Friday 26 February 2016

Step Back Relax and Go Ohm

I need to sleep big time , im starting to get rather testy as the kids have noticed .
Poor Young Baldrick Im sure he thinks hes landed in another world , yes I do get up at 5.30 to start the laundry and have a cup of tea , read the paper , do work paperwork and enjoy half an hours peace.
At this stage of the day it isnt wise to complain about anything at all , really not wise . In fact you are in severe danger of death if this bit of the routine is disturbed. Do not whine that the washer wakes you up and a bouncing seven year old wants a cup of tea and cartoons .
Second cup of tea time is when i clock on and not a moment before !!
Everyone gets up and goes to work , the job center , agency wherever they are heading. Hold conference over who will be here  for  tea and who needs  laundry doing today
Then its washing out , breakfast , get Mr Bah Humbug up help with washing and dressing , some days much more than others. Decide by how lame he is, what he can manage today , once the drugs have kicked in . Then the munchkin has second breakfast with grandad and does his reading while i get dressed and sorted .
Do not moan that you cant get in the bathroom , just wait your turn!!
8am start work phone calls and the first Young Baldrick phonecalls . 8.45 School run .
The fact that i come home settle at the computer and have a nice coffee does not mean i am, unlike your mother , who wouldnt be up for hours anyway, idle and playing bingo !! I am working , hours of research and reporting some days and now trying to sort your mess out . AAARRRGGGHHH
There is a jumble sale tomorrow and i will be going , even though im at work in the outer reaches of civilisation, I really need that half an hour of ME time , I will be going round with a begging bowl for coppers later

Wednesday 24 February 2016

It Continues

I had to take the day off work yesterday to continue the saga of Young Baldrick , I managed to flatten my phone battery three times .
My next crafting effort will be a doll resembling his mother with very large pins as a fashion statement...grrr.
I have to say that for the most part everyone has been really helpful , but the problems just keep piling up .
He has a meeting with housing next week , for which as he has no ID, we have had to fork out £24 for a duplicate birth certificate , that was this weeks grocery money .
Social Care were quite helpful on the first call . told us a few more things we need to ring and to contact social care in his old home town.
This is the point where I had  to sit down and just go OHM
Apparently he hasnt got a social worker , he has had one periodically when cause for concern has been raised by various people , this will be the times they have contacted us for information and asked if we would take him to give his mother some respite . But what has happened is , and the very nice lady apologised profusely,as they were aware his mother was "difficult" is that at the point where he left full time education he should have been assessed and restatemented for his adult needs , but because no one requested it they have shut his files and because he is no longer a juvenile they are now locked . So his bleedin mother when the money stopped , promptly chucked him out . He seems to have gone to the YMCA because he thought they would help the homeless . Somebody there had helped him but we cant find out who. But when the scheme he was housed under lost funding at xmas , he was then homeless .That was the point where his mother assured us she had sorted everything out .
The second call to our local Social Care didnt go quite so well. They acknowledge that he is special needs , but because he didnt have a key worker they wont help , he isnt in any danger so thats it , unless they get a statement of needs . The women then took great pleasure in informing me that once he gets the statement he will have to wait 6 months for a psychological report because his juvenile files are shut .AAARRRRRGGGHHH then once we get that because of budgetry restrictions it may be another 6 months before he can receive the help he is deemed to need .
So today im going to ring the nice Autism lady and see if theres any way we will be able to get the reports done quicker privately ...somehow we will raise the funds .

Am I Really Doing This

When youre awake at 4am reading up on autistic spectrum disorders , you know you have a problem..lol .
Its a problem that isnt going away and is going to need a lot of work .
Yesterday I popped to the doctors with Young Baldrick , now our GPs are spectacularly awful , theres a couple of good ones , theres one who has come straight out of training and should be sent back and to have common sense and people skills added to his programming, then theres an endless stream of odd and awful locums . The backroom staff however are really good , receptionists, nurses pharmacists etc all go above and beyond . So we got his registration sorted , they explained that it could be done rapidly if his old surgery was on the same operating system and they would ring me when they had done it . Meanwhile i explained to the receptionist what the situation was .
Within an hour they rang back and told me it was done , she also told me she thought shed spotted one of the problems hes being having , he hadnt filled a sharing of information form in anywhere , so there was no sharing of information on his condition between social services , healthcare professionals , government etc etc , so we popped back and did that . But they cant fit him in for a month for his assessment , because he needs a long slot appointment with one of the actual full time Drs who will then deal with him full time . Another problem is he will blindly sign anything he is asked to with no question and will agree to anything , another symptom of his condition .
Then rang the Benefits Help at the Council and explained the situation to a lady ive met previously while trying to sort Mr Bah Humbug out . She has registered him as living here , it doesnt affect our situation because he is special needs. She did however point out a few things , if hes on the old system of benefits , his mother will have been getting Disability Living Allowance and maybe Mobility for him still , he will only have been getting Job seekers if and when he managed to claim it and that would be paid to his mother , we are well aware that he cant be expected to deal with money himself despite him thinking he can , so thats not an issue . What is an issue is that he hadnt seen her for over a month !! so thats why he ended up homeless and hungry , his mate who is 17 and just out of care had been looking after him , he is in a flat with a social worker keeping an eye on him and they had thrown Young Baldrick out .
Im beginning to think im taking part in a comedy of errors , the deafening silence from his mother after her abusive phone call speaks volumes about what has been going on
Tomorrow , i have to contact
Housing Needs
Adult Social Care
Job Center Plus


Wish me luck , i think by the time i get this sorted I will be old and grey...ooops i am old and grey already . ( maybe i should have put a line of smileys and little hearts here , but im to old and dumb to figure that out) pass the valium. Im going in !!!

Monday 22 February 2016

The Saga Begins

Well on this fine and sunny day lets give you an update on a few things .
Young Baldrick is enthroned on the sofa looking clean and fed , his dad however is just sat staring at him and shaking his head . He has morphed into Marilyn Manson , you know piercings black hair great clothing choices ...lol. As a retired goth i see nothing strange in this , embarrassing teens are part of being a parent , My daughter once owned a white Adidas shell suit , that was worse , far worse .
Step one on the path of sorting his life out has begun , spoke to a lovely lady at Autism UK today. ...register him with our GP ask for him to be registered with a social worker for an assessment of needs. then speak to the nice lady again.  see how hard was that ?
What we hadnt bargained for was an abusive phone call from Mr Bah Humbugs ex and her partner , we are now child stealers it would seem ..bless they didnt want him when he was homeless did they .
They got Mr Bah Humbug on a grouchy day so i think he gave as good as he got , shes ringing back later to talk to me , im not having a grouchy day but i can soon arrange an injunction if she persists and i will make sure there are lots of witnesses if she turns up here creating .
Why is it the worse things are the better i find i cope ? mundane has never been my thing im afraid

Saturday 20 February 2016

Duty Bound

Where to Begin ?
We received a phone call Friday night from a very nice lady , who had Young Baldrick at her house in Birmingham , he was once again homeless and her daughter who is also autistic had befriended him and bought him home , she knew him from college . He was in a right state filthy , emaciated and crying . She got him clean ,fed and let him sleep on the floor . Now most of yesterday was spent trying to find out what is going on and what is happening with him . Adult Social Care, couldnt find any record of him , we knew hed had social workers at various stages when hed got into trouble , but it seems that once he reached adulthood aka 18 they just closed his files and filled them , if there was no requests for help , he ceased to matter . They are going to ring him on Monday ...big help there !!

So after much thought , we are going to take him in , that must sound a little strange , most parents and step parents would just leap in a car and fetch him , but because of Mr Bah humbugs disability and the fact that we are in Council Housing and already classed as overcrowded , this could get us another eviction notice . There is also the fact that we are fairly sure that drugs either legal Highs or harder fit in the picture somewhere and we have a seven year old who adores his uncle on the premises .

But what has really pushed the problem is a rather bizarre conversation held with his mother on the phone , as far as we were aware she was helping to sort matters after he was homeless in the New Year . It goes a little like this .
Well I took him to the Housing Department and they said that as he was special needs they would pay me £14 a day if he stayed with us because its cheaper than him being placed in a hostel .

OK, so what happened

He said hed sooner go into a hostel

OK, so did he go to the hostel.

I dont know and I dont care , theres a bed here for him , I could have got £14 a day for putting  up with him . Anyway they need to stop pandering to him hes got to learn to live like the rest of us . Theres nothing special about him , hes just an ignorant idle waster .

Well we are picking him up tomorrow, he will come to us .

Send me a text when you throw him out ...bye

So as of today we will have a 20 year old sleeping on the floor , doing cold turkey off whatever he has been taking , theres nowhere to run to from here , we really are 15 miles from anyware. Tomorrow I will start dealing with the authorities over this sorry mess, Didnt need this ,dont want this and it will all fall on my shoulders yet again , im thinking of crowd funding for gin ? as an option maybe ?

Thursday 18 February 2016

Petty Irritations of Life

Its been a strange sort of week , im working all hours so everything is piling up at home , they generally start whinging when they run out of socks so im just waiting for the comments to start . Bless them .
Got my wage slip and once again its not the full amount so the bank will be squealing , they will pay me eventually but WHEN is the question . Meanwhile my creditors are frothing at the mouth . You would think i owed as much as a banker , I totalled it up the other day, if one more company rings and tells me to contact the CAB I will hunt them down , im well aware i dont owe enough to go onto an IVA and nobody can bankrupt me but they do try to threaten it at every turn , im sorry but as a couple we have been living on £40 a week since November , you can threaten all you want , Mr Bah Humbug gets his PIP payments and that just covers essential bills ,they cant include PIP payments in any calculation for income they are for his disability ,  hes had to sub me for fuel as im busy at work so things are more than tight at the moment .
Nearly wee'd myself we have been taken over by some strange American company and my line manager has got a new job title ..Performance Enhancer.
Now heres this weeks HUGE annoyance , I had to cancel my insurance for my car , I got a new to me car from my daughter on her buy it now pay later scheme , mums rates.
  Its just a two door version of my car, same make, same model ,same age , i rang Swintons and they couldnt insure it on the same policy in fact they couldnt cover it at all for business usage ..grrrr . The insurance policy has been running for just over a month , the girl says theres a £25 cancellation fee , fine, bad enough . She turns round then and says that will be £111 pounds at which point i spat my dummy , apparently this is to cover their expenses !!! I will be taking this further !! She then says they wont issue my no claims certificate until I pay this , which will leave me unable to get insurance . It has taken 3 irate phonecalls to get them to admit they are in the wrong and they have finally sent the certificate but i now owe them £135 pounds because im not a customer any more . AAARRRGGGHH
My Swinton story just gets better I thought id check on the van policy with them , the little girl turns round and says it expired on 29th DEC , they hadnt renewed it !!! So ive been driving round with no insurance . I had spoke to them on the 23th Dec and they had agreed to continue it , for this year .

Now this story just gets better , I said please take this months payment of  which she did , then she turned round and said , we can no longer cover you with that policy , this year it will be £859 thats a £300+ increase , we have full no claims its more than the van is worth , I did wonder if it was because Mr Bah Humbug is now officially disabled ? I asked the question and pointed out that would be covered by the disability discrimination laws if that was the case, which she denied  . I told them to forget it we would go elsewhere which we have at over £500 pound cheaper , now we get to the good bit .
She then says that she has to charge a £25 cancellation fee , for what ? they are holding ,my no claims certificate  still  and I am going to try again tomorrow ...wish me luck
The moral of the story is dont insure through Swintons , ive been with them for over 20 years without problems , try to leave them and they will try to commit highway robbery .

Monday 15 February 2016

The Politically Incorrect Immigration Edition

Well lets upset everyone, lets talk about that which should not be mentioned , immigration .
Every newspaper every facebook feed is full of the horrors of the Muslim invasion of Europe , so lets take a look from the perspective of a little old biddy in the fens .
1  Mrs Merkel has aged 20 years in the space of 6 months , she agreed to let thousands of migrants into Germany and didnt get the grateful families posing for the journalists she expected , instead she has ended up with some grateful families and a wonderful bunch of multi racial sex offenders , who dont understand womens rights exist , this is not a cultural difference , this is something that needed to be jumped on very publicly and very loudly by the authorities . But no, they decided to blanket news block the issue and it rather backfired because nobody has yet managed to block the whole of the internet and the truth got out .
2 Skinheads , well thats any bald bloke with a football tattoo tarred with the same brush . Yes there are far right skinheads all over Europe but they are few and far between , the US has the Aryan something or other , we have groups of dodgy blokes who bore everyone in the pub to death with their minority views , they are not getting mass membership enquiries .
3 Despite what the papers say , we actually deport more Americans , Canadians and Australians than anything else . Yes we should deport everyone found guilty of a criminal offense in the UK that is a non national . Regardless of whether they have children born here, own a bleedin cat or have an allotment to tend .
4 The small issue of asylum seekers destroying their passports and pretending to be children . Easily cured if you have a look for their wisdom teeth , but looking is against there human Rights , yes a few late developers may sneak through the check , but the 6ft Libyan beardy isnt going to end up in a childrens home , im sure Bob Geldorf said he had a spare room ?
So in summary lets just state we will welcome asylum seekers and refugees if they just tell us the truth , Europe is full of people who want to help in someway , there is a small very vocal minority who want to waste police time staging pointless demonstrations and having a ruck. Yes we are scared , scared that we are looking down the barrels of world war 3 and scared people do and say foolish things . Political Correctness needs booting out the door and hard core common sense needs to be brought into play ..THE END

This a party political broadcast on behalf of the Old Biddy Party

Thursday 11 February 2016

Cheap Cheap Food

Todays adventures included a trip to the tin factory the little portacabin at Langrick Bridge .
Scary amounts of unhealthy but cheap food have been bought , So what have we hauled home today ?
6 jars of Robinsons marmalade 50p a case  , 12 large tins of spaghetti letters £1, numerous tins of beef curry 50p each, Big breakfast lots of 50p each , 25 packets of tuna in pizza sauce these are some posh survival food packs 25p each, numerous fishy pastes, soup , dates , jam washing up liquid  cappuchino etc etc

These bad boys that they have from time to time , that my daughter saw and said "oh God its dog food season again "  No its not dog bleedin food , its army bulk ration packs . 2.0 kg of mince in gravy , chicken chunks in their own juices and they also do steak in gravy , they have nearly a years date on them and i usually split them down once theyre opened and freeze what i dont use , you can get an awful lot of meals out of one pack the chickens good in whatever sauce you conjure up , these cost a whole £2.75 each .

Now for the good bit  , because we spent so much we were given 12 big family sized tins of marrowfat peas , out of date in the next couple of weeks but perfectly edible for months if not years  and self raising flour was help yourself . As you may have guessed we are back on the bleedin skint
 plan diet, add loads of veg and we wont die .lol  Creative uses for marmalade anyone?

Sunday 7 February 2016

Sunday

Well I made it to the Jumble Sale at the Scout Hut yesterday and it was a regular bloodbath , just heaving with people which was a surprise due to the monsoon . Place had a selection of the blokes with the big bags , the ones who swing round and smack you in the face with them , guess its the penalty for being short ..lol  I was hoping I could show you some pictures but the camera has no batteries and 30 miles for a couple of batteries isnt happening . But I did spend a whole £1.30 making myself happy at the jumble , a posh leather ipad case , some glorious rosy and spot bedding in king size, must be nice because i got a "what the bloody hell is that " from Mr Bah Humbug ,bless him , hed happily sleep in a sack . Then there was a nice mohair mix cardi , that will doubtless get accidentally felted by No One but i wont shed tears because of the cost plus the cat already likes it .
So its a slow Sunday , piles of washing trying to set off down the fen in the icy wind , Chicken stew for tea bubbling away and making me hungry , sorted yet more for the charity shop , sometimes a lazy Sunday is a good thing , I may even ring my mother ,because  im feeling quite positive I could put up with the "you are a useless failure lecture "

Wednesday 3 February 2016

Am I going Mad ?

Answer the question.....ive had a funny few days, stomach bug having settled down to bearable with the worst smelly flatulance of all time , back at work properly tomorrow .
So in a fit of preparedness I thought I would log into the company internet to pick up some urgent work they told me about yesterday . That was 3 hours ago !!! and im still trying to log in to the poxy useless , highly expensive corporate system , the chimp from IT has hung up on me 3 times now , if i knew where he was located id hunt him down and insert his mobile slowly and painfully into a random orifice , he just had the cheek to tell me im to old to understand what im doing ..Doh . i think I can spell my name by now , so why does it keep telling me that its spelt wrong ?
Now logged in and the printer has decided its lost a driver AAARRRGGGHHH bloody computers