What a guy!

I don’t always have much desire to praise my former self. In fact, if I’m honest I tend to find myself increasingly annoyed and pissed off at earlier versions of me.

I mean, if he could just have bothered to take the time to learn another language, just think how useful that would have been for me now. And what if he’d decided to take a bit more care of his body and eating habits a little bit sooner? Well, I wouldn’t have had to fight so hard to lose all that weight now would I? Frankly, I have to say the guy is mostly something of a disappointment.

But today I could have pinched his cheek, and given him a friendly slap on the shoulder followed by a manly hug, while saying things like “come here, you…” and grinning warmly.

You see, Kim of a year ago realised, when he was struggling with sorting out his accounts on a spreadsheet, that Kim of the future would probably have forgotten the system he used. So, after compiling the spreadsheet of income & expenditure for 2005/6, he created a template for 2006/7 and filled in the first month.

So when I came to start going through the receipts and invoices and panicked at the idea of having to create a spreadsheet system I could work with, I was delighted to discover one was already waiting for me. And because it had the first month filled in I was able to work out how to do the rest.

It was one of those few times when I would happily have bought my past self a drink. Unfortunately he was nowhere to be seen so I had to have his one.

Mind you, even though I now have the figures I need, the selfish bastard has always used an accountant in previous years to fill in his self-assessment tax form*. The lazy sod had more money than me so felt he could fritter it away on the services of such professionals. This has left me in the unenviable position of trying to figure out how to do it myself for the first time.

I hope my future self is suitably grateful next year.

*Due for the end of September