September 18th 2011
It is Sunday today, so I can let the boy stay asleep as long as he wants to – or at least up until midday as he wants to meet a friend at the skate park in the next town seven miles away at one p.m. because there is what he calls a Skateboard ‘Jam’ going on there.
Jam ? Jam ? I thought jam was something you spread on bread. I suppose it is another ‘import’ from American culture.
As we both went to sleep diabolically late – about 3 a.m. – I slept late too. I woke up first at 8 a.m. because of noisy breakfast goings on in the next room.
I was wide awake and slightly cold despite having gone to bed fully clothed. The thin, cheap and nastily shoddy duvet the skinflint B&B owner supplies is useless at keeping me warm, and it’s only early autumn, not even winter yet !
The room is a bit like an underground prison cell too; small, poky and cold, dark, dank and airless and with only a small, narrow window high up under the ceiling of the room which hardly lets in any light. It is really a ghastly place to live.
My thirteen year year old son and I have been living here three months now, forced to live almost like vagrants thanks to the vindictive nastiness of the benefits system which has systematically persecuted us ever since I became a lone father over ten years ago, bringing up my son entirely by myself. (more…)
SINGLE DAD 