Wednesday morning was all about bitty admin stuff.
Once I’d done my usual household chores and read a couple of chapters of my book, first job of the day was to try and locate a pension. It occurred to me during the night that I may be one pension short. I have the two I’m already receiving plus another one that matures in 3 years. But I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing one.
I had to do some research to find out what the firm was actually called in the mid-1990s, and then I did a search on the government website to see where they kept their pensions these days. Well, there were quite a few of them and I plumped for one that looked a bit corporate, a bit central.
As it turned out, they didn’t have any record of me on either of their 2 databases, but she did give me 2 other numbers to try. The next person I called found me straight away. Wow, what’re the odds? But it was only a small file as I’d been sent a refund as the benefit was too small to transfer into an annuity or even add to another one.
Thinking about it, I remembered that when I left that job I was going solely freelance for the second time in my life and the refund was so low it was worth more to me in the bank at the time than it would be 30 years later.
I had a consultancy waiting for me when I left that job, which was handy, and I was teaching several classes every week (and earning more than the full-time PAYE teachers at the same places). But I do remember thinking that this refund would come in handy for something.
But I’m happy that I know where it went, as I wondered if it had been transferred into the one that matures in 3 years. And that was another box ticked.
Next up was my passport renewal. I knew it was expiring in May but I wanted to see how long I had to get a new one…and it had expired the day before! Not to worry, I think we have so many days grace to call it a renewal rather than it become a brand-new application. I spent a lot of time trying to get a photograph of myself that I liked (or could live with for the next 10 years) (I even washed my hair!) and that met all the criteria.
The first one I submitted was rated as ‘good’, but I didn’t like it. The next one was ‘fair’, due to shadows on my face. The third one was ‘poor’, because there was a glare off my glasses. But the fourth one was ‘good’ again, even though it wasn’t one with a completely plain background.
I completed all the necessary formage, submitted it, paid for it, and popped my old passport into an envelope to return to the passport office so they could ‘cancel’ it (i.e. cut the corner off and maybe stamp ‘cancelled’ on the pages). I put outside clothes on and took the dog for a walk, and then I jumped in the car to take the envelope to the post office.
I was gone for precisely 19 minutes, but the dog hadn’t moved from the spot near the back door I’d left him in. We’re still getting him used to being left on his own, not just so he can be left on his own but so he knows we’ll always come back.
By the time I got back it was almost time for my afternoon meal and the day was nearly gone again. I made myself a sandwich, then tackled the assignment for the WMG workshop on making a living with novels. Once that was done, I fired it off. Then I acknowledged an email our conveyancing solicitor had sent us last Friday.
No news, just an update that the only outstanding queries were #15, #17 and #18, and #18 was one I’d raised with him prior to his email. That means he had 17 queries with the vendor’s solicitor and had received replies on all but two of them before adding mine. So that means things have been moving even if we haven’t heard very much.
I finally turned to today’s blog post before everything slipped my memory, and I moved a few jobs along to next week that I didn’t think I’d get done this week.
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