Grin and Bear It

I think it must be age because round about this time of November for the last few years I have begun to have deep empathy with the principles of hibernation.

If you told me that I had to go to sleep this evening and wake up sometime in mid-February I don't think I'd be too disappointed. It is not that this time of the year has been particularly empty work wise-in fact the past month or so I've been phenomenally busy.  It's easing off a little now, but there are still a couple of days in the diary.

Quite a few social events coming up as well, the agents party, various drinks dos at  the Actors Centre and some home entertaining. We've also just come back from a weekend in Yorkshire for mum's 91st birthday. Cake, flowers, local village Christmas fayre, fish and chip restaurant lunch, and a new microwave for ourselves out of a branch of Comet that was closing down all packed into a 36 hour visit to Rotherham. That is of course "national headline making  Rotherham".

 We awoke yesterday morning in the sumptuous, luxurious but mainly  economically friendly surroundings of the Premier Inn Rotherham East  to find that the town was headline news. Probably the last time  Rotherham figured so prominently in news reports was around 1352 when some local residents invented an early precursor of the benefit system known as robbing travellers. Yesterday however was rather different. Child services in the town had decided to remove some foster children from their current care as the parents had been outed as a UKip voters!

As a person who has had cause to deal with social services in Rotherham during the last 12 months, I am neither surprised that the irrationality of the decision, nor  shocked by the reaction.  Suddenly the cameras were only a few miles down the road interviewing  the head of child services (nice frilly blouse dear, but probably slightly too much for breakfast TV on Saturday!). Soon we were told that Nigel Farage was threatening to visit Rotherham for an explanation -  hopefully he wasn't going to fly up.  The town was also threatened with an imminent visit from Ed Miliband. Readers of my blog will know from previous entries that the town is already dull enough. Indeed politicians were descending in their droves. That afternoon while visiting the local shopping Park (playing the role of retail vultures circling round the local  branch of Comet for the new microwave) we were to be regaled by the golden tones of George Galloway canvassing from of an open top bus. It's not often that you see the words Respect and Rotherham side-by-side. 

 There is of course a by-election around in the coming week. Dennis McShane, the previous incumbent resigned as a result of the scandal over his expenses.  Rotherham is looking for a replacement.  Rotherham's Labour heartland. At the centre of the Soviet Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire. As my mother  has said on many occasions "if a cabbage stood for Rotherham it would get in!"  No one is in any danger of a surge of UKip sympathy in Rotherham. Mum herself of course  has registered her own electoral revolution for years and voted Tory. Secretly, behind my dad's back when he was alive, but every time using her franchise to strike a blow for her own individual freedom.

 Like many people now she has become disinterested in what she regards as the whole shoddy affair of politics. At 91, I think she's allowed to. She's voted faithfully for many years, but increasingly seems to be let down.  This year having moved from her own home into a care home, we've been forced to sell the house to fund her care and the final straw of many last week was when the Department of work and pensions decided to stop her pension credits pending a review of how much we sold the house for.  They'll be getting all the money in one way or another through  care costs and charges, but it's just another way of making life hell for the elderly. For the time being they have stopped her state pension until they review it. The final nail in the Coffin being the line in the letter that said "You cannot appeal against this decision".

If indeed half the population of Rotherham are on benefits, then Rotherham must be a much cleverer town than people perhaps give it credit for.  Because anyone who can get any money out of the system must either have a first in law or mathematics.

Perhaps it is time to follow the habits of the bear. To go deep into my layer and curl up until the winter is over.