2026 Week 24

Summary

This week has been dominated by one theme my determination to audit my own tax records and understand why I received a letter from HMRC. I’m hoping that by the end of this, I’ll have resolved any omissions in my tax returns but also I’ll have a greater understanding of my personal tax situation. I don’t think I fully understood how acquisitions can mask significant changes in tax liability. As a result, my spreadsheet skills have been getting a real workout. LibreOffice has been excellent.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time looking into drum kits for Oscar. I’ve yet to hear from a parent who has enjoyed their decision to allow their child to play the drums. Universally it seems to be something that families, but hopefully not neighbours, come to regret.

We discovered Nuki’s Thai Kitchen in Grove Park. The restaurant name on OpenStreetMap was wrong so I submitted a fix (changeset: 184318699) This has now become our favourite local lunch joint. It’s nice to be able to sit down and eat a reasonably sized, tasty dish for £10. It’s even nicer that this is a five minute walk from home.

Although we haven’t quite hit the high temperatures of a couple of weeks ago, the slow increase in temperature, particularly at night, left me feeling exhausted. By the time it reaches midday, the muggy atmosphere makes it difficult to sit at my desk. The constant shifting in position and lack of focus has left me with back ache. I made an effort to clear up the mess of cables underneath my desk and raised it to a standing position. The change was instant. Both focus and productivity improved significantly. I’ve yet to move the desk back down to a sitting position.

I hadn’t realised it was the King’s birthday until the flypast passed overhead. I’d just dropped the two boys at Chinese school when the first jets flew over. A child came running out of the school building, shouting, “Trump is bombing us”. A short phrase, probably meant in jest, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this. We are incredibly fortunate that this isn’t true but worryingly complicit as a nation in our support for conflict around the world. As a child I remember being glued to the news as jets began bombing Iraq. My boyish fascination with the technological marvel that was the precision guided missile masked any sense of what was actually happening or why it was happening. These days I feel like I should be in a position to understand and explain. I’m not.

Alicia is heading off to China for a bit and on our last day before she left we went into town for our family haircut. It may sound ridiculous, but we’ve really enjoyed using the excuse of a haircut to go and do something as a family. The boys love it, and we always end up eating in a Chinese restaurant afterwards. What was once a chore that I struggled to squeeze into the working week has now become an excuse for a family day out.

Solo parenting next week, advice welcome.

Plus Minus Next

• ➕ Progress on consolidating various “stuff” folders that litter my laptop hard drive.
• ➕ Discovering Nuki’s Thai in Grove Park, Chiswick
• ➕ Rediscovering my standing desk
• ➕ Family haircut
• ➖ The struggle to focus with warm, muggy, air
• → pick up my blog refresh // template // structure
• → Start replying to my backlog of letters on Slowly

Week in Pictures