annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Win win
Today I got a letter from HMRC saying that I was due a tax refund of £444 and that they would be sending a cheque to some fuckers I'm not even going to name - a company. There was a number to call if you had any queries, so I called. Thirty five minutes of holding on got me to a conversation on a bad line with a man who was very pleasant but had some kind of thick foreign accent so I ended up asking him to repeat things at least once if not twice, but eventually we established that the tax had been deducted at source when I had a repayment of mis-sold insurance (PPI) located for me by the Claims Guys and that this other company had somehow wormed its way into reclaiming overpaid tax. Well, I remember getting the claims guys to check out PPI for me as that was really complex and required checking loads of shit, but I have no recollection of asking anyone else to claim tax back for me. I can do that - I worked in a tax office once, about a million years ago and this is all pretty simple. So I call them and this time it's a really bad line and a woman with a squeaky voice as well as a foreign accent and this is much harder because she wants my NI number and my email but she can't hear me any more than I can hear her so we go round and round but eventually she finds my file and says oh yes, you signed a thing giving us authority to claim the tax back for 48% so we'll send you your 52% when we get it. Er, no, I don't think I did. Oh yes, we sent you an email about it on 24/4/21 and you responded, giving us authority to claim the tax for you. But there's no email about this. I wouldn't have deleted it, I'm shit at email - I have 21,308 unread ones. The only ones I have from the claims guys are ones asking about other overpayments of tax, eg a marriage tax refund, which don't apply to me - I haven't been married since the 1980s, thank fuck - so she says she's going to speak to her supervisor and comes back eventually saying they definitely have my email, I definitely authorised them, but I know I didn't - why would I give them half the money to do something I can easily do myself? But they insist. They say they'll send me a copy, which hasn't arrived yet either, not surprising as it doesn't exist. I don't know where we go from here but Son has a law degree so we'll figure it out.
It was only about an hour but it left me completely frazzled.. I'd kept calm but persistent in a way that I feel proud of but the cost of it was getting the screaming jitters once it was over. I'd thought I couldn't possibly go to the art group at the museum, which I'd be very late for anyway, but then, luckily, what I'm learning to call my Healthy Adult stepped in and reminded me that the art group was very soothing and I could speak about what had happened or not, whatever, but I could sit in a room with other people and peacefully get on with some art till I felt better. So I did and it took me a while to calm down, partly because I chose to do another copy of the terraces where I used to live and it was repetitive and easy which was good, well, the easy was good, but the repetition got faster and faster and scruffier and scruffier until I noticed and stopped for a bit and started painting instead of drawing windows and doors, windows and doors.
It was OK in the end. I went to a cafe and had a coffee and a dulce de leche blondie which was so sweet and delicious then came home and knitted two new squares on the next row of my cardie and watched the first ep of S2 of Bridgerton and the last two eps of Maid, which makes me feel immensely pleased that I'd been a single parent here in the UK at a time when I got benefits and rent paid without any hassle then a full grant with extra allowances for the kids when I did go to university, so no debt, but good on her, making it out from under all that crap.
Tomorrow Son is coming down and staying till Sunday so he can take me out on Mothering Sunday. Yay.
I am grateful for navigating today OK.
1:24 a.m. - 26.03.22
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