I highly recommend this post by Mary as an insight into the stupidity and failings of the benefits system for those disabled people who are doing exactly as the government dictates and attempting to work.
Once again, stupid is as stupid does.
PS: I don't mean Mary is stupid. Obviously. Anyone who can navigate the benefits mess must have at least double the IQ of your average politician.
PPS: I don't mean Mary is only twice as clever as your average politician, for starters she can write in full sentences
Aside from helpfully selling any personal data you may have recklessly uploaded, there seems one other main feature to facebook. Reconnecting you with all those people at school you didn't like enough to keep in contact with when you left.
I went to what was, and still is considered an excellent school. A highly academic girl's grammar school. So academic that one of their first tasks was to ensure we could all spell 'grammar' properly. Oh, and to remind us on a regular basis that [we] 'were the top 2% girls'. And don't you ever forget it!
Other things considered most important were that we all had regulation colour socks, and to the point of teachers searching through the cloakrooms obsessively, the correct colour coats. Woe betide any girl unlucky enough not to have wealthy parents, a non regulation coat (navy blue only) would reward a girl with daily lectures until they broke and put constant, hysterical pressure on their cash strapped parent to replace their existing, perfectly acceptable but not navy blue coat.
Such care and attention to detail over appearance made it rather easy on occasion to get drunk, smoke fags and the occasional spliff on school time. We learnt very early on that such transgressions would be ignored in favour of a lecture about wearing earrings. Along with the music teacher's interesting ideas about 'gels' not being able to sing with jumpers on, or without sitting on desks so legs were visible along with the view up our skirts, or the numerous odd reported assault.
Bullying was the order of the day, you either sunk or swam, the idea of reporting such problems to a teacher being as laughable as the idea they might give a damn about it. The only things the teacher's were really interested in were ensuring the police attended rapidly to remove the pre pubescent little boys hanging around outside the school before they "carried us off and did unspeakable things" Thus successfully planting the hope in our boy crazed heads that we might just find out what those things were. The vast majority of course having done so long before 16th birthdays came around.
Fortunately the years of uniform obsession are long cosigned to the past, the only clues remaining my constant fear of 'scruffiness'. Oh and the regulation house gym knickers which were almost as big on me at 18 as they were at 11. Until facebook.
So last night I went to meet up with a girl I'd not seen since leaving school. We were never the closest of friends, both just trying to survive the school experience the best we could. I'd had to cancel a previous arrangement last week as my hips were bad, and I was a little nervous about seeing someone from school now I'm cripped up.
I shouldn't have worried, it was a lovely night. We caught up on the events in our adult lives, and reminisced about the horrors of a school interested in nothing but appearance and results.
Perhaps in another 15 years or so a few more of us 'top 2% girls' will have managed to achieve the level of career success our peers from the local secondary modern have done.
Maybe I've been overdoing it of late. Maybe there's no maybe in that at all. I have been doing far too much of late. A combination of frustration, boredom, the good weather and having more of a life than at any time in the past 5 years have sent me sailing forth into summer. Where I appear to have left several body parts somewhere I can no longer find them. Mostly my right hip. Could be my pelvis though. It doesn't really matter what's caused it (too much death walking might feature high on the list) as the end result is pain and stiffness so severe I can't straighten up properly.
Initially I thought my right hip had wandered off and didn't want to go back. Having heard the thunky pop it produced earlier this morning I no longer think that's the (sole) cause, it has to be a combination of pelvic, hip and spinal movement/instability.
A few people have mumbled about A&E but I laugh in the face of such suggestions. As if anything A&E could do would persuade my wayward body to behave. Instead I'm planning on 'fixing' it with the heat of the sun and copious amounts of drugs. Legal and otherwise. This is a plan I've had for a good week or so and despite all evidence to the contrary I'm sticking with it...Unless of course I get a better offer-sex being fantastic for rearranging my pelvis!
Ouch, ouch, ouch! I've just had to increase my direct debit for gas and electricity from £80 a month to £110 And no, the increase is not caused by my toy addiction. They are all battery powered!
Anyone else made that painful call yet?
I'm a bad blogger. A whole week since my last post. I should be ashamed. But it's me, so I'm not. Instead I thought I'd bring you something just a little bit special. Yes indeed. The esteemed sex bloggers give you regular half nekkid photos, and I thought about it. Really I did. But, apart from the fact I couldn't be arsed to shave my legs, I couldn't be arsed to take (anymore) naked pictures of myself either. So I thought and thought. And came up with this. Drum roll please.
Ta da. Welcome to Bog off! (TM to Benefit Scrounger. Support my hope of not being one!) Yes, this is like the whole Half Nekkid Thursday thing. There's just a few essential differences. It's not Thursday, it won't happen weekly, oh and there's no naked people either. I feel your interest wane already.
But, in
the interest of plumbing new depths (groan) Bog Off! is 'the' place on t'internet to post your photos of the skankiest disabled loo's. Tired of toilets used as store rooms, without locks, dirty, neglected and mirror less? Always bloody mirrorless. What about my lip gloss dammit?
This is the place to dish the dirt. Next time you're in a disabled loo, take a look a
round. Mind out for the people using it for a quick shag and take in the full ambiance of the place. Then take out your mobile phone. Photograph the evidence, and send it to me. I promise to post it here in Bog Off! Anonymity will be protected if you so wish, and place names volunteered by the really brave.
Next time, I'm taking the champagne. Which is not on offer as a prize for Bog Off! toilet skank. Obviously. It's not Cristal.
