Hope

A beautiful coincidence running into Hope on Monday because five minutes before I'd been thinking of her.

Had my son and I gone to the Lido I could've called her. Didn't think. Here we were in the playground. There she was, with her son who gets on fantastically with mine.
"I haven't told you! We've moved! We got a house! With a garden!"

I hugged her tight. Fourteen years this mamma's been crammed, literally, into a tiny one bed with two children and her on/off partner.

The council said she'd be transferred when her eldest son was five. He is now 17.

She's coped with it all these years because she had a garden. Valuable space. Her son hasn't been coping with it at all, she's always said. She didn't want to trade her garden for a high rise. I understand that.

It's a housing association flat. An assured tenancy she can pass down once, which she will, to her son. Throught the bidding system they called her and asked if she'd received their letter; she hadn't turned up for the viewing. She'd received no letter.

They said they'd be back in touch with her later in the week to arrange another viewing. She missed the call. No message was left but she guessed the withheld number was them and looked them up on the internet. What an obstacle course.....

She viewed the flat on a friday and was told to move in the following monday. She couldn't do it at that speed, but that's where having an on/off partner comes in handy.

Hope was lucky in this lucky lottery. She was Number 4. One family didn't show and two others turned it down. "Rooms are too small," she heard one say.

Too small? A kitchen you can comfortably seat six in? A bathroom you can put furniture in? Bedrooms bigger than my living room? A garden the size of which I haven't seen in friends' surburban semis.

What can I say? Those awaiting transfer, they are secure. With extra points for overcrowding, they hold on for the dreams.

Hope's have showered on her like fairy dust.

"Thanks for having us over to stay," I said to her Wednesday morning as we left.

"Oh it's my pleasure, I'm just so glad that finally I can!"

Hope is the name she picked for herself when I asked if I could write about her.

A good one methinks.