This morning has seen us complete our 2013-14 TAX returns – a hair pulling experience as each year passes.  Thankfully this is the last year that Simon needed to account for Atimeo given the business was closed off in August, but it still caused an amount of pain this morning.

Anyway, we are now through it for another year and while we have a rebate on the way, it is not as much as we thought – Simon earned 700UKP too much accordingly which has had a knock on effect with some child payments that mean we have to return all of those payments from the year – grr..

Anyway, a cheque is still on the way and more importantly the whole thing is complete and out of the way for another year 😀 YAY!!

Next up, school fees…. gone up by 300UKP per month as Oliver moves up to Year 1 – yippee…

I recorded a short video to give perspective as to the hotel that I am staying in just near Earls Court. Two nights last week, three this week.

Credit where it is due, the rooms are nice and clean but wow it is small – certainly no room to work effectively.  See the attached video for details 🙂

TheCaravan-Feb14

Daddy is trying out the EasyHotel group this week in the Earls Court area of London.  From the outside the hotel looks like any ordinary London 4 storey house, but once inside, it becomes a rabbit warren of corridors and bright orange room doors.  When he stepped inside his room on the top floor, (very steep steps so he was pleased he only had two small bags with him) the door opened inwards and there was just enough room to step inside.  The door needed closing to be able to get into the bathroom (which is just a small plastic cubicle that has clearly been delivered in once piece and carefully placed into the room.

Basically the entire room is reminiscent of a static caravan bedroom in that it is about the same size, the bed being a 3/4 sized item fitting almost exactly to the width of the room and the bathroom adding to the length.  There are just two coat hooks so daddy was pleased he took a hangar with him 🙂

Ultimately it is a £30 room so can’t complain really – but certainly wouldn’t want to stay there more than a couple of nights 🙂

Yesterday morning Simon head out for a 07:52 train from Wakefield to London.  He parked the car as usual in Westgate car park and collected his tickets from the machine in the station for next week’s travel.  Then walked over to Kirkgate to get the train.  He arrived some 20 minutes early so walked around the platform to get his step count up 🙂 and when the train arrived 10 minutes early he was somewhat surprised so asked a guard if there really was another train leaving just 10 minutes later.  The guard promptly pointed out that the ticket was for an East Coast Service (which probably meant that the train would be departing from Westgate and not Kirkgate :-(.  The moment sunk in quickly that Simon had made a fairly large mistake and now had just 10 minutes to get back across town to make the train.  So he set of in a kind of jog.  He arrived on the platform at Westgate just as the train guard was smiling at him as the train began to pull out of the station 🙁

HUGE mistake since an alternative ticket would now cost £125 as his existing ticket was no longer valid 🙁

Thankfully a little time with the eastcoast website showed that a train was leaving KIRKGATE in 50 minutes and that it would only be a tax of £54… So another walk to Kirkgate required but at least the cost of this mistake was not going to be HUGE.

A handy reminder for Simon to ensure that he double checks the tickets before setting off so that he ensures he is at the right station at the right time 🙂

All this was caused because he has been booking ticket through until the end of March and latterly he has been booking from Kirkgate because of that cost differential – there are still a few weeks of Westgate in the mix so departure are from Westgate for the next few weeks….