Praying for "the best outcomes"

I can't articulate the magnitude so I won't even try.

Tomorrow morning I have a 2 hour exam which if I pass will be a positive step in direction of my dreams - namely to learn shorthand (in the short-term) and get a payrise.(in the long-term)

Tomorrow afternoon I am viewing a flat. This is huge, this is so big, this is enormous.
The flat is great for my son, but not for me, on account of Zat bike and there being no space for it. It's a form of transport I need. Would you get rid of your much loved car because the home you've had a choiceless choice to move into meant you had to? Anyway, I'm saying YES and feel really fucking sick. I don't want to lose the bike. Argos have a 65% clearance sale going on though so timing couldn't be more perfect if we got it. Starting from scratch here...neither of us have beds and that's just the start...

I need to share some coincidences...I'll be quick, I don't like long posts particularly unless they are well written and well, love Stigmum as I do, I am her conduit and a hopeless judge.

The flat I'm viewing tomorrow is in the same block, or next door to the block where I said 'no' to a flat 6 years ago. (The first person had accepted it so I didn't see why I had to...)

I got a call on Tuesday, after posting (!) to go and view a flat I bid on in.... Papier Mache Towers! Yes, the place my son and I wrote this entire blog from when we were being evicted. "Aren't there plans to knock it down?" I said to the woman on the phone. "I don't know about that," she said. "I'm only given names to call. Do you want to view it?"

Yesterday I bet myself that on the bidding boards today, there would be a garden flat. There would be my 'ideal home'.
Bingo! There it was. Ground and basement floors with a garden. Steps so not for wheelchairs. And where is it? Why, the very street my son first lived on. A few doors down from where we both lived with the Foca. The very first place we were booted out from. Well, given no choice but to leave.

It made me think about Posh Street, where we were evicted from afterwards, narrowly avoiding a hostel only to land in Papier Mache Towers. I'd stand in the Posh Street's park in those dark days and implore the sky: "Please, one day, bring me back to Rochester!" like a Bronte heroine, only not half as cool.

Imagine...(I breathe, it is, all, if not too much, alot)

Anything could happen. Who knows what can happen? Not me (I've been reading posts that I saw others had read from Stiggers stats - long story ey stigs, a long long story but them readers picked some good ones for me to read back on. Your best is sometimes hard to find)

I'm praying I pass that exam tomorrow morning.
With the housing, I'm praying, I'm praying hard for the best outcome.
Whatever happens, I'm saying YES.
With that I relinquish control and hope the best, whatever that may be, comes to me and my boy.
My son, my sun, my boy, my buoy.

He asked to sleep in my bed tonight - "So you can hear me breathing if you can't sleep. I remember you said that used to help you when we shared a room"

How many times can you win in life?

I won with him; my son my sun my buoy, my boy.

I win for him now.

best outcomes best outcome best outcomes

At the Coal Face

At the Coal Face - written the day before a viewing in November, my first viewing in five years. I was Number 12 for a housing association flat. I was struggling so took myself off to a vietnamese woman for a pedicure

At the Coal Face - viewing a property

It's all so tight
in the throat
particularly
Easier to breathe
through the nose
breathe
release the chains bound tightly
across the chest
Leave to God
Trust to God
He has a master plan
You can say Yes and something better will come
Enjoy the pedicure
There is space for you
to make space
within

Invitation to view a property

The council called me yesterday at 8.50 am to ask if I'd been contacted in regards to viewing a flat. The viewing was meant to be that afternoon but it seemed no-one had been told. I wasn't surprised to get an invitation. I don't know why. Possibly because I like this flat we're in. This flat we can't stay in.

She called again at 10am where my son rather unhelpfully told her I was 'sleeping in bed', which I wasn't. We were both being lazy and playing and tickling and being generally silly... 'sleeping in bed...' tsk..

Friday. I view it Friday. A two bedroom flat. Third floor. One double room, one single. Blow heating. (Blow heating? Is that similar to totally ineffectual storage heating?) Shared garden.

I'm Number 2.

I should be excited but I'm not, I'm terrified.

It's much further, much much further to a main road, public transport and shops BUT I can relax about my son's education and my job, that those aren't disrupted.

Zat. Zat bike. What will happen to you Zat? I still need you to get to work. Where will you live?

"It's a big decision," said the woman from the council.

I have to say there and then if I want it or not.

I can't say no can I? They say you can but read me and my experience and you know I can't.

The choices we are forced to make are not the choices we would love to make. Everywhere I've bid on recently, or risk being taken off the lists, have been on estates I wouldn't 'choose' to raise my child.

My son caught me crying yesterday afternoon. "Don't worry mummy, we'll move in, play the lottery, win and then buy something brilliant."

Perspectives huh.

I thank the world for my son everyday. I ask the world to protect my son everyday.

I'm Number 2. Number 1 could always say "Yes"

Should a stigma be attached to benefit claimants?

It was last week I think, listening to LBC radio, one of the presenters asked if benefit claimants should be stigmatised.

Stiggers! For years a wealth of our society have thought so, or so I though. Afterall, that's how you came into existance...Stigma, Stigmamma, Stigmum!

Last week's news was how overweight people should agree to exercise or have their housing benefit cut (more than it's already being cut)

A bill is being passed to day to legislate the reduction of benefit payments. Benefit claimants get too much. So they're reducing annual payments to 1% instead as measuring it to inflation. Haven't the Tories done well?
They've pitted the working poor against the welfare poor and blinded people with their rhetoric.

Didn't Osborne paint that picture of the father leaving for work while next door, blinds down, the benefit claimant, stays in bed? What I find interesting about that is I'm pretty sure when I first read that, Osborne mentioned the father leaving for work before 'his children are awake'.... Ooh they quickly erased that from the propaganda, especially with the likes of me wondering who's looking after his children? Ach well, yesterday they took child benefit away from children. Not mine of course, I'm not at £60,000 yet.

Within a decade benefits, all benefits, will be worth nothing. They are worth little now but with rising food, fuel, vat etc etc, you see where I'm going.

Where am I going?
Where are you going?

I hope you're going somewhere good, and not a life of permanent poverty. I'm hope I'm going there too.

P.S Should overweight ministers get a grocery allowance?
P.P.S I know I keep coming back to this but: Is parenting a job?

Happy 2013 and One Resolution

Happy New Year everyone!

While many people may start a blog today, I'm not. I've come back for maybe three or four more posts and then go (ha ha, I tell myself one thing and stiggers goes and does another!)

Old followers... me and my son were handed another possession notice. Another!! I thought we had to be out on Boxing Day but silly me, I've not learnt even from myself! These notices are 'routine', 'standard' and it's to make it easier to boot us out come June!

To blog is to think about it, and I mustn't. It'll finish me off for sure. Besides, I've told you everything before: bidding, letters to councillors, to mp's, to politicians.

My last fight was all on here so no need to repeat myself as I'll be doing the same again this time. Not only my son's education to safeguard this time, but also my job!

Yes dear reader. I stopped Stigmum as she wasn't serving me anymore and up popped opportunities. I'm now working for a publishing company (of sorts) and flip, what can I say, dreams come true (shall come back in edit if I can and link you back to something I wrote in the 'work' label!) I love my job, the pay is shite but how does one measure wealth ey?

 My resolution for 2013? To become more spiritual. I am quite spiritual already. It helps with all that mental health stuff, and does beat some of that dark dark depressing stuff.

 I wish you all the best. Really, all the very best. Wins on lotteries, hugs and cups of teas and all sorts for 2013.

 13: lucky for some someone once said to me and it's true. Lucky for me and you.

 I'll let you know if we win. No no no! I'll let you know WHEN we win.

Promise!