I'm just going to have to trust you completely...

I'm desperate for a drink and it's only 3.30 in the afternoon. For the second time this week, I've waited in all afternoon for a gas engineer to come and look at my boiler, then tell me that my problem, no hot water at peak times (mornings/early evenings and all weekends) is due to water pressure and I would just "have to live with it"
WTF??? The man shows not one shred of empathy or sympathy for my dilema, just attempts a long rant about Thames water and their leaking pipes. Look, I'm still paying �6.05 a week water rates, and their responsibility ends on the ground floor...

Surely, there must be something someone can do about it. Well not these council subcontractors, thats for sure, this is the fourth time they've been and this time they sent the surly, and I mean really unnecessarily surly, supervisor.
So I'm phoning Lambeth, trying to speak to my illusive housing officer, but he's on leave (again) and I'm so upset the woman gives me the number for complaints dept, and I ring them.
Well, they take hardly any details at all, and tell me they will respond within 15 days.
I wonder how long I will have to put up with this, or if I really will have to live with it.
I feel exasperated. Being a Lambeth council tenant really sucks sometimes, I mean I've learnt to live up 42 stairs with no lift or balcony, heaving buggy, baby, heavy shopping up and down all these stairs , I take my kiddies to the park with the horrible fighting staffi dogs and their owners, who encourage the dogs to leap and gnaw all the bark from the trees and the rubber from the seats of the swings, and the resident pissheads (who are ok really) and I've learn't how to dry my washing in winter, though not in summer, but I really dont think I can stand living without hot water at the times I need it most...

I've been moderating the forum at the ClimateCamp site for some weeks now. It's still almost dead, despite my attempts to liven things up and gradually change the slightly turgid structure of the forum which is currently based around topics actually discussed at meetings, at least I've managed to stop nearly all of the spamming for the time being...

I was rather taken with this installation at the Science Museum that we saw on Monday, seems to relate quite well to the inside of my head at the mo....

We went to visit "Nanny Windows" as she seems to be known now, my 95year old grandmother.
It's such an arduous train journey with three kids, but it's worth it to see her face light up when Tea talks to her for the first time ever really. He's suddenly become quite fluent.
Last night I felt so very sad though. Such impressive old age is really taking its toll. She can't straighten up now, when she gets up, and getting out of her chair itself is really hard. Her paper thin skin is reddish pink and really shiney, and she'd cut a huge hole out of her slipper to accomodate her ingrowing toenail, they stopped doing her feet on the NHS a couple of years ago apparently.
There is a tray on the fridge on which all her daily medications are somewhat chaotically placed.

She hobbles around valiently, but I noticed her being really unusually clumsy in the kitchen, worryingly so, as she makes the lunch. I try to help but she's having none of it.
She serves sausages, chips, peas cooked with a teaspoon of sugar, and strawberries and an enormous party sized gateux from Iceland for pudding, and the kids love it.
Everyone eats everything off their plates, which makes her very happy.

I managed to get the washing up done though, by saying I wouldn't leave until it was done. She let me, but insisted on drying them herself instead of sitting with the kids in the other room.
She used to pride herself on her housekeepeing, in fact judge other women by it mercilessly, but I noticed how dirty all her cupboards were, and I wanted to empty them and wash them out for her, but this idea outraged her, she's so fiercely independent.

She still had plenty of energy to give me her views on why the country had gone to the dogs, and delivered a lengthy monologue on immigration...
As we left I hugged her tightly, and she me.
I breathed in deeply her scent, and for a moment was transported right back to my childhood, she still smelled the same. My nan, my carer, my love.

Yesterday I had to sit in a room full of teenagers and take a 5 page maths entry 'assesment' or TEST as they should have called it, to see if I can take the GCSE maths at Lambeth college. Well the first two pages were fine, but half way through the alloted forty minutes, just as I was begining to get horribly stuck, one by one the youngsters began leaving. Smiling, Yes, they had double checked everything, they chirpily replied to the examiners. I was mortified. My eyes stung, holding back the hot tears of humiliation, as soon I simply wasn't even able to continue. It might as well have been rocket science.
Before leaving, I had to show them my pile of useless, mainly media related, exam certificates, the only thing giving reason for them to comment was the grade 4 CSE maths taken back in 1981. 'Not very good....' he said.
My cheeks were burning.
I left thinking I'd proberbly not even be accepted on the course. Something I'd previously not even considered.
I walked all the way home from Clapham in the spring sunshine, my head spinning with what a fuck-up my life is.

Eureka!! I have finally worked out how to use the scaner that has been sitting in my living room for over a year now.
I did the test with this rather ghostly self portrait that I've had blue-tacked to my wall for far too long, but there's something about it I like. Perhaps it's just the amount of jewelery I'm wearing. Something I'd never do now for some reason.
Focus certainly never bothered me.

Anyways this fantastic scanner development means I can begin to make further progress on the book that Red Dread and I are thinking about writing. Well I say book, more likely to end up on the web I guess. We have this plan to try and document the two crazy years that we lived together squatting constantly, using the diaries and photographs that we both were doing rather obsessively at the time. I don't know if anything will come of it, mainly because most of my diaries are filled with personal turmoil rather than exciting descriptions of adventure, which I tend to skirt over most infuriatingly.
Anyways, I've also decided to make a concerted effort to try and read more, because that might help me write better, so that I can fill in the missing bits etc.
Hmmm...So much to do on that front...

Hmm...Chicken pox.
Yesterday Tea starts coming out in a few red spots. This morning they are rampant, and quite nasty looking bulbous liquid filled blisters.
He's taking it well though, apart from the medicine that is.
His dad and I have had terrible trouble persuading him to let any of the minty anti-inflamortary stuff pass his lips. All incentives to get him to swallow just a spoonful fail, miserably.
So we bought a special syringe for the job, but this still involved a certain amount of pining him down, frantic squirting, followed by the whole lot being quickly and efficiently spat out. Well traumatic. But what can you do?
Poor little thing. Stubborn little thing. I hope this will be the worst day...