Here we go again.
I left the pub on Monday, and I cried when I told my boss lady that I was going, because I loved it. Good friends both sides of the bar, something to do, money in the bank, or that was the theory. Without stable hours, my top-up benefit claims would be fluffed at worst, and extremely complicated at best. So poof, I’m gone. Heavy heart and feeling like I’ve failed again.
This morning, after calling JobCentre Plus and reclaiming Income Support just four weeks after I’d stopped claiming it, I thought it would be a good idea to try to placate my letting agents by offering to catch up with my rent arrears.
They responded by threatening me with a Section 21 notice. Oh, here we go again. For two weeks of arrears that I’ve offered to pay and set a date on? Don’t make me homeless for that. Christ. Will this nightmarish merry-go-round actually ever fecking end?
I’ve filled in the forms for a loan from the Social Fund to clear my arrears and *that* electricity bill but I’m not holding my breath as in a telephone assessment they told me that my circumstances weren’t an emergency, despite now they’ve mentioned the eviction process, which ups the fear game a little.
So I’m in another email-slanging-match, sitting at my desk explaining my circumstances to someone new at the letting agents, and wondering when, if, it’s all going to end. Repeating myself, and repeating myself, and repeating myself like a groundhog day of no money, no rent, some money, catch up with rent, then no money, no rent, and all the while the same email conversations back and forth.
And before anyone suggests it, I have considered moving to a cheaper property, but the cost of moving, rustling up a deposit, rent in advance, moving van etc is utterly unfathomable. If I had the money to move, I wouldn’t be in arrears with my rent. Two weeks, that’s all I’m asking from a man who has a an alleged portfolio of hundreds of properties. I need two weeks to keep a roof over my sons head a lot more than you need my £334.62.
Ms Jack Monroe, Southend on Sea.