Tales from the Tigerfort

It seems to have been a while. I haven't been good even at reading other people's posts recently, at least in part because most of my mental energy is spent either (a) fearing the apocalyptic wastes of brexit or (b) trying not to think about brexit.

The most important household event of the last three months was that ceb and damerell visited and moved many many boxen around for us. Multiple rooms are now actually pleasant to be in, and there's a table that's accessible to play games on. (I have in fact been doing a certain amount of soloing[1] to occupy some of the more sleepless nights.) Spare beds are more of a work-in-progress, but it's potentially possible for us to put up about three visitors. (There are also two fairly comfy sofas, but they're both in conservatories that don't have curtains; a situation with substantial drawbacks:)

[1] If people would be interested in coming and playing games with me, and possibly even seeing the sea (weather permitting), we're pretty accessible by rail for physically fit people. Assuming there are still trains, food, etc in the coming months, obviously. We might also be able to find some boxes or furniture you could move if you feel so inclined, but David and Clare have very much done the bulk of that :)

The second most notable happening was a brief psychological rollercoaster that came in this week's post. This was a government-issue brown envelope of the kind all British disabled people know and fear (we'd already had our letters saying that there's no cost-of-living increase in benefits this year because us silly paupers would only waste it on food or such). The mental atmosphere lurched (briefly) even further into "I don't need this" territory when I opened it and read that it was the outcome of our tribunal appeal, for which we'd not received any notification of a hearing date. The next page much improved my mood, however; it stated that the tribunal had decided (a) in our favour (b) without a hearing, because it was obvious from the paperwork that the DWP were completely in the wrong. And not only did they state that K is entitled to the higher rate of the PIP "daily living" component, but also that the award should be for at least five years (rather than the DWP's two years), to minimise the psychological harm.

Now, of course, we have to wait for the DWP to act on the decision, which they try to do as slowly as possible - but some extra breathing room should return to our budget. I deny having eaten my own bodyweight in chocolate pudding to celebrate :)