The letter

Oh great! The post has just arrived. My sense of well-being and reverie in a beautiful world has just dissolved. I’ve got a letter from Jobcentreplus with my first appointment to meet my Personal Adviser.

I gather I must attend or lose my benefit (ESA). I gather I can bring someone with me, but they discourage this as space is tight.

They can discourage this as much as they like but someone is going with me. I won’t even be able to make it to the Job Centre without the Fox driving me there. Apart from the risk of dropping off to sleep at the steering wheel if I drive myself unaccompanied, the actual Job Centre is in a building located on an island encircled by very busy roads. The island has no car parks. There’s no way I could push myself in a wheelchair from the nearest car park to that building. The terrain is too uneven, the distance too far, the road to cross too dangerous to cross at what would be my very slow speed. As for walking it, that would take me all morning if I ever managed it and I would be in agony for a month or more afterwards.

I’m telling myself, maybe this adviser can come up with some job/training I could do. I can’t imagine what.

If she can’t, as I suspect will be the case, maybe she will be able to provide extra evidence to support my view I should be in the Support group, not the Work-related group for benefits.

I fear the reality will be she will have some idea for a job that she thinks I can do but for which I am physically & mentally unable. I will be expected to run myself totally into the ground, into a state of complete collapse, in extreme pain, shattered with exhaustion.

We’ll soon find out.