Must Try Harder!

I met Dave two years ago, when I first started volunteering for the Salvation Army Lunch Programme. 

Dave is a success story, he turned his life around, and now volunteers alongside me. Today. He was pretty upset. His Jobseekers Allowance has been stopped because it's been decided that he isn't trying hard enough to find work.

He's done everything asked of him. He's attending a computer course to learn how to fill in the Application Forms, which is just as it should be, but he's stuck, because he can't access the email account he was given, and he hasn't the literacy skills necessary to fill the forms in. 

You'd have thought someone would have taken these two things into account before leaving him penniless. Wouldn't you? To compound the problem, Dave has coeliac's disease, and the kind of food you can scrounge when you have no money to buy any, is going to make him sick.

Then there's the anxiety. He's off his head with worry. 

Think of it - insufficient literacy skills to apply for a job. Poisoned by foods his body can't tolerate, driven into depression by a system that has taken no account of his personal circumstances ... 

What chance of Dave getting a job with these burdens to carry? 

Who, I wonder, 'Isn't trying hard enough?' 

I tell you, I'm getting pretty mad. I hope that this makes you uncomfortable too. It's not enough though. On Wednesday I'm taking down Dave's story, gathering the evidence on his behalf, and arranging to take  him to see his MP. I think I might ask a journalist to come with us. You never know.

Using hunger and anxiety as 'nudges' to try to make the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society conform to standards they can't meet, is inhumane. Those in power need to see how the policies they pursue impact on the lives of good people like Dave. I still have sufficient faith in our democracy to think it might make a difference. 

C'est La Vie

It's been one of those days. 

I ignored my own advice and started out with a 'To Do List':

1. Reconnect the printer to the network, so that I can print from my bed.

2. Bake Johnny Appleseed cakes for the church stall at Newent Onion Fair.

3. Attach new pull chord to the light fixture In the toilet.

I knew Number One would be trouble. I know enough about tasks like these to get started, but insufficient to complete them. I know this, so why I persevere is a testimony to my stupidity. The printer regularly goes offline, for no discernible reason, and I see it as a challenge. Surely THIS time, all I have to do is go through the procedure as described in the Help Pages? No. It's still offline, and in the process of getting this far, I have buggered up the Firewall Settings on my laptop and shortened my life. 

Making the cake should have been ... A breeze. I planned to bake whilst waiting for the help elves at Kodak to materialise ( they didn't ): to make good use of the interminable download/upload dance of futility this exercise usually demands. 

I have no kitchen. This is no barrier to my culinary wizardry because a perfectly adequate temporary kitchen is set up in the back bedroom, and all ingredients were lined up and ready to go. No cake tins? No problem. I knew just where I had put them, so all I needed to do, was open the shed door, "et Voila!" 

No key, and no-one else to blame. My late-night foray into the shed for Worcestershire sauce had been the last key-related incident  of the day before. Consequently, the downtime on the printer problem was spent looking for the key to the shed so that I could find the cake pans to make the cakes that I needed to deliver to the cake stall by 2 pm. I searched every inch of the house, I even looked in the refrigerator. No luck.

Ray found it within five minutes of returning home, some hours later, in my jacket pocket. I'll say no more.

I am tucking into the Johnny Appleseed cake, that was too late for the cake stall, but has found a good home right here instead. It's not all bad. 

And now I'm off to swear at a light fitting with screwdriver in one hand, a length of chord in the other, wondering which foot I'm going to use to dismantle the unit. Before it gets dark.

Talk to you later! 

I BLOODY WELL DID IT! The toilet now has a light. Though to be fair. I'd never have succeeded if Ray hadn't held a torch for forty minutes. There was swearing, and as you can see, there still is. 

Hiding Behind The Sofa

Dr. Who, my all-time most favourite television series, is half-a-century old this year. The BBC, which must be thanking it's lucky stars that it never starred Jimmy Saville, or clashed with The Queen's Diamond Jubilee, is throwing a chunk of my licence money into a huge celebration of this illustrious anniversary, and I am thrilled! I tell you, I would pay my tv licence fee for the Doctor alone, and think it cheap at the price. 

I retreated behind the sofa, with my brother Adrian, in 1963, when the TARDIS first lurched into view carrying the Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan, and I have remained a loyal, entirely uncritical, Dr Who fan ever since.  I didn't much like Jon Pertwee I have to admit, but spent the 'Nappy Years'  turning to Tom Baker for solace. 'He make's mummy's toes curl', I explained to my wondering offspring, only one of whom grew up to be a sci-fi fan. That's OK, I am undiscriminating in my love for them.

The black and white special effects were memorably unconvincing, but served their purpose. They practised me in the art of suspending disbelief, and worked wonders on my imagination. And what about the  monsters?  The early ones were something else. I was especially fond of the Lepidoptera: an invertebrate that WAS a giant mophead.  I don't remember how the Time Lord saw off that particular menace, but I have retained a passing dread of anything ending in 'optera' ever since.  Sorry.

(Aside: Although I vividly remember the Lepidoptera, they have vanished from the public record. I suspect a plot. Or could it be that my imagination, in overdrive, totally invented them? Surely not. Who would invent a monster so utterly unconvincing? Certainly not me!) 

My all-time favourite evil entity, for today, is The Plasmivore. She demonstrated to the Universe that we sweet little old ladies carry something sinister about us, even if it's only a straw. We are not to be entirely trusted. 

When the twenty-something Matt Smith took over the job of saving the universe, I was  sure that my Who-fannery must surely come to an end - but no, I have followed the latest series with the same excitement as the first, though with toes that remain visibly unmoved.

And now Peter Capaldi is taking over the role at Christmas. I approve. I'd go further, I feel the ghost of a twitch in the region of my metatarsals. I think I'd better go for a lie down, but not before checking out  the space behind the sofa. I'm a little bigger than I was in 1963...  .

Endpiece

Oh My Opteras! 

I was wrong about the Lepidopterae! 'All memory is imagined... ' I was told when I embarked on my creative writing adventure. Maybe, maybe not, but it's definitely suspect. Check out the facts, if you really need to know... . 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/webplanet/detail.shtml

Lavender On My Hands