And Here Comes the Spanner

 I did say last time that every time I consider sorting out my time table so I have more time to work on my career something comes along and derails my plans. Well this time it was a form from the DWP.

The DWP - the Department of Works and Pensions. Or as I prefer to call them the Department of *ankers and Perverts. Seriously, what kind of person wants to earn their daily bread by quite literally stealing it out of the mouths of crippled veterans and those that were born with physically or mentally a bad hand in life?  What kind of person can go to bed at night knowing that their employer makes their money by refusing to give funds to a woman who is dying of cancer, a child who lost their leg in a car accident and a veteran who sees his best friend's skull bursting like an over ripe plum every time he closes his eyes? Seriously what kind of person do you have to be?

And they say these supervillains are unrealistic because of their lack of empathy and their evilness. Um, I think their only unrealism is that they are open about their desire to run the world and the fact they are willing to stamp over people to get there. Now, if you want realistic then have your villain say that they don't want to rule the world, oh no, no, no, they don't want to rule the world, they just want their country to be strong and great and to do this they must cut out the fat, reduce the wastage, decrease the unemployment rate and build a strong economy. Wait a minute, this seem very familiar. Why is that? No, don't tell me, it will come to me in a moment.... Let me think about it....

So, that aside, I had a twenty five page form to fill out where basically every question is - tell us why you are too useless to society to have a proper job? Twenty five pages that you have to fill out by hand in really tiny writing to fit it all in because if you use extra pages to fully explain why you are not a valuable human being well, let's put it this way I used extra pages when I had to fill out one of these forms in 2017 and strangely all of what I'd written on those pages was undelivered. The fact that it was posted in the same envelope as the rest of the form and yet some how was undelivered is a mystery never fully explained. I guess there must be a post office ghost that can some how extract extra sheets of paper from between the pages of DWP forms without breaking the seals on the envelopes that surround both forms and extra sheets. A phantom indeed and far more powerful than any theater born spook.

Now part of my problems in dyspraxia, which means I co-ordinate very slowly and that make writing standard size letters difficult. Writing the tiny size required for a DWP form is even more difficult and time consuming if they are to be readable by anyone who is not a doctor's secretary and as the reviewers who are employed by the DWP are not medically trained I doubt any of them are doctor's secretaries. Therefore, after spending a week and a half complying my answers in rough form I then spent a further two weeks writing them out on the form, crafting them letter by letter, all in black ink, all in upper case.  Then after all that struggle, I had to take it down to the post office and pay to have it sent recorded delivery. Yes, I know they provide an envelope that you just have to make sure that it is in the post seven days before the deadline BUT if it turns up one day late they will reject your application and you will have to go to a tribunal with the second application so paying for that recorded delivery is the only way to be damn sure they get it on time.

So having fought my way through that soul sucking morass I was finally able to go back to my career, only to discover that it is now the summer holiday. Infant Distraction incoming!!!!!!

On the plus side, we did manage to organize a whole bunch of friends to come over and help put the outer shell of my shed up so we are one step nearer to having my studio ready. Now to just silicone seal the holes in the walls, water proof it inside and out, insulate it with some new fleece lining (having discovered that the polymer foam that was originally used is one of the most flammable substances on earth), put up the marine ply inner lining and finally paint the whole thing inside and out. So nothing much to do then.

Cue manic grin and baggy eyes.

Half a Year Later, Still Thinking About Tomorrow

 Well I will sit down with the calendar and sort my schedule out. I keep promising myself that but it keeps not happening.  Just when I think I have a handle on life it goes and breaks. Some days I wonder if I am just insane to keep trying, then I remember that were I tried to get a 'proper' job I didn't even get a reply.

The long and the short of it is that we have moved with all the joys, plus some more, that comes with that.

First up was the fact at we were only moving to be closer to my son's school. Cutting a long story short, my son was going to a school within walking distance from our house but they were unable to cope with his ADHD outbursts or meet his extra curriculum needs so he was transferred to an SRB. There was some shinangans over that. I was told when they asked me to sign the paperwork so they could apply for the transfer that I would be able to call a halt to the process if his behavior improved. Once the doctors had finally allowed him the ADHD medication his behavior did improve so I asked about leaving him in the school where he had made some friends, only to discover that as he already had an EHCP then I had no rights to call a halt on the transfer. I should have read the fine print... I would have done so if they had ever bothered to show me the fine print.

So the transfer went through, which meant I had to have him out of bed at six o'clock in the morning to have him ready for the taxi at seven twenty. Not cool. It was wearing him out and I'm not entirely sure I was human any more. Therefore we applied for the house move, which we duly received.  We were supposed to be picking up the keys to the new house on the 3rd of March... and that was where the fun began.

Because we were all of five minutes over the Norfolk/Suffolk boarder Norfolk County Council promptly went 'he's no longer a Norfolk child and therefore is not our responsibility, you'll have to put him in a Suffolk school'. So we moved to be closer to the school and found that he could be moved to another school on the far side of Suffolk, immediately restarting the cycle.  Therefore we had to start petitioning the relevant authorities to allow him to stay where he was.  We wound up having a three way slug feist going on. Suffolk was saying that Norfolk had to contact Suffolk to ask Suffolk's permission for Norfolk to send them the paperwork. Norfolk was saying that it was the school's responsibility to do a NEW SRB placement application. The school was saying that they were quite happy for my son to finish his primary school education there, it was the responsibility of ONE of the councils to cough up the funding and the transport.  Round and round it goes and were it stops nobody knows.

We had to push back the move date five weeks to try and give them time to sort it out but you are only allowed to postpone the move once so we couldn't move it back any further and the transport hadn't been sorted by the time our move in date arrived - on the twenty fourth of April. So thinking about it, we pushed it back more than five weeks and it still wasn't enough.  Please excuse me while I go and laugh manically in the corner for a while.

As transport hadn't been arranged I had no choice but to try and book a taxi for the school days when I had no help. Have you ever had to try and book a lift during the school run times? It took me three hours to book taxi runs for two days and cost me about a hundred quid in fares and that was with me not bothering to head home after dropping him off. Instead I saw him safely through the school gates and then went and found a Greggs where I could hire a seat for the price of a coffee. It did give me the chance to catch up on some writing that with the house move had been seriously neglected.  Unfortunately it meant that the house moving was neglected as I have yet to work out how to be in two places at once. A time turner would also be a great addition to my collection. I could be fighting my way through the house work and be catching up on my sleep at the same time.

The up swing of all this jerking around is that my collection of books are still in boxes, my shed that will house my studio is still in pieces and all my merchandise is still in storage.  I can feel the edges of a hysterical scream bubbling up and I'm not sure I can keep a lid on it.

Despite this, I have been trying to work on my career. Keeping up with the emails has been a big part of it and I have managed to work on doing a new avatar for facebook. At the moment I have been using a photograph of myself but I have now drawn a self portrait and I also plan to upload it as a line on my Tee-springs store.

https://vjbartlett.creator-spring.com/

Now to do so I just have to find where the printer/scanner has gone. Can I cry yet?

Happy New Year!

 I know I'm late but Happy New Year everyone!

I know that a monthly update is usually considered the absolute minimum but life happens. Life most definitely finds a way - a way to jerk me around until I feel sick. I don't need a merry-go-round to feel nausea, just trying to keep up with the demands thrown my way has a knack of doing it.

On the good news I did manage to launch my Springs store before Christmas!  I could have sworn black is white that I had done a post about that but I guess I either didn't or I did and didn't manage to post it so blogger has swallowed it.

Therefore, to make up lost time (drum roll please!)...

https://vjbartlett.creator-spring.com/

 What is more we've already to have some sales in the Low Sun line.  Low Sun being a painting I did of a boy watching the sun set from the dune near the channel at Wells-next-to-Sea. Unfortunately we will not be able to revisit this scene as said dune is no longer there, having been eroded to nothing by foot traffic in the last ten years. I could make a comment about human nature but I think it has been said before. Instead I'll say that I am proud to have caught this place in paint before it disappeared.  This is why humans have made art since we started as a species, ever since our ancestors painted ash and ground stones across the walls of caves - we are trying to catch our memories before they slide away from us, to set them down so if we are gone before we can tell the next generation then something of our minds linger in this world to be remembered.

It is amazing what lengths we will go to in the race to be remembered.  Is this what scares so many alien races in fiction? The fact that they struggle to match our drive? Just a theory.

In addition to a snap shot of the a fore mentioned Low Sun here is a snap shot of my current favourite of the range available - Draconic Discussion.

Feel free to check out the designs on the links on both this post and my shop. There are thirteen separate lines of produces - one for each design completed so far.

Be safe everyone and good luck.