The Board meeting has been and gone. As usual, I worried more about this than necessary, but the reality is I can never wholly predict which of my two, once married shareholders, neither of whom now have any day-to-day involvement in the business, will play Mr Nice and who will play Mrs Nasty (gender attributions optional in this case).

Of course I am happy to accept new business and to help new and growing businesses, but I sometimes wish I didn't have to. Like today, I had a meeting with a very pleasant young lady who has been dealing with a relatively well-regarded local sole practitioner. Over the years she seems to have just accepted that tax returns are usually filed late, even though her accountant has had the records some six months before the deadline. In fact, most of the work he has done seems to have come with a complementary fine or penalty of some sort!

Heat is not good for business. We have strict dress codes for those visiting customer premises. Many of these are for health and safety reasons. They are harder to enforce in this weather. #

Around the yard shorts are on view – with a rash of tattoos on display as a result I never knew our staff possessed.

The accounts department (entirely female right now) has also hit shorts big time. Fewer tattoos on display, but petty cash claims and payroll queries seem to be more popular than usual.

30 June - Had any of these recently? Someone from HMRC leaves a phone message - usually the collector or debt recovery - so you politely call them back and once you have dozed through a series of recorded messages, and been on hold for 5 minutes plus, someone then picks up the call and gives you the third degree! How dare you have the audacity to phone Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs? Who are you - can you prove it? Who is your client? On what authority are you calling? Can you verify your clients personal details? etc etc.

I should have been preparing for the board meeting on Thursday today, but le me be honest: I think it will go OK. So I didn't.

Instead I had our IT chap (appointed, some might recall, because he's a bit of a geek) in my office much of the day.

I told him I want to learn more. He was amazed.

We looked at the Wiki. I was unfair the other day. For customer commubnication it is working really well. It is also being used a lot for technical data, and all manuals and updates are on there. I've probably under appreciated just how effective this is.

But equally, it's not a blog.

I remain surprised, nay bemused, by the change that a screen can make.

I was half tempted to give a running commentary on my whole day today (which I gather would make me something like a Twitterer) so beguiling is the new entry screen for this blog - sitting on the screen asking me to 'Create blog' whenever I look at it.

Is this the appeal of blogging, Twitter and all that other stuff (sorry - I'm not that informed as you can tell)?

But if it has that impact on me I still think it might be good here.

There's a problem with this new software: it tells the truth. If I post a blog for one day the next day on the old AccountingWEB software I could just re-set the clock. As far as I know I can't do that here (and if I can - someone tell me how to do it!). Which begs the topical question, is such transparency a good thing?

Our West Country general practitioner advocates honest, straight talking when negotiating fee levels.

* * *

#1 bounced some things off me this afternoon. One was some new documentation I had to sign off for internal control purposes.

I recalled this morning's lesson: I asked her to trial it on people first.

And to then use our intranet / wiki (which is underexploited) to summarise it.

But the thought occurs to me: if blogs are as easy to use as I'm told they are, why not post it on one of them instead? Of course, privacy may be an issue - but I want to get the message out - and anyway will do.

Our IT guy has got that one to look at.

I have spent much of this week reading about the latest developments in the pensions forestalling legislation (do I need to add the word "fiasco" or is that a tautology?) The debates in Committee seem to have lasted for about two thirds of a day and not really moved the Government on - skimming to the end of a substantial printout most amendments seem to have been eventually withdrawn. (Yes, sorry planet I printed it to read on a plane.