Blog 190609 *Robot* M-u-s-t p-r-e-p-a-r-e f-o-r t-h-e n-o-r-m-a-l w-o-r-l-d

I love signing on in my home town. Desperate slightly eerie people, but none that know you any more. Mainly plumber-types shifting about anxiously, and some hideous creature trying to glam up her lidl existence with a primark handbag, smeared lipstick and a massive belt that her waistline clearly didn’t warrant.

To add to my natural ‘delusions of grandeur’ image, I walk in and I know the girl on the front desk. I used to live with her back in the old dole days, when everyone spent each others giros on a dry packet of golden Virginia.

I also knew her sister (Ibiza 95, brief fling with housemate), so I’m almost family. Mmmmmmmmmmmm, DWP family. The mafia are everywhere.

However, I’m not an official member really, and now I’ve found a job I thought it might be okay to send the old UB40 in and not bother to sign on. I mean, surely that’s a waste of everyone’s time right?

A horrible looming ‘I am poor’ feeling crept over me after another weekend of debauchery in east London, and wincing, I went to the library to look at my online banking.

Online banking and speed dating in a public place? I hear you cry. I actually get off on it in a smug, survivalist kind of way.

Nope. No dole money. PANIC! Do I contact them and risk being told off for not attending, miss high-and-mighty-too-good-for-this-queue? Do I just wait.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,nah, my days in supported housing taught me to CONTACT THEM.

Aha! I have a BT line. But that stupid 0845 number’s been in the news as a royal rip-off (hm, ‘royal’, would love to see Lizzy in the line-up scratching her arse). I cunningly find the local number and off I go. My marvellous powers of negotiation, (that was an interesting course), pay off, and the lady finds my dole card on the top of the pile in the drawer.

So never more shall I arrive like a superstar, fresh out of Cannes, suitcase in my mum’s car, begging for milky tokens. In the old days the tan would have given away a holiday, but for 90p a pop you can turn yourself orange in the back of an amusement arcade nowadays.

Thank God for drawers. And piles.