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Absolutely crappy evening!
Nov. 21st, 2006 08:42 pmHad to hurry away from the school today to get to my local Council office before it closed. There have been bicycles dumped outside my front door for almost two weeks now (bear in mind I live in a basement flat) and someone has yet again being urinating out there too. I know it's a person now, as I heard people laughing outside Sunday night; there was a weird burning smell once they'd gone so I popped my head out the door and saw swirly patterns all over the floor. So it's obviously not one of my neighbours' dogs *sighs in disgust*
This is actually a fairly quiet area, so this is very disheartening.
Anyway, once we'd reported it we headed back home. On checking the post I found a letter from the Council's rent department advising me I'm in arrears. This had me very confused as I have a standing order set up that's deliberately more than I'm supposed to pay each month, so I called them to ask what's going on. Turns out they've reassessed my housing benefit claim, following my no longer needing to pay childcare costs for Rowan, and have decided I no longer qualify! They've backdated it to when he started school and I suddenly owe them almost a hundred and fifty quid!
The really stupid thing is that they're calculating this based on my receiving the same amount of Working Families/Child Tax Credit I did before he started school. This went down by almost two thirds when he left the Nursery, but it didn't occur to me to let the Council know *headsdesk* Now it looks as though I'm gonna need to make a new claim, and go through all this shit again.
It got me so stressed I was snapping at Rowan, which made it worse. So we snuggled up with a funny DVD to make it up to him, and cheer me up a little. Plus I read him an extra long story at bedtime - an excerpt from Wind In The Willows I have in an old Children's Treasury. It's amazing how wordy children's stories were back when that was written - I read him part of 'The Secret Garden' (at his insistence, I might add. I certainly didn't want to read him a story about an unwanted child whose parents die of cholera in the first couple of chapters...) and that was just as much of a tounge-twister.
Well, I'm going to distract myself with the stories that got posted up at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
vecchiofest today.
This is actually a fairly quiet area, so this is very disheartening.
Anyway, once we'd reported it we headed back home. On checking the post I found a letter from the Council's rent department advising me I'm in arrears. This had me very confused as I have a standing order set up that's deliberately more than I'm supposed to pay each month, so I called them to ask what's going on. Turns out they've reassessed my housing benefit claim, following my no longer needing to pay childcare costs for Rowan, and have decided I no longer qualify! They've backdated it to when he started school and I suddenly owe them almost a hundred and fifty quid!
The really stupid thing is that they're calculating this based on my receiving the same amount of Working Families/Child Tax Credit I did before he started school. This went down by almost two thirds when he left the Nursery, but it didn't occur to me to let the Council know *headsdesk* Now it looks as though I'm gonna need to make a new claim, and go through all this shit again.
It got me so stressed I was snapping at Rowan, which made it worse. So we snuggled up with a funny DVD to make it up to him, and cheer me up a little. Plus I read him an extra long story at bedtime - an excerpt from Wind In The Willows I have in an old Children's Treasury. It's amazing how wordy children's stories were back when that was written - I read him part of 'The Secret Garden' (at his insistence, I might add. I certainly didn't want to read him a story about an unwanted child whose parents die of cholera in the first couple of chapters...) and that was just as much of a tounge-twister.
Well, I'm going to distract myself with the stories that got posted up at
vecchiofest today.
