Jobbie etc.

Running total as of today this week is 24.5 hrs for the part-time 20 hr/week jobbie. Another 8 hrs planned this week. so I'm well ahead for time-in-lieu owed, including the 17 hrs already in the TIL basket.

The mortgagers have been screwing me around and fecking up my credit rating. For the last 2 months I've been in to make personal payments on my mortgage due date. Each time they've erroneously informed me that the dole made a partial payment, when this was not the actuality. Now I've been referred to the mortgage collection service (i.e. credit rating bad guys) through no fault of my own. I'd intended to go in and exercise consumer anger today, but am too tired after an all-day/all-nighter shift. I shall muster my righteous indignation for tomorrow. I also have extremely detailed complicated forms to fill in to retrospectively to claim council tax relief, child tax credits and mortgage interest relief. If I as a PhD can't manage these, God help others. I have to report new changes in circumstance in 4 days, when I still haven't cleared up the last 3 months part time claims.

Anyway, it's a lovely day today. At dawn I'm standing on the back step at work with a mug of tea and a roll-up, watching and listening to the dawn chorus and bird movements. The starlings flock together and give a splendid fractal show of collective movement. The wood pigeons are solitary and have a peculiarly obese and laboured flight pattern, supplying owl-like whoo-whoo calls all the time. The pied wagtails swoop and flit aerobatically to catch insect prey on their morning sojourn. The natural world goes on regardless of puny human moods and influences.

On the way home from the all-nighters I snag another box of mangoes and 2 litres of milk from my favourite Smiley brother, for smoothies. H-etc. has granted me 3 hrs per week vital cleaning for the summer. That means she will be rifling through and organising my drawers, filing my properly folded underwear, dusting the artwork, assembling the loose cigarette papers in the Big Wan's woodwork desk-tidy, stashing the hash lumps in a discrete drawer and hoovering up the carpet beetles. Life doesn't get much better than this! I am blessed.