t actually retired, nor can I really afford to, but neither do I need to be busting my beer-gut five days a week at my age, so small works and part-days are my go-to going forward.
That’s not to say you can’t at least ask if I’d be prepared to take on a job, however if it involves more in the way of mechanics than electrics, you should perhaps steel yourself for a disappointing, or even a downright rude, response. Or I might even ignore you entirely. It’s nothing personal, that’s just the way I roll.
Yes, my days of returning home looking tired and filthy, only for the wife to demand I endure a chilly hosing down in the back garden before I crack open my first Carlsberg of the evening… are over. From now on, I’m arriving back before the day gets dark, my clothes clean as a whistle and enough moxie to handsomely sling my toolbelt to one side, tear off my branded T-shirt, drop my Screwfix-supplied trousers (order code, 842XR), and sweep up said wife for some sexeh fun time… before I crack open my first Carlsberg of the evening.
Or… that’s the way I picture it at least. The wife, no doubt, has different ideas, even though (either way) a cold shower is the only thing I can really depend upon.
Nonetheless, along with this simpler form of working day, I also don’t need to be blindly handing His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs a whopping 20% of the sweat from offa my greying scrotum to be blindly blown on the pleasure of King Charles polishing his family jewels, or for the Tories to (not) spend on HS2 North, the NHS, schools, infrastructure, food-banks or… indeed… anything else they don’t otherwise bother spaffing money over outside of themselves, their own large corporate conglomerates and their COVID lockdown office parties.
So, here we all are and none of us are happy, especially those officious VAT-twats because from 30th September 2023, HMRC can go suck a fart from out of my arsehole as that’s the only return they’ll be receiving from my rusty coloured end between now and my finally keeling over out on site somewhere.*
And, hey, I accept HMRC have a job to do, but come on: friggin’ VAT? Either level the playing field and make all businesses charge it or stagger the damn thing against turnover. The cost of everything has gone up, often thanks to this government buggering up Brexit, but the VAT threshold for businesses hasn’t risen at all, thanks to the same government, so if you hit a paltry turnover of just £85k, your invoices are all arbitrarily sodomised with a tax at 20%! For someone dealing with domestic clients, that’s your bumhole left red and throbbing mate!
What a stupid fucking situation.
*If anyone is updating this site after my passing, do please update this page as to how and where I threw-in the towel. I’m kinda hoping my liver explodes so forcefully that it takes out someone I don’t like in a wonderfully violent collateral damage kind of way...