I had an early night last night and got four hours asleep
before needing the loo. I then had a pitched battle to get any bed space. How
can such small dogs take up so much bed?
I put a load of washing in to scrub, and over brekkie I had
my usual look at the Internet. This morning people were ranting about how we
should use cash rather than credit cards; the implication being that credit
card transactions cost whereas cash just goes round and round and round in free
perpetual motion.
But it don’t.
Eventually the cash in your pocket will be deposited or
topped up which requires a trip to a cash machine or bank, and costs (depending
on who you bank with).
Cash does not generate interest when in paper form like
digital money does, so you are effectively devaluing your money when you turn
it into cash (especially right now when inflation is so high).
If my cash is lost or stolen, I’m poggered. If my card is
nicked I’ve got some come-back.
Shops might not have the same costs on cash transactions as
they do on card ones, but it costs them to count it all and take it to the bank.
(I can remember my old boss (at the Harbour Restaurant in Hastings) going on
quite a journey to the bank with two burly washer-uppers as bodyguards as he
went to deposit thousands of pounds of cash several times each week).
Shops can also deal with far more customers per hour using
cards than they can taking cash payments (which must go some way to counteract
the cost of the card transactions).
On a personal level if I buy something for (say)
£3.99 on my card, that’s what it costs me. If I pay cash I spend a fiver and
the change just disappears.
I use my card whenever I can for the simple reason that it
has been my experience that about one payment in two hundred never actually
goes through and appears on my statement. This year I've had free fish and
chips, Amazon e-books and fifty quid worth of clothes. In the past I’ve had
free bar bills and tank-fulls of petrol.
And (like all government employees) my income is a
matter of public record and therefore so is my tax bill. If people are paid in
cash it is a lot easier to end up paying a lot less tax (not that *anyone*
would ever dream of doing that!)
I then took a deep breath…
Our plan for the day had been a family beach day. But
events conspired against us. So I got out the paint brush and put the last coat
of paint onto my epic wooden reel.
I mowed the lawn.
I hung out laundry and put more in to scrub.
I gave the pond filter a seriously big scrub (as opposed
to the routine fortnightly ones it gets), then washed myself off. No one
said anything about fish poo when I first dug the pond.
I had a little look at the pond. The plants in the bog
filter are now flowering and look rather impressive. Sadly the ones in the
floating baskets look dead, but you can’t have everything.
I hung out more laundry and put undercrackers in to
tumble-dry.
I pruned the stuff pouring over our fences.
After six hours I was aching somewhat. I went inside where “er
indoors TM” was putting the finishing touches to the assembly of
our new table. The old one was poggered. But despite it being poggered she’d
advertised it as a freebie on Facebook Marketplace and someone said they’d
collect it at two o’clock.
I’m told they arrived at half past five; I was asleep
underneath a pile of dogs.
The idea of a Bank Holiday is to have a bit of a rest. “er
indoors TM” had been busy indoors all day; I’d been busy
outside. But we thought we should do something today. So we took the dogs to
Kings Wood for one of our shorter walks. Starting from the lower car park we
did our two and a half miles walk. It was a shame that Treacle had to wallow in
every muddy puddle she saw, but that’s the kind of dog she is.
“er indoors TM” boiled up dinner which
we scoffed off of the new table whilst watching the final of “Lego Masters:
New Zealand”. The new table is rather good; it is higher than the old one
and so consequently has room to get your legs underneath.
And for all that today
was rather busy, being able to eat dinner without cramped legs was the
highlight.
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