Stress City in Scottish Meanderings

I raided the shed (think ultimate gloryhole) the other night and within minutes had produced my first school Italian grammar book and Cassell's English-Italian dictionary (a present for my 16th birthday as I was leaving home to go to college the following day to start a secretarial studies with languages course 100 miles away). The grammar book was missing a front page but otherwise both were in peak condition.

Which means they've been knocking around for 46 years.

Take that Marie Kondo :)


I've had a bad couple of weeks which has probably been partly due to stress and definitely due to the result of a tribunal hearing I had to attend last week to appeal against having my benefit stopped. Over here one of our benefits is called Employment Support Allowance (ESA) which amounts to around £64 a week and which I was on for about a year. Every so often you have to have an assessment organised by the Department of Work and Pensions which determines whether you’re fit for work or not. These assessments are a hotbed of lies, deception and outright abuse as staff do everything in their power to stop people getting money they’re entitled to.

This sounds like an exaggeration but I can assure you it’s not - people have gone to them in wheelchairs and been written up as having walked there, gone with friends or family to assist them and been written up as having got there under their own steam, said they have a dog which gets walked by friends and been written up as taking the dog out for 3 walks a day - you get the gist. I honestly had no idea how corrupt this system was until I became a part of it myself.

Anyway I had one of the assessments in August of last year and in September my ESA benefit was stopped. You can appeal if you disagree with the decision and you’re then given a date for a hearing where you go before a tribunal to state your case and answer questions. How this goes very much seems to depend on who’s on the tribunal - i.e. whether they’re nice people or not - there have been some absolute horror stories where not once ounce of concern or respect has been shown to folk who are clearly ill.

There’s a Facebook group page for people with ME/CFS which gives advice and information about benefits so after I appealed, I went on there and asked for any advice anyone could give me. I was told I would probably have to wait months - perhaps up to a year - for a hearing date - and in the meantime here was a list of things I could do. One of the things mentioned was to apply for Universal Credit - a fairly new benefit the government want everyone to get onto.

I knew it would make me ill to go through the application process plus it would annoy me because you basically have to go looking for work even if you produce a Medical Certificate saying you’re not fit for work! Anyway I did it, figuring it may at least bring in some money even though when I used the benefits calculator it said I would only be eligible for £15 a week. And then was shocked to get a letter in on the 30th of January saying my hearing was on the 26th of February!

It was a huge effort writing to everyone and preparing a personal statement of my own especially as any evidence has to be submitted a week before the hearing but I managed to amass letters from my doctor, psychiatrist, homeopathist, a community psychiatric nurse, counselling supervisor, my brother, last employer and the University providing evidence of my illness and saying it would be detrimental to me to work at the moment and got it all sent off in time. I had also managed to get hold of a representative from the local council’s Revenues and Benefits Department - Jamie - who was going to make a case for me and also accompany me to the hearing.

As you can imagine, the day of the tribunal was really nerve-racking and I was quite worried because I had been too ill to meet up with Jamie beforehand. However he had a chat with me 10 minutes before we were due to go in and told me what to expect. Normally when you’re called, the rep and client both go in and the tribunal asks questions for around half an hour then the rep is called back in for the decision which he then relays to the client.

When the time came though, only Jamie was called in and when he returned he said they were willing, on the basis of the evidence already supplied, to award me the work-related component of the benefit (meaning I would have to fulfill some commitments at the local Job Centre) but if I wanted to try for the support component (about £10 a week more and with no commitments) then I could go in and answer the questions. I only had a few minutes to decide and had no clue what to do so asked Jamie for advice. He admitted he’d seen people talk themselves out of getting anything at all, so not wanting to risk it, I took the work-related component.

I was delighted that I’d won without having the stressful experience of facing the tribunal and having to prove I was ill and unfit for work even though I’d potentially done myself out of £40 a month. Jamie was finished for the day so chatted to me for a while afterwards and in the course of that conversation, I said I was impressed that people were being treated a lot better at the Job Centre when I’d been there for my first Universal Credit appointment.

Immediately his face fell.

“You haven’t applied for that have you?”

“Yes - why?”

“Oh that’s a complete game changer. The government want everyone on Universal Credit and once you’re in the system you can’t get out so instead of getting ESA for 2 years, you’ll only get the backdated amount for September to January then you’ll automatically be put onto Universal Credit.”

“But I might not get anything for Universal Credit and if I do it’s a lot less than ESA!”

“Yeah ...... I wish I’d known you were thinking of doing that - I would have advised against it.”

I literally sat there with my mouth hanging open for a good 10 seconds unable to believe what I was hearing.

“Can’t I stop the claim? They haven’t paid me any money yet.”

“Unfortunately not. Once you’ve had your appointment confirming your identity that’s you in the system.”

So I won - but I didn’t. I’ve basically done myself out of £64 a week for 2 years and all that effort, time, resources and energy was completely wasted. It makes absolutely no sense. And the annoying thing is they’re still asking me for evidence for the Universal Credit claim - they want bank statements going back to September last year now - and of course I don’t want to supply anything in the hope it’ll all get ditched! Apparently it doesn’t work like that though.

To say I’m gutted is an understatement.

All I can think to do is write to my MP which I’ve done this week so we’ll see what comes of that. It’s so unfair and it’s really done a number on my health.


And we have no babies making any appearance yet.

The due date’s not until the 7th of March but Nikki was really struggling last week and was looking forward to getting a sweep from the midwife mid week. However when she got to the surgery she got told she wasn’t getting one and broke down in tears to the extent an emergency appointment with a consultant was made to see if she could get induced soon. They gave her a date of today but when she phoned the hospital at the weekend, they said there were quite a few folk in front of her so it definitely wouldn’t be happening today but she was quite far up the list. So she’s been bouncing like crazy on her ball and going for walks and doing all the other things desperate heavily-pregnant women do in the last few awful weeks to no avail.

Having stayed in all weekend trying to conserve energy, I was going completely stir crazy so went to table tennis this afternoon thinking that’ll probably jinx it and he’ll come tonight! Didn't work though - so far anyway.

She has her best friend lined up to take the girls - poor Jane is desperate to take them and has been on standby for a week now but Nikki’s not even giving her details of what’s going on far less anything else - and another friend is earmarked to get her through the early stage of labour then hopefully I’ll shimmy in at the end bit but the other friend works full-time so if he comes during the week she’ll be scuppered and I’m absolutely terrified she asks me to come up then and I exhaust myself before he’s even born.

And then there’s afterwards. With Lily & Lilah I was hours before I could get away and I remember leaving the maternity hospital at midnight after Lilah was born 4 years ago in the early evening and being so dizzy I had to walk really slowly to the car and sit in it for ages before I could attempt driving home. And then I had to walk Trooper, drive out to Pitmedden to relieve Jane who’d been looking after Lily, get to bed and then get Lily & myself up in the morning and drive into the hospital. It was awful because it was right at the beginning of being ill and I had no idea what was wrong with me.

God this entry is so dismal - I’m so sorry! I just could really do with catching a break and I’m fed up of feeling so lousy all the time. Bailey has been doing an odd thing with his breathing as well lately - it doesn’t look good. I know at 17 he may not have long left but I don’t know if I could cope with losing him so soon after the other two.

Let me finish with a cheery photo or two and hopefully the next entry will be full of new babies and lovely pics and be a lot more positive!

I tried to put some quirky pics in my calendar this year - this is the one for February - afficionandos of the film Brief Encounter will recognise Laura (Celia Johnson) - I love the wistful expression on her face, reflected in the train window, as she realises she has just started to fall in love with Alec (Trevor Howard).


And I was delighted to see this lovely bloom on one of my orchids recently - for those of you in the know about these things, should I be attaching that flower to one of the stakes? I did that with one of the other ones and it seemed to bring it to a grinding halt.


And one of Nikki's trio of cats - Daisy - having a very cute conversation with me through her kitchen window :)