Enforced poverty
And other fun things!!
There’s nothing better to kick off the week than a huge helping of grief. My partner Nick and I went to see ‘The Thing With Feathers’ at Watershed, starring none other than our mate Benny Cummerbund. I wear a mask in every public space I don’t need to drink/eat or talk loudly so it’s important to me to keep supporting the masked and socially distanced screenings that Watershed put on. I assumed it was roughly based on the book Grief is the Thing with Feathers (which I haven’t read) and knew I was in for an emotional time, but woooowwwww it was a lot. A man loses his wife suddenly and has to figure out how to continue life and take care of their two sons, when a crow-like being starts appearing to him. I mostly think of BC as wanker Sherlock and Mr Dickhead in the Marvel films, so this was a wonderful reminder that he’s an incredibly skilled actor.
When I saw ‘Your Fat Friend’ in the cinema last year, I spent about 45 minutes sobbing because I couldn’t believe I was finally seeing something so close to my experience portrayed in a real way instead of in clichés and throwaway jokes. The Thing with Feathers hit me in the same way - sudden death of a partner is something that not many people my age have experience with, and it was transformative to see a young widower deal with grief in ways I hugely related to. 5 stars. Honourable mention to my new waterproof mascara.
A friend of mine has recently been told by Universal Credit that the DWP need to ‘review’ their claim, so I hopped on a video call on Wednesday to help them put together the documents requested. Over the past couple of years, this has happened to me and a ton of people I know (one person has had it 3 times in the past year), and consists of submitting your bank statements for the past four months for every account you have in a ridiculously short timeframe otherwise they stop your ‘benefits’. Mine asked for a Monzo account I haven’t used since 2016, a joint account with an ex that we used to pay rent for 2 years, and my PayPal statements. Nope, I’m not hiding money in any of those. Then they phone you at a time they choose and if you don’t pick up, they stop your ‘benefits’. They pick out about 5 transactions per statement per bank account and ask you what they are, and if they think you’re lying then they stop your ‘benefits’.
‘Benefits’ has got inverted commas around the word because the DWP keep poor and disabled people in enforced poverty, which isn’t exactly a benefit. We’re not allowed to save enough money for a deposit on a house, so we’re forced to live in rented housing which is almost impossible to find when you’re on ‘benefits’ because landlords will reject you for having unstable income. I could rant for hours about the punitive system that we have to go through to receive the bare minimum. I’m constantly worried about my PIP being taken away at renewal, but I hadn’t realised I needed to be worried about my Universal Credit as well until this process happened to me. I honestly didn’t realise it was legal to be required to show absolutely everything I spend my money on in order to keep receiving it. And now they just have that information forever! Fun.
I also tried a smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwich from Morrisons. Unfortunately they didn’t have the fancy one when I went so I just got the regular one. Taste was good, texture was mid, nausea for hours afterwards was bad. I’ll try it again at some point, but my first experiment has not been successful.
To be fair to the sandwich, I didn’t realise I was headed into a 48-hour energy crash just as I ate it, which could have been the cause of the nausea. Energy crashes are so intensely boring; I didn’t even have the energy to spend hours fishing in Animal Crossing so I had no material net positive during it. No I’m not obsessed with productivity culture, what makes you think that??? Anyway, the crash has just about lifted and I’m ticking lots of things off my to-do list today, including ‘eat an entire terrys chocolate orange in less than 15 minutes’. Champion.