Hello! I might have to go to court tomorrow, so I'm having a bit of a panic/whine. Feel free to ignore this, as it is probably quite tedious.
Me and my housemates moved into this house last September. Two of us are students, and one works full-time. Being the excellent sort, I had my student declaration certificate ready to be sent off to the council for the appropriate council tax discount. My other student housemate, also generally being the excellent sort but dropping the ball on this occasion, didn't get her student declaration certificate sorted until about five weeks ago. By that point, we'd had a load of bills, and a court summons for the 3rd of April. So I quickly posted the certificates to the council, along with a covering letter basically saying "hello here is proof that two of us are students so you can make the appropriate discount, sorry it's really late but we had trouble getting the documents together, and also we assume the court date is no longer necessary as we are fully willing to pay the required amount as soon as we know for certain what that amount is, plus you have our certificates now so it would be a waste of everyone's time anyway" - only it was dead formal, obviously.
Now, what usually happens (in my experience) when you send student certificates off is that they send them back within a couple of weeks, then a few weeks later you get a new bill. Only this time, we just got another bill, trying to get us to pay council tax on the property until March 2009, about a week after I sent my letter/certificates. By this point, though, I was due to go and stay with my parents for a couple of weeks over Easter, so it was left with my housemates. I get back today to find there's been no further communication to or from the council, and the court date is tomorrow.
So, the obvious answer is 'get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and phone the council to find out what the hell is going on'. But there's just under twelve hours between now and then, and the prospect of having to go to court tomorrow, on my own (both my housemates are busy), without any of the documentation I need (since the council still have it), to make a load of shit excuses, is making for a pretty miserable evening.
Any advice, chaps?