Benefits anxiety

I walk to work, its about 2.4 miles, I do it not to save petrol but to save money and ensure I get to work on time. As a result of this walking, I get to see lots of adverts.

You know, of course that the government is the UK's biggest advertiser.

I am fraught with anxiety. I see lots of adverts against benefit fraud. They catch benefit thieves, 56,439 of them last year.

I'm not sure if I'm a benefit thief or not. Maybe I am and I just don't know it, maybe I made a mistake on a form, and as a result I'm getting benefits that I shouldn't be. If its just an innocent mistake, they won't prosecute and fine me, will they?

Like, last year I claimed Housing Benefit for a few months, and Job Seekers allowance, but they kept cancelling it for a variety of reasons, so I got further and further into debt. The Housing Benefit was a particular pain, cos I lived in the middle of West Hampstead, its pretty expensive round there and I could barely afford it even when I had a job, so there was something that made me feel uneasy about getting the state to pay for me to stay there. If I was the state I wouldn't have paid any benefits, I would have insisted I moved out to somewhere cheaper, like Hull.

But no, the State, they paid vast sums of money for me to stay. Maybe that was the mistake that will get me done. Anyhoo, I moved away to somewhere cheaper, Wembley and stopped relying on Housing Benefit.

I heard about some bloke who works 50 hours a week, but still claimed Housing Benefit cos he couldn't afford the place he stayed in, he had a big family and needed a big house. He was advised to work less so he'd be able to claim more benefits, it was the only way he could stay were he was. Is that cheating? Not working as much as you possibly can? Or is it just the way the system's geared.

I was on Job Seekers Allowance, but that kept on changing, and getting cut and I'd have to reapply for it and then discover that it was the Job Centre who made a mistake and not me. But maybe it was all a mistake and I wasn't due to claim anything. It could go either way.

Besides, if its not the claimant who makes the mistake, does the person in the benefits agency get fined and imprisoned? No? Is there any penalty for them cocking up? Any incentive for them to not mess up?

There was a Dick Puddlecote piece the other day about how his business has to keep doing stuff to keep up with changing regulations, just to stay in business. Maybe the benefits malarkey is like that, one week I'm all law abiding and lawfully claiming and then some legislation changes or some statutory instrument and a week later I'm a benefit thief without me actually doing anything.

Right now I get a single person's discount on my council tax, 25% off, which is nice of them. But I'm concerned that when I phoned up, I just told the nice person at Brent Council that I lived alone and they believed me, and didn't require any proof or anything. What if I was lying? What if its some kind of trick, some kind of test?

I swear I'm the only person who lives at my flat, no one else has slept there or stayed the night since I moved in. The bed remains unchristened.

Then again there was that thing with Islington Council taking itself to court about parking fines, maybe the council folk have gone rogue against themselves. Its not my fault, I'm just caught up in some council schizo split personality battle.

Maybe its the Working Tax Credits? First time I applied I figured out how much I was due to earn in 2009/2010 and the nice Working Tax Credit people gave me a regular amount of money every week. But then a month or so later, I recalculated how much I thought I'd earn in the same financial year and came up with a different figure, so now I get paid a different amount in Working Tax Credits, but I don't know which number was right, or what I did differently the first time.

What if it was right before and wrong now? What if I'm a benefit thief?

I don't think I am, I don't think they'll ever catch me, but that's what the people in the adverts thought. Or they would do if they were actually benefit thieves, and not just models paid to appear in adverts holding signs.

In fact if they're not really benefit thieves, and just pretending to be, how do we know that the 56,439 figure isn't also just pretending to be the number of people caught? How can we believe any of it?

Shoes

I'm standing in a shoe shop in Brent Cross, rather than judging whether shoes look nice, the first, second and third criteria has have before picking up a pair of shoes to look at are:-

• Price
• Requirement
• Comfort

Prices start at around £60 up to £80, even the ones on sale were £40. So far, all out of my price range.

I am unemployed, I survive off of £60 JSA a week, and Housing Benefit which doesn't quite cover rent, so every week my credit card stacks up a wee bit and I keep telling myself that I'll be able to pay it off one day in the future when I have a job.

So to buy any of these shoes, my lifestyle would have to change for a week.

I'd survive on eating just pasta or rice with a sprinkling of herbs. Instead of spending my mornings in Borders avoiding a parking ticket, I'd sit in my car knitting. No gigs, no journeys on the underground, no cinema, no going out for dinner. And all for a pair shoes surplus to requirements.

Christ, I wish I had a job, then a pair of shoes would be something I could save up for rather then something to hold my breath for.

I wish I had a job.

This lifestyle sucks.

When will it all end?

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New Shoes

Shoes die. They crack or the soles tear off, they develope holes and stones pierce the skin. Anyhoo, I was down to my last pair of shoes.

God knows how, evolution, survival of the fittest, I don't know, but my smart work shoes had survived longer than my boots or my trainers. I'm not surprised about my trainers dying, they were Converse knock-offs, £7.99 from somewhere in Braehead in the frantic dash before heading to Spain in '06.

Anyhoo, for the past few months, whenever I've headed off to buy new shoes, I wander into Brent Cross or The Trafford Centre, or where ever else people do shopping, I took a deep breath stepped in, then stepped straight out again, almost in tears of frustration.

But this time it was different, I took a girl with me to supervise.

And so I acquired these rather nifty Converse

There was a sale on, but there were no Converse in my size, so I just asked the guy to bring out everything in size 11, and after looking in the three boxes that appeared, these ones were the coolest. I think they're going to do as my dancing shoes and driving shoes.

Also acquired were these rather generic boots

I admit they were the first ones I picked up in the shop, but they fitted okay and there's not much between one pair of generic boots and the next pair.

At least now I have a full complement of footwhere, I can now spend more time under less pressure to find any more I could need.

Fulfilled

What a thrilling and action packed weekend.

All starting on friday just as I finished work and got a text from my friend Rowan who was down in London from Glasgow with her husband to see Sonic Youth, They beckoned me out to Camden, where we trawled through a few pubs, including The Good Mixer, it reminds me of the crowd from Sleazies, decamped to The Lauriston.

I managed to squeeze in an hour in an internet café too, just procrastinating. There are strange things afoot, and without knowing much about anything, its hard to fit the pieces together.

Saturday saw me wandering to Oxford Street to pick up a teach yersel Polish book, and getting a text from Fiona fae uni beckoning me to her flat to play X-Box with her boyfriend, in return they fed me and took me along to a barbecue in Ealing. The boyfriend Dom was pummelling me on the games and pummelling me for information about how to make money in the hi-fi industry reckon the answer is using environmentalism as a differentiator.

So this barbecue was for another Strathclyde alumni's birthday, no idea who she was but she said I looked familiar, cue Fiona joshing about me being in a band. They even gave me a lift back to my flat.

So Jill, Jax's friend, has been filling me with dread, socialising with Natalie, I'm pretty sure no good can come of this, but if I stay hundreds of miles away and keep my head down, maybe she'll forget about me. Damned monkey spheres.

Text message from brother and family on Sunday, beckoning me to a shopping mall, The Lakeside, near Dartford Crossing, which I assumed was near Dartford, south of the river aye? So I took the Southern Circular, expecting it to be just as useful as the Northern Circular. No chance, its the deformed runt-like little sister of the northern ring road. Took me straight through Clapham Common, and down windy roads, with a million junctions and traffic lights. Finally I emerged near Dartford to discover that I was on the wrong side of the damned river mate, and had to pay to get to the other side. Barstards.

It was nice seeing my niece and everyone, once again she was shy at first, but during lunch I took her out to watch the boats on the lake and the cadet kids canoeing, which enthralled her.

Over coffee later in the afternoon I snatched a swift bit of wifi internet to find the location of this evening's gig, and bade farewell to the family, the wean barely notice I'd gone.

Parked in a residential area near Euston and chatted to ma as I wandered to the gig, got there late, got bored, drew pictures, and scribbled.

Got home at about eleven, remembering I hadn't eaten all day, and well, kind of scared to use the kitchen at this time of night. I ought to get a packet of choccy digestives to keep in my room for these frequent situations. Or, more responsibly, start using the kitchen to cook food. This irregular eating and quality of food is killing me.

Ooh, I finished Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows at some point, and started Terry Brooks's Armageddon's Children, Genesis of Shannara. Potter was thrilling to the end, but a bit of a cheesy cop out ending, Snape resolved himself honourably. I think I identify with him a little more than I did in the earlier books. Its been decades since I read a Shannara book, this one's more post-apocalyptic than the fantasy of the earlier books.