An Ultimate Curse? - Friday 24/06/11

I couldn't help but feel disappointed when I discovered the source of yesterdays mysterious deposit. Working Tax Credits. I did have to text a friend to correct my mistake and assumption, but I had been sensible enough at the time to say I was awaiting proof to support my theory. I may not have come by the money through the process I expected but I have, nevertheless, come by the amount I believed we needed.
This leaves me feeling that to continue to fight the bank is not necessary now my needs have been met. At the same time I feel I do need to fight for what I believe I am 'owed' by them. But is that the ego? Or is that feeling stemming form a need to satisfy a curiousity and prove a theory?
The other way of looking at it is I have been provided with the exact amount required to file a 'winding up' petition. £1190. Including penalties for breaches of agreement, the bank 'owes' me £21000. But the principal amount is £1000. If I am mistaken, the worst outcome is that I could be the one declared bankrupt (not really a problem). The middle mark - that I get awarded £1072.79 (including statutory penalty and statutory interest).
£1190 to be awarded £1000. That sounds like the insane behaviourof the very people and mindset to which I am opposed.
Yes, I know, I would be awarded the £1190 as costs on top of the principal, but inside, I am concious of not getting sucked into the terrible monetary-market hell.

On a real life level, today we took a bus ride to where we used to live as Fran's old school was having their annual sports day. A very strange feeling of having come full circle. This time last year we did the same thing. But this time it was for Fran to relive fond memories that she has been recalling for a year.
I believe that when we departed last year, she thought she'd find the same school but in Wales. I imagine the truth and the pain she might have felt from that, would have been quite heart wrenching.
Looking around, I saw the older looking faces of the other parents. The same beings that I had stood beside at 'home time' day after day in my previous life. And still, here they were. Probably believing no other alternative exists. One woman told me this was the tenth year she had been here watching her children. I was shocked.
I often thought that tributes and testiments to the power of human endurance and of the human spirit were only to be found in the harshest and most terrible of places. Wars, torture, survival stories in nature.
But no. It can be found in the churches, the offices, the factories, the homes and the school playgrounds.
Sheeple.
Emma relayed a recent story gleened through women's gossip about a local couple who had been having financial difficulties. They had bickered and argued for a couple of weeks until she came home five minutes before the children to discover her partner dead, hanging from the beams over the stairs. I was not shocked. I'd visited that dark place of the mind often myself.
My sadness is that, in my opinion, he had never really lived.
My realisation after, was, as tragic as that story is, far worse is being inflicted by our Government and Society on far more.

The sooner I leave this dark, mad world that people term as 'civilised' the better. When in human history, has civilisation ever been less than an ultimate curse?

Fran Surrounded By Chums.

M Jones