Picking Your Battles

Sorry for the long absence I have been waging a war against the world.  In true Joolz fashion I have been fighting the forces of darkness.  However unlike the usual Joolz I have caved on the big stuff so I can win the smaller stuff.  This is where the 'picking your battles' part comes in.  You see it's all about priorities.

When I was looking to buy a house I did a full secret squirrel search on properties including research into planning permission on neighbouring plots.  To my horror, a few years after I moved in, I discovered my neighbour-but-one was starting to build something.  So I checked on the local council planning application list for that address and nothing came up apart from a shop sign application (the plot is in the shops garden) and an application for 4 two storey houses that was refused.  I rang the council and they had nothing on their records.  Then someone from their office rang me back a week or so after and said 'we have nothing on our system, what are they up to?' in a mock-british-bobby voice (I expected him to say 'ello, 'ello, 'ello what's going on 'ere then?).  So i filled them in and off the investigation went.  When I called them a month later I was told 'why Ms Bojangles that planning permission had been granted long before you moved in .... it was always on our system .... you must have searched incorrectly ... sorry it seems all logs of your telephone calls have disappeared'  and when I checked the information was suddenly there, right above the application for the shop sign and the first refusal.  The council refused to escalate the issue and when i asked for time-stamped data entry documents they provided me with very wishy washy bits of paper.  No time-stamp, it looked just like any old excel print-out.  So what would you do?  I now have houses looking into my garden.  I dropped this one, I planted trees instead :) 

Now I have challenged my council tax banding.  I have the smallest house in the street yet the houses range from band A-E and I am band E!!!  I found an old probate document (with the official seal in it and everything) in with my HIP report.  In 1987 the owner of the house died leaving all her savings, possessions and the house to her daughter, which came to circa£63,000.  Now all houses had their bandings assigned in 1991 depending on how much the house was worth at the time.  For a house to be classed as band E they had to be worth between £88,000-120,000.  So in 4 years the house supposedly went from being worth a max of £63K to £88K, that's £25K difference (close to 40% increase).  Ah ha but what about the house market boom of the late 80's??? yes yes I know but remember the house market crash of the early 90's!!! Using two methods I obtained a rough idea of how the market fluctuated during this time.

1) Nationwide house price calculator [House price calculator]. This takes into account the rise and fall of house prices in various locations.  I am classed as Outer Metropolitan.  I calculated how the house price would have varied between 1987 and 1991.  This site suggested that the maximum the house price would have increased by was 27% (= £80,000 which was about the national average at the time) and this was the second quarter of 1989.  By 1991 the price had floored to £64,000.  This means that the price was about the same in 1991 as it was in 1987.

2) I wikipedia'd the house price boom and crash of the 80's/90's [boom and crash graph] and saw that this agreed with the findings from 1) - UK house prices in 1991 were almost equal to those in 1987.  

So what a stroke of luck finding that document.  The VOA are now investigating.  They said they have the right to visit my house and look through my documents (I must remember to maintain a social stockpile of custard creams ... and I may accidentally slip a saucy pic in the pages of the probate ;).  So unless there is some monumental mistake I have made, or the houses in the street doubled in price between 1987 and 1989 I will keep fighting this one! 

On another note I lost my job.  Boooo I hear you say.  Well it turns out that the government can preach rules and regulations to the private industry but don't exactly like playing fair themselves.  Apparently I had to be dismissed before 2 years or i'd get redundancy rights! They advertised for my replacement a day after my dismissal, I applied, I did NOT get an interview.  Can they get away with this ... well according to them their policy states they can. I have asked for the actual reasons for why my contract was not renewed for a 5th time and 2 months later I am still waiting that reason.  Oh and how did I get my notice served?  I was told in front of a room full of my colleagues.  Did I appeal it ... hell yeah!!  what happened? I offered the appeal decision maker my evidence, he refused to see it and then upheld the dismissal on the grounds that he didn't see any evidence.  At the same time I made a claim to the employment tribunal court because of another little thing like my manager forgetting to tell me about a permanent position that was advertised.  I was livid, I had evidence, the fight was dirty but I was legalled up and I had the union behind me.  The problem was that I needed proper legal advice and I couldn't get the answers to the important questions.  I was spending hours and days surfing the web looking for clear cut advice or similar situations, but I found very little.  Time was dragging on and I felt like I was wading into a fight with my helmet on back to front and a lame horse.  As it turns out even if I had won the claim the reward would have been minimal, if i didn't get my job back they would only have had to pay me one week's wages.  So regretfully I withdrew the claim because ultimately I couldn't justify wasting thousands of the taxpayers money for a mere £200.  

The claim was taking it's toll on my little family, I was stressed and the kids were getting distressed.  There was other stuff going on that I was finding hard to deal with as well.  It was becoming unbearable.  So my decision was also based on the reasoning that if I was to overcome the issues at home, and regarding my health, I had to walk away from the bigger battle as much as I hated doing so.  

So there we have it.  We are not failures because we walk away from things we are successes when we know what fights to walk away from and what to hold on to with the determination of a monkey dangling over a crocodile.  I have still achieved a lot due to my fierce persistence and niggling habit of sticking ones nose into things but I know I will not win everything, and even if I could have won there are some things that are not worth sacrificing.

Yours humbly, Sir Joolz of Copout-alot

Painting it Black

Last year a friend suggested I write about mental health disorders.  I can't remember how we got onto the subject but I know that since that time I have rewritten the post about 5 times.  Sometimes I get to the end and then delete the whole thing.  Mental health, in particular depression, is very hard for me to describe let alone talk about.  I think the main problem was that I wasn't in 'that place' during my earlier attempts.  It is very difficult to write about a subject without being at the helm of an episode at that time.  However I now feel ready to try and write about it again.  I haven't had a bad episode in a few years but recent events have plunged me back down to that place.  It's not as bad an episode as I have experienced before but it's bad enough that I feel it won't take much before I am free-falling into the darkness again.

For me an episode is triggered by the feeling that I have lost control of everything.  I will have spent a lot of effort improving my quality of life and when events occur that threaten this I start to panic.  The result is that I try even harder to recapture my happiness.  I become stressed, and every thought in my head is focused on finding a way to fight the threat.  I start to feel suffocated, I become exhausted and I lie in bed, unable to sleep, trying to think of a way out of the hole I'm falling down.  The more control I lose the more desperate I become and the more I try to control the small things that before would not have bothered me.  I become irrational and my mood darkens.  The worst episodes stem from when multiple threats have presented themselves at the same time.  This is what has happened recently.  I haven't cooked a proper meal in weeks.  I do not shower as often.  I get angry very quickly.  I find faults in the smallest of things.  My relationship with my husband and children is strained.  I am tired ... all the time.  I don't want to participate in anything.  I have no patience with people.  I cry ... a lot. The worst of this is the strong feeling that life would be better for everyone if I wasn't here.  As soon as I get to this point I completely lose it and have a full breakdown.  Like a volcano that explodes after a steady build up in pressure everything comes out and it's usually loud, violent and can take time to cool down.  But it's not the explosion that's the dangerous part it's what comes after ... the silence.  When you have no more tears and no more energy.  When the sadness is still there and you still feel despair, but you also feel rational.  This for me is the dangerous moment, this is the fight or flight moment.  If you know someone who you suspect is depressed and who has suddenly gone quiet, this is when they need you the most.  A hug or a kind word could mean the difference between life and death.   

Ironically I have just watched an advert about mental health discrimination and how we should start a conversation to help end the stigma associated with mental health.  I once confided in a manager that I was being treated for depression.  I thought I would get some understanding, and hopefully someone I could confide in when I was feeling 'under the weather', but instead he used this against me.  Over a period of 2 years he subjected me to bi-monthly meetings where he told me that I was a poor employee with an attitude problem, even though my appraisal reports said the contrary.  These meetings could last 1-3 hours and he wouldn't let me go until he had reduced me to tears.  If I complained he would tell his managers that I was 'over sensitive due to my depression'.  In a grievance meeting he asked me what medication I was on as potential side effects could explain my attitude.   No action was taken against him for this, or for any of the 'meetings' he had arranged.  Apparently this was his right as a manager.  I knew that I had to leave when one day, after another brutal meeting, I found myself under a table with a scalpel, wanting to end it all.  I moved on but I vowed from that day on never to tell anyone about my depression, especially managers.  Even with family I feel that if I was to mention my past depression, or that I felt depressed, they would think I was making it up or exaggerating my situation. 

Then there are the tablets.  Fluoxitine and Citalopram were my poison.  Did they work, yes.  Did they cure my depression, no.  I was aware that my happiness was false.  It was like someone else had control of my mind.  I became overly happy, manic even.  In October 2008 I took myself off the tablets.  I struggled through the next year. I moved house, I was made redundant and I was pregnant.  I had to disclose my depression to the midwife who recorded in my notes that I was a post natal depression risk.  Strangely enough being a mother had the opposite effect.  I had this little person in my arms who relied on me and I controlled every aspect of her existence.  I was focused and I was happy.  I haven't been completely free of depression but I had been coping better.    

So what about counselling?  I have tried that as well.  The NHS allowed me to have 3 sessions and those sessions helped me more then a mountain of tablets.  I sometimes wonder why doctors are so ready to dish out the pharmaceuticals yet restrict the availability of this vital service.  To stop a volcano erupting you would need to steadily release the pressure not just poor cold water over the top once a day and hope that does the trick.  Talking helped, so maybe this conversation initiative, organised by Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, has some merit to it.

Time to change, Lets End Mental Health Discrimination.  

Those that know me would probably tell you that I am a happy person with a good life, and probably would never suspect that I could ever be depressed.  This makes it worse.  I feel like I have no right to be depressed, and that by allowing myself to fall back I have let myself and all those around me down.  I know others who have depression, they didn't tell me I just knew.  I think that everyone must know someone that they suspect has a mental health problem.  Many would just choose to ignore the signs, or avoid the person completely.  OCD, eating disorders and personality disorders etc have a stigma attached to them.  We are given guidance on how to respond to someone with a physical disability but not much out there to help those with a mental health problem.  

Just by typing all this out I can feel myself relaxing.  The millions of thoughts tangled in my head have started to straighten out and file themselves accordingly.  This calm feeling may go away after a few hours and my sadness may reappear tomorrow but at least for just a few hours I can forget.  I can play with my child or talk to my husband without snapping or crying.  For just a few hours I can look at the wall and not want to paint it black.

Big Hugs, Joolz

Student Groans

Dear generous people at the Student Loans Company,

It has been 13 and a half years since you proudly invested in my future.  On a warm and sunny August morning after my A-level results had been collected and I had discovered that I had been accepted into a modest University (It did not matter to you that it was once a polytechnic!) you gladly and willingly provided me with the financial means to kick start a long and successful career.  You sent me off like a delicate yet excited butterfly, with faith and hope in your heart that one day I shall make something of myself and gladly repay your kindness and low rate of interest.  You may have cheekily imagined that I would wrap the final  payment around a lavender scented candle (bought from a pretentious boutique no less) to express my gratitude.  I therefore feel that it is only fair that I update you on my progress over the years ....... 

You will be pleased to know that I did fairly well during my studies.  My academic year was one of the first that was introduced to self-paid tuition fees, but thankfully you had provided me with the funds to pay them.  Despite your kindness, having to pay student fees meant I also had to hold down a part time job to pay for silly things like accommodation and food.  In addition to this I had to arrange a weekly allowance from my parents as a top up to supplement those times I had to attend my classes and work on my assignments.  But like a good citizen of this great country I plodded on and battled through those 3 years to obtain an upper second class degree (with honours may I add ... yes I know, you expected nothing less of me).  My student life was a typical one and although I didn't have as wild an experience as some of my fellow peers I look back on those days with fondness and a knowing smile.   You may be pleasantly surprised to know that I also obtained a higher degree with distinction.  I had to cheat on you a little bit and arrange a personal loan to cover the costs but as you don't generally deal with the post grad elite I knew you wouldn't mind.  

Like a beaming parent you will be ecstatic to find out that I did indeed enter into the career I had coveted since I was 12 years old.  Applications ran into their thousands and yet I was deemed special enough to warrant a place amongst these working angels.  I worked diligently and learnt fast.  Unfortunately this was where it started to go wrong, this is where our hopes and dreams for the future started to fall apart like a well cooked leg of lamb.  

The pay was bad ... I mean it was appalling.  The knock on effect was that I couldn't afford to get on the housing ladder, or even rent a flat by myself.  I expected to start at the bottom but the forecast was bleak.  Inflation was rising and annual pay increases paled in comparison.  As my manager delicately put it "put up with it or leave, there are thousands willing to take your place".  So with sadness I left for pastures new and a slightly better salary.  This also failed to bare fruit as my new destination was a mess of confusion and bad temperament.  Micro managing tactics had bred poor practices and dodgy line managers.  When redundancies were announced I volunteered myself to leave this impending disaster behind.  There was no sadness in this instance.      

But wait there is a small speck of light at the end of the tunnel.  I had married a few years beforehand to a lovely man (who fortunately for me was already a few feet on the property ladder) and we had our first child on the way.  We had also managed to find our first home, a little detached bungalow (2009 was a big year for us).  We had to compromise and get a run down building in an area with lots of 'character' but we were one more rung up that creaky old ladder!  For the following two years we were paddling upstream against a strong current but we fought on with true grit and determination.  I managed to find a part time job which topped up the household income .... if only slightly.  Competition for jobs and childcare costs had cornered me into the realm of 'low paid, part time job' because apparently I am not a desirable candidate for a 'well paid full time career' (oh and how I would be flogged by the Daily Mail community for being such a bad, uncaring, selfish mother if I dare return to work full time ... I am on a knife edge as it is for dipping in and out work "when I feel like it").  I can sense your disappointment in me, but I must get brownie points for keeping a foot in the door of the working world when so many have been pushed out, or have given up trying.  

At this point in time Britain is struggling to be great and our kingdom is no longer united.  The financial institutions had screwed us all over royally and the squeezed middle is baring the brunt of it.  Neighbour has turned against neighbour and everyone seems to need to know what great deal everyone else is getting.  For us, as parents, when we suffer financially those without children would scream with paranoid fury that "you shouldn't have had children if you couldn't afford them!".  There is no compassion anymore, there is no understanding.  I felt this today when other passengers pushed me out of the way and climbed over my children's buggy to get ahead of me as I was struggling to exit the bus (sad face emoticon).  Prices have soared, companies are going onto administration, taxes have risen, the value of a customer is no longer important, insurance companies are corrupt and MP's are demanding a 32% pay rise whilst they promote a cap on everyone else's at 1%.  However, throughout all this and through clever degree level tactics I have cleared debts and maintained a good credit score.  I am presently trying to secure finance for a much needed family car and you would think the main lenders would welcome me and my fantastic financial maintenance with open arms .... will they bugger!!  

Anyway I digress.  So as it stands I am presently considering my options as I masquerade in the lowest rank of the civil service.  I am hanging by a snippet of red tape due to not being able to secure a permanent contract after 20 months (long story and nothing to do with my performance may I add).   I can't even give you the confidence that I will eventually rise through the ranks towards independent success.  There is no future career for me in this job because there are no promotions from my level.  I do sincerely apologise for not being able to steadily contribute to my loan over the last 3 years but I am a victim of circumstance, a slave to the law of sod.

You must be heartbroken that I have let you down in such a way when your initial hopes for me were so high.  Rest assured I will keep trying, Illegitimi non carborundum and all that jazz.  Don't lose faith and don't write me off when I reach 50!  

Deeply remorseful, Joolz

p.s. it may be interesting to know that my husband was on the grant scheme and he paid his student loan off in ten years.  He is doing very well, you would be very proud x