There’s a line in the Crosby, Stills and Nash song “Long Time Gone,” that goes:
The darkest hour is always
Always just before the dawn.
For me the darkest hour, can stretch way past dawn; from the moment I awake, to the moment I dial my consultant’s secretary. It’s a cruel time, when distractions like online news and reading e-mails, are simply that – distractions.
It’s a time when my body speaks: during the past few days an ache has developed in both of my legs, it penetrates deep into the bone. I walk like an eighty year old, hesitant and unsteady. And I ponder discussing this, when the darkest hour is over; and I think about the results of the CT scan.
I check to see if my home of six months is on the estate agent’s website; and there it is a blurry image, taken from across the road. The pictures taken yesterday have not been uploaded, and their description of the property is minimal.
Neither the agent nor his prospective buyer (a woman and two young children), asked me a single question about the property. There were no attempts at common courtesy: I was simply the person who opened the front door – nothing more than a functional avatar.
The woman appeared pleasant, and she seemed to love her two children. I wonder if she noticed the photographs of my daughter in the kitchen, if she gave thought to how being evicted will impact on my relationship, with my child.
When she was young, I saw a lot of my daughter; she stayed with me every weekend. We had a relationship. But loosing my flat, and then my health have severely impacted on that relationship. She’s older now, a full blown teenager; and has a comfortable life with her mother. Visiting her father must seem like a holiday in Afghanistan; so she stays occasionally, and we go shopping. She spends the pocket money; someone else has provided; and in each shop I feel ashamed that my subsistence income will not stretch to a simple gift.
My flat is a tiny one-bedroom place that was in a shocking state of repair when I moved in. This was confirmed by a Local Authority Inspection. But when I complained about the flat not being habitable, and lacking furniture (it was supposed to be furnished) : they sent me to a homeless hostel, where shouting alcoholics roamed the corridors. They gave me Hobson’s choice: I moved into a flat without heating, in December, and cleaned rodent droppings from every room.
Despite being aware of my condition (I provided detailed medical evidence), they housed a person who was sick and at risk of infection; in a dirty, unheated and empty flat. But desperate people, in these desperate times, have no choice.
I furnished the empty flat from Freecycle; I requested a Social Fund Grant to cover my moving expenses and the cost of making the place habitable. Anything retrospective, like the cost of moving, was rejected; and so were basic things like a sofa to sit on. With the help of Macmillan I appealed their decision, and received a few hundred pounds (which had already been spent) to cover furnishings. By the time the Social Fund Money came through, the flat had been decorated, furnished and curtains/blinds put on the windows.
The woman with her two young children, said to the agent, the flat’s in good condition. And I wondered, what her impression would be, if we’d rolled back time six months and instead of a tidy habitable place – she’d seen the rodent droppings and excreta on the walls.
The darkest hour is almost over and I’m psyching myself-up to make that call to Professor K. Wish me luck.
