Wednesday 23rd July 2025

Right, well, here we go. No jazz concepts to calm the soul tonight my lovelies.

My son has special needs. He can’t spend his summer at Summer camps as so many places won’t cater to him and he thinks they are rubbish in any case. So, there is a scheme where you can hire a qualified person to come to your home and take care of him, for a maximum of 40 hours over the total summer. It is a tiny thing but it is there. You fill in a form, you send it off, you get approved, you’re good. My son has a favorite person who has come to us several summers in a row, and it was all going like clockwork.

She asked me today about the form, and I should have received confirmation way back in June about it. And I didn’t. I hunted through the items in my inbox, and on my desk, and true to form, there was the fubbing form untouched in the envelope his school had sent it home to me. I think I got it late April but maybe May, and had all of that month to send it in and then June as well. And I ruddy well forgot!

I now owe this woman three figures that she has more than earned and I have to hand it over straight away, as in, tomorrow. How can I be so stupid? My first reaction in such moments is that I’ve discarded the right to live, I’m so stupid. And I have no one else to blame!

There was a dreadful moment last year, after we were evicted and living in a city center flat, where I let getting the electricity set up go too long. It was absolutely my fault, I just let weeks go by and didn’t do it. Then they shut us off, and I had to get it back on pronto. It meant paying a reconnection fee, and dinners for my son in McDonalds. I was lucky, I still had a membership fee at the gym so we could go for swims, take hot showers, lunch in town… I was privileged. But it was completely unnecessary, just being too delicate to deal with the realities of life! Lying in the dark that night, I felt that a lesson of life had been shown to me; suffer the pain of practicalities or suffer a greater pain in their absence.

And yet here we are again! Things sliding off me like algae off the side of a stagnant pond; why am I so stupid?! Why?

I am supposed to be amazing everyone at work regarding my marvelous skills, and I’m honestly wondering if I should be here at all. What a waste of flesh!