You can't argue with a 4 year old

It is a bit of a shame, but it's defiantly true that you can't argue with a four year old. They know just enough to argue passionately that they're right, but not enough to realise their actually wrong.

I'm working with 2-5 year olds at the moment in a children's centre. By the end of next month I am hoping to have finished a big banner made from the work of children and parents, sewed together by me. The design has quite a number of things that it has to incorporate and at times it has been tricky. Yesterday I needed children's pencil drawings on paper that was 20 x 20cm I had pre cut a load of paper and just had to entice the children into doing some pencil drawing. I'm not expecting amazing stuff just vaguely representational drawing would do fine. I didn't really want scribbles.

The kids had a choice of outdoor play or pencil drawing....one kid choose pencil drawing and he was a scribbler. So when the other kids came back in I was really pleased that one boy said 'I want to draw a caravan' 'brilliant' I said and passed him the special square paper. 'This is not the size of my caravan' he said he then went over to get some A4 paper and said 'this is the size of my caravan' I tried to reason with him his caravan was clearly not A4, it was probably rectangular rather than square but as we all know as adults you can draw anything at any size, he didn't have to draw a square caravan just because he was given square paper.

In the end I gave in and gave him some A4 paper and he said 'that's what I wanted ages ago' he then drew a really good caravan that I can't use for the banner. : (

Read this IMMEDIATELY

....Don't really it's not that important. I'd say read my blog at your leisure, don't try and read it whilst driving, or mowing a lawn or whilst making jelly, or whilst trying to have an argument. Read it when your procrastinating or having a bit of time off. I hope I haven't in anyway pressurised you into reading this when there are more important things you could have been doing.

The above paragraph is something HMRC need to learn from. I came home today from a lovely trip out seeing some art with one of my best mates Rachel to find this letter saying 'PLEASE OPEN IMMEDIATELY' I was just about to press in the code on our house alarm which is the first thing I do when I get in. I think this is the kind of task that needs immediate attention because if you leave it for about 30 seconds the alarm will go off and upset the whole street.

I had a dilemma for a second, 'IMMEDIATELY' according to dictionary.com means 'without lapse of time; without delay; instantly; at once' whereas the alarm had 30 seconds before it needed seeing to. As I am not really that stupid I did the alarm first, and thank goodness I did because when I then opened the letter it contained a form that needed to be completed by 31st October so I actually have more than 6 months on that. Perhaps HMRC need to change their envelopes to say 'PLEASE OPEN SOONISH' or 'THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT ONE DAY DON'T LOOSE IT'

I wonder whether it would be possible to sue HMRC because you had some kind of accident that would have been avoided if you hadn't opened their letter with such haste. For example say you were a lion tamer and you were about to lock the lions up in their cages and then the letter came through the letter box and you rushed to open it, leaving the lions to escape, and whilst you're reading your self assessment tax form (that you have 6 months to complete) the lions pounce and rip off your arm.

Also if they want things done so quickly why are they sending it in the royal mail? Why don't they employ Olympic runners to distribute them? Or a slightly more cost effective solution...email. This is an organisation that took 5 years from the moment I told them they owed me money, to the moment it was in my bank. I don't think they have the right to tell me to do something immediately. Rant Over.

Happy New Tax Year

The Chinese have their own new year, the Jews have their own new year, I think it's time that freelancers and business owners step up and start celebrating the new tax year. As a self employed person I lead by example by putting on a new years party on 5th April. Unfortunately everyone left by 11.30 which I don't think would happen at a 'real' new years party.

Oh well, I hadn't worked out how I was going to to the count down anyway. Especially as all the clocks in our house are all a little bit wrong. I am writing this in the kitchen, and the clock says 4:11, the ipod doc says 4.22, the oven says 15:11 and my laptop says 16:15. I can't change them though because I know how much they are out by and if I change them I might forget and still allow extra time when I didn't need to or something. I was planning on writing whole new version of old langs aine which was all about tax which I would make people to sing at midnight but luckily for them I didn't get round to it.

I did however invent a lot of tax related games, my favorite was probably 'Pea 45' in this game you have 5 seconds to get 45 frozen peas from a bowl full of frozen peas to a empty bowl and how ever much you're out by you have to eat that number of frozen peas. Mike did quite well he only had to eat about 6 peas. 'Net prophets' was quite fun you had to catch old testament prophets in nets, and lets face it who doesn't enjoy that. 'Steakholder' was interesting, you had to hold a steak whilst platting a girls hair- neatest plait wins. Since I ended up being 'the girl' I was glad I had bothered to make the steaks from modroc and didn't buy real ones.

I wish I had a video of Will playing 'turnover' the game where you had to turn over as many times as possible in our bed in 30 seconds. There's something quite funny about a man wriggling around tangled in a duvet really trying hard to win when you could be far more effective just doing neat rolls back and forth like me and Katie did. I thought it might be a bit odd having everyone in our room and it wasn't really until Katie said 'this is your bed where you and Dan have sex' while that is true is doesn't mean it can't be used for tax related games as well. It's a multi purpose bed, it is also the venue for our late night improvised comedy hoedown game, and we sleep in it too.

I will leave you with a picture of Mike and Dan playing 'PAYE' (Pout As You Eat) I promised Mike I wouldn't put it on facebook. I love Danni's face in this too, she's not sitting down she attually is that little.

P.s Congratulations Joy Farrington, overall winner of the tax games, I hope you will be putting that on your C.V.