Wednesday 31 October 2012

Angry Pants

Actually i'm not angry i'm absolutely bloody steaming right now. I have had enough of the uneducated trolls who think that everyone who can't work for any reason should get off their lazy drug riddled arses and find a job.Most of the time i won't bite, not quite true the tip of my tongue has teeth marks in it on numerous occasions, this time though was a step too far.
On facebook i am a member of a fantastic page called Atos Miracles. Without this page i am confident in saying that i and a lot of other people would be even more afraid about the hell that our beloved government are thinking up for us. This page is a support to anyone and everyone who is fighting Atos, who quite frankly couldn't give a toss and i have learnt a great deal from it.
So tonight while wafting through facebook as you do i come across an entry for this page. Someone who is very scared and vulnerable just asking for help and advice. I's what the page is there for. What i did not expect when i read down the comments was someone who thought that because people are on facebook that automatically implies they can work, that they are worthless scroungers. I am being a lot politer than the troll that this came from.
NOW LET US GET A FEW THINGS STRAIGHT HERE MR TROLL.
unlike you who look the epitome of hooliganism obviously treating your body like a beer ,drugs and kebab temple every weekend when your job seekers allowance comes through , we can not work through serious mental of physical illness.
 we are not the idiots that grace your screens on programmes like the Jeremy Kyle show or 999 what's your emergency, those so off their heads on drink and drugs that they are no good to man nor beast. those are the people that give us a bad name.
DO NOT DEGRADE US BY CATEGORIZING THESE PEOPLE WITH US THE GENUINELY ILL.

Let he who is without fault cast the first stone. we are vulnerable people who are judged daily and shunned by others. We are judged enough by various departmental bodies what we don't need is to be judged by the great unwashed on a social networking sight. Some of us aren't strong enough to fight back.

I genuinely hope that the person who put up the question/ cry for help gets the advice that they so greatly need.
As for Mr troll my dream is that he takes a long walk off a very short cliff .

and thus the pants have spoken.


Tuesday 23 October 2012

Because sometimes 140 characters just isnt enough

Today i went in search of cat food, not just any old cat food but the kind of cat food that none of the super markets seems to stock. I hate going out.Going out means noise and people and i'm not a fan of noise and people. But i was a hermit yesterday so today i had to venture.
First to the local post office. This is hidden at the back of a little corner shop that smells of curry and depending on the weather and time of day sweat and last nights booze consumption. If you time yourself correctly you can be in and out of there in under five minutes, if not then you are forced to Que behind the great unwashed most of whom seem to want to post parcels lots of parcels all around the world, very slowly. The more parcels the more movement, the more movement the bigger the smell. It's not pleasant.
Next the bus into town, stuffy, damp seats , old people with the added attraction of the dick head that thinks the whole bus wants to hear his phone conversation. No no we really don't care about your life, next time whisper you inconsiderate tit.
Finally off the bus and into the wall of sound. It's like being hurled head long into the rat race and then run over by several buggy's. the bank was hot, the staff unfriendly and the resident male and i were stuck behind a woman with a double buggy containing twin girls intent on killing each other loudly. One of them with gritted teeth bounced a plastic beaker off the side of the other ones head and the second small child screamed and managed to kick her sister in the side of the head. I'm still not sure how she managed to get her leg up that high seeing as she had the worlds baggiest nappy on.
Anyway off to the next shop this time to buy smelly things. we stood for a while scratching and sniffing, the air fresheners not each other, before deciding on a selection of fruity smells anything to hide the smell of cat and small boy works for me. and then home. I had been out for precisely an hour it had been a long hour, by the time we got in my head was spinning from the noise and the smells.
In forty minutes i have to go out again this time to get the fluffy one from school and throw him into his friends car to go to karate. My failed dieting is becoming even more failed. I have put in all my food so far on that fitness pal thing. I did know i was doomed when i entered a sausage roll and it laughed at me. although in other news the down stairs loo smells like an orange grove the kind of orange grove that rips your nose off and screams sniff the air i smell awsome bitch's. if that doesn't counter act the smell of small boys bottom nothing will.
and that is my day so far .
boring isn't it.

Monday 15 October 2012

outings with adulf ( a needs must blog )

I love monday mornings . Mostly i would love to smack them in the side of the head with a septic fish head. Mondays signify the start of five mornings of school runs, alarm clocks that play the first three bars of an annoying song and then shut off. Fluffy having to be crow barred out of his pit kicking and screaming and wailing that he " feels sick, Has a head ache, Might die "
Today was no different apart from the fact that i grudgingly had to enlist the help of adulf father to the fluffy one. Seeing as mister fluff had managed to lose half his P.E kit i had to get replacements. The only reason i had to ask adulf is he has a car and the only place that does said school uniform is in the darkest reaches of Hounslow. So this morning fluffy had been drop kicked out of the door for school, cats had been fed, shit had been scooped and washing was on. Then adulf arrived and the white knuckle ride from hell began. Adulf is a bus driver. Anyone who has ever ridden on a bus will know that these drivers well most of them like the brake pedal , they absolutely adore the acceleration pedal and tend to use the two of them is quick succession. It's no different when you are in the passenger seat of their car. The only thing that is different is that they play crap music and talk at you while you sit with your nails embedded in the seat praying for a quick death.
He missed not one but two turnings, he complained at most of the other drivers that got in his way and he farted and burped his way through the whole journey. And then we got out of the car. Adulf in his alpha male mode had a map to said shop. He pulled out the map and muttered for a moment while i was busily hitching up my trousers which had begun a love affair with gravity. I had no idea where we were going, neither did he although he had a map, added to which my trousers and my undies had decided that down was the only way to go. It is impossible to be subtle when trying to rearrange your under clothes every three steps, your pants have found a safe haven by the backs of your knees and your trousers are threatening to follow them. He asked five people for directions. Five people all pointed to different places. we were still lost and by now i really was regretting that last vat of tea i had before leaving pants palace.
Then we saw a parking attendant, adulf went in for the kill and with his usual polite way began speaking,
"excuse me mate ( burp ) can you elp us ( burp ) we're looking for this place it's somewhere round here ( sniff belch ) "
First thing the man does is take the map from adulf's hand and turn it round the other way. He had been reading it upside down for the last twenty minutes. Now with correct directions it was actually just down the road we managed to find the shop. A school jumper, a pair of school shorts , a reversible rugby shirt and two white P.E shirts later we were out. half an hour later i was home to find cats rampaging about and the resident male had finally managed to rig up sky to the bedroom. It had only taken him all weekend to get it to work. Only thing now there is wire trailing the stairs as someone miscalculated the tack to wire ratio.
I have a feeling this week is going to be a challenge.

Wednesday 10 October 2012

Atos bloody Atos ( the tribunal )

In my last blog i told you about my experience with the work capability assessment process. Well after that and due to the fact i was appealing things went very quiet for a while. Slowly money began trickling back. I was able to but food pay a few bills and continue existing for a while. I was lulled into a false sense of security, maybe they had forgotten about me ?
For a while it looked as if they had. Then it came crashing through the postbox like an avenging angel. My tribunal letter detailing time and date and where they wanted to see me. I was being sent to a hotel in Watford. I had no idea how to get there, i wasn't even sure where Watford was from where i lived. Heart racing i phoned them asking if there was anywhere else they could send me. The answer to that was a resounding not a chance, it's easy to get to by car they told me. I don't drive, i told them shakily and then asked if they could send me directions to this place.They told me they could.
The directions never arrived. Next i tried to get some form of legal advice. I spoke to a lovely lady on the phone who said they couldnt help me unless i had some form of proof i was on benefit. Couldn't do that either because i wasn't strictly on anything at that time i was appealing to get something. So that was that. Once again i was on my own about to embark on a magical mystery tour from hell. I stopped being able to sleep for any long amount of time, an hour here an hour there was all i could manage. My anxiety ridden short fuse was non existent by now, the slightest thing that went wrong in the house sent me into a ranting free fall. I stopped caring about anything.I refused the flu jab hoping i would get something nasty and die from it, same with the smear test. who cares i thought i'm sunk anyway.
The day came. Armed with a couple of bus maps i manged to find which i covered with marker pen i left at eleven o'clock for an appointment at three. Waiting for the first bus i began to shake. Everywhere there were people, everywhere there was noise. Nothing felt safe. I begun to absentmindedly scratch my hands. The bus came and i slid onto it finding myself a window seat. I wasn't sure where to get off to get the connecting bus. I kept checking the time scared i was going to late. I didnt know where i was going, my eyes were glued to my timetable. An hour later i made it off the first bus and onto the second. I was cold, i couldn't feel my feet. I spent the journey with my nose pressed to the window. I wanted to disappear. Another hour passed and i managed to get to the last stop of my journey. The bus had stopped on a little housing estate. According to my notes it was only a short walk to the hotel. I had plenty of time to get there so i followed the directions i had and began walking.
The only thing i now remember about the hotel was that it was next to a Toby Carvery on the other side of a four lane motorway and there wasn't a crossing in sight. How the hell was i supposed to get across to this place? i paced up and down the road as the traffic whizzed past. I had to cross there was nothing else i could do. I can't remember breathing till i knew i was across. I felt sick with fear but i had made it. I found the place and was signed in and taken to a waiting room. There i sat and waited rubbing my hands and watching the floor.
I wasn't the only one who had a tribunal that day. soon i was joined by another three people who were armed with what looked like a library of solicitors notes. While i was shaking and scratching the skin off my hands they were discussing their next holiday to turkey and wondering how anyone without a car could have made it here.
I waited an hour to be seen by that point i was tired cold hungry as i hadn't eaten all day, and tearful but i wasn't about to let my emotions get the better of me, not yet. someone came and got me and showed me to another room, i was barely coherent by this point. I just wanted to go home. The two people that i saw soon realized this. as soon as i had been told to take a seat the emotional flood gates opened and i didnt give them a chance to ask anything or speak for a while.
I told them straight that i hoped they realized that if they upheld the assessment they would be making me homeless and my son would go into care. I didnt expect them to believe me i didnt expect them to understand but this was breaking me and i told them so. The doctor managed to ask me some questions about how my life was. What my routine was like, how i managed and watched as i tried to string a sentence together while scratching layers of skin off my hands which were now red raw and weeping.
I won my tribunal. They told me there and then, but i didnt dare believe them. I still had to make it home. i wasn't safe till i did. It took me three hours to get home, by that time i was tired my hands were agony and all i wanted to do was sleep.
But i had won and for now i was safe.

Then a month later i got another letter.
Dear Miss freeman you are now due to come for a work capability assessment.......
and so it began again.

Saturday 6 October 2012

Atos bloody Atos.

So you hear about these people on the news. You have heard the stories, the injustice, the deaths, the hardship they and the department of work and pensions course. Some of us are living it.
This is my story.

It starts the way all horror stories start with a form that could send an Amazonion rain forest into freefall. People sometimes say they can remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, well i remember where i was when this thing came crashing through my letterbox. I remember the gut wrenching panic of the brown envelope. I remember it took me a week to fill it out. Everytime i picked up a pen i felt physically sick. none of the questions they asked had anything to do with me or anything about my illness. Was i a fraud ? Maybe i was the only fraud that didn't know how to " Play the system?" . well i sent it back and tried to ignore the fact that sometime another letter thing would invade my home this time with an appointment on it. Sure enough about a month or two after i got another lovely letter saying that they wanted me to come for a medical assessment. They even sent a badly designed map to show me how lost i could actually get. Luckily the place i was going to wasn't horrendously far. Only one bus there and one back. For someone who doesn't travel well on her own to familiar places let alone somewhere new this was of small comfort.
I went. I spent my bus journey crammed nose to the window muttering to myself reminding myself how many stops i had to go. Even then i missed the stop and had to walk back, retracing the steps i hadn't taken before. so i made it all the way up the three flights of stairs past the big untidy scary looking pitbull of a security guard and into an over heated waiting room. I waited there for an hour and a half untill i was seen. By this time i was mentally shutting down, high alert has been replaced by a need to sleep and shut it all out. It was too hot and i was the only one there on my own without a family member, advocate or social worker there with me. Well i must be ok i got there all by myself.
the actual assessment took a whole TWELVE yes twelve minutes. Of course you can gauge someones mental state in that time can't you? And when you are tucked behind a computer screen the size of a forty two inch tv, and firing questions like;
"How often do you wash?"
"Where do you do your shopping."
"Who comes to your house?"
"Can you cook for your son?"
the little matter of eye contact and actually observing the person sitting hunched over in a seat that has been placed right in the middle of a room with barred windows seems somewhat over rated doesn't it.
And breath.
 So that was assessment number one.
In the grand  tradition of the eurovision I scored a grand total of nil, zero, ziltch, not a fucking sausage nothing. I was effectively screwed. so i appealed. i had no choice i phoned them as soon as i got the letter. all my income had stopped. It was November at this point. Luckily the fluffy one at that time was spending most of his time with his dad. His dad could afford to feed him. I on the other hand had a bout fifteen pounds to my name and a choice of food or heat. I spent a lot of the time wearing at least two jumpers and wrapping myself in a blanket for warmth while fighting the council who were now asking for money and the dept collectors who were doing the same.
I stopped taking my medication. What was the point i asked myself. i stopped sleeping, spent hours wrapped in a bundle of despair on the sofa. I felt alone i was alone really, days of never venturing outside, not changing my clothes, not really functioning waiting for the next thing to hit. It's what you do when things happen that rock your world and the one place you feel truly safe is the one thing that people are trying to take away from you.
It was six weeks before i was paid any money again, i coped i think just. I had to write to them telling them how and why i was appealing. They had sent me a file of my assessment. It was the best piece of fiction i had ever read. I hadn't told them any of what they had written in their paper. In fact the most worrying thing about it all was that along with my information was someone elses assessment information. They had in fact put the two of them together and then sent it all to me. My five page letter of the how's and the why's of why they had got it all so wrong was sent off and then came the wait for my tribunal date.

I did think that i would be able to write the whole of this story as one blog but as i write this i realize that i need to go away clear my thoughts and come back. So this is part one of my story, my fight, my on going battle with the lords of the Apocalypse known only as Atos the killers of men and women who deserve more respect and help and support than they are ever given.
So for now i will leave you with this. next time i will write about the tribunal.
For now though the pants have spoken.