I recognise this description, I live much of it too. Never in my life have I lived as frugally as I live now.ohsocynical wrote:Yesterday we saw friends from twelve years ago...Lots of catching up and was struck anew at how little the Tories really know or care about how a big percentage of the country lives. Even I'd forgotten just how hard it can get...
They have a son who joined the army 11 years ago...He did two tours of Afghanistan. Injured physically and mentally he is having a hard job managing his temper. He is living with his parents while he goes through all the hoops of claiming disalbility etc. but she is becoming afraid of him, fears he'll lash out soon. Needless to say he doesn't do it when his father's around. Even so she says she's happier he's at home where they can keep an eye on him. His dad takes him to a medical centre for veterans for treatment.
He said it makes him feel sick. He said when he was a boy he was used as we all were to seeing men who'd lost limbs or had burns from the war and his mother saying, 'don't stare, he got that in the war'...
Recently when they were at the centre, he saw a whole roomful of young men with one or more limbs missing. He said the reality of what really happens made him come over faint.
Their other son moved back in with them when he split with his partner. He has a daughter who is now living in Wales, so in order not to lose touch with her, every couple of weeks her husband hires a car, drives down, picks their granddaughter up, she stays overnight and then they take her back the following day
They rent from a housing association.
They both work - always have done, but are classed as low pay.
We were chatting about utility bills.
I said I only showered every other day to save money and felt like a big spender when she said she and hubby only take one bath a week. They make do with a good strip down wash the rest of the week. She haunts supermarkets when they're filling up the reduced shelves and says if she times it right she can buy bread at 19 pence a loaf.
I was left feeling bloody guilty...
I got knocked over by an a motorist running a red light in the USA several years ago. I received nothing to compensate me for this but the experience of what it's like to live through a series of unpleasant events beyond my control. I don't underestimate the value of this experience. One catastrophe after another, personal, global. It was miraculous I'm not dead or broken. The orthopaedic surgeon looked at the bone bruising and said the vehicle hit me going 40 mph or so. Yep, that’s what people saw too. He couldn't understand how nothing was broken. I'll likely live with pain the rest of my life - sometimes little pain, sometimes bad pain. I'm ageing, the pain sometimes makes me tired. My capacity for active work and movement remains.
'Goddess bless you, Big Time!', a Hindu monk eagerly said to me, demanding the monk moving his wheelchair push faster to reach me as I walked for the last time through the Vedanta retreat, near where I'd lived, before I left to come home to the UK.
