It's been an unusual few weeks for me, with the DLA, Housing and Council Tax benefits in place and Working Tax Credit applied for. It seems very strange to finally get the support that I should have been getting since my condition was finally diagnosed. I was almost angry when I asked my colleague, Matt who gets a free "Motability" car rather than DLA, wasn't getting Council Tax or Housing Benefit, it seems no one told him he'd probably still be eligible for those benefits when he changed from receiving DLA to having a car. I've given him the phone number for the woman at the CAB, who has been helping me with my benefits, after asking her if Matt could probably get those benefits.
I feel rather drained after putting all that effort into getting the benefits, it's been hard to apply myself fully at work, not through laziness but from exhaustion. I'm considering taking a few days off work just to de-stress.
It's also been a busy period, I go out to see "Howl's Moving Castle" at the PictureHouse Cinema, turning my phone off shortly before Dad attempted to contact me, just a bit of bad timing. Dad visited me on his way back to Camberley, with a damp, non-functional mobile phone. Unfortunately, this is the same day as my first Resident's Meeting with an agenda point I've raised. It was about the status of the Book Club I attempted to get involved with, only giving up after four weeks of no one turning up. I turns out that it had shrunk to only two active members shortly before I attempted to join and petered out. It's been revived, and hopefully will give me an opportunity to socialise in the evening. I fed Dad after the meeting, his sabbatical seems to be doing him some real good, although he was tired, it didn't seem to be as deep rooted as it had been.
I had signed up for the Belmont Church event, "Feed a Fresher", however on the day there were far more providers than mouths to feed, It ended up with me being invited to Mark's house by one of his housemates for a roast chicken Sunday Lunch, very nice. I left a little earlier than I'd wanted to because I needed a break if I wanted to be able to attend the talk that evening at Belmont, about the book "The Da Vinci Code". The talk was quite interesting mostly because I'd only heard bits and pieces about the content and implications. The talk pointed out that The Da Vinci Code was very similar in content to another book based on an publicly admitted hoax, and the so-called accuracy of the "facts" was rather questionable. Despite the general Christian view that the book is nonsense, the talk tried to be fair and was well presented.
Today I went to the cinema with Mark and Monica, to see the "Wallace and Gromit" film, it was good, but I felt a little disappointed that the density of puns was a lower than I'd hoped for.
