The tax man, a Mr Matthews in my case, rang the other day. He said, ‘Why haven’t you answered our letters for the last four years, Mr Clarke?’ I’d been dreading this phone call for so long that it was almost a relief. I wasn’t much of a letter writer, I told him, which is the truth. Well, things have got to the stage now, said Mr Matthews, where bailiffs could seize my assets. Did I have any seizable assets? Only my laptop, I said. And a monitor. But if they seized those, I said, it would be a bit of an own goal as I wouldn’t be able to earn the money to pay back what I owed. ‘What about your car?’ he suggested. ‘What’s that worth?’ ‘Less than the monitor probably,’ I said.
To avert the bailiff situation, I agreed to bring all my receipts, invoices and bank statements to the tax office the following day. We’ll have a look at them, said Mr Matthews, and maybe fill out some returns. I had kept all my statements and invoices, hadn’t I? I had, I said.
Well, I thought I had. But when it came to actually laying my hands on them, I couldn’t find them. That’s the trouble with living here, there and everywhere, you can never find anything. So when I was ushered into the large bare room and sat down facing Mr Matthews across the large bare desk, all I had with me was a book called Hot Sex: How To Do It (pocket edition) and a letter addressed to Her Majesty the Queen. I’d bought the book along in case I was kept waiting, and the letter in case there was a post-box between the carpark and the tax office, which there wasn’t.
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