I am struck by how very much I want to start blogging just as soon as I have ten million other more important things to do. Two of last week's ten million things included:
1 Being ill - well not, obviously, that I have any control over this but it renders attempts to write impossible. Which meant lying on the sofa sweating and shivering by turns, recovery possibly impeded by mounting stress as I tried to write in my head and remember what I would want to say just as soon as I could get back to the keyboard.
2 Starting my job search, and I have/had (oops, one nearly now missed) two or three applications to get in. Let's call that two, then. Or three, I've just seen another 'possible'. Hum. As you see, I am not taking this eversoseriously. Possibly because I can only do part-time and because we have been talking of re-locating which creates a somewhat surreal and unreal air over attempts to find employment. But I am shifting from my position of 'we will manage by hook or by crook til Babe2 starts school in September' to 'somehow I've got to pay off that holiday in Tunisia and raise some cash to fix the roof and go on another holiday and actually I want to be back at work now more than I want time on my hands at home while Babe2 is at pre-school'. The advantage of this change in perspective is that a somewhat casual desire to find work takes some of the pressure off feeling that my next job has to be an amazing and career- propelling move. Although that would be nice. Meantime, anything that enables me to pocket any money at all over the next few months would do. Quite how we will cover school holidays and the like once Babe2 is at school and I simply have to find a proper job, I have no idea. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I suspect I have some rude awakening to do. I am clearly not going to land on my feet in any old job, just because I want one, am I? In fact, since starting this blog post five minutes ago I have had a rejection from Job One. But it was through an agency and I had barely bothered to update my CV, let alone tweak it to match the requirements of the job I was applying for. Which was in Bournemouth anyway. Oh me, oh my, I have to serious-up.
Job Two was (I say, 'was' because I am now blatantly not going to apply for it) with something that kind of matches a lot of my skill-set but with a health/pharmaceuticals provider. Bottom line, I do not give a shit about health or pharmaceuticals. At this point in my life at least. And one of my perennial problems, that I guess I have to shake off, is a need to really really really give a shit about what I do or otherwise I get depressed by it. Which is why I stayed with my last employer for so long. I really really really care about issues relating to global poverty. I wish I could shake myself up a bit and not be so choosy but I know how I have felt having made previous wrong career moves. I left one publishing job with a major women and girl's charity some years ago now for a job that had me jetting off to meetings in Spain all the time but because the new job had me working with publishers, authors and books for the Spanish education market that I didn't, well, give a shit about, suffice to say that I didn't survive in the job very long. I wasn't got rid of, don't get me wrong. In fact my manager started to cry when I handed my notice in. But I was bored out of my tiny mind and could not go on. How very middle-class white of me.
Ho hum. I have this excited feeling that things are going to turn out just tickety-boo, that the right job is out there and things are going to be ok. You are possibly thinking that I need to wake up and smell the coffee. I am determined to push thoughts that I will never be paid to do a decent day's work again out of my mind and be positive and optimistic. I do wish that I could be paid to do the voluntary work I do!
Anyway, snow has provided the latest disruption. It was predictably exciting on Friday of last week. Well, for those of us who have ski-wear in the roof and do not have too worry too much about heating bills or where the next hot meal is going to come from, I guess. (Not that OH gets paid if the site he's on closes because of bad weather conditions and it's closed again today which is going to make an already-overdrawn month into a very difficult one. ) But this talk of hot meals and work and the like takes me on to the subject of DBrother.
I felt both sorry for him but also vindicated when OH reported back that the work with the Greeks and accommodation they were going to provide for DBrother, starting last weekend, had fallen through. Vindicated because DBrother had told OH how shocked the Greeks (by 'Greeks' I am referring to the congregation at our local Orthodox Church) were that we are not putting him up any longer and that we had not found him work. At least I hadn't promised to and then changed my mind! It did make me wonder what had gone wrong and whether DBrother had just way too optimistically presumed it was going to come off. It had sounded highly unlikely to me - a legal job with a contract and accommodation thrown in. But with a Cypriot who had a liver problem and needs someone reliable which I presume DBrother would be... It seemed manna from heaven - not speaking English, DBrother needs to work for someone who speaks Greek and those options are clearly limited over here.
What on earth is he going to do now? He is simply determined to stay here, it seems. I was impressed that he got himself off to Athens and back via the coach to Gatwick, despite losing his return ticket and having to buy another. I had totally expected OH to get a phone-call from Gatwick on Saturday evening, asking him to go and pick DBrother up. But no! (Turned out DBrother hadn't taken his English phone with him which could explain that. But he does seem determined to demonstrate his desire for independence.) The thing is, what that trip 'home' (I'm not sure where he thinks home is any more) does now mean is that DBrother has, arguably and somewhat prematurely once more spent the last of his money and has only a tiny bit left to buy food, let alone enough to pay the rent which is now due on Thursday. And having handed in his notice to Mr Khan anyway, the last month there has been financed by my £300 deposit which I am looking less and less likely to see again.
Hells bells. I have been sitting tight. I know from a couple of the ridiculous suggestions that OH made in desperation before Christmas, 'DBrother could live with us and do our house up' and 'OK, so he could live in the roof and convert it at the same time,' that DBrother has been repeatedly asking OH to let him come and live with us. At least I presume he has, despite the fact that he is still not speaking to me.
Predictably, this weekend OH did formally - and angrily, because he does not know how to approach the subject with me - ask if DBrother can move back in. I resisted the temptation to say 'over my dead body' and 'you promised me it would never come to this' and 'only if he kisses my ar*e repeatedly first'. But I do feel completely cornered and angry. OH promised me that if his brothers come over here, he will find them work and accommodation and it will not impact on me. The goalposts have in fact, as you know, changed incessantly and I still don't see any way that DBrother is going to move on from a very basic and scarcely-managing hand-to-mouth existence without speaking the language. He got a day's work last week back on the site OH had found him some work on before Christmas and having hailed a taxi in the street he had to call OH at work to speak to the taxi driver and explain where he needed to go. For crying out loud!
He would also have had work today, but having texted the foreman for DBrother last night, OH did not notice the text sent in reply at 6.30 this morning saying that yes, he wanted DBrother there today. Having been sent home from his own job because the site was too snowy to work on, I then noticed this text on OH's phone at about 11am. OH called DBrother to tell him but he lies in 'til midday and did not therefore answer the phone, so OH went off to wake him up and drive him to work. Because it is too icy to cycle and DBrother has punctured one of the bicycle tyres anyway. They came back two hours later because they hadn't been able to find the site manager, and DBrother wasn't sure what he wanted him to do on the site. Finish what he had started the week before, I would have presumed, but... What a load of boring drivel! But you get the gist - it's like dealing with Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. How long should we be prepared to cope with this for?
When I heard that Khan wants DBrother out I immediately pursued a message on our local email group that said a woman nearby has a room available for a month from the end of Jan. It would cost £270, a bit cheaper than Khan's. And presumably has a cleaner kitchen that DBrother might actually be prepared to use so that he can stop eating at the church/IKEA. She is then having her house converted into two flats but could keep him on for an extra couple of months at a reduced rate, if he's prepared to rough it a bit. I have said that I think he would be, and that he has skills she may be able to make use of in exchange.
There is a chance that I could pursuade Khan to keep DBrother on til the end of the month. And if DBrother gets some days work here and there he might have £270 by the start of Feb. But what if he doesn't have the money? We sure as hell don't. Would it be completely wrong of me to refuse to have him here? What choice will I have, where else will he go?
Believe me, I don't want to be ungenerous or unkind and have been asking myself repeatedly if I could cope with the scenario of him living with us for a limited period of time. When I asked OH how long he would need to be here, he said 'while he gets on his feet'. I said that I needed a time limit and he said 'maybe two months'. Am I a complete and utter bitch for knowing I do not have the will or the temperament to cope with this? Reasons I feel I cannot include:
*How long would limited be? OH plucked this time-scale out of thin air. If he has no work in two months' time, what would happen next?
*I know there is no point trying to agree goal posts.
*How would I get him out when I had had enough? Which may be less than two months anyway.
*We would have no privacy
*He would have our bedroom
*His would be another bottom needing to use our toilet
*He'd be cooking and watching Jeremy Kyle all day, as before, when not working
*He'd be in the sitting room all evening lying on the sofa as before with smelly feet and expecting to watch the football and horror films
*I would have no personal space whatsoever
*It's the wrong time of year to start turning the house into a building site and I just can't cope with the thought, I am DIY-ed out from years of OH balls'-ups
*All it would do would perpetuate his staying in the UK in a situation that is not likely to improve for him until he either finds a girlfriend or learns enough English to be able to take on a proper job
*I don't like him
*I do not feel comfortable around him.
*I hate losing and I said I would never have him back here again. Gah. Gah. Gah.
Reasons that I should say yes include:
*It would make OH happy (I say 'happy' - he has in fact confessed to me that he would pay his brother to go back to Athens but he wants the decision to be his, not ours)
*It is the right thing to do
Oh my life. All the above aside, his thick-skinned determination/desperation is causing us a whole load of stress that we don't need. And while on the one hand yes, he is desperate, on the other I think I would be moved by all this if he wasn't also an unrealistic and fairly choosy so-and-so who instead of saving his money or re-pay us, chose to nip back to Athens for a holiday last month. Where he has yet to sell his BMW motorbike. Although that is of course none of my business.
How do I cut through this crap and decide what the right thing is to do?
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