Another Year Older

Today is my birthday (I'm fifty two years old) and Tuesday was the anniversary of my moving in with Mrs Gruff , originally for just a few months, while I acquired sufficient funds to move back to Northumberland, where my possessions remain. Sadly, I'm still in Lancashire and still penniless. The only improvement in my circumstances, after a year of short-term, low paid, temporary agency jobs, punctuated by periods of unemployment (for which, saving one desperate week, I have not claimed any benefits) is that I am not suffering the broken ribs that made my almost entirely single-handed removals such fun. I had to load and unload my van fourteen times with boxes of my belongings, which was awkward and uncomfortable, but decided that 'discretion [was] the better part of valour' and conceded defeat when faced with the the sofa, bed, refrigerator and cooker, and spent one hundred and fifty pounds paying two men to transport them just five miles to the secure repository, leaving me with just sufficient money to buy diesel for the two hundred mile drive south. The job took them less than half an hour.

I've been without an income for four weeks and see no prospect of an early return.