Monday 18th August 08

Spent most of the morning skirting around our visitors who were getting packed, and doing loads of washing up. Later in the morning the adults went to the bank to sort out a problem there, they have had some money taken out of their account by someone else, possibly by someone doing a phone transaction and entering a wrong digit... possibly!

This took much longer to sort out than they'd planned and they eventually got off at after 2pm, heading for Birmingham to pick up some stuff they left with friends when they were living here, and then on to Dover where they are camping overnight before a long drive back to Germany.

I went into town as soon as they were gone, and put in a cheque I found whilst sorting through piles of paperwork looking for a letter from a booking in July, where they'd asked for an invoice, I'd written one out and they'd refused to pay me as the invoice was handwritten. I wrote a robust reply explaining my situation and ethics (ie no printer, never using 'new' paper, only re-using already used paper printed on one side only) and told them that if I didn't have a payment by 1st September that I'd start proceedings in the small claims court. I cycled this to the company and talked it through with the boss of the woman who booked me, who has gone on holiday. He said he'd talk to head office and see if they could sort something out quickly.