The tax inspector

At 9.30 this morning it's All Systems Go. Besieging the office since 6am, Dig has undermined a two foot high layer of paper and made a tunnel to the kitchen table, where the tax officer will sit. In this military strike, he has also engaged in a spot of propaganda, draping a tea towel over the big box, marked in black unmovable marker pen, VAT. It's stuffed full of unopened envelopes. If this were not enough to establish some sort of central command, he's found a child's chair which he has wiped clean from strawberry jam, wedged it under the table, and turned on Ride of the Valkyries. Obviously we are out to take control.

But I'm struggling. I cannot bring myself to force up a nice and smiley smile to a tax inspector. I simply can't. I'm choking in the gullet. Apparently, she says, arriving, dressed in grey, and jollying us along, someone somewhere deemed us 'high risk' because Dig works a lot overseas. That puts us 'off the scope'. Code: tax evasion.

Oh. Is that what it is? Is that what I am engaged in then? Fumbling on with Dig in India, or China, or wherever, with triplets in hot pursuit around the house, screaming? I didn't know tax evasion looked like that. I thought tax evasion looked like a swimming pool in Monaco and a diamond called a corporate asset. I didn't know tax evasions also came with a sink full of cold washing up, this morning's strangled unicorn swinging from the banisters on a length of pink embroidery thread, and an afternoon fight over the video box of Mary Poppins.

Mrs VAT continues, airily. She says she does her best to make everyone feel happy. Happy. Should I sing 'Oh joy! The tax inspector is here! Tralala! Let's skip! Let's wear the antler horns for spring!' She starts to josh about Tesco and bottles of milk as Dig sits her down. We don't offer a drink. And I'm still not laughing. This woman has the power to trash our business, remove all our savings and take us to court.

Once sat down, the jokes are clearly a front. She's in quick enough now, asking for invoices and accounts, posing some pretty sharp questions about our practices. It's like being interviewed by Mr Welding, head of fifth year. They behave all 'I'm really on your side'; it's just their fingers are tapping on the school exclusion forms.

After an hour, Mrs VAT gets up and says she cannot understand it, why she's been called. It looks like everything's in order, she says, and we probably won't be seeing her again because she's waiting to retire. Looking back at the chair, she says she can see it's a business where we're working at home and doing the relevant paperwork, and that all the payments seem prompt, considering.

And as she collects her bag, paper, spectacles, I feel a slight alarm. Because at this point of departure, she might want to use the toilet. Now. I'm not a spiteful person. But I have a mean streak. Definitely.

Just before she arrived, I went to clean the toilet. I could not find the brush. Where has the brush gone? Who stole the brush? I check the children's rooms. They might have misguided themselves into a spot of experimental Hockney-style pool painting with Harpic. Nope. Just the normal mess. Then I check Dig's areas. Sadly, not with fetish, but forgetfulness, he'll possess remote controls, favourite pens, household items. But then I've never known him do housework. Or ever hold a toilet brush.

Defeated, I abandon the enterprise. And then, to add to any distress a much-used toilet in a house of children may bring about to an elderly tax inspector, probably with delicate sensibilities and a weak bladder, I place an old toothbrush on the lid.

And then I hide the toilet roll.

And now I think, just as I become aware that the threat of prosecution has subsided, I think, please don't say, please don't ask, 'Can I pop to your toilet?'

We have a table

This morning Dig says we have to look sharp because when the VAT inspector comes tomorrow she will need somewhere to work.

This evening I think that should be OK so long as she sits only at one side.


And brings her own chair.

All in the head

Today began with a pain in the head. Again. I knew it was going to be a bad day, waking up with a vice pinning together my forehead and left eye socket. And I was right.

By 9.15 we are late. Art with Hitler. My turn to set up the tables. Again. Sitting in the car at the service station, trying to remember is it diesel? Is it unleaded? What is it? What car am I driving with an ice pick lodged in my head and Squirrel going wahwahwah because Tiger has given her a kick for invading her seating space. Again. When we get to art I find out it's not my turn anyway, so needn't have rushed. I feel like banging my head against the wall, thinking I could have buried myself under the dark dark covers instead of rushing out and off. Perhaps the banging head solution is not for today.

Six aspirins and eight hours later I'm staring out the kitchen window wondering about sparrows when Dig creeps in saying he's moving the oven in the office for the VAT inspector. He can do it if I hold the bottom. You might not recall that the oven has stood in the middle of the office kitchen since January 15th, when Dig put it there. So now, despite not yet having reached convalescent stage in the head, I have to carry an oven through two flats and deposit it in the yard where the gate fell off. The oven is possibly condemned to stay there forever, or until I have hormones and can do one hundred impossible things in one day and ring the council to come and take it away.

Really, there is only one course of action left for a day when you wake up with knitting needles in your head and someone starts knitting with them while you are wondering why sparrowhawks exist before you are forced to move ovens.

Take refuge in eating. None of that bon apetit red pepper mousse and walnut salad in virgin olive oils. No. Real comfort stuff. And as much as you can manage in forty minutes. Two chocolate bars, five sugary biscuits, one chocolate muffin, two chocolate cherry sponge bars (OK then, I ate the chocolate cherry layer and threw the sponge away), followed by last night's left-over pasta, cold, and straight from the pan. But of course I do not want to get fat. Or fatter. So I've eaten an apple. Because apples do not make you fat. Or, I hope, make headaches worse.

Dig returns

We think Dig is home from two weeks of a not-holiday in India. There are signs, tracks and little messages.

And we are very observant, Squirrel, Shark, Tiger and me. Even though I did not notice the pile of soil in the bedroom for three days until I turned over the chair and lifted up the towel. Tiger, Squirrel and Shark, aged three, were very upset when the little bird's nest got thrown back in the garden by a grumpy Grit mummy who, without thinking, actually banned soil for ever. So if one day you cannot see any soil anywhere, it was me.

Anyway, we think Dig is back. This is why:

1. A pile of socks has appeared in the hall.

2. Several upturned plugs and twisty computer cables have been abandoned in the dark corner bit of the hall, just as you come bare-footed from one flat and turn to go into another. This might be a better way to trap bare-footed burglars, rather than an unwary Grit in pyjamas at 6am wondering which flat might have a tin of coffee.

3. Someone staggered into the kitchen yesterday and thought that it might be three o'clock in the morning when it was only seven in the evening. They then proceeded to knock over the coffee machine, crash into the table, bring down the fruit basket and fall over the potatoes.

4. There is a man at Dig's computer at 7am complaining that everyone is working in the Middle East so why haven't they replied to the email which was sent 43 minutes ago?

5. There is snoring at strange hours.

6. I have witnessed someone jumping up and attacking the kitchen in the office with a power saw to remove an entire work surface and my jam cupboard. This is not advisable on five hours sleep. I seem to remember last time they sawed through the gas pipe.

Seriously, anybody would think I make this sort of thing up.