Wildewire

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