The Day After

Today has been very much a day of recovery after the day before. The first thing I had to do at 9am was call British Gas, with whom I have a particularly l-o-n-g history of run-ins. I thought I had closed my Chesham gas account with an online chat assistant yesterday afternoon (a real person, not a chatbot). And yes it had indeed been closed, but so had my Tiptree account. I groaned out loud when I checked after the “chat” and realised what they’d done. So, as I have done on so many occasions with British Gas, I resorted to the arduous task of phoning them up this morning to put it right. In the end, they had to leave the Tiptree account closed, send me a final bill for that, and then open up a new account with a completely different customer account number. This took half an hour from start to finish, which is pretty good going for B. Gas - and, touch wood, all *seems* to be sorted…

I’ve taken the wrapping off one piece of furniture, and put in two loads of laundry I brought back from the flat. The rest of the day has been spent logging onto all sorts of online accounts to change my address, with no two procedures for doing this being the same, even though three of them were via the gov.uk website. I had a real tussle getting into my HMRC details to notify the taxman - whereas the DVLA had been relatively easy, HMRC was like trying to enter Fort Knox!! Several irritating hours later and most of the notifications have now been done, with one or two wanting me to phone them in person on Monday. I am not looking forward to trying to register with the local GP surgery, which I’ve already had lots of dealings with because of caring for Mum - they’re lovely people doing their best, but are hideously over-subscribed and therefore difficult to get through to on the phone. I might leave that until Tuesday, which tends to be less busy.

All in all a quietly productive day.

My blip is of the main bedroom, so crammed with boxes etc (and a large wardrobe surplus to long-term requirements) that I am unable to make up the bed to sleep in. So I shall remain in the room I’ve always used for the time being, and try not to roll out of the single bed onto the floor!