Matthiola incana

** Backblip for Thursday **

It was lovely to see Charlie at church in the morning. He had been brought by car from his care home for the service and coffee afterwards. I assisted with communion, and as I offered the chalice to him it was clear how much it meant to Charlie to be there with us.

The afternoon’s work on the mission to get things straight at home was intermittent, due to the hot weather and the need to sit down from time to time, have a cold drink and cool off. I spent quite a bit of time filling in my application for the State Pension after receiving the invitation yesterday, and then researched buying some gap years missing from my National Insurance record while I still could to see if it would be worth the cost. Although I would recoup the initial outlay in three years, the additional income would take me even more perilously close to the upper limit of my current tax bracket. If I stray into the next level up, my income tax would literally double and I would actually be much worse off. I think it’s wise to have a bit of head room, plus of course we can’t know what any government will do when it comes to taxes - I don’t want to be a victim of the dreaded fiscal drag!!

I drove to Sainsbury’s early evening to get the week’s groceries, so naturally I took the opportunity to snap some supermarket flowers - this time some pretty and beautifully fragrant stocks.