Lola at the Coffee House

The hamsters did it, fm. I went there too. This is the new place, even though it's just like the old one, just move current.

Wassau hurries over with hot chocolate with chili. But he wants to know, does the chili go in the coffee or with it?

Damned coffee coming up. Wassau is good at damned things. Me too. Damn damn damn.

Plain ole black coffee coming up too. Good morning edgar.

Thirty something? Is that a complement Spendi?

good morning georgeob. Poor you. Work again. Here take this oj on your way.

chili goes in the hot chocolate, try it sometimes , it gives the drink a nice zing. Not too much, maybe a quarter teaspoon.
An I puts cinnamon on the whip cream.
It makes a party in yer mouth

I had a right dust up with the taxman. It lasted over a year. He had all my bank statements with certain items highlighted in a phosphorescent shade of light green which, when he pointed to one, caused his eyebrows to beetle up like a dragon cockroach eying up a flea.

He wished me to write him a cheque for an amount which was as truly flabbergasting as it was unjustified. The fines for late payment added up to more than the tax alleged to be due.

He had taken against me in a personal way because he had found when he first visited me, in the company of a burly gentleman, who was seemingly not required to speak, that there were over 200 unopened letters from his office addressed to me by name and to my company in the bottom drawer of my desk, the effect of which being possible exacerbated to some extent by my incautious remarks about left-sided defenders which I had discovered he was one such himself in the general gentlemanly bonhomie which takes place during the sizing each other up. The blown-up picture on the wall of a lady in an improper posture didn't help.

He was every inch a martinet. Having power over such stalwart diggers in the trenches at the front as myself in the war to allow our political leaders to crow about 0.2% growth in the particular quarter recently consigned to what is euphemistically called "the past", had gone completely to the silly sod's head. He looked like the sort of bloke who had 2.1 children.

Most of the letters were marked THIRD WARNING. Whether that was supposed to make my knees knock and my teeth chatter I don't know but if they had known what I had been through they would have realised the utter and absolute futility of going to so much trouble on my behalf. Hence his visit. Visits by tax inspectors are the first sign that serious matters are in train.

And it is obvious that if they have envelopes specially printed with THIRD WARNING there must be enough people deserving of receiving them to show that they are not as unusual as my man tried to make out I was. And there is no law saying anybody has to open them. No news is good news my mother used to say.

After the preliminary skirmishing had got him nowhere he ventured to arrange for me to appear before H.M. Commissioners of Taxation who I knew were all men like myself only better at it. When the day arrived I found a queue of slippery looking fellows who it turned out were all accountants representing various absent parties. When the clock showed 10 a,m. a name was called and it wasn't mine so I approached the clerk and asked her to record that I was present at the time specified and if they were not ready I was going. This caused a flutter. A flurry. And low-level consternation which resulted in a deferral to the next hearings in 3 months.

They didn't make the same error when the day came. An error born of sublime arrogance or possibly not an error at all if you consider that most of the accountants had been tax inspectors themselves and were abled to sit around all day reading the Financial Times and comparing notes on tax havens and offshore funds whilst charging their absent clients the full whack.

I was first in. My tax inspector had sent a lady to represent his department, a dashing ceiling buster, and I so befuddled her that she became overly friendly and the Commissioners recommended that another deferral would allow time for us to work out an amicable solution. I was working on the principle that if I could delay the fateful day long enough I might cark it first and that would be the end of that.

I then wrote them a letter explaining that any tax I might evade was necessarily spent on alcoholic drinks, cigarettes, and suchlike on which tax was at astronomical levels, and unavoidable, and that the Government was getting my money far faster than they could do considering that I knew I could easily get the payments of the arrears staggered over a few years and that it is all the Government's money anyway and that their department was nothing but a job creation scheme for accountants not up to private practice or for taking on the fat cats and, as such, a drain on the nation's scare resources.

Shortly after that a new guy arrived. Friendly, affable, laid back. "Look spendi" he said, after admiring the picture on the wall and the dwarf marijuana plant I had in a pot in the window facing south, "we can settle this here and now with a bit of give and take". Which we did in five minutes for half what had originally been demanded so brusquely. I wrote him the cheque tearfully and I've never heard from them since.

The trick is to make them greatly desire to place your file in a cabinet that is rarely opened.

"dwarf marijuana plant I had in a pot in the window facing south..."

not familiar with that particular strain, spendi.

an impotent ornamental variety?

I think you should remind your clientele, Lola, that Coffee Houses are places where thumbing down the contributions of others is considered the very height of vulgarity and that any objections anybody might have to anything said should be stated openly so that they might be discussed rather be subject to the sneaky poison pen treatment.

You bad boy.
That one was brilliant.
(And how often do you hear me say that, eh?)

Do you know why it was brilliant osso? It was because it was authentic. It did happen to me.

Those guys assume that their victims don't know how bureaucratic processes work. They had no wish for me to pursue the line I took in the letter, which was far more persuasive than I intimated, in front of H.M Commissioners of Tax, all four in full and enthusiastic agreement with it, and with a public gallery present.

It is a long time ago and since then the Inland Revenue, which collected income taxes, has been amalgamated with H.M. Customs and Excise, some say taken over by, into an outfit called H.M. Revenue and Customs which is a more formidable body.

Always put yourself in the other person's place so you can work out what it is they are up to. It's not easy to do with ladies though because they give out mixed signals. The quarry that holds all the aces. A fox like that would have the hounds running the other way.

What you want equality for passes my comprehension?

I think the Monopolies Commission should look into that merger.

One of the things good Coffee Houses are noted for is the telling of tales. A raconteur or two.

I bet Setanta can tell a tale or two if he would but put his mind to it.

What's it like going to see the whales is one fm could do. At the level of the physiology being caught in a web spun by one's own psychology.

Twas an enjoyable story, Spendius.

It is an excellent story, Spendi. And I would welcome other stories that are as fine as yours.

With the tax people, it doesn't take long, if one is brave as you were, to learn that they go for half with great ease. Further, in the US there is a statute of limitation of 5 years. So, if a person has nutin, then they can't get nutin. I even know a person who has opted for this scenario. Amazing.

And yes, it seems to be more productive to tell a person that you don't like what they have written, rather than to anonymously check the thumbs down. Still, I hadn't noticed there was a thumbs down check place before you pointed it out. Ignore such responses. I do.

Kissing Spendi on the cheek. You're a real friend..........even if you are sometimes, or especially since you are sometime grumpy.

It's not as good as when H.M Customs and Excise sent a lady to investigate my application to register for VAT status.

This is not the place to go into that I fear. Her husband was a body-builder who was proving unsatisfactory.

VAT?

Value added tax, it's a tax on purchases.

I see. thanks

I dealt with vat once and somehow lost, but I was extremely tired and understood none of it.. I tend to not buy much.