Paper work

Cloudy and fairly warm for most of the day. At sunset last night, green fingered Keith arrived at our door with a hefty amount of veg from the Riverside Community Garden in Llandaff Fields. He works in several municipal allotments locally, advising and helping less fit gardeners with digging and uprooting, keeping the place tidy, particularly allotments that become neglected, or unused in between leaseholders. Fruiting trees and bushes continue to produce their crop, and he can't bear to see fruit and veg go to waste, so he harvests and offers to friends, neighbours and churchgoers. He brought us a giant marrow, some huge pear tomatoes, a handful of purple runner beans, and several kilos of potatoes of assorted sizes. Potatoes were on this week's shopping list and Clare had only just bought some, although I said I would. We are blessed with abundance at the moment.

I made a start on tidying the accumulation of un-filed documents in my study, organising end of tax year statements, in preparation to fill in my year's tax return. I discovered I was lacking two pension P60s from my service in the CofE. The one from the Church Commissioners I knew I could access on-line to print a copy for reference. The other one from a supplementary pension provider called One Family I didn't have, only a notification letter advising me that I needed to create an on-line account. No more paper P60s. The sign-up routine was thorough and straightforward, involving an identity verification process delivering different codes to both email and mobile number via SMS. Finding and printing off the P60 was easy after that. Aviva had already sent me a tax certificate relating to the cashing in of one of my investment bonds. All I need to do now is add up state pension payments for the year. The State Pensions advisory letter gives the expected sum per annum, but the actual amount received varies a little I've found, depending on payment dates.

While I was busy in my study, Clare cooked mackerel fillets for lunch, with spuds, carrots and a generous amount of purple runner beans picked yesterday and cooked to perfection. A real treat. Then I got to work on printing a copy of Jack's tale to send to my cousin Ros. I wanted to include page numbers, but simply couldn't get the Libre Office editing feature to work, and inadvertently printed them all with page number forty six, so I had to amend all the pages by hand. Worse still, after thirty pages properly printed, the last sixteen came out with striped fades on one side, making them illegible. I took the laser cartridge out of the machine, gave it a shake to redistribute the remaining ink, and fortunately all sixteen pages printed fine, second time around. The cartridge is nearly empty. It's just over four years since I bought the last one, a benefit of being a light user plus the benefit of laser cartridges being far more economical than inkjet ones.

Then at last I went out for a walk around Llandaff Fields. Over the past few months four new sites along the main footpath to Llandaff have been created for park benches, each dedicated with a plaque in memory of someone. It set me thinking. Almost all park benches I see these days carry one. It's more functional than a grave stone, and in a more everyday beloved location than a cemetery, but doesn't last as long. Benches decay, break or get vandalised. Will there be family members around to take care of renewal when the time comes. Stones can last many centuries, depending on what they are made of, but cemeteries can end up being neglected and memorials disappear into undergrowth which is great for wildlife, but not for people. For how many generations does a grave plot get maintained when no family members live nearby? Grave plots may be family owned, or leased and recycled if not renewed, as is common in Europe.

I walked down to the river for a circuit of Pontcanna Fields. I noticed a couple of baseball pitches have been freshly marked out. I often see practice sessions there, but it looks like there'll be a match this weekend.  It was after six when I got home. Clare made veg soup for supper. I didn't feel like tackling the tax return tonight, so I continued watching 'Detective Surprenant' until bed time.