Wildewire

  The only real problem about my London trip (apart from the expense) was my inability walk far or at a reasonable pace before having to let the blood vessels in my legs recover! There was a minor scare with the place I stayed as I'd got the wrong house number, but the room was clean and I only really wanted somewhere to dump my bags and kip so it suited fine. It took me ages to work out how to buy a ticket and use the underground so I ended up being late to meet my lecturer friend at a pub near Goldsmith's. We had some dinner and then I went to see a couple of friends from 'Basement' days. Ubered back. The day of the wedding i somehow walked all the way down Oxford St on the way to the Actors Centre*/ I met Leon in St Martin's Lane and we had a long chinwag. The Actors Centre is now 'The Seven Dials Playhouse'. I spoke to a (frankly comical) 'Receptionist' when I got to the space. He told me that they had "Rebranded" with such a distinctiv...

So, I'll be wending my way 'dahn sarf' on Friday to be at a friend's wedding on Saturday.  This will be my first visit to London for three (?) years. I've known about this since last autumn but I confess a slight but growing anxiety as the day finally approaches. I was completely shocked by the prices being charged by allegedly "budget" hotels- not far off what i used to pay for a month's rent in Newcastle for just TWO NGHTS in London! The place I found has cost me £179, is not far from Baker St and looks pretty scruffy! I don't really intend to be there much- check in, drop bags, head for Deptford, meet a couple of friends, back to digs, up next day, breakfast en route, wedding (which is on the outer edges north of London), back to digs and train back on Sunday morning. I can't pin down the source of my anxiety apart from the sheer number of things that could go wrong starting with getting to the station- taxi or bus? Its a bank holiday, how w...

OK so talk about "random convergences": a LOT has been on my plate these last couple of months. I have definitely been 'dealing with it' but "wow"!  On top of caring for my foster young'un, it seems to have been the season for friends having emotional melt-downs. I have 'been there' for a couple of people and it has felt good. I've had moments of fearing I was getting back into my Mr Fixit trip, but this is very different, for a start; I was sought out each time. I'm most worried about the youngest one who in my opinion is being fcked up by his parent. It reminds me of 'Steptoe and Son' -the son constantly trying to improve himself and at least leave whilst the father sabotaged his plans and attacked his self confidence and self worth at every opportunity- all so he would not be left alone. The parent in this situation has systematically pushed everyone away, including their other children leaving this lad to shoulder their bullsh...

So, when my 'charge' asked if he could spend Saturday with his 'girlfriend' I was surprised how uncomfortable I was. Part of me hoped he'd just forget about it but that was never likely. I said I'd onlu consider it if I spoke to a responsible adult. I eventually spoke with 'the Mother' on Friday so off he went the next day. I was surprised about how preoccupied with him I was all day. The fact that I'd not actually met the mother and that all I had was an address and a telephone number bothered me. -After all; according to Children's Services are concerned, every adult with whom he comes into contact is supposed to have a valid DBS certificate. -Then I got into knots about what is was or was not necessary for her to know about my charge. After MUCH internal torture I decided to make sure that the mother knows not to leave the children unsupervised as the basis of the care training I have received. The lad came back from his 'date' very ex...

  What a week that has been! And this one offers equal excitement! Phew...Where to start? Adjusting to the responsibilities of my 'charge' has been surprisingly tiring- not that I've been gambolling over fields after him or anything, in fact; we seem to have slipped into a routine that 'works' and allows -nay inspires me to do a lot more writing whilst he is killing people in computer games :-( . Nevertheless, I'm almost ashamed of the relief I feel once I've warngled him into bed AFTER STANDARD ABULTIONS (!!! LOL).  So I came across this Job Advert which interested me -I wasn't even looking for a job, I think I was actually deleting job site subscriptions when I recognised an acronym I'd recently come across in all the Fostering stuff I've been trying to assymilate. I misread some of the details (which will be important below) and found I matched the Person Spec and thought there'd be a way to do it whilst fostering as it was another branch ...

I found myself thinking (lol) a lot about my friend's current struggles and about how he had stumbled, almost against his will, onto something that worked to lift his mood: acting happy! Of course it was more than that, but that was the basis: He realised that he had the choice of going to work with a visible thunder cloud surrounding him. He also knows that if he had done that, his colleagues would have asked him what was the matter, he would have been disinclined to answer or engage properly with them which would have created even more tension. In stead, he chose to put a brave and relaxed face on. Instead of finding that hard to maintain, he said that it became easier as the day progressed and that he actually began to feel happier! I was extremely pleased and tried to get my friend to think about the basics of Neuro Linguistic Programming. I know that a lot has been over-claimed for the benefits of NLP but it HAS been around for a LONG time and there is clearly something in loo...

OF COURSE; the payment I was expecting on Thursday didn't come. I had to contact people and found that 'it hadn't been processed so they were just going to wait until the next pay run (in a fortnight) and sort me then. LOL. I made it clear that was not an option and a "favour" was allegedly performed to release the funds by Tuesday... As EVERY deadline in last three years has been missed, I'll not be holding my breath! It is annoying because one of the barriers to me becoming a Foster Carer was that I didn't want to do it when I needed the money. It has take over a year to get to this point during which time I have been discouraged from continuing to seek external work and so I am dependant on this cash. -Which focusses my mind even more on being THE BEST I can be... which is not entirely healthy as I have been wrestling with fears that the lad will be bored because I can't talk with him about computer games and the sorts of things that fourteen-year o...

OK, we're getting used to each other and finding a routine. Highlights (or perhaps that should be 'lowlights') of this week centred on taxis. I paid for the first day but had a fright when the car was late and the despatcher told me i hadn't ordered it! Things were sorted on Tuesday and ran smoothly for the next couple of days. On Friday, the expected driver didn't show up and could not be found by the company! The lad was 30 mins late for school. I remain concerned that he is so insecure that he will say what he thinks I need to hear whch is irritating. He has been a typical fourteen-year-old in other ways- asking to go out on his bicycle at inappropriate times- with him not having a 'phone I am more reluctant than I would be otherwise. When I DID say "yes", he was back in less than twenty minutes, beaten by the cold which he said wouldn't matter. Mick came over on Thursday as usual and it was clear we're going to have to make some changes as ...

I am already unimpressed with the SW assigned to my charge. As a Black man, I do not say lightly that it appears there are two obvious reasons why this Black woman has her job! She is the sort of 'worker' who does no more than she thinks is necessary so, sending an email to someone last Wednesday was, as far as she was concerned, all she had to do to expect that thing to be done. She did not bother to find out that the person to whom she had sent the message was not at work until today. Of course, I dealt with the issue, but when I contacted her to ensure i would not have the same problem for the rest of the week, all she did was tell me what she had done. I told her that I was uninterested in the administrative workings of her department, just that it had failed. I asked her to take responsibility for addressing the problem and contacting me when she had done it. All I managed to get from her was a commitment to copy me into a message she sent to the person to whom she had sen...

Soon after I'd finally been approved to foster I was contacted to find out if I'd accept a lad who needed temporary "respite" care. In principle I was able to do it as long as it fitted in with my lodger who was moving out and the kid they'd started the process of placing with me on a potential long term basis. I was unsurprised not to hear anything, then out of the blue I was asked if I'd take a lad the next day "for the week end". That 'weekend' became a week during which I had a half day visit from my prospective placement whilst hand-holding and cattle-proding my lodger into his new place. Of course, that meant THREE sets of social workers to deal with AND the current carers of my 'placement'. At times it was like Piccadilly Circus.  A 'complication' arose when the lad who was here 'for the week end' announced that he liked being with me and wanted to stay. I was not averse to it but my 'placement' was the ...

They were to have been here last week, but Spencer caught covid. It was all a little rushed, but worked out in the end. Mick and me spent a lot of the day together and decided to go by taxi to Ouseburn. Raice dropped by to get some stuff for his mother and I invited him after his boxing practice. We picked him up and got to the venue. Time was getting short, but I'd made arrangements for Spencer to come back to mine after the gig. Spencer hugged the hell out of me! I haven't seen him for 35 years! The scrawny kid with the broken wrist has filled out and is taller than me. I haven't hugged ANYONE for so long that is was a little strange! I wasn't at all prepared for the gush he gave me about the impact he said I'd had on him! I was delighted and embarrassed. I needn't have worried about them getting a good crowd; the place was pretty well packed. It turns out they're popular on the festivals circuit. I mused that they'd go down well with the Faeries, but ...

He lived opposite me, he was there before I arrived. Jeff got to talking with him and found out that he had brought up sons on his own after their mother left. I never saw anyone else at the house. it was several years before we struck up a greeting relationship and a few more before I found out he was called "Jimmy". We often encountered each other to and from the local shops. He was a character. He liked to put people's bins back into their gardens after the binmen came -except his immediate neighbours: they were... odd and secretive, they objected to Jimmy 'going onto their property' so he'd leave their bin out. They moved out and the new family are much nicer and interacted with Jimmy. Jimmy hung two England flags from the first floor windows which always made me smile. Last week I noticed they were no longer there. I had a bit of a thought, but dismissed it. A few days later I happened to pass the front of the house and thought I could see into the room, ...

Was it Lawrie's death? -Or the fact that the SS have finally started procedures to connect me with a foster lad? - I don't know, but I have been very retrospective recently. I got out my notebooks and diaries with the intent of fuelling the 'Oski Darski' story I plan. It is a lot slower-goign than I thought it would be- I'm still in 1980, living in Wymondham in my second year of university, spending the summer with Gill- I had forgotten how much I disliked her by the end of that summer! I've watched a couple of TV biographies including that of Kwame Kwei-Armah who's AD at the New Vic. It shocked me to notice that his rise to fame began at the same time I left London... ...I don't regret leaving London for my health: I was stressed and frustrated by a big buck salary for a stupid job that wanted to keep me on for window-dressing and there was a growing tension in the air so that when "7-7" happened, I don't think many people were that surpri...

I got a horrible shock last night when a friend sent a message saying that a mutual friend had been killed in a house fire and asking me for contact details of their surrogate family. It was the fact that he had been killed in a fire that set his death apart from other friends I've "lost"- even those who took their own lives. The image of my friend being engulfed in flames was hard to dismiss. This morning, after not seeing anything on Facebook etc, I contacted the person who'd got in touch last night and begged him to tell me it was a mistake. He confirmed that our friend had been retrieved from his burning house, but had died on the way to the hospital. I cried last night. UGLY tears. I cried when I facetimed a mutual friend whom I knew was even closer to Lawrie than I was. I didn't expect to, it just happened. I am NEVER that openly emotional. Again, it was the image of the manner of Lawrie's death which, I think, tipped that balance. One of the reasons I...

Well, (financial) times are hard thanks to the Social Services LOL. To make things worse, I'm having to raid my account to pay for someone to fix my fence before it gets blown onto the pavement. I've been waiting all day for someone who agreed yesterday to do the job today, to actually arrive. I have called three times and been told someone was on their way etc. It is most annoying because I fobbed off another quote who couldn't do the work until Saturday. I was in bed listening to the wind last night and was grateful for the job to be done today as I don't think the fence will last until Saturday! Now it seems I am back to square one.  I haven't heard anything from the SS. This is the 'second week' so, my SS worker's talk of 'fast-tracking' to accept respite care has come to nought. My lodger has at last been given keys to his new flat, but I am a little dismayed to find that they're only now taking measurements re acquiring furniture and ap...

  A friend in London contacted me to say that a mutual friend whom I've not seen since the mid 1980s, who's now fronting a band that is much more successful than I thought, will be playing in Newcastle this weekend and would I like to go. Of course, I said 'yes' and started listening to their music along with my remaining Bubblemate. We were pleasantly surprised at the variety of the sounds. I confess I'd rather dismissed them as "White Reggae" - which is wrong on too many levels including that half of the core band are Rastas! I contacted him to finalise the freebies and we ended up exchanging a load of messages before actually 'facetiming' with each other. It was a great reconnection. I'd recently- probably since contact with him actually, been pondering how much I enjoyed that time in my life: I had no money, but I was at work from 10:00 to 23:00 five days a week, i was working with up to three hundred different people per week delivering pe...

  I wasn't surprised to be waiting for ten minutes before being allowed into today's zoom panel interview. The wait had the effect of allowing me to think of all the negative things about the process so far which threatened my mood.  When the meeting started, the formalaic process was less than stimulating and in no way challenging. The panellists were pretty much EXACTLY as I expected them to be with the youngest taking charge of the organising-chair stuff and others looking comically distrustful - of the technology as much as of me. There were smiles albeit strained lol. Strangely, they apologised for the number of questions they asked, I didn't find it excessive, but wondered if they generally ask fewer and if so, why I got extra treatment. There was one slightly challenging moment when they posed a fairly left field question about my neices and nephews -I'm pretty sure I've not mentioned them in any previous assessments or discussion and my Supervising Social Wo...

-Perhaps. Tomorrow, the long-postponed 'panel' to assess my suitability to be a Foster Carer is scheduled to finally take place. In some ways I'm actually grateful for the delay: it has given me a LOT of time for introspection. Of course I expected my character to be examined for this role, but I never expected it to be actually challenged after my past experiences with young people as a trainer, mentor, godparent! I've run the gamut of emotions ever since the panel was postponed: from fury to despair. It was over a year ago that I first raised my intentions to transfer from 'Supported Lodgings' to Fostering, I was clear that I wanted it done by December 2021 when my longest residing lodger was supposed to have left (he hasn't). It has been a bit of a life-saver that my lodger is still here as he provides my main income - apart from having recieved £936 from them by mistake after my asylum-seeking lodger did a runner. Of course I have to repay it, but withou...

Black people in white majority countries are taught from a young age how unacceptable their full selves are in white company. I dare to add that if you're Gay as well then you often lack access to the Black community's support. A deference for white people is the insidious norm- even when families teach their children to be wary of white authority whether awarded or assumed. As example, I was abused by a nasty white woman with her brood, one of which I caught green-handed having reached over my garden fence to yank off a hunk of the clematis growing there. Despite the hideous female repeatedly calling me a " stupid fokkin' cont ' at the top of her lungs, she, of course, reported to the police that she and her children where confronted by a big, frightening Black man and, the rest is history. - Of course they took the word of a semi literate mother (of three kids by three men) over that of an articulated and educated BLACK man. It is such a cliche it is almost funny...

I was watching something on TV which talked about the difficulties faced by Black men in white majority societies whenever they gain a position of leadership or focus. I tend not to attribute things like that to my own situation, partially because it feels like an excuse, but this idea rattled about in my head. Black men and women who achieve any leadership or representative position are often given the choice of toeing the line almost in the hope of their ethnicity not being noticed, or running the gauntlet of being casually othered if not subjected to overt racism.  Black workers are habitually subjected to greater scrutiny, expectations are lower: Black managers contend with the rumours that their appointment was political rather than based on their merits. The remit of my first job did not match the needs and demands of the "underprivileged" young Black clients so I instinctively developed the service to match the need. I did that partially because it was needed but also ...

So, I was contacted today by one of the straight white women from the fostering panel booked for tomorrow. She apologised, but told me that the panel will now be delayed for another week. Of course, I asked "why?" and was given a 'newspeak' answer which, even after a repeat when I said I didn't understand, I didn't understand. They spoke about 'ensuring a robust procedure'... They tried to present it as if they were doing me some kind of favour! It was something about the way that the images that were questioned had been identified.  I asked if there was any point in the delay as it seemed suspiciously to me as though a decision had aleady been made and I would prefer not to go through the experience just for the sake of their procedures. I was assured that was not the case. The person with whom I spoke said they were an advisor to the panel and that they had endorsed my application. LOL that's two of them who have privately told me they have endor...

 - and a certain amount of anger! I was prompted to be a foster carer after dealing with the lads I've had as care-leaving lodgers since 2019: Only one of them, in my opinion, has what he needs to survive without social services support. One has been in care since he was ten, he's now twenty-one and his understanding of the world is "limited" to say the least. The stories I've been told about what has passed for "care" made me furious and determined to be the best foster carer I could be. Of course, I expected my character to be investigated but I was not prepared for it to be questioned. First there was immense who-ha about my encounter with the law in 2014 when I was abused by a woman whom I ended up calling a "fat slag" after she'd spent ten minutes calling me a "stupid fokkin' cont". She told the police that she and her small children had been traumatised by their encounter with a large black man and because I admitted to ...