Today I have successfully fought off the urge to waste time on-line. It was my day to go to the shop. I arrived just before 9.00 after dropping Julia at work, and immediately had to ring the boss because the alarm was playing up. It is linked to his phone so I didn’t want him thinking he had burglars.
He came to the shop later in the morning, with home-baked cakes from his wife and we had coffee with coconut and cherry buns. They were very good.
It does highlight a grey area – we are at work and we are able to sit down, chat, and have coffee and buns, but if we were a café instead of a coin shop we wouldn’t be able to do that because the coffee and buns would have to be takeaway or click and collect. I know the scale of the risk would be different but the underlying principle is there.
Same goes for talking to the neighbours. I’m hazy on detail, but I’m fairly sure I couldn’t go round for a chat, but as we needed to discuss building work it is allowable. Unfortunately, I found myself doing an impression of an old man droning on about how the street was 30 years ago. They are a nice, young couple, as I may have mentioned before, and have offered to paint the side of my wooden garage before they put their new one up. It’s very kind of them, but does make me feel a bit old and decrepit. However, I did accept the offer – I may be old and decrepit but I’m not stupid enough to turn down an offer of help.
Julia made tea (egg fried rice and served it with some spring rolls left over from New Year. It was tasty and healthy and much better for us than the chips we would normally have had. We aren’t giving up chips, it’s just that the chip shop is broken. The fryer has broken down and they are temporarily closed. This must be a bit of a blow on top of the lockdown. I am glad, as I have said before, that I am now employed instead of self-employed.
Talking of which, we now have a stock of CN 23 Customs Declaration forms. Since Brexit the Post Office has tightened up on the use of customs declaration forms and we can no longer send items over £270 using a CN 22. Of course, we didn’t even have to use CN 22 forms for Europe until Brexit. At the moment I’m spending an average of 10 minutes a day messing with customs forms for Europe, which comes to an hour a week if we were working full time. Call it £500 a year. The CN 23s require more time to complete.
I wonder how many other small businesses are finding this.
My anti-Brexit feelings are, at the moment, somewhat confused. I still think we would be better in than out, but I look at the mess that Europe has made of the Covid vaccinations. Maybe we are better out of it.
After work and fried rice it was quite some time until I could be bothered to switch the computer on – which is how I successfully avoided wasting time on-line. I just watched TV instead.