The Joyous Job Center

I'm in a bit of a backlog of blogs. Since the wedding we had a honeymoon in crete which was great it was 'better than reading a book!' I'd love to tell you more behind that story but I'm only allowed to tell 'one or two people' and I've already told four. There's no restrictions on those for people though so if you want to know what happen ask Helen Rachel Danni or Grace. It's hilarious.

Since then we moved into our lovely new house we came back to a brilliant surprise of two kayaks in our garden! Dan thought it was a wedding present from my rich relatives but then we saw the card signed by all of our real life best friends none of whom our rich, and soon after we saw the photos of them carrying the kayaks quite a long way to our house.

So we've settled into normal life again now, Dan's been hard at work and I've been making ikea furniture and stuff. I was hoping to start doing my art workshops in schools again but no work was coming through my agency I tried contacting schools directly but without much luck. I had a job interview to be a part time nanny but I didn't get it so I thought maybe I could go on Job Seekers Allowance, I phoned up to ask 'can I go on it ask I'm self employed and have a tiny bit of work?' They didn't directly answer that question but they asked me a million questions about myself and my financial situation. Including 'does anyone care for you?' I know the answer to that is no but I didn't want to say that I wanted say 'yes my husband cares for me, and my parents and all the friends that chipped in to buy us kayacks'

So after about an hour of questions and him taking every boring detail of my life he told me that I had an apointment at 10.50 at the job center on Monday and they will sort me out with JSA. I've been on JSA 3 years ago and I know if your later for an appointment then you can get benefits cut off so it got to 10:40 and I was trying to choose whether to go by car or bike or legs and I picked legs...I started walking then I started running then I realised even if I run I will still be late so I ran back and got the car. I couldn't park that near so then I had to do more running but I just made it on time.

When I arrived I then had to wait in a queue before finally going to my appointment, and the first thing the woman said was I can't get JSA because I'm self employed! she did tell me that if I wanted to continue with my claim then I could but I would get any money.

'errr I think I've wasted enough time thanks'

'Ok well then you need to fill in this form saying that you formally want to withdraw your JSA application'

'but the first thing I said on the phone is can self-employed people with no work get JSA!'

'it's not their job to answer that question, it's only their job to ask you questions'

I think there are some job cuts that need to be made in job centers! stupid questioning man that is being paid with my taxes!!!!!