I had a tricky interview to negotiate with the dole after having given up work at Transport that Fails.
Unless there's some pressing reason, you're not allowed to simply quit work and then claim even the completely inadequate amounts of dole money. Instead, I planned to claim I was commencing self-employment. Looby's Editorial Services, proofreading and copywriting.
I spent a few hours down the pub writing a business plan (or making up a load of mumbo-jumbo about cash flow and advertising costs) from a template I found on a website featuring a photograph of a smiling young black woman on the phone. Serendipitously, a few months earlier, I had rescued from the recycling the unpublished memoir of a former resident of my block, a retired translator. In the introduction, where he gets disagnosed with bowel cancer, he says "[t]his is my story, which I'm dying to tell you."
I took my eleven-section "business plan", along with Peter's autobiography, and a domain name I've registered with me to the dole. It looked impressively thick when placed on the asessor's table. After twenty minutes, mainly taken up with an explanation of my rights and responsibilities, I was told I'd get £400.12 a month. Since then, I've been living on my savings, which are dwindling fast, largely because I'm a spendthrift and find it difficult to stop doing things like going on the Grand Tour (to see my friends in the North).
I stayed with my mum and my disabled brother in Middlesborough for a few days. My eldest was over as well, the only person I could go out for a drink with. One evening, I rang my mum to tell her we were coming home from the pub, to interrupt her in the process of my brother having an epileptic fit. We're all quite used to it; you just have to stop him banging his head on things. The three of us heaved him on to the floor, where he spent the night in a deep sleep as he recovered from the lightning outbreak in his electrical head.
Then to Trina's. Bit of snogging, lots of eating and drinking, and one night we found Jesus. Attempting to walk home one evening, her legs buckled under her at a most inconvenient and attention-drawing location near a railway bridge. We batted away a couple of offers of help from passers-by who were happy to be batted away, but my most strenuous efforts were inadequate to the strength needed to right her.
A new couple came along who seemed more serious Samaritans. A tall, ginger, bearded man and a woman came along and managed to haul Trina to her feet, just as I was thinking that all we could do was to have a little sleep by the side of the road and see if Trina could stand up. The disadvantage of this plan would be that it'd look like a crime scene. I imagined a policewoman arriving and asking her, "did he touch you?"
Jesus and his girlfriend took us to Trina's, into her living room, as far as the sofa. I was immensely grateful to them and I wish I'd tried to track them down afterwards. In the morning, Trina named him Jesus, our saviour.
