What have you been doing today?

[Mottie]

Pressure washed the patio and patio furniture today ready for the three weeks of glorious summer we might get….

Went over the allotment to check on things - specifically seedlings and young plants I have in the communal poly tunnel and my own greenhouse. Scorchio! It was 58° in the poly tunnel and many of my seedlings were well past the wilting stage. I may be lucky and save them after some watering but blimey, the water in the water butt inside the poly tunnel was hot enough to poach an egg. I planted out some pumpkin plants and when I took them out of the flower pots, the soil/roots were like holding a baked potato. Going to need to go twice a day in the coming weeks with temperatures of 30°+ predicted.

 

[mikehammer69]

I’ll make an attempt to recover from addiction again very soon

Walked into it again after 6 months sober

 

[fillyboy]

I’ll make an attempt to recover from addiction again very soon

Walked into it again after 6 months sober

'Keep going back'.

My wife's been sober now for over 30 years (possibly 34 or thereabouts). The first year was probably the biggest hurdle.

 

[Justin Passing]

More banking problems!.
The one described a few posts ago, which was First Direct's fault, will lose me probably 10 days of interest.
£5k, delayed a day, costs about a quid, at about 5% per annum. . They have admitted it's their fault and have agreed to compensate.

Today a bigger lup went astray. Or rather, didn't go anywhere. It was a pension my late wife had. If you're under 75, those just turn to untaxed cash. Obviously I want to put it somewhere it's earning. Fortunately in this case, the Pension company has it in an interest earning account, so that'll do, though it'll be transferred a couple of weeks later than it should have been. Surrounded by incompetence!

I will add here something I explained in the Stock trading thread - if the lump is in a BSoc, outside an isa, it'll get taxed. If you use a short dated Treasury Gilt, you pay less. They're a Bond - you buy them to lend the government money. The TG has a "coupon rate" which in this case will be 0.125%. You pay tax on that. But the bond also has a value, a bit like a share.
For a round number example, you might pay £96 for the bond. You have the certainty that at its maturity date, which can be from a few months upwards, depending on the issue, you will get £100.
That's a Capital Gain, but these things are free of tax. and that's the wrinkle.
So in a BS you may get 4.5% and be taxed at 20% or 40%, leaving you 3.6% or 2.7%
but in the exampe of that bond, assuming it has a year to run, you get 4/96 = 4.16%, plus a little bit of income from the 0.125% which would be 0.1% or 0.075%.
This absence of taxable income can mean that you do not creep into the next tax band, which can be handy.
N.B If you DO have some ISA space, you wouldn't use these.

That assumes Wes Streeting doesn't stop them.

 

[Mottie]

Went over the allotment early this morning to do a bit of work before it got too hot. I swapped my frost damaged sweetcorn plants for my reserves that were kept in the polytunnel and safe from frost. The damaged ones have gone back in the tunnel and if they pick up, I’ll give them to my daughter for her allotment.
Frost damaged:


Backup plants:


I then set about making a long bed for my climbing French beans and planted them out. The allotment manager advised me to make up a shade from some thick netting I had until they picked up.



By now, I was sweating buckets and I’d drank over 1.5 litres of water and it was only 11.00. I said to the the allotment manager "How the hell did those blokes build a bridge over the river Kwai working in temperatures higher than this?" "Easy" he said "They had someone kicking them up the arse so they carried on or died!". Not long after that, I had a call from Mrs Mottie ordering me home as it was too hot. I ran the car with the aA/C in while I was packing up but I forgot to harvest some asparagus for tonight’s dinner and tomorrows breakfast, I think I was getting a bit delirious so I’ll have to go back later to get it. I went home to a bolluxing from Mrs Mottie because with the sweat that had been running into my eyes and with me rubbing them with gawd knows what on my hands, my eyes had turned red and she has diagnosed conjunctivitis. She made me have a cool shower after that to get my temperature down.

Edit: Just been over and picked sime asparagus. I’m not exaggerating but these weren’t big enough to pick on Thursday and they are a good bit taller than they were this morning!