CREATIVE ACCOUNTANCY

By a happy coincidence, my trading year ended yesterday, at the end of a week of startling revelations regarding the expense claims of our parliamentary representatives. Today, I have been putting the last month's figures into the Excel spreadsheet on which my year's income and expenditure is outlined. It makes depressing reading - I appear to have been living beyond my limited means again. Over the period I have made a trading loss of over £1400, some of which I hope to receover from the Duff House exhibition, which begins next month. Perhaps, in these financially troubled times, I have fared better than most.

I observe, from the spreadsheet in front of me, that my heating and lighting bill for the year has gone up to £900, I have spent almost £1800 on advertising in its online and offline forms, and almost £2100 on art materials and graphics services (my giclee prints). Stationery, which includes all office expenditure, has set me back £1200. Depressingly, I have spent less than £100 on postage, which reflects the lack of overseas orders for my work. (Incidentally I have spent nothing on daily newspapers, and this will continue to be my policy).

However, I have claimed nothing for my hob-nobs, which are of the plain variety, as chocolate gives me migraine. I have no swimming pool or garden, and no second (or third) home to claim mortgage interest relief (or whatever it is) on. I get postally bombarded with long-life lightbulbs, and any dry-rot on my premises rots away unnoticed and untreated. I won't go near the subject of lavatory-seats.

I have spent nothing this year on moat clearance. I repel unwelcome visitors by creative drawbridge use, and my neighbours' small dogs discourage them further. Later today, a Greek student called Thanos Bicycle-clips, or something similar, is coming to see me with a questionnaire on young people living on islands (a subject I know little about, but I was probably the only person who answered his email). I expect the poor fellow will be bloodied and dripping wet when he arrives, so I'll offer him coffee and a hob-nob (plain) to help him feel better.

As to spending hundreds of pounds on horse-manure, I generate enough of the smelly stuff in the columns of this blog to render any such expenditure completely unnecessary. A few years ago, our local council began a campaign to encourage compost development in the islands. At that time, my late brother-in-law, whom I still miss dreadfully, was a councillor, and I suggested to him that this would be a good description of proceedings at a Policy & Resources meeting. He was less than impressed by the analogy.

So, in conclusion on this subject, I'm afraid my creativity does not stretch to my accounts. Some people maintain that it doesn't manifest itself in my art (or my writing) either, but, after 5 years of self-employment, I'm still in business, and I hope to stay that way for some time to come.