A friend in deed

Another damp day, but ten degrees centigrade all day from before dawn until well after sunset, as if the clouds were trapping a large mass of warm air, and there was no wind to shift it. Curious.

I set out in good time to drive to Thornhill for this morning's funeral, but found the car wouldn't start. We have used it so little recently, and simply not left it running outside the house long enough keep the charge level up and prevent the battery from draining. It could have been bump started, but with nobody around and the contagion risk entailed in asking anyone to help, not enough time to connect the battery charger and top it up just enough to get it started, and not enough time to be certain a taxi could come soon enough to get me there on time, and the possible risk of taking a taxi anyway, I started to panic.

I called Pidgeons and explained what had happened, and bless 'em, an empty stretch limo pulled into the street ten minutes later, kitted out with anti-covid screens (a thousand quid a go, said Paul my chauffeur), so I travelled in style and peace to Thornhill and arrived with twenty minutes to spare. Paul is one of Pidgeon's long standing drivers. He used to be an emergency recovery vehicle driver, and sometimes now has to go to crash sites and recover bodies. Unflappable, good humoured, always willing to help. After the service, with his boss's permission, he drove back to Pidgeon's garage, collected his jump leads, drove me home and got the car started in just a few minutes! I hope he enjoyed the thank ou pot of home made marmalade I gave him.

I did most of my walk before lunch, then went out again down to Blackweir later in the afternoon, to see if the onset of rain in the Brecon Beacons, as warned by my weather app, was reaching us yet. It was much the same as normal, but with a rainy night ahead who knows about tomorrow?

I had a long chat on the phone with Ashley in the evening and during our talk, signed off the penultimate set of audited accounts for 2019, the last trading year for CBS. In 2020, the year of covid, there's been almost no account activity. Auditing these accounts will be very simple and the next task will to audit them and wind up the company. Thanks to some very careful stewardship the company will be wound up owing nothing, all bills paid, electronic and other physical assets properly disposed of, if not written off, nothing left in the bank, no directors' payoffs. We always believed this is how a voluntary not-for-profit business should conduct its affairs - honourably.

I said we signed off the audited accounts. In former years each of us signed the paper version, but on this occasion Ashley received an email from our accountants which contained a link to access an online document service where an applet allowed us to append a signature to the correct place in the document and then submit it for printing. A jpeg of Ashley's signature was accepted by the document portal, but not mine. This was one of three options available. If I'd been viewing on a tablet I could have used a pen and given a live signature, but as this wasn't possible, a third option, was to type in the constituents of the forename and surname I use in signing. It shows on the document in a quaint cursive copperplate script! If ever interrogated, about this I can say 'Yes I did this, and it was a surprise to me how it came out! 

All this was done standing up with my Chromebook on a chest of drawers while we talked on the phone. I never had to do anything like that before! Electronic submission to Companies House had already happened by the due date, as law requires if you're registered for Corporation Tax. We didn't owe any as our turnover was well below the threshold. 

Trump had announced his farewell ceremony, boycotting Joe Biden's Presidential inauguration, will take place at Andrews Airbase when he leaves office tomorrow. A twenty one gun salute and a final speech and then off to Florida to live. I guess the world is wondering whether he'll have anything else contentious or inflammatory to say.