Thursday Lunchtime Update

Following yesterdays fantastic news at the doctors, I promptly went and blew my diet by eating 3 packs of aspirational crisps (you know – the ones that advertise themselves as lovingly hand-fried to a traditional (possibly secret) recipe by Polynesian virgins, whilst the crisps themselves are made only from natural, organic, sustainable, traditional, platinum). In my defence I had not had any lunch, and the damage caused appears to be minimal as my weight remains at 85 kilos - but still. Its not good enough.

 

In other news, my CPD catch-up plan is paying dividends and I’m now almost at the official halfway point in my online German course: I have just under 16 weeks left to do 12 & a half course modules (out of a minimum of 24). Go me. As mentioned, its very time demanding and periodically frustrating, but given that C is in the sleepy stage of the pregnancy, I actually have 6 hours free time per week in the evenings. With luck, I wont be in this position in a years time (at least, I sincerely hope not), so if I can get this years & next years CPD sorted by Christmas, so much the better.

 

Despite badgering my tutor, I’ve still not had any news of the final exam – either what it covers, what its format is (is there an oral element? Is it time constrained?) and I’ve had no response on past papers that I’d quite like to scrutinise. Mind you, despite the dearth of response, I’ve identified a few areas that I’ve really got to lock down: there’s a metric dictionary of vocabulary which I’ve got to commit to memory, lots of grammar (which just hate for historical reasons*), and lots and lots of practice. Hoo boy, the practice. Still, given that I aim to have ‘about 4 weeks’ left over, after the formal course is finished, I have the slack to do some exam preparation. I just wish that I knew what the structure & pass-mark of the exam was.

 

Today is the sharp point of month-end, and, is as usual, a mixture of hurry-up-and-wait, madly-busy and deathly boring. I find that I’m moving further & further away from my old tasks – though whether this is by accident or design, I don’t know. On the other hand, I do know that I didn’t used to be this bored at month-ends.

 

In other news, I’ve got to come clean. I been investing in the stockmarket over these last few months, and I’ve made something of a profit (certainly not ‘wow!’ – but definitely a respectable return). The other day, I took fright at the news that was coming out of the markets & sold everything, and, since then, the shares I was interested in have (damnably) gone up by 20%. I’m in 2 minds about what to do; on one hand, I’m tempted to just buy the shares again – they’re going to be worth about 5 times their current value in a few years time. On the other hand, they’re presently trading at a 3-month peak valuation (ie the most they’ve ever been at for 2 years – and every time that they have traded at this level, they have fallen by about 10%, so there should be better options available in a few months time.

As such, holding myself at the point where I’m ‘ready to invest’ is very tempting. I still just don’t believe that we’ve seen the end of this turmoil – there are a lot more things to emerge from the woodwork, so being patient is definitely an option.

 

Mind you, the third option is just to pay off the UK mortgage entirely. This has a certain allure to it - and the added bonus of whollyrandom exploding in shock – but it doesn’t play to the strengths of my current situation: the 30% rule makes any profits we make in the stockmarket completely tax free**, so it is in our interests to invest whilst it is (artificially) cheap to do so. And besides, my goal is pay off all the mortgages in 5 years time – that way C & I can reduce our hours to look after fiver (and any of his/her siblings) in a less stressful environment.

 

So yeah, its a question that definitely falls under the heading of ‘a burden of blessings’ and I do appreciate how lucky I am (don’t get me wrong, I know full well what our blessings are, especially after last year) – but it does keep me awake at night.

 

S

 

* The only grammar lessons I got when growing up were in Latin, where I routinely ‘scraped a pass’ because I couldn’t get a grip on the grammar. In fact, my Latin teacher went out of his way to clarify grammar for me, and I would try my absolute best to figure it out – only to fail the next lessons, much to everyone’s disappointment. Hey ho. Grammar is, as far as I can tell, governed by a complex interaction of random encounter tables and linguistic conspiracy theories.

** Completely tax free in the Netherlands, and completely tax free if I don’t return to the UK within 5 years of making the capital gain. If I don’t, then… ouch.