Manic days manic posts

Run into Mr Gray and the Good Caretaker as I'm carrying my bike down the stairs (I don't get the keys until Friday apparantly and the lift, as always, is out."Bloody incompetents!" says the Good Caretaker).

Mr Gray tells me I should contact the Quality and Review team, that is the group which refers people to the exceptions panel apparantly. "Oh god really?" I say. "I have the guy's name! Why didn't I know this before?! I'm off to meet my friend for coffee and another for lunch and then I was going to come back and write to Gordon Brown (ha ha ha giggling) but now I won't have time!!"

I speed into Camden, ring Jo and ask her if it's ok if we have lunch another day "because I need to write to the Council's review team and write to Gordon Brown before tomorrow! Meet tomorrow?!"

Now, at the time, these letters were a matter of urgency. I had another 'wide awake half the night and falling asleep minutes before the alarm goes off' experience, taking my advice and asking my angel to help me sleep, but current fear or whatever taking over, it didn't work.

After school run, I put together some psychiatric reports and shrink letters to give my doc to help her write the letter she promised to write for me, then quickly drafted a letter to Brown because tomorrow or Thursday people will be viewing the flats upstairs and I don't want to give up hope that we'll be shortlisted at the last moment!

I read my draft to Millie who said it was good but I should expand on the private rental sector and make clearer why it would make working so difficult but we quickly moved onto our kids at school, our families, oh much more interesting stuff while I chain smoked all the while.

I raced home, tried to find an old letter from OO7 in the Review Team for Mr Gray said I should ring and try and set up a meeting with "someone from there". Voicemail: "I will be out of the office until July 6th" Ha ha, that's funny. I ring housing to ask to be put in to the team proper and I get put through to social services (?!) who say he's the only one and I should email him. Which I do, adding as a P.S "Might I suggest you change your voicemail message....!"

Before I email him though, I quickly respond to an email from 'needs and access' who says she's contacted the relevant person in the support team for me, so I thank her and say "could you also ask whichever panel it is to shortlist my son tomorrow?"

Flip I'm shattered but must write to Brown. Handwrite to Brown. Handwrite to Brown because I handwrote to Blair. Oh fuck! No time to extrapolate on the private sector, no time to edit the damn thing because it means rewriting the whole damn thing. "Oh it will have to do, have to do."

A support manager phones, telling me we've spoken a number of times and I say "No, I've met you once!" She's pleasant enough, tells me I can call her whenever I want but she's not going to house me so I'm not going to call her. I ask her again why we've slipped down the list and again she says "people have greater need" and I'm like "no, I'm not going to buy that now."

Then I jump in the lift, jump on the bike (which I'd left outside in the pouring rain) and peg it to the Post Office.

The queue! Oh for fucks sake! Is this a sign? Is this a sign I should not send the letter? I check my phone. It's 4.30. My son's in after school club, will I make it within the hour? Chat to the guy infront of me about angels because he's here for his mother, something about her grave plot being covered in Japanese (something) Weed and he'd seen a van go past with Japanese (something) Weed on it so he'd jotted down the number, omitting the need for the Yellow pages so I'd spun off about coincidences being miracles in a Paulo Coelho book. I did start my spiel with 'you might think I'm abit of a nutter but..." but I have to say, he was very responsive. Chat chat chat. Was it a coincidence that the queue was flipping long (recorded delivery see, all my letters to them up there go 'recorded delivery'.)

Man sees a friend of his, a sweet looking old lady, and I disappear into my head. Before I know it, it's my turn!

"So will he get it tomorrow?!"
"No, there's a postal strike tomorrow. Thursday or Friday."
"Oh you're joking, really? Thursday or Friday? You should give me a discount on the stamp!" I laugh. (Laugh! Like this is really rip roaringly funny!)

Then I race to the co-op for some milk and more tobacco then jump on the bike because I forgot to drop off my letter to the docs this morning.

I could really go on about the rest of the day, how I turn up to the school soaking because my waterproofs aren't effective anymore, and the club leader says I'm "soft" and I say "yes, but I've got to be fierce! Got to step up to the plate!" How my son said "Mummy, if we've moved get me whatever you want for my birthday but if we haven't can you get me my own bedroom?" then asking me to play Mamma Mia and I wanted to swoop him up and kiss him as I played the entire Abba Gold album but I didn't, we just did 'dance moves' (well actually Abba was before dinner, he told me his wish in the bathtub).The Book That Will Never Be Published is nothing like this blog. Everything I've written in this post would be condensed and split into much shorter nuggets, or else ignored entirely. But seems I've written my headache away, or have I? Will it come back when I stop? Is this the equivalent of foaming at the mouth????

I'll blog my letter to Brown on Friday. On Thursday you see, I will be really depressed, really at a loss when I see "Properties Offered To Others" and it's not us. For something I need. It's back to bidding for somewhere for my boy and my bike. It's back to fighting that flipping council.

Seems I haven't written my headache away. I might have made it worse. Oh joy. Oh fuck it, let me end my day's posting with something really painful because I can't work miracles in my life....Obviously, as posts read down you will have seen it repeated in here. It's what I shall dream of tonight whether I want to or not....I'm too wired to sleep.