The week and weekend

Here we are Friday evening - and an odd week. Back to work and not wanting to be as I was missing Rebecca, then a funeral then flat out working - well except for a little diversion in the Greyhound last night with Geoff and Martin - the wine was very tasty indeed.

What has been achieved - well I've finished the Belden Cable section on the CSE web site - as far as I can - the cable cross referencing section anyway, an email newsletter design for Livcom Awards, dropped in to Grant and Stone - i'm devising a new layout at the moment, some more images on British Battles and quite a lot of other bits and bobs. More work this weekend - primarily my invoicing and expenses for December!! My in box is also rather full of work as well - and I've an ecommerce project I'm being briefed about first thing Monday morning. I'm also sorting the Cater For You accounts over to Quickbooks at the moment, though not very helpfully when I exported the IIF Files to Quickbooks it keeps crashing - I thought I could look at it this weekend but I didn't take a copy of the Actinic Link settings.

Looking forward to playing hockey tomorrow against Aylesbury - always good to play them - I usually have a few friends that i'm playing against. As of this precise second my body is not hurting / swollen / falling apart which is good - well its a bit overweight after Christmas but hey ho - i will even be able to do the warm up exercises where you flick your knee up - can't usually do that! lol. Then the rest of the daytime weekend will be entertaining rebecca - I cannot wait :D

Late payers charged Interest

New interest rate for overdue invoices - Business Link Solutions

This is quite interesting - I didn't realise that it was on the UK statute books that late payers can be charged interest.

I was thinking the other day about the major blockers to business in the UK - this after thinking just how simple it is to set up a business these days either by starting on Ebay then setting up an ecommerce web site - so much easier than 20 years ago. The two major blockers I could think of were:

1. Banks who are horrendous - trying to get an account then an internet merchant account number is impossible - especially if you are a start up. This is partly due to the legislation passed down to them by government (anti laundering legisliation etc) but also their own doing.

2. Around this area is business rates - I was talking to a customer who is looking to expand, they have found a suitable premises at reasonable rates but the business rates are huge - especially compared with householders council tax - so they will probably shelve the idea of expanding

Back from wales!

We arrived back from our holiday to Wales on Saturday afternoon - we drove to wales and back from wales in snow with cold and damp weather in between! Thanks to Martin who organised the week away again - we had a great time (also with warren and zoe etc). We had a brilliant place to stay a 16th century country dwelling with six bedrooms - the kids loved it running around and exploring everywhere - the owners were really welcoming as well which was good - it was about two miles from Dolgellau in the Snowdonia National Park. Wales really is a beautiful place as well - I did feel on edge though about not having particularly warm welcomes from the locals - we were talking about it as we went in to a local pub one evening in Dolgellau - and the whole pub stopped talking and looked at us - it was perfectly ok - and took them a while to switch in to Welsh lol. Still we won £22 out of the fruit machine - and besides - if you walk in the Waggon it is like that!

We did quite a lot whilst we were there - went to Barmouth twice - a beautiful place, visited a slate mine, the centre for alternative technology (though it was closed when we went - but didn't look much good anyway - bit 80's / 90's rather than urgent 2000's and incorporating new technology developments, Lake Bala, Beyws-y-coed and Porthmadog (I think that was it - bit run down but could be beautiful - probably is in summer). The advantage of going when we do is that we can walk straight in to places and see things rather than lots of queues an fighting for car parking spaces. Photos are now in the photos section.



So was very relaxed after than holiday - and my new years resolution (or one of them) is to take more holidays this year - though I guess the new baby in March / April will take some of that time away.

Went back to work today - I was really dreading it as I was going to be away from Rebecca for the whole day - the first time in two weeks - she has been so fantastic and is changing every day - saying new words and is understanding lots of things now and is learning things we teach her - she is soo happy too, laughing all the time - but guess I have to go back to work - though that is another new year resolution to work fewer hours.

Off to Eastbourne tomorrow for Bob's funeral :-(