The turn has wormed!

Yes, OK, I know that it should be the worm that has turned, but in the two months since I last wrote on this blog things have changed a little and it's not me that changed.

So there was I, at the end of my tether, DLA had been denied, ESA on Assessment Rate while I appealed and the thud of paper hitting my doorstep threatened to break my floorboards.  Wait five weeks and the date for the appeal into my ESA arrived. Nice and close, BRIGHTON!

In case you don't already know, Hastings is 52 miles away from Brighton and like most people asked to visit a town or city so far away I do not know the layout of it.  So, thanks to my dad, I bought a train ticket and got some cash for the taxis and some food.

The day arrived, fortunately as I was about to walk to the station (600m to the platform) so I was going to be in agony before the day started, and my darling daughter turned up to drop her mother off, so I begged a lift and cut out 400m of the walk!

I got to Brighton, fell off the train (at the wrong end) and hobbled to the exit.  Unfortunately, Brighton station is designed so that you have to walk across 20 m to get to the ticket barrier and then back 20 m to get to the taxis, which I sort of bypassed and went and got a coffee.  Great little coffee bar in the old waiting room with the imaginitive name of "The Waiting Room", nice staff and nice coffee.  So then I downed some instant hit Tramadol (those that I get sent into the country from Spain) and shuffled off to get a taxi for the mile to the tribunal centre.

So, there is our hero, arriving at the tribunal centre with his customary early arrival - 30 minutes in this case, and the security man says "Really early sir!  You're due to be here in 2 and a half hours!"

"No," Says I, "my appointment is for 2 pm.  If they don't like it, they can get me a chair to sit in because I am not sitting on that sofa, as there's no way I'll ever get out of it!"

He dials a number on his telephone and I am soon greeted and taken to the Tribunal Service office and shown into a waiting room.  Barely had I sat when a clerk with his shirt hanging out from the back of his trousers called me in to the hearing room.

Quick little chat with a GP and a judge about how things were and how they are (I told the GP that Arthritis is a degenerative illness and yes, over the last 18 months it had got worse).  How do you manage to do things, like shopping? We have it delivered, I can drive to the supermarket, but can barely walk round it.

"How do you grip the steering wheel?" asked the judge.  The next day I nearly died at the answer I gave!  "I don't grip the steering wheel, you don't grip a steering wheel, if you do and hit a pothole you're going into the kerb or a car, anyone that says you grip the steering wheel should go back and learn to drive!"  It was the next day I realised the judge had blushed!

"Go sit down again and we'll make our decision." Eh, what? I haven't had a chance to put my side of the argument over, I haven't had a chance to point out the 22 errors in the Atos report!  If you have a complaint about Atos, you'll have to take it up with them!

So, I go back to the waiting room, take my bag off my shoulder sit down and the clerk comes back!  I was escorted back to the hearing room and there on the table was a piece of paper with "Appeal is allowed"!  Mr Turtle is hereby awarded 15 points! 6 more than the original decision.

Now all I have to do is wait for the money to go into my bank for the backdated money that they owe me, including TWO Christmas bonuses - a whole twenty pounds!  Ten pounds for each Christmas, a measly fiver for me and a fiver for my wife!  This amount was instigated way, way back many decades ago when £10 filled a shopping trolley, now it will pay the delivery fee for the shopping and the electricity to heat the house on Christmas day!  Still, the government know the use of a ten pound note, it's used to light a cigarette, well, you can't light a cigar with a £10 it's way too small!

Still, my 18 month fight against the system has been won and now I have to fill in the 40 page form for Personal Independence Payment. I did 5 pages last night, I might go for 5 tomorrow that'll be a fortnight to fill in the whole form!  Don't these people realise we're disabled and we didn't choose to be!