Tax-22.

Hello, Unknown Reader.

Being a tender, vulnerable Eighteen year old A-level student, I should be allowed to earn something in the region of £6,000 a year without being cold bloodedly swindled by the intangibly demonic 'tax man'. Rather unfortunately, this is not the case. I have been stripped of several hard earned gold coins in the last few months, which is irritating, but being a Gold Medallist in the strict discipline of Procrastination, I sort of decided to forget about it. This lackadaisical attitude towards my own earnings was not well received by my financially battle hardened parents, who spoke as if they have picked many a scrap with the T-Man himself, whoever he is. After several gentle, guiding comments encouraging me to take the necessary steps to re-obtain my stolen Tax treasures, I still remained steadfast in my well developed 'I'll do it later' philosophy. After many a heated discussion, it came to my mum sitting me down, thumping in the numbers for the Tax office herself:

0800 300 0627 - before thrusting the dialling phone to my ear which did not want.

Several minutes later, I found myself sat in the same position, phone to ear, listening to the monotonous drone of the robotic voice at the other end. I followed all the appropriate steps, tapping in '1's' and '2's' in accordance with the electronic bints' condescending enquiries. Half infuriatingly, at the end of the computerised monstrosities' ruthless interrogation, I was told to log on to the HMRC Tax Office website and follow the income tax reclaim steps there. I conformed. The website was the perfect visual accompaniment to the robots' rhetoric. Disgustingly logically presented, neither aesthetically pleasing nor displeasing - blindingly mundane. The centre piece of the Homepage however, was a delightfully playful picture of Moira Stewart leaning against a postbox. I easily located the links to the areas of the site I had been trustingly lead to. Once there, I was both horrified and perplexed by the advice offered to me.

"to reclaim overpaid tax please contact HMRC on 0845 300 0627" 


So, I am aware I have already dialled this number, followed the appropriate steps, and been led to the Tax Robot's website as a result of this. The website, appears to want to redirect me back to repeat the terribly artificial encounter with the Tax Offices' resident female robot. Please correct me if I am mistaken, but this does present itself as some form of contradiction: a paradox, a never ending maze at the centre of which lies all the wrongly seized monies of the general population.

This is your...Facebook.

Facebook frightens me. Despite its friendly exterior, dressed in friendly blues and whites, decorated with pictures and conversations, a dark truth has yet to be explored in the youthful stage of the Facebook generation. After all, Facebook is effectively an incredibly detailed, illustrated diary of your life, depending on how thoroughly you maintain your Facebook. In fact, Facebook is more than a diary, it is a documentation, an ongoing, seemingly ceaseless record of the minutiae of yours, mine, almost everybody's lives. 

This thought may not strike you as anything ground breaking. You may cast a slovenly eye across your Facebook page now in fact, and think nothing of it. You may have a few hundred pictures which you've been 'tagged' in, dating back maybe three or four years. But what about in fifty years time? How will your Facebook look then? Imagine yourself on your deathbed, scrolling through your Facebook; your whole life will be right in front of your eyes. Conversations, thoughts, photos, videos, chat conversations...All logged, stored, saved, documented.

What a horrific thought. I'm not entirely sure how comfortable I feel with the entire substance of my life being reduced down to storage on a voyeuristic spy-haven for lonely old men and sexually inquisitive fourteen year old boys. Will we be judged by our Facebook record in years to come? Who knows. Part of me feels I should keep Facebooking away, wasting hours of my time clocking every seemingly worthwhile thought or conversation on the damned website, just to see. 

Shameless 'Arty' Indulgence in my new camera.

 This is me taking an arty photo of a lens-cap on an armrest. I feel this evokes feelings of inspiration, divinity and... Well, no. It is just a lens-cap.

This however, is a really arty picture I took of my piano. Its really good because you can see all along the keys and all that, can you see that? Its really very good. Well, no. It is just a piano. From the side.

This was a lovely piece of Victoria Sponge cake, which my Mum made. Notice how the slightly 'jaunty' angle of the fork encapsulates the concept of Modernism, Relativism and... Wait, no. It is just a piece of cake. Accompanied by a jauntily angled fork. 












This is the same piece of cake, but slightly closer, and propped up on its spongey-spine (see spongey-spine above). 

Ladies.

One thing which has always struck me, more than any other flaw in my own personality, is my complete inability to converse with the fairer sex.  I have always struggled to strike up a conversation of any worth, meaning, or interest with a lady - probably from the first moment dialogue could be formed from my tiny little awkward child mouth. Even in early youth, when such boundaries of social awkwardness and ineptness towards women have not yet been formed, an innate force within me always seemed to cut the cord in my brain along which normal conversation commutes; forcing my mind to take an alternative route, resulting in phrases such as “Couscous?”, “Craig David?” and “The Independent?” escaping my idiotic cavern of a mouth. It goes without saying that these, obscure, detailed, cultural references fell far from the mark when it came to impressing the ladies, especially when strewn into conversation out of context and out of turn.

I set it upon myself to try to decipher where this tangible nightmare could’ve derived. My first port of call, unsurprisingly so, was my appearance. Although not horrific, some might say I looked ‘different’. I mean, I’d like to say there’s nothing particularly striking about my face, or indeed my body, which repulses people to the extent of mass genocide. Certainly nothing so overly pronounced to an extent which could make a grown man vomit, from inside his plush estate Volvo upon watching me cross the road. However, there has always been something - a slight, almost unnoticeable niggle I’ve had with my own looks. It’s nothing really, in fact, not even worth writing about. The grown man in his Volvo would spot me and think nothing of it. However if the grown man in the Volvo were to pull over in his sleek company car, stop me and ask politely my age at any point through my teenage years, he would probably spontaneously combust with horror - completely spoiling his shimmering Scandinavian leather interior. I have always looked a little older than my years. 6ft tall by the age of twelve, untamed facial foliage by thirteen; I’ve never looked my age. At age eleven I wore a size twelve shoe; quashing the usual authoritarian quip, “Act your age, not your shoe size”. 

On paper, this scenario sounds fairly manageable to the average man. Most people look on the bright side, “Oh I bet you always got served underage!” forgetting that I am an inevitable cock in any situation in which I may need to act the least bit suave; cocking up my syntax, cocking up my presentation of cash, spilling coppers, apologising frantically, etcetera, etcetera.

In addition to this, my chances of getting served for alcoholic beverages at a woefully tender age decreased significantly if the decisive hand of fate so cruelly led me to a female cashier. Not only would I have the general inability to not be a twat battle against me in my plight for cheap lager, on top of this, my heightened superpowers in being unable to talk to women would prove their worth, in spectacularly embarrassing style. Apparently “Craig David?” isn’t a suitable response when asked to produce some identification.