I won't play the game

Nothing to bid on for me this week. There are four properties for hundreds and hundreds of people to choose from. I'm not bidding on any. Last property I bid on I was 156th out of 346 bidders. Don't know how many points they won with. In March I was 154th out of 403. Winning bidder had 308 points. I have 319. Go figure.

There's a maisonette in Regents Park, ground and first in a tower, £102.44 a week.
There's a maisonette in Swiss Cottage, 7th floor of a tower, £96.70 a week
There's a conversion on a street property, ooh! but sadly in Covent Garden/Holborn, at £188.57
The other is a conversion in Primrose Hill but it's Housing Association at £124

Location location location, I want to be near my son's school. The staff are exceptional and have always been so supportive when something's gone wrong in his life or mine. It's a brilliant community school anyway offering music and sport and art and ICT and all those things a child needs beyond English, Maths and Science. It also feeds very nicely into his secondary education. Why pull him out? Why be forced to pull him out?

I'd go housing association but I don't trust it anymore. In Posh Street where I lived before, all the empty properties were housing association and when I called and wrote and pleaded for one to move into as we were being evicted, I was asked "Do you have a job?" and I said "Yes, I'm a mother." They replied: "Not that kind of job" (That was a phone call obviously, I never got it in writing) I'm also Housing Association now, and it's no picnic I can tell you. No security either.

The rent is cheap you might say and yes, it's certainly cheaper than the private sector. £250 a week for the tiny one bed I live in now? A two bedroom is anything up from £300. However, council wise, I can't afford £188 on my own on top of everything else. Couples can at least split the rent. Still, if it's near my son's school, sod it, at least there's security.

The council says "bid for everything". That is how you play this game.
I've become the Fussy Mother I wrote about in 2005. I haven't sent my Book That Will Never Be Published to the publisher who said he'd publish it. Yet. When I do and if you want, you can read the chapter then.