For a few days it's felt like spring has sprung - warm, sunny, lambs in the fields, walking round with no jacket on, that kind of thing. The weather was so good we had some of the boys up on Saturday doing a bit of concreting for us to finish off the apron into the new shed. Jim who's in charge of the job is a perfectionist and was very concerned not to get any dog paw prints on his pristine surface, so he left it all fenced round with strict instructions not to go near it for 24 hours.
Unfortunately he failed to take into account the resident 7 cats, several of whom appear to have held an impromptu concrete dance on Saturday night including the feline version of 'Strip the Willow' (a very interesting traditional dance, I never quite got the rules straight but it involves flinging your dancing partner as hard as possible at the next person in line). They have also tried to dig the concrete up in several places (don't ask why!) - Jim is not going to be best pleased.
Have recovered from the VAT shock, slightly cheered by the realisation that I can go back 4 years & claim back the VAT on any equipment we've bought for the business & still have. Have also got our VAT reg form back (it came really quickly - funny how efficient the government are when they want money from you). Still don't fully understand the TOMS VAT scheme but from what I can gather from online forums no one else does either. I don't think it'll be that difficult to apply to our own business, it's just that all the HMRC information on the subject comes in 100 page documents that appear to have been written by someone who knew what they were trying to say but couldn't work out how to transmit the information to anyone else. Ho hum.
Have also managed to get a hold of a 2012 diary - you would think a lot of folk would need next year's diary now but they're surprisingly hard to find. We've managed to beat our own record having to produce the 2012 brochure in January 2011 so we could start taking bookings for next year, & have got quite a few bookings in for 2012 now.
Less than 2 weeks to go now before the West Mainland Strathspey & Reel Society concert - my debut performance! I'm going to sit somewhere near the back & play very quietly. We're busy fundraising at the moment for the concert tour of Norway in June - I can't go of course as I'm working. I think I'll suggest a trip to somewhere in the winter - does the Caribbean have a strong strathspey & reel tradition at all? Anyway better go & do some practice I think - I surely need it!
http://www.orkneyarchaeologytours.co.uk/
