Organic-Ally

This time of year, every year, I dread having to do my accounts for tax purposes. I am fairly numerate, but when it comes to accounting, I wallow in the abyss between the debits and credits. My dear husband, trained in accounting, thankfully tolerates sitting down with me to sort out the numbers. Always we row over my poor book-keeping(??), my lack of analysis, and ... O dear! So last year, for Christmas, I was given Book-keeping for Dummies which I attempted to read, and even did exercises, etc. Last Saturday we sat down to do the accounts. I had made a start on the Trial Balance and the numbers on various bank accounts were adding up properly, etc. But still I managed to put some DRs and CRs in the wrong columns -- which he spotted, and I failed to find a record of my last payment to the accountant (!). But, BUT, we managed to balance the account without getting too cross with each other. Whew! Profit/Loss? Apparently I made a tiny, teeny profit, not enough to buy a half-decent han...

Isn't it ironic that someone who does not know how to take good pictures to profit from market-place websites like Etsy should have one of her photos featured in the local papers? Sadly it was the photo of my 'little brother' "Big Ben" in a tribute page . We looked at our photos of Ben. They are either of him with hands in his pockets or arms around a little baby. The photo here is actually one of him with our new-born son ten-and-something years ago. We knew then that he would have made a good father, and we were right. Sadly his daughters now won't have him around any more. Our prayers are with your family, Ben.

This was going round the Internet. There is no certainty over its authorship, and the piece has been called a "hoax" and all that. Still it is worth reading, methinks. When pondering the question of taxes and the structure of our tax system in general please refer to this explanation using the language of Beer !! Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this; The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1 The sixth would pay $3 The seventh would pay $7 The eighth would pay $12 The ninth would pay $18 The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59 So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy withthe arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer...

Yesterday was a very sad day at church. Last Sunday we heard that we cannot put God in a box as we looked at the passage in the Book of Samuel and the way the Ark of the Covenant was treated and feared. The congregation was bowed by the news of a serious house fire that left one of our church leaders and his wife (a paediatrician) in ICU. Later that day we learned the news that Ben, a Microsoft engineer, had been called home. Smoke inhalation had led to cardiac arrest. And the young man who first came to our church 11 years ago, spent Christmas with us, gone away, come back, got married, had children, was now back in the arms of Jesus. Yesterday was the first day back at church together for many of us. There was such an outpouring of grief. Ben was special. Ben was much loved. I spent time with his mum last Friday. O, how we cried. "Why? Why? Why did God take him at the prime of his life? Why did He not take me instead?" Ben's mum cried. We will never understand. I could,...

I find it hard to believe that. My eldest sister. Sixty. And she spent four hours working at McDonald's today, because the manager there could see that her work ethos was so different from that of Generation Y (or X or Z?). But she had a run-in with a much younger staff member who did not realize that she was a champion french fries fryer whose "just-in-time" technique was exemplary. Sister has a full-time job in accounts. She 'retired' and started doing some hours at M's, but was soon offered a job elsewhere. M's called her up, asking her to work Sundays. Actually Big Sister is very good at audit/accounts but never quite bothered to get her accountancy qualifications. I remember her talking for hours on the phone trying to explain to her best friend the difference between debits and credits, assets and liabilities. I look back at my young life with great sentimentality today because the talk in the UK this week was -- still -- on cutting publi...