Outsourcing

I’m sat in a little café in a part of this peninsula that I never often reach. I’ve just taken out £50 which I do not expect will last me the week. I’m thinking about where I have to go in an hour’s time. The café is a cute little place, an old home, with fairy lights and free wifi. The coffee is weak, but only £1.20. I’ve been here for the few hours it has been raining and I’m waiting to go along for a medical review. The government outsources the assessment not to the NHS, but to Atos Origin – some stab at a medical consultancy.

Its purpose is to assess if I am fit for work, what help I need to get into work, if there is anything they can do to get me to work, if they can trip me up and force me to work; there seems a pressing theme. Work.

Not that much of a surprise really. I’ve been out of work for the last four months. It is about time that I started thinking about just pressing on with things and ignoring my problem again. It’s a cycle after all, so let’s get riding. Problem is that at the moment it feels like I’m peddling up hill.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but there doesn’t seem to be a need for them. Perhaps I should just join the armed forces. I’ve always thought I might like to die for something slightly ridiculous. I once had a dream that I threw myself in front of a car to save a plastic bottle from being crushed. So getting shot at by people I’ve never met seems like the same flavor of stupidity. At least it removes the need to think for myself. If I’m lucky it will even remove the need to end my own life. I can outsource.

Radio

When I am at my most drastically unhappy I like to stream the radio through my computer and flitter about until I reach radio 4. It means I can write with the laptop and still have something going on, some person talking to me. I can’t bear to be on my own. You all know that by now. I don’t cope well with absences.
I’m a writer and we need to have language filtering through us. In winter you wear a jacket; when I want to write I wear the noise around me. Coffee shops always heave with chattering people in the winter. Fuelled by caffeine and lust, I watch people interact with each other and live through their lives like a parasite. I’m in love with them all and would love to get closer and know them. Often I do.