Only, as a business nobody ever adds VAT on for you. When you're VAT registered (you can opt in to this but there's a threshold above which you have to be registered and I believe that's a turnover of £72,000. Needless to say we're well under that and I don't want the paperwork that being VAT registered makes.) you get to claim your VAT back, so that the only people who actually pay VAT is the consumer and tiny businesses. So they give you a price without VAT and if you pay VAT, like we do, you work it out yourself. It's not too hard to do and when I'm buying wool, for example, I add up the total of what I've bought, divide it by 100 and times that by 120. It gives me a rough estimate. Only a rough estimate because some companies charge VAT on each item and some charge VAT on the whole lot and that changes things by a couple of quid. But whatever, I need wool, I want wool, we wouldn't be a business without it.
We would, however, be a business without rubbish collections that we don't need. So I asked, when I talked to the council how much that would work out at for each bag and when they didn't understand that I asked if VAT was added on the individual bags or on the whole order and they didn't know so somebody was going to ring me back. I won't even write the next sentence, I think you know what didn't happen... So I'll be ringing them today, again.
So things have moved on a bit since the last time I saw you, I'm now dealing with another incompetent component of the local council and hating every minute. The more things change the more things stay the same. Blurgh.
Oh, and I mustn't forget to tell you about the visit from the Community Protection Officer. He came. Which was a start I guess. He didn't actually say anything, didn't write anything down and certainly didn't bring any forms for me to fill in. He sat there looking a bit gormless whilst I explained why I wasn't tip top happy chops about the way that this has all panned out. He said he'd pass it forward to his supervisor, I said 'brilliant, so I can have a written confirmation that that's been sent forward?', he has a bit of a paddy and tells me his supervisor will call me because I'm obviously finding it difficult to work with him (news to me, I was enjoying myself!). Supervisor hasn't called.
Yowser - this makes being a small business owner a lot easier and more enjoyable. Brilliant.
Right, I was going to say a load of positive stuff right now but frankly, I'm a bit pissed off with a lot of minor things and I'm too busy to allow myself to be inspired or excited about much at all really. So if it's alright with you lot I'm going to crawl back into my hole, ferret about and get a load of work done and reappear refreshed and reinvigorated tomorrow with a run down of what happened at the Bead Fair on Sunday.
Until then, I'll leave you with a little photo of what the Bead Fair ended up being all about for me - it will put a smile on your face:
Little pretty sparklies that were dead easy to make. The kits are available here and these are both the 'Miyuki' ones but when I went in to buy stuff to make more it turns out some of the components are unavailable there so I bought a Snowflake Crystal Kit (no idea what size) and it turns out it was written by my friend Steph who runs Knit in Notts the knitting club at Lee Rosies! How exciting! And all of those components are easily gettable at the Bead Shop and the instructions are pretty fabulous if you ask me, even for a complete beginner.
And what do you know, I've finished the blog on something positive! Isn't life odd, ey?
Love Eleanor.
P.s. I nearly wrote 'lovely Eleanor' then, which is my go to finger movement when I've typed 'love'. Maybe I should have left it to cheer myself up. But then I'd look a tit.
But Eleanor you are lovely.
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