Day of Reckoning

After breakfast, I started work sorting documents and retrieving information for my tax return. That took me until lunchtime as it involved sorting through paper bank statements and my on-line bank account to look for information in the one that I couldn't identify in the other. The trouble with going cashless is that a bank statement expands from one to three pages due to the multiplicity of small entries. When checking donations on-line, it was difficult to spot the particular entries as my particular on-lone account doesn't have a search by name of recipient, or a payment history for each recipient. A whole morning to get it all straight, and then lunch to cook while Clare was out at her study group.

After lunch, I started work on my digital tax return, which then only took me an hour to complete and submit. Some of its internal procedures have been simplified a little, making it easier to complete without puzzlement. Even with my income from un-taxed fees declared, it turned out that HMRC owe me a small sum, which is better than it being the other way round. After all that concentrated effort I felt quite tired and slept in the chair for over an hour.

Then I went out of a walk taking my Song Alpha 68 DSLR with me for the first time in five months. It felt so much heavier to carry than the Olympus. My last two photos were of an egret on the Taff. One was near the shore and the other, slightly blurred, in flight. A couple of mallards noisily arriving nearby alarmed the egret and it took to the wing. I swung the camera up, pointed and shot in what I hoped was the right area. The Sony's slick shutter response did the rest. It's not great, but here it is anyway.

I walked for an hour an a half taking photos, so far autumn looks quite different from the vivid colours of last year due to the extreme heat and dryness of the summer. Dark green tree canopies have been touched with reds and yellows since the end of August. A few trees have lost most of their leaves already, trees that were golden yellow for a month last year. 

After supper we watched a Norwegian documentary in the BBC Four 'Storyville' series about systemic racism against the Norwegian Sami population, focussing on the lack of attention by public authorities of serious cases of incest and child abuse in one remote marginalised poor village. A disturbing account of victims' lives when safeguarding isn't taken seriously at all, due to cultural prejudice. Hard to watch. I think it should be required homework for church safeguarding training courses, not because there's any religion in it, but because of the witness of those who suffered across the generations,