Crunched!
It was a week of numbers. More than ever, I need my detoxing to be over. By Kate.
This week, numbers kept falling on my head.
Not literally. Although - despite the sharp-edged 4’s and 7’s - I think actual numbers falling may have been rather less painful to bear than the metaphoric shower I endured.
I’m really more the creative type, but I also rather like numbers. You have to have a respect and admiration for them if you want to run your own business because the entire thing balances, often precariously, on their small, solid backs. I like them when they make sense, adding and dividing and multiplying in a soothing, sensible rhythm. I do not like them when they get skittish or stubbornly obtuse, jumbling and tumbling together and finally spewing out a sum that makes no sense at all.
We have had quite an adventure, numbers and I, over the past 4 years, not least because we have managed to get entangled not once, but twice, with accountants who have made a huge mess. There are other phrases I could use here; have used here in some situations but this is a civilized blog, so we’ll leave it at that.
Even more so than lawyers over the past four yeas, it is accountants who have bought me to the brink of a combined professional massacre/suicide debacle on more than one occasion . Lest we forget though, Liz the lawyer saved our business during the time of the drains, thereby redeeming that profession somewhat in our eyes. The accountancy profession has had no such Paladin in the world of Green & Blue and the very word now inspires profound loathing in both Jude and I.
Pre Green & Blue I had always imagined accountants to be people who were essentially profoundly dry and precise; devoid of humanity or imagination. We now know that this is not even slightly true and that just like the general tide of humanity, there are all sorts.
Our unremittingly poor luck for many years meant we got entangled with two who were not precise at all; who took a rather carefree, bohemian approach to the calculations of the mechanics of our business. Accountants should really never employ a bohemian approach. It does not bring joy and happiness.
Too many months, we received numbers (very late) which bought on the kind of stress where one can literally feel blood pressure gushing upwards, like a geyser. It would subsequently transpire that these were wrong and that the situation was not a disaster after all and at times like these, I have wanted to pick up the phone and scream, murderously, until they too felt the geyser effect. Pass it on a bit. Make it clear how very unpleasant such a sensation was. I didn’t though and while we could and did fix some of the mess, it has now taken a brand new company to get to the bottom of all of it.
This has been a remarkable painful, long winded process which is just now in the final stages, hence the numerical shower this week. It is all a good thing, as we are finally almost completely sorted but by God, it has been hard.
Our new accountants give every impression of being the dusty, dry, precise sort which makes me very happy, as much as the fact of having to sit in desiccated meetings does not. I can feel the moisture and life force literally seep out of me. This is not the sort of environment in which I feel kindly towards numbers, principally because they are being discussed in an entirely foreign language.
“whuthup hoodinwa pelago” says Anwer the new accountant. Jude and I nod solemnly. Jude speaks the language better than I do but I can tell from the slightly frozen look in his eyes that he is not able to translate this either.
“prufinbar sim notting qupa”. A bubble of slightly hysterical panic inflates in my chest and I contemplate the very real possibility that I will shortly find myself in the throes of an attack of the giggles so debilitating that I will slide off my chair and lie, like a beetle, on the floor, kicking my legs and shrieking. This is not really the image I want to portray, so I have to squeeze my palms together in a death grip and take deep and slow breaths.
Somehow, this worked and I did not lose my mind. Better still, as deathly as the meetings have been, we have emerged intact, with numbers that now make sense on all levels. This is a remarkably good thing. Not least, because of the fact, according to Anwer, that HMRC are changing their tactics.
Apparently, they have been very gentle with business since things came tumbling down, fearful of pushing those glumly staring into the abyss over the edge. I have to say that we have not particularly noticed this but apparently, having calculated just how much the gentle approach has cost them, they are now donning combat fatigues and are gearing up for the blow-the-bloody-doors-off era, so if your numbers are not in order, they will tear you limb from limb. “Like hungry dogs” said Anwer with relish, displaying an unexpected (after the dust of the meeting) flash of lurid imagination.
This week, numbers kept falling on my head.
Not literally. Although - despite the sharp-edged 4’s and 7’s - I think actual numbers falling may have been rather less painful to bear than the metaphoric shower I endured.
