Since getting back from a holiday in Costa Rica in 2005 I have been ordering my coffee beans from Café Milagro in Quepos. Over the years I must have received at least ten parcels without a hitch.
Having just been dug out of a snow drift in Yorkshire, this blog feels like the first after a long hibernation. I’d been on a creative writing course run by the Arvon Foundation. The course was at Lumb Bank, a few miles outside Heptonstall, in a house that used to belong to Ted Hughes.
‘Black socks, they never get dirty.
The longer you wear ’em, the stiffer they get.
Sometimes, I think of the laundry,
But something inside me says ‘Don’t send them yet.’’
(Children’s song)
Am I becoming obsessed with poultry? Maybe. Two fowl blogs in three months. Well, this is how it happened.
My theatre buddy Gary is sick of hearing about Taxidermy.
(In memory of Pearl, the wire-haired German pointer who loved a juicy bone)
It being Halloween and this being my thirteenth month of bloggin’, my mind has turned to ghoulish things. There’s has been a spate of recent judgements of the European Court (four in six months no less) on the application of VAT to what may be loosely termed ‘body parts’.
For many years I have been a member of the VAT Practitioners’ Group. According to the VPG website:
‘The VPG membership is comprised of specialists from the VAT profession, leading law firms, industry, major retailers and commerce…’
Recently my American friend Sam (she of chicken-sitting fame) told me that years ago she had read about the US tax authorities taking over and running a brothel. I was sceptical as usual but she turned out to be right.
A couple of weeks ago I went down to deepest Sussex to spend a day in the country with an American friend of mine, Sam, who was chicken-sitting for a week. And yes, that was a new one on me, too (though not apparently to everyone out there: click here).