Eating Healthy Costs More and It’s Time To Stop Pretending It Doesn’t.

In the past 12 months, I have lost almost 5 stone in weight. It’s been *hard* work, and not because I don’t want to diet, but because it’s difficult to afford the foods I should be eating if I want to maintain a healthy body and lifestyle.

As anyone who has attended a Slimming World or WeightWatchers meeting will tell you, losing weight is easy: it just takes cooking all the meals you eat from scratch; a kitchen; the right equipment; your energy costs covered by a magic money fairy; the money in your pocket to be able to buy a fabulous array of vegetables and fruits, be they fresh or frozen…

It just takes being able to buy a whole chicken and a lettuce!

Losing weight and living a healthy lifestyle isn’t a mystery to most people. Not the very well off, not the middle classes, and not the working classes. Most of us know what we should be eating, and we know what our children should be eating. I don’t know any parents who have sat down and decided they want their child to be fat, unhealthy, and unable to play and run with free movement, whatever perceived class they are from.

I know fat rich people and skinny poor people, but mostly it’s the other way round. Not because of a deliberate choice to eat crap and laze around on a fat arse all day, though. It’s not a ‘lack of willpower‘ that makes those in poverty put on the pounds, something Jamie Oliver tried–if clumsily–to get across this week.

Unfortunately, the entire concept of food and food poverty seems to be based around the idea of a Class System. The wealthy, if we are to believe The Times, are taking heed of the Government’s advice on healthy eating–an approach that will not, apparently, work on the poor. The article actually calls those in poverty an underclass, although it hasn’t directly attributed those exact words to Jamie (read it here). I can’t begin to express just how offensive that is, and how much it hurts to be deemed as less than, as below. It invalidates my humanity, and that’s painful to deal with.

It’s not class that’s the problem, it’s money.

Poor children are twice as likely as rich children to be obese. Two thirds of children living in poverty come from families where one, or both, parents work. I have emails from nurses, from teachers, and even from a solicitor, all sharing their stories of struggling to get food on the table. One nurse actually has a slice of bread before work, and nothing else until she ends her shift, when she has a bowl of porridge. She’s not an underclass, and I’m pretty certain these educated men and women don’t have trouble grasping “middle class logic”. It’s not a class problem, but a financial one. Something I was able to discuss in detail at the Food Foundation‘s Vegetable Summit last year, and also wrote about earlier this year for the Health Foundation.

Back to my own weight loss. Two years ago, eating what I eat now was an impossibility. It’s not that I suddenly have a diet of roast duck and caviar, but I am able to afford to buy a chicken in place of nuggets, and pork shoulder instead of sausages. We still eat our staples and favourites, like sweet potato and butternut squash tagine, curries, and anything with rice, but we’re able to eat better than before, and you know what?

…it costs more…

It costs more to buy. More to cook. More physical energy to prepare. A degree of risk, because trying new food around kids is always a risk, right? I don’t know about your kids, but if I served mine chickpeas on a regular basis, I would be slaughtered–and they wouldn’t have even tried them when they were young. I know this as fact, because I like the bloody things and love cooking with them. A tub of hummus lasts exactly 30 seconds if it’s put close to me. My children thought chickpeas were weird, bland, and disgusting, the same as most other kids. Poverty happens in the pocket, not in the taste buds. Sure, as they’ve grown older, I’ve got them to eat more foods and now we argue over hummus and the valuable cucumber sticks we get to scoop it up with.

We have a richer, more varied, diet thanks, in part, to our struggles with poverty and the breadline. We’ve had to adapt and learn that what was in front of us is all I had to give, and if my kids didn’t eat it, they would go hungry.

Please, understand, when I say ‘they would go hungry’ I don’t mean the old threat, “You eat that, or you go to bed hungry,” – I mean there was nothing else to eat, and we had no access to food unless they ate what was in front of them; the same reality as millions of other children know every single day. Some days the best I could offer was smashed up kidney beans (bean burgers) and some potato wedges made from those last couple of sad looking spuds in the cupboard. If you haven’t been there, you’re lucky. If you have, I’ve cried your tears.

The risk of trying new foods is a very real one, in households where a meal for four people has to cost around £1.50 – £2.00 in its entirety. Wasting money, wasting food, is never an option. So what happens? Normally something like this:

Me: What should I cook for dinner? This is a nice recipe, and I should be able to afford the ingredients…squash is cheap as anything in Lidl, so that’s not an issue. I have rice, and I’m sure I can stretch to a tin of tomatoes…

Me: Although we’ve had tomato based dishes all week. I think I might cry if I have to face another tomato sauce. Even ketchup would be too much, right now.

Me: We could have fajitas, but without the meat…

Me: Oh yeah. I have a daughter who doesn’t like veggie fajitas. I can’t feed her separately today, so…

Me: I could always do rice. Again. I am so bored of rice. And potatoes. My life is rice and potatoes. Where do these people on TV buy their takeaways? A kebab costs seven bloody quid…times that by six…hahaha NOPE. That’s not going to happen. Okay, so no takeaways for us. Twenty quid for a pizza? I’d rather shove wasps up my…

Me: Was that the electric meter beeping? Damn, it was. Okay…no long cooking times, then. Quick, cheap, and easy. God, I’m tired. Okay...I have a fiver–that’s enough for some Iceland pizzas or sausages, a bag of oven chips, and some beans. 20 minutes and we’re done and I can finally sit down for half an hour and still have the lights on in the morning! Yay! Whoop–living the high life!

And so it goes. I can feed a family of four an evening meal for a fortnight at Iceland for £21.55 (as at time of writing). £20 for 14 meals for four people. That’s without additions, like vegetables or fruits; they cost more, and at my most desperate all I could think of is to stop the constant whines of, “Mum, I’m hungryyyy. So I’ve based this on those feelings of helplessness.”

It’s no secret why those in poverty are struggling with obesity. 75 breaded chicken nuggets for £3.00? Middle class logic? How about 4 Scotch Pies for £1.25? Lack of education? 40 value sausages for £2.00 might have more to do with it. People eat this stuff because it’s cheap. Most of the people I’ve spoken to don’t even like the bloody stuff, but it’s the most calories for the least amount of cash–it’s economically sound, if not nutritionally so.

Short cooking times, ease of storage, the knowledge the food will be eaten? It all combines, becoming the only safe route forward. Healthy food simply costs more. A cheap chicken, while only £3.00, takes an hour in the oven. Pulses and beans need soaking and boiling for an hour. Even potatoes are energy-expensive, depending on how they’re being cooked. And this is before we’ve even thought about how the kids are going to react to a courgette and pasta bake!

I have no trouble grasping the Middle Class Concepts of healthy eating. I’ve taught my children to cook, and we’re so lucky in that we have a well functioning kitchen and the things we need to cook our meals. I can cook, and I’m not half bad at it, either. But there are still times, even two years on from my original blog post, that dinner is something from a bag from an Iceland freezer. There are still times when there’s not so much as a solitary pea on my plate, and there are still times when I’ve resorted to eating just a bowl of plain steamed rice, rather than risk putting on weight and eating processed frozen foods.

Each extra item added to a plate costs money. It’s a very simple fact to grasp, regardless of class, that more food on a plate will mean higher costs. So food is removed from the plate, and the food removed cannot be anything that will fill a stomach…so the added vegetables are lost, and a beige plate of oven-baked nuggets and chips reigns supreme for another night. Bellies are filled, and kids will sleep without waking up because they’re hungry.

Food Poverty is not a class problem. It’s a financial one.

It Could Be Worse? Try Saying It Another Way!

It’s just a saying, isn’t it? People say it all the time. They look at a broken leg, and tell themselves they should be thankful they have a leg to break. They get the flu, and tell themselves they should be thankful it’s not pneumonia. Some, like me, get pneumonia in the middle of summer, and are thankful it’s not some fatal rapid-onset variety of lung cancer. We all do it. We see ourselves, and our friends in situations, and we say “It could be worse.”

But, and here’s the thing, saying that doesn’t help. It doesn’t make things better. It doesn’t change the dire situation someone is in, just because, somewhere, somehow, it could be worse.

The other night (just before payday, which happened and then, faster than I could appreciate it had happened, it had gone again) I was staring at the contents of my fridge and wondering what the bloody hell I could cook for dinner. As most of you will know, there’s only so many times you can feed kids pasta with a chopped onion and some tomatoes before they begin to riot like French Peasants prior to the revolution. They probably feel the same way about rice, near the end of the month.

You can jazz it up all you want, but it’s still pasta. And that gets bloody boring, right?

So there I was, staring into my fridge, wondering what I could do with some limp spring onions, half an aubergine, and a withering pepper which, to be fair, looked as terrible as I was feeling (I had a cold last week – my heart hates me getting colds and objects in terms I can’t ignore). There was enough to feed one adult, in my fridge. So I looked at my bank balance and decided to risk a small top-up shop. Up the road to Tesco I went, and began to choose the cheapest food my extortionate little corner-Tesco offers. Seriously…it’s a Tesco Metro. This means they can scrap their value range, replacing it with premium brands. It means tomatoes aren’t 32p. They’re, like, a million pounds (or 85p, whatever). Anyway, I was staring just as blankly at the shelves in Tesco as I had stared at my fridge. I debated walking the two miles to the bigger Tesco, but my energy was gone. I thought about walking the mile to Lidl, but honestly, walking to the end of the road was already pushing my hard limits that day.

Then, miracle of miracles, I saw the man with his mark-down gun. He marked down chicken, and potatoes, and vegetables. I tell you, I grabbed that food as though I was in a bread queue in the USSR circa 1986. I paid (it came to under £3.00, and I had two days food, plus lunches. RESULT!) and I went home. And I told myself ‘Well, it could be worse. I have food. Many don’t. There are starving people in the world. Homeless people. My husband has a job, many don’t. I’m not dead yet, so that’s something.”

And it sounded, for once, like what it was. A trite remark, which is meaningless. It’s something people in dire situations tell themselves, and others, in the hope that it will carry them through one more hour, one more day. The politicians, bludgeoning us all with figures to make it seem we’re better off than we are, love it when we look at each other and say ‘It could be worse!’

Maybe, instead of saying ‘It could be worse’, we should start saying, ‘It should be better’. Because when we realise it should be better, we will make other people hear the truth. The truth about rents of £1100: more than the total take home pay of an average earner each month. The truth of council tax that costs close to an entire week’s income, every month. The truth of shops who hike up prices to over double the cost, because they’ve not got competition and because they can. The truth of energy suppliers, who are given a license to steal our money and increase their prices, because no one will stop them. The truth of a government who would have their cronies believe a working family with Tax Credits is playing the system and deserves the same irrational contempt they give someone who isn’t, for whatever reason (and there are many) in work. The truth about media portrayal of the poor, victim shaming and blaming until everyone is too scared to admit the struggle they face, despite being nurses, or office workers, or managers, or shop assistants. The truth that poverty is real, but hidden, and shameful.

So yes, it could be worse. But, for crying out loud, it should be so much better.

If You Need A Gun To Make People Do It Your Way…You’re Doing It Wrong.

In a bit of tremendous foreshadowing, I have a line in my third book:

“It’s naïve to think any peace gained by such means would be a lasting one. It is like holding someone under the point of your sword, and declaring him willingly obedient, when he is simply too afraid to move.”

The same, I think, works with religion. If you point a semi-automatic weapon at me, and tell me to obey, then I will. I am no hero, for all I would like to be. I have no religion; I am not ashamed, or fundamental, about my Atheism. I think believing in a monotheistic sky-god is weird, but it’s not my choice what you want to believe.

You want to think the son of a god came down from Heaven? Great! You do you, and I will do me (that sounds bad, but we’ll run with it). You want to think there are aliens, or prophets, or a being watching you from the sky? Cool. You think that.

But your beliefs are not mine. They should have exactly zero impact on my life. They should not rule my uterus. I have four surviving children, all grown nicely, thank you, and I did that without religion telling me how to go about it. I have had early miscarriages, and lost a child, late into pregnancy, and I did that just fine without a Bible in my hand. If I found out I was pregnant tomorrow, I would be at the clinic on Monday to deal with it. My husband has had a vasectomy, and I do not want another child.

It is my right to have autonomy over my own body.

Your beliefs have exactly nothing to do with how I live my life.

But, and here’s the thing…I want to live, and let live. I want to enjoy the fact I am a Godless Heathen. I love believing that when I die, I will be dead. There will be no other life. There will be nothing beyond this existence. I will have lived and, much like a hamster, I will have died and be remembered by a few people. In a hundred years, there will be no one speaking my name, and I will be gone. That’s comforting to me. It’s what I believe. I am a card carrying paid up member of the British Humanist Association. My body is going to science. Do not pray over my corpse. Do not throw holy water at me. That is YOUR belief. It’s not mine.

Yet I will go to your funeral. I will bow my head, through your prayers. I will be respectful in your churches, and respect your mosques. I will enter your temple softly, and leave it as I find it. Your beliefs deserve my respect.

And my beliefs bloody well deserve your respect.

You will not find agreement, or belief, by firing guns into a crowd. You will not find converts at sword point. You cannot police the mind, you cannot tell us what to believe. You cannot kill swathes of people, and make us all join you in your demented war against rationality. You cannot make me become like you. You cannot make me think what you want me to think.

Honestly, I think you’re not helping your own cause, really. You want to rule. What you desire has nothing to do with religion. It has nothing to do with belief. It has nothing to do with a ‘Holy War’ or anything ‘Holy’.

Holy is something found when human loves human. When we embrace our world and care for it, and each other.

And peace will never be found at the end of a sword. Submission is not permission. You will not win this war. We don’t believe in you.

We don’t believe in you.

You will not win.

Stand & Deliver: Modern Highway Robbery! Your Money or No Home!

Last week, I looked at a ‘Beautifully presented, newly refurbished, modernised home’. It lived up to the blurb in a way not many things ever do. It was indeed beautiful. It was well presented, and newly refurbished. Its brand new kitchen and bathroom, oak laminate, and white-painted smooth unmarked walls set pictures of Home Beautiful and Good Housekeeping magazine floating peacefully through my head, as cellos played and gauzy white nets fluttered in a gentle breeze. I could see modern sleek furniture in the ‘spacious’ living room. The front room, with its closed off fireplace, was already my new study. In my private little dream, I saw the beds placed just so, in each of the three double (mould-free) bedrooms. It was, in short, a dream home. And the rent, at £875 a month, was average and just within budget.

The agency fees, however, were not. As anyone in the private rental sector knows, as a tenant, you are expected to hand over a deposit (normally one month’s rent, plus another hundred. In this case, the deposit would be £975). You are also expected to pay a month’s rent in advance, which is all fine and dandy. All letting agents have ‘admin fees’. Normally, these will range between £125 – £175 per tenant. So, for myself and my husband, this would generally work out around £300, and include an inventory, tenancy agreement, and a handover of keys.

I used to work in a letting agency. The tenancy agreement is a word.doc; a bog standard bit of wording with a ‘fill in the blanks’ for address and names. Takes 5 minutes. I could run one up on this computer, right now, and it would be as legally binding as any given to me by an agent, so long as it was signed. But, of course, the agents need their income, so they charge. Kudos to them, but it’s extortion, right?

However, the agent I met with last week, to view the whitewashed paradise of this terraced house? They wanted a little bit more than the costs stated above. Take a deep breath, and hug your wallets close. Ready?

Rent £875.00
Security £975.00
T/agreement £300.00
References £225.00
Admin £150.00
Check-in £120.00
Guarantor chk £100.00
Pet Clause £75.00

A grand total of £2,820.00, to save you adding it up. £970.00 in fees alone. But it gets better. They required a ‘Good Faith’ payment of £500.00 to hold the property while they did credit checks. Checks I informed them I would not pass. My credit is shot to all buggery, and I have more chance of accidentally discovering a way to teleport humanity through black holes, defeat the Borg, and live without religion, than I have of passing anything like a credit check. This is why I have a guarantor.

The £500.00 is non-refundable, if the credit check is failed. So they get five-hundred quid, and I get to still be imminently homeless. That’s nice, isn’t it? (They said, when I kicked up a bit of a stink over this, that they would of course refund me, because I had been so open and honest with them. I asked for that in writing…the fact I do not have that house to move into gives you their answer.)

Now, you would at this point be forgiven for thinking this was one of those backstreet agents, like the abortionists and money-lenders of old. You know they’re there, but good people don’t have no truck with them. But it wasn’t. It’s a massive High Street chain, with offices all over the South of England. The smaller backstreet guys are generally more honest, in the case of lettings. They have more to lose, if people complain. Their reputation is all they really have, so they make themselves good enough that people want to do business with them.

Shelter, the homeless charity, have also noted the unfairness of these fees. They have a petition to sign, if you want to click this link and head on over to their page.

Disheartened, unable to pay nearly £1000.00 in agents fees, I walked out of the beautiful house that may have been a home, and went back to pounding the streets. My home is out there, I have no doubt, but I can’t justify paying all the money I have in the world, donated by people who are kind enough to help me, to a Highwayman of the Modern Era. The difference between these agents and Dick Turpin is, simply, they are breaking no law. Everything else, though? There’s not much between them. You have to ‘Stand and Deliver’, or you will be on the streets. There is no choice, but to pay, if you want a roof over your head and a life worth living.

So, it’s back to scouring the web, the papers, and the streets for me, and I’ll continue to believe there is something better around the corner.

Kathleen Kerridge is a Fantasy Fiction Writer. Her books can be found on Amazon here. Or here, if you are not in the UK.

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There is now a Go Fund Me page, a friend set up, to help me cover the cost of moving. I am, as always, overwhelmed by the generosity of people.

Cosmic Pigeons, Metaphorical Poop, & the 80s!

I have got to know my city.

This is one of the positives to have come my way since my eviction notice fell through my door last Thursday morning. I have walked the length, and I have walked the breadth. I walked diagonal, in circles, up and down…I could have started a one woman tourist agency. No, really, I could have. Portsmouth is a beautiful city, when you look at it with fresh eyes and an optimist’s filter. I’m a human Instagram, when it comes to making things look better than they are. Rats? Great wildlife locally! Overgrown bushes? I do love a good Nature Reserve! Crushed and discarded beer cans strewn haphazardly across the grassy patch on the corner of a road? Modern Art, dude! You get the idea.

So, in a week that has had me walk more than 60 miles, look at 5 houses, apply to view another 70 (yes, really), and speak to the Council (I saw the really cool guy who was on ‘How To Get A Council House. He’s lovely in real life), I thought I would kick back and look at those positives. Remind myself who I am, remember what I have been through, and understand that, as with all things, “This Too Shall Pass.”.

I can have a massive clear out. I am naturally a bit of a hoarder. I like *things*, and I tend to pick them up from everywhere I go. Even if it’s only to the local Tesco, I end up with some small bit of crap that caught my eye. I have enough books to fill a study, maybe enough to fill a small library. I have clothes (too small, too big, kids outgrew them…) enough to start a charity shop. Maybe a rag shop, actually, because they’re not really that great and some are from the 90s. I wish that on no-one. I found my recycling mojo kicked in when I looked in, and around, my family’s wardrobes. DVDs, CDs, and, believe it if you will, cassette tapes. I have accumulated so much tat and crap over the years, the BBC could do a one hour special on ‘Things We Should Throw In The Bin’. It’s worthless, old, and mostly junk. Positive #1 of being made homeless? I can justifiably throw away the remnants of a life long lost.
I will be forced to save every penny, and replace my mould-infested furniture. This sounds harsh, but new furniture has never really happened in my life. Not much as a child, and definitely not as an adult. I had friends with old sofas, and beds no longer used. They had tables and TV units. They had an old wardrobe, which was going to the tip. They had coffee tables and freezers. You get the idea. It’s a constant source of amazement to me, how generous my friends and family are (and in one case, how much of a shopaholic pack-rat one friend is: a lot of the ‘second hand’ things she offered to me at huge discounts were a month or two old, and she’d simply gone off them). It has meant, of course, that I have not had to buy new pieces, or spend extreme amounts of money. It has also meant I have never chosen what will go in a room, what we will sleep on, or how our dining table would look. We always ‘made do’ as many others always do. Now, thanks to all my possessions being ruined, I need replacements. I have decided I will save, constantly, when we have a secure roof over our heads, and I will buy cheap, cheerful items, chosen by me. They might well come from thrift and charity shops, indeed, they likely will, as I love the 60s & 70s home decor look (don’t judge me!), but I would have chosen them. Positive #2 of being made homeless? I can start afresh and get things I like. Also, the kids love camping – they get to have sleeping bags and roll mats, until their beds can be replaced. Yay!
I get to document everything, as it happens. The people I meet, the resources available, the robbing rental agencies! There is so much involved, when one is becoming homeless, it seems scary, daunting, and at times insurmountable. Hoops are put up to jump through, then moved, just after you have launched yourself up into the air. The rules of the game change, but that’s not so bad, because it turns out I was playing Cluedo, and everyone else was playing Chess. Typical. I’m hoping to gather enough information to be of some good to someone, somewhere. I’m not the only one out there, in this situation. I won’t be the last. So I will collate and make note of anything useful. Positive #3 of being made homeless? I can make it into a small adventure and hopefully help people as I go along my way.
I survived the Eighties. So this, in comparison, should be a piece of cake. I was brought up on a Council Estate, by a single mum, in the bloody Eighties. I had day-glo socks and a big perm. I wore white stilletto shoes and ra-ra skirts, with shoulder-pads to rival Joan Collins. I had Converse and Hi-Tec trainers. I am battle hardened to austerity, I have lived through boom times and fallen through the recessional floor. I can do this. I must do this. I will do this. Positive #4 of being made homeless? I have realised how strong I am, and that I can get through it. Because…
I have the best friends, anywhere, everywhere, in the world. Truly, you are all amazing. Thanks to your support and messages, I have not crumbled on the worst days, and I have laughed on the not-so-bad days. I’m exhausted, worn out, and disheartened. I will not patronise myself, or anyone else in the same predicament, by pretending otherwise. But thanks to all of you, I know I am not alone. Just knowing I have support, good wishes, love, and people who care? It sort of balances the cosmic pigeon enjoying itself by shitting on my head from a great height. I might be getting shat on, but you all hand me the baby wipes to clean myself up and carry on. Thanks go to all of you, but a special mention will be made here to a lovely woman, Zoe Gray. She heard what had happened and set to making a difference. There is now a Go Fund Me page, if you would like to help financially. Many of you have asked, and now, thanks to Zoe, there’s one set up.

So, it’s hard, being made homeless. Bloody hard. But there are positives, if you know where to look. I’m off now, to drink some coffee and tend to the immense and epic blisters I have. Then I’ll throw clothes away and old ornaments, and maybe even that old shirt I have had since I was 11. I’ll sing along to Material Girl, and throw out mouldy linens. And I’ll hope for some kind of cosmic Pest Control guy to come and kill the cosmic pigeon. I’ll remember this is but another phase, and I will be moving on. I’ll remember I have friends and people who want to help me — and in turn, I’ll remember to accept that help.

Kathleen Kerridge is a Fantasy Fiction Writer. Her books can be found on Amazon here. Or here, if you are not in the UK.

Lightning Strikes Twice

Benefits, Private Renting, and The Ever Feared Possession Order.

Can a rented property ever become a home? It’s an important question but one we rarely think about when we look at renting. Buying a house will likely always remain an impossible dream for me; bad credit and worse health mean that the ideal of home ownership will not be mine to know. That’s okay, I made my peace with that a long time ago. It’s not an issue…or at least, it had never been one before.
I first wondered about it when my last landlord went down with the recession and plummeted as fast as my husband and I did. We were reminded, in the harshest possible way, that we were not in control of what happened to us. He needed to sell the house. Fast. So, one morning, out of the blue, he called me to tell me I had six weeks to find a new place to live.
I remember the horror, the panic, and the consuming terror. In one sentence: “I need to sell the house.”, he had made me homeless. We entered a nightmare of uncertainty and sleepless nights. My health worsened, my mental state hit the darkest place it had been in a long time. We couldn’t be housed with all four of our children: properties with 4 bedrooms were rarer than goldfish riding bicycles. My eldest daughter, then 16, moved in with my mother and, as a shrunken family of 5, rather than 6, we found a 3 bedroom house in the private sector, with the help of our local council. We were told it would be affordable, long term, as secure as it could be, and better managed than the home we had lived in for 8 long years.
We were lied to on all counts.
Our new house is, as you will know from previous posts, riddled with black mould and damp. The walls run with water. The windows don’t shut and open fully. The back doors do not lock. The roof needs flashing, there are rats in the rafters, the bath leaks into the living room…and at £800 a month, it was too expensive for us on our new, much diminished, wages and tax credits.
And today, I received the second eviction notice in 4 years. Ironic, I know, considering the year I have had so far, helping other homeless people and pointing families to the right places to go, so they may also find help. Now, it’s happened to me. Again.
This time, I looked at the paper deciding my fate, and I realised I felt nothing. Only worry about where we would go. I looked around at the walls that keep us locked away (to an extent) from the outside world, and realised it was not my home. Just a shell. It was never, had never, would never be, my home.
My biggest concern is financial. I can afford rent, but a deposit and between £300 – £400 administration fees on top of an £800 rent are well beyond my means. It may as well be a mortgage application. How can fees of £200 per person be justified? How am I meant to find that money?
The simple answer is, sadly, that I can’t find that money. We’re on a breadline. That doesn’t miraculously change because we’re facing, yet again, homelessness. Despite receiving assistance with our rent, that assistance can’t be used for a deposit, or to pay for advance rent. It can’t cover the administration fees. It can’t find moving costs. I need everything from a washing machine to beds for my daughters, as this house was part-furnished. I have to start over from scratch. It’s a scary prospect, when I thought I was in a stable situation.
I am one of thousands facing this dilemma. There’s not really any options, or places to turn to. I have an appointment with Housing Options, at my local council, but I know I only have a slim chance of a future with anything approaching security. There may be help to allow me to pay a deposit over time, but I know what I’m facing and I know how much I need to be able to pay out of my own pocket. When you are living on a breadline, it’s hard to keep a chin up, and a lip stiff. But I shall, as always, endeavour. I plan to document this journey and keep you all informed, right to the end. Whatever the outcome, wherever my family end up, I’ll be chatting to you as we go. From £1 a day living (to try and save every penny possible), to selling off anything I have left to sell (not much, my wedding ring and other jewellery are long gone), I will let you all know.

I have until November 24th to relocate, settle, and maybe find a home. It can’t all be bad. I’m not a naturally pessimistic person. If there’s a bright side, I’ll find it! I’m hoping for laughter, as well as tears. I’m hoping for a life my children will be happy to live. I’m hoping for a small space, somewhere, where I can plug myself into the mains, and write my books. I’m hoping. Hope, right now, is one thing I have in abundance.
So watch this space. We’re going on an adventure, and you’re invited to tag along.

Kathleen x

Kathleen Kerridge is an Amazon Best Selling author of LGBT+ fantasy fiction. Her books are available here (UK) and here (rest of world). She can be found on Facebook, and Twitter, so come and say Hi!

Homeless Doesn’t Mean Cardboard Boxes.

I don’t have a lot of material goods. I don’t own my home. I’m not rich by even the wildest stretch of the imagination. Yet I do have something in my life, which right now, is a lifeline to a friend of mine. I have a two-seater, second hand, 15 year old sofa. It’s the only seating in my house, except for wooden kitchen chairs. We used to have a leather three piece suite…clawed and scratched up by a previous tenant’s cats, but serviceable. It belonged to our old landlord, though. When he sold the house from under us and evicted us with only four weeks notice, he refused to let us take the suite. He wanted £200 for it. It had cost £30 second hand. So, we had only the kitsch old sofa I’d bought years ago. It’s small, beaten, weathered and ugly as sin, according to my husband. I bought it (and a three-seater which unfortunately died) as more of a joke than anything else. It was in a charity shop window and it was so hideous I felt sorry for it.

Now, that old battered and beaten sofa is my friend’s new home. I wrote before, about a friend made homeless due to bereavement. That same friend has once again found himself with nowhere to turn. Much as poverty is hidden, so is much of this country’s homeless. My friend, who shall remain nameless, has numerous personal issues. One of which is another ‘hidden’ and ‘shameful’ blight — depression. He needs help, which is proving difficult to get. Suicidal Ideation is present and, when he told his doctor he wanted to die, he was told he had to want to help himself before he could expect help to be given and to go back in two weeks. Isn’t that lovely? A homeless man, out of work, no close family, nowhere to turn, suicidal…told to go away and come back in two weeks.

My sofa isn’t the comfiest thing in the world. It sags and can cripple anyone with a back injury. But it is under a roof that can keep off the rain and it comes with love and an ear attached to it. It also comes with a meal a day. I will need to juggle and get creative, but that one extra mouth needs feeding, so fed it shall be. Until we can jump through all the hoops of ESA/JSA, and get him some kind of benefits. Until we can get council help in finding him a place where he shall not need to be able to produce a deposit, as well as one month’s rent and £150 in agency fees. To be able to be housed, this man — homeless, without money, without savings and without, right now, hope — will need to find about £700. To some, that sum will seem insignificant. To those in his situation, it may as well be a million.

His is a world where, when benefits come to him, he shall be living on a pittance. One so small, that when he gets a bedsit, charged at an extortionate rent, after he has paid utilities and bills, he shall be left with pennies to survive on. They are pennies he is grateful for. A small amount, but one he appreciates. His health and mental state make work an impossibility. This is his life and will likely stay his life. It’s not one he would choose, but it is his and it is worth keeping. Worth fighting for.

This is where friends rally around. Where we will sit with him as he wades through the minefield of legal gumpf and fills out enough forms to fill a wheelie-bin. We will be at his side to help him find a small, cramped, cheap bedsit. We will find him items to cook with, so he can eat. Right now, he has a duvet and clothes from his life ‘before’ it was all lost. We shall prop him up whilst he is too weak to stand, and we shall cheer when he takes those first steps into a new future. We will be there for him for as long as we are needed.

So will my small, insignificant, beaten up, battered, hideous old sofa. Because this is the world of the hidden homeless, and that sofa will mean he is not vulnerable. On the street, left to the elements and discarded from society like a worthless old bit of junk no-one wants in their life. That sofa, as ugly as it is and as uncomfortable as it might be, is his new home. The sofa is more than an item of furniture. It is a promise that it will be there, to hold him safe at night and keep him warm and dry. It means there is a roof, not the sky, above his head. It means he is not alone.

It means there is hope.

I am a Fantasy Fiction author (too much ‘real’ in my life as it is, thank you) and my books are available on Amazon. I am Independently Published — my ‘team’ are my friends. My début novel ” Into The Woods” can be found HERE (UK) and HERE (rest of world). Links to my Author Page and other books can be found through these links. The paperback for Book #1 of the Searching For Eden series can be found HERE. Book #2 shall be available shortly.

kathleen kerridge

Tag: family