The Name's Pikey.....Mrs Pikey....

In this post last year I may have implied that I am too proud, and not in enough need to root through the possessions of strangers. In fact that is not strictly true. Only two days ago I was to be found scrutinising my neighbour's leavings and after a short conversation in pidgin English (him) and pidgin Polish (me) with a builder whose attention I got by throwing a large piece of wood through the window where he was working (accidentally!!! I could never do it again in a million years. And anyway, he should've answered the doorbell...) I was richer by two Pyrex casserole dishes; one matching lid; a large mirror etched with a picture of a galleon; and the piece de resistance, a blue plastic vegetable trolley. I am a great believer in life presenting you with what it is you need if you only wait. I wanted a vegetable trolley....hey presto, one presents itself right next door within, oh...three days? After I had a blitz in my kitchen (that exciting post is for another day - you'll be impressed!), part of which entailed scraping up yet another repulsively decomposed eggplant from the bottom of the vegetable cupboard, I decided that what I needed was some place to keep the veggies IN THE OPEN! That way they would be a) visible and less liable to be overlooked, and b) able to have fresh air circulating round them and hopefully not end up rotten, like about 60% of all green stuff that I buy does. I tried to look on the Argos website but that was messing about so I thought I'd look in the catalogue later (ie when I remember a fortnight later). But I didn't have to because the god of plastic storage smiled down on me and threw just what I wanted in my path. I like to think of it as karma for giving old ladies manicures every day.

The Pyrex of course is always handy - pity there was only one lid but beggars can't be choosers I suppose. The mirror is another story. After a quick look on eBay I can see no market whatsoever for it. I could hang onto it until my next car boot sale but the fact is my house is full of such things so I think my only option is to wait until tomorrow night and then sneak it back, under cover of darkness, to my neighbour's front way. I noticed today that quite a lot of stuff had gone from the box and the heap that had been thrown outside (my neighbour doesn't live there, in case you're wondering why the need for all the subterfuge - the property is an unused B&B. Actually, there's no need for any subterfuge, I'm just devious by nature) so I'm not the only one making off with his junk....just the closest one.

Ill-gotten gains!

And now, your comments on this situation, if you please. Sid, a resident where I work died last week. He was very old and he'd just had enough. He was very much cherished and all of his extended family were around him at the end....he had what you might call 'a good death'. We had all grown to like his daughters very much and they appreciated what we'd done for their dad. When they cleared his room the family left Sid's clothes behind for us to use as we see fit - sometimes a resident comes to us from hospital wearing just their pyjamas, with no other clothes at all (hard to believe I know, but true) so we can provide something to wear from our stock. My colleague had sorted Sid's old clothes into 'keep' and 'charity shop' and being both nosey and an eBayer I had a look through the charity shop stuff. Inside were two pure wool sports jackets, from maybe the 60s, very good quality and eminently sellable. Not for my benefit, I hasten to add, but for the Residents' Fund (fundraising is part of my job). I could have taken them out, brought them home and listed them but the fear of being found out and sacked is too mortifying so I didn't. I told Nadine, the matron, my idea and she said we need to ask Sid's family but she was sure they'd be okay with it. My question is, do you think my idea is objectionable, and would you just have gone ahead and done it without asking? The fear of exposure as a thief, even with the most altruistic of motives, and the shame of being in the local paper ('Local Mother of Three Steals Dead Pensioner's Clothing!!!'....the horror, the total horror!) is what stops people like me, and probably you guys too, from stepping out of line. But is taking my neighbour's destined-for-the-tip trash any different from selling Sid's clothes without permission? I probably won't ask Sid's family about the jackets now - Big Man thinks Nadine should have just made the decision herself since Sid's family gave us the clothes to do with as we wished - but....I dunno.....we'll see. What do you think?

PS This clip from The Royle Family is not only heartbreaking (and Sinead O'Connor's singing is heavenly) but it makes me think of the way Sid's family all came to his bedside in his last couple of days. If you haven't ever seen the Royle Family, maybe you're in the US, try to watch it - it is brilliant!





Tonight Matthew, I'm Going To Be The Little Engine That Could

It's going to take all of my mongrel cunning and guile to finish this month solvent.
I got paid on the 8th and because our Working Tax Credits have just been renewed and were (I thought) not being paid until the end of the month, all the direct debits and such came out of my wages, leaving me with nothing to pay into the credit cards when usually we throw a stack of money at them. I can't work out how this has happened. There were a couple of biggish things to pay in the first week of the month - Babcia and Dad's wedding anniversary flowers were nearly £50 and the newspaper Memorial notice for V's first anniversary was over £50, not that I begrudge either in the slightest. And I'm keeping a good check on the food bills too - we're at £263 out of a budgeted £350 (just whilst all the kids are home for the hols, then back down to £200). Anyway, I discovered yesterday that we got our WTC paid on Friday so I used them to pay this month's Council Tax (a mighty £177 which, considering we don't get any rubbish collected, is high by any standards) and paid some money off one of the cards. Now there's no more money again until I get paid on 3 September so it'll be tough.
On the plus side Red is paying me back £50 a week from her portering job that will cover the money I've had to lay out for her in the never-ending rent saga. Yes, that's still creaking on. I'm waiting on £53 in expenses from work and have another £30 or so to put in. I did a mystery shopping job yesterday for a whole £7 (yay!!!). I have a little bit of money in my ING account but that's really for Christmas. I have just over £22 in 20p pieces in my calculating cow AND between us we have £5.50 in Tesco vouchers. Oh, and I have about £45 in my Paypal account and made £10 in eBay sales this week but one of the things I sold was given to me by Babcia and even though she won't expect it, I'm giving her the money from the sale...she needs it just as much as I do. Am I going to make it? Let's just say I'm going to make like The Little Engine That Could.....I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.......

Actually, this is slightly creepy.....:S

Now, I have a dilemma. You remember that some of Red's rent money was taken by the housemate who was responsible for paying it to the landlord on behalf of all the housemates? And that I paid, as guarantor, £680 which Red is portering to pay back? Did I also say that on the last day before they were evicted, whilst I was helping Red scour out the kitchen, the landlord rang and said that he'd discovered there was a further month when the rent hadn't been paid....another £340 each outstanding? In a nutshell the landlord is saying that the deposits (£680 each) are now in arbitration because Red owes the 'missing month' and the rent thief owes...well, who knows what she's paid. The other three housemates' parents have already paid everything for them, no questions asked. My dilemma is, do I pay out ANOTHER £340 (see above, where do I get it from?) making it a total of £1360 I'll have had to find, and hope that we get the whole of the deposits back? Or not pay it, write off the deposit and still have my £340, bearing in mind that the five sets of parents were joint guarantors, ie we are responsible together for whoever doesn't pay. Even if I do pay, the landlord could say that, since there is rent outstanding from the thief, we can't have the deposits back anyway without covering HER share. I wouldn't put it past the landlord to make up some reason to keep the deposits anyway, since I assumed deposits were for damages, not rent arrears. He has never proved, to my satisfaction anyway, that the money wasn't paid, although with everything I hear about this girl I can quite believe it. But to ring up on the last day of the tenancy and say that he'd just discovered that rent from the previous November hadn't been paid (this was July) just stinks to me. Plus he is threatening to sue the guarantors jointly which is not good as I am the one out of Big Man and I with a good credit rating. Anybody got any ideas because it's driving me crazy. I am so thoroughly pissed off with the whole episode and Big Man is no help at all. 'Sue him!' 'Sue her!' 'Don't pay any more!' He wants to load the gun but let me shoot it. Will this ever end? Help!!!!

Finally, since some commenters were envious of my 49p toilet roll dolls, here they are in all their glory.

I ♥ toilet roll dolls :)