The politicians driven to despair when we paid a visit to parliament square

I was invited to visit the Houses of Parliament where Glenda Jackson (MP for Hampstead and Highgate) would be there to meet us. I thought I’d come along as the chance to grill Glenda would be fun. In the morning on the Wednesday when we arrived at Parliament we where met by a couple of ladies from the PR firm Burson Marsteller who did the PR for the Labour Party and arranged this Unique Opportunity for us. The ladies from the PR firm seemed impressed with my knowledge of the inside of parliament and came out with “I didn’t know that.” I was surprised as I had first assumed they worked at parliament, as I hadn’t met them till that day.

After a little wait we found that we could go in and when I first walked into the Building Troy cracked a joke about watering the grass as he wanted to the toilet but Lyn said that they couldn’t find the time to visit him in the police station if he did. The first door had a Police Woman outside and all bags where searched by her I was tempted to crack a joke about how she had better look under Troy’s cap for his knife but I thought better not as she might take it way too seriously. When we walked though that door it was just like the air port with a load of xray machines and metal detectors and so many police officers that I for a moment thought we had got Scotland Yard by mistake. We had our photos taken and where issued with visitor’s badges then I was able to go to the gents then come back and join the group. The first room where we waited for the tour guide to meet us had a stain glass window and was an old style building which was like a church.

When the tour guide got there I asked him if it was like a church there coz it was where the politicians prayed that the election results would go their way. The tour guide we got who’s name also happened to be Richard took us to the red section near the house of lords where we went first to the room where the queen goes to change into her special clothes before she opens parliament once a year. There were also lots of coats of arms and shields. The tour guide told us that a lot of the school boys think they were football team symbols so Troy asked where Arsenal was. The tour guide told him to see if he could find it but he couldn’t. We then went to where it really got interesting, the House of Lords and all the red seats, I saw something that looked like a loud speaker on each chair. I asked the tour guide whether it was a loud speaker or heated seats coz the Lords Porsches had them too. The tour guide told me they where loud speakers so everyone could hear each other. Then we all had to stand in the rows on those seats without being able to sit down on them to be out of the other groups way but if I wanted to sit down I would have to buy a pedigree and give a couple of million to a certain political party.

Then Sir Somebody walked in and the security lady told him he was not supposed to be in there at that time. But she did say something afterwards about the rules changing all the time. She also talked about something getting caught on the seats tearing the expensive red leather and saying it was £1000 worth of damage. The tour guide says she was going to show to a place where the Queen doesn’t go and that he would tell me why in the minute. At that point I immediately thought of poor areas and public transport. However it was actually the house of commons. The tour guide told us that this was because of King Charles antics, such as trying to behead politicians, so later he was beheaded himself and the royals where only aloud in the red section of the parliament building and the green part was out of bounds for them. We then went and stood above green seats to stay out of another groups way. These seats you had to live somewhere where a good few thousand people liked you enough to vote for you, so you got elected if you wanted to sit down there. The tour guide also pointed upwards to show us a big screen where the public gallery was before and said that it ruined the live atmosphere. However it was built because a group of protesters threw a bag of flour on Tony Blair’s head and it could have been anthrax or something else more dangerous.

We then went back to the big room that looked like a church and waited for someone to take us to see Glenda. We walked up this escalator and it looked like a shopping centre full of posh cafes. I asked the girl who was showing us the way if the cheapest bar in Westminster that was allegedly was in this building actually existed. Her answer was that we had just gone past it and her husband didn’t like the limited choice of drinks and when I asked her if it was tax free she said no. I figured they where not gone tell the public if it was as that would lose a lot of votes.

We finally got to Glenda’s office. Glenda was there waiting to greet us and we were all offered seats around a table. We were then all given a copy each of this thick booklet called hansar and Glenda said it was just for one day. My first response was gosh I’ve seen company annual reports smaller then this. Glenda said “I doubt it” and Suzie said “ and to think someone has to type all that”. Glenda talked about voting and how it saddened her that young people particularly girls where not bothering to vote as she said she remembered women who had risked their lives and even died to get them this right. And when she was 21 she voted and was happy that she could do so. I remembered a particular year when women where first allowed in the house of lords apart from the queen which was 1958 – only a year after Glenda was 21. So I asked her “Glenda you was 21 in 1957 and I remember from the tour how women where first allowed in the House of lords in 1958 shortly after. Was it your ambition to buy yourself a seat there when you had made enough money after finding you could as a women, but then found you where popular enough for a green seat so you didn’t have to buy a red one”. Her immediate response was “I WAS NOT 21 IN 1957 …… oh yes I was! However you couldn’t buy a seat there in those days you had to be born to the right family which I unfortunately wasn’t.” I don’t think she liked being reminded of that. She did talk a lot about how Gordon Brown was the man for the job and how Cameron wants to do cut backs and how she didn’t like Tony Blair. I asked her if the reason others begged to differ about Brown was that unlike her he was no actor and unlike Tony he was no barrister but that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t a good money manager. She seemed to like that.

When I asked her which she preferred out of politics and acting she said that when she was acting most theatre companies wouldn’t have put up the behaviours of some politicians she had to encounter. Suzie talked about how she remembered working with her ages ago when she was acting but I don’t think Glenda remembered her as it was so long ago. When I asked Glenda about the rumour that she told Tony Blair in 2005 to stand down or she will stand against him in 2005 and the fact he did so in 2007 and what she had on him. She answered with “it took him 2 years to go away since the time I told him to, so nothing” and that she did tell him this but she knew she stood not much chance against him so it was what they call a stoking horse. Glenda stated she thought that prime minister’s question time was a waste of time. So I asked her if she were the opposition wouldn’t she want to have the opportunity to ask Mr Cameron questions about his recent causes of action. She responded with “Well yes the prime minister should be held accountable however it has started becoming a time for Torys to have a go at Gordon Brown who is doing a very good job considering the circumstances .”

I asked her what made her want to go into politics when she had already made enough money to retire in acting. Her answer was she wanted to get rid of Margret Thatcher’s ghastly government. I asked her this joke question “So Glenda according to your page on Wikipedia, your political career took off in 1992 around the time that John Major won his last election and that he came from a circus family. Did you think that his party was becoming a bit of a circus and that as an ex actress did you thought she could do a better job of it?” She responded quickly with “ I’ m not that arrogant”. I remember asking her what she thought of car clubs she said “ My constituency is full of people who keep asking me what I’m going to do about getting all those cars off the road but were any of them willing to give up their cars like they want every one else to? No.”

Suzie was talking to her about affordable housing. Glenda was saying that her constituency did have quite a lot of poor people, however she stated that the council had sold approximately 25% of the housing stock under the ‘Right to buy’ scheme.. My thoughts were if that is true Hampstead and Highgate and surrounding area where so expensive, where do all those poor people live apart from the servants quarters? I asked Glenda about how she voted on the Autism bill and the terrorism act where one can be detained for up to 42 days without evidence. She voted yes to the autism bill and no to the said the section of the terrorism act. I wanted to ask her about Cameron’s cut backs and how Gordon intends to continue this good life they are providing on borrowed money and how does Gordon intend to pay it back and continue this at the same time; but she seemed to have to go before I could ask. Maybe she had a 6th sense for this sort of thing.

We then went downstairs to eat lunch which was quite nice but expensive in a café in the houses of parliament. We then went outside waited for Carenza’s wheelchair taxi for a while which seemed to come, then go away, then take a while to get her another one. This was most Annoying but we did arrive back at AFK before 2:30 pm so I could get to my supermarket job on time.

Blogged by Richard

The Visit From Lynne Featherstone

On Thursday 20^th August Lynne Featherstone MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, came to visit us at The Gatehouse, which is part of Action For Kids. In the morning, a team of six students (including myself) and Antonio (the chef) and Madeline went to The Gatehouse to cook for the MP. We made Mexican Chilli Rice. First we washed our hands, the food and the equipment. Next, we prepared the food. We had our photos taken while we were preparing the food. I didn’t do much as I had to get a few ingredients.

When everything was prepared, the chef with the team cooked everything. Then we prepared the table, drinks and the cutlery.  Lynne Featherstone arrived at The Gatehouse at 12:30 with Jo and Maureen. We had a good chat, and then we had a party afterwards.  Finally, the photographer asked us to pose for one more picture. We had to hold the bowl of salad and pretend that we were tucking in. 

Blogged by Siobhain

Read Lynne Featherstone’s blog post about the day here.

WHILE BEN WENT AWAY, I WENT FULL TIME AT AFK

For the last 3 weeks my colleague Ben was on holiday in Hungary. So I was the only aspie in ‘aspie corner’. Normally we sit together and my boss had told me that the place could not run without us. The charity needed me to do Ben’s job while he was away so I was going to have all the overtime I wanted. For the first week of this cover I had a week off my other job at the supermarket, so I was able to go full time at Action For Kids for that week. Usually I have to leave AFK early on Thursdays in order to get to the supermarket on time for my other job.

 

On Monday morning when the post arrived, it was a big sack full which Yi-Ling (one of our students) was finding quite heavy to carry, so I helped her, and there was a big sort out of what’s what. There were all sorts of letters some, of which where not even for anyone at AFK. This included a letter for the meat company and the storage company next door but there was also letter for the cab office and the curry club and the wishing well pub nearby. There were others that were for other people in other departments within AFK but most of it was raffle ticket payments which I was responsible for while Ben was on holiday.

 

The one thing I noticed when I sat down at Bens desk was that the whole computer needed a clean so I found some antibacterial wipes from the WRL (work related learning) department so I could clean my screen so I could see the work I was doing as well as the pictures of cats staring at me. I then went onto the keyboard which looked like it hadn’t been cleaned for over 10 years. I turned the keyboard upside down and ran a paper clip end through it after I had bent it for that purpose. I found a handful of dust and I showed it to the girls in Carolyn’s row and they didn’t like the sight of it.

 

When I looked in Bens desk draw to find something to clean the keyboard with I found a fake plastic yellow banana and some chocolate wrappers in his drawer.

 

Nazmin (a colleague of mine) told me to ask Simon (the IT man) for some spray to clean the key board. He lent me some and it was like a spray of air blowing the remaining dust out. But as there was so much needed I used a lot, Simon seemed annoyed at the amount I used but that was how bad it was. A few dusty residents in that key board were evicted that day, even though they had probably lived there long enough to claim squatter’s rights.

 

After all that effort of cleaning that key board sadly had to go to waste as it packed up one evening a few days later while Simon was away so Tracy made an executive decision that Ben was due a new keyboard so she got one for me as we both agreed that it was probably all that dust that was holding it together.

 

After the first week, the work seemed fine but on the second week the post seemed to come thick and fast and on top of that I had my supermarket job for 2 evenings a week as well. There seemed to be loads of raffle tickets and money to deal with. Carol (one of my colleagues) told me it was because the raffle draw dead line was on the 21^st so there would be loads of tickets coming in and also it was busy because my boss was on jury service.

 

When there seemed to be bigger and bigger bags of post to sort out I was so glad that Jolene (another colleague) had previously thought of this envelope colour code system so we knew what raffle it was without having to open them all first. I was so glad I reinforced it at staff away day.

 

I was working away at the T6 raffle first as that was the one with which the draw was drawing nearer. I managed to stay on top of T6 but T7 was piling up even though I did quite a bit and even put nearly £3000 through the system on one day.

 

Another fun part of this job was also when I opened supporter queries. The good thing was I didn’t have to deal with them as it was Carol’s job. Even then it wasn’t face to face like it was at my supermarket job, which I hate and I’m powerless to do anything about as it is way out of my remit. In fact at times the complaints at my supermarket job are so far out of my remit its funny. I mean no one would complain to a road sweeper about planning permission decisions, just because they work for the council.

 

The last week of full time work at AFK was better as my boss had returned to work from Jury service and I took a day off to see my social worker even though that was a day I had to work at the super market. Also the pressure was off because that raffle T6 had all been done and the T7 draw wasn’t for a while yet. I still didn’t have time to do everything that Ben normally does as I didn’t have time to bombard our team (Ben calls it bombarding people when he sends loads of funny e-mails about trains and bananas to colleagues).

 

I asked my boss if I managed to do the same amount of work as Ben. She told me that Ben wouldn’t have done any more then me and the reason the raffle work piled up was that summer was a busy time as there are more people willing and able to sell raffle tickets in that nice weather. I figured Ben from his many years experience in this job knew exactly when to take his holidays.  They say aspies are good with money and numbers and I managed to put several thousand pounds on the system over the weeks.

 

Blogged by Richard

Making mugs: my project

My name is Tanya and I was asked to help with designing mugs to sell to the public in order to raise more awareness for the charity. First of all a team of young Action For Kids students researed other charity’s merchandise on the internet to see what people would buy.

Then another group of students went out into Crouch End with a questionaire to ask the public what they would buy and how much they would pay. Then the students started to design different mugs, they came up with about 20 different designs, so we put it to vote to see which were the most popular and we came up with two designs.

Then a printer came into the office and I asked him some questions to do with the mugs and he said he would give us the mugs and package them for free. We then edited one of the mugs (the tree mug) where each of the students designed a flower or leaf and we put them all together took pictures and put them on the comuter.

Then I sent them to our printer with the Action for Kids logo and colours, for him to print he said it would take three weeks to print. When they got delivered everyone was excited including me, seeing our designs on mugs is very exciting, even more exciting is thinking that the public are useing our mugs designed by us.

Now we are selling them by word of mouth and local business Loukias has helped, and Budgens have given Action For Kids a stall outside there shop in Crouch End, to sell the mugs.

Blogged by Tanya

Me with Loukia from Loukia’s cafe on Tottenham Lane, N8

 Buy an Action For Kids mug designed by our students! Project manager Tanya, pictured with the mugs, said “I am really pleased with how they turned out and I hope that people will buy them”. They are available for £5 each (including p&p). Email partnerships@actionforkids.org to place an order.

Action For Kids: The Movie

Click here to view a five minute film about Action For Kids, where our bloggers are based. Richard works at the charity and Toby does work experience there. (Note that the film clip opens in YouTube).

Raising more with fun for all at the Hornsey carnival

I was offered a chance to go to Hornsey carnival and join in with the parade as part of the Action For Kids team but I wasn’t sure where to go and I knew I had a choice between dressing up as a cowboy or an Indian. I had made a few jokes about other things we could go as including Ben (work colleague of mine) going as a banana. I chose cowboy as I only had the choice of that or an Indian.

When the day came last Saturday I was wearing my jeans and a t-shirt and I was standing outside my local corner shop near where the parade was about to start. I saw a few other organisations go by as part of the carnival. This included Budgens, the army cadets and the brownies.

Then who should be there but Action For Kids. I was given a cowboy hat and invited to join in there where loads of people I knew staff and students alike as well as Antonio driving the mini bus with a sign in the window saying “Casti: wanted dead or alive” in the front window.

However there was one thing I noticed about every one else with charity collection buckets on the parade was just walking by in the middle of the road holding the buckets. I thought that the people where not going to come to the buckets, you have to bring the buckets to the people. So I did. I even managed to get to a lady in a zima frame sitting on the wall in Park road who was generous enough to put a handful of coins in once I explained quickly who AFK were. I knew that had I, not we would have missed out on that donation.

I also came up with a few quotes that got a few more people fishing into there pockets and hand bags to get coins into the bucket. One example being a small boy with a nice new bike with his well off middle class parents I brought the bucket over and said “for kids who need 4 wheels all the time not just 2 at play time”. I also would see parents, mainly mums, with buggies and push chairs where I’d offer the bucket and say “for those with kids who need to be wheeled around beyond the first 3 years of their lives”. This piece of front line fundraising soon made the buckets full.

Then we went past the Crouch End clock tower. We had a rest in a nice residential road nearby. A Gentlemen who happened to live there and know one of the staff at AFK was kind enough to let us in his house to use his bathroom. This meant the rest of the walk was easier. The front line fundraising continued till we had handed in the bucket at Tottenham Lane police station to the organizers of the carnival, then we went back to the AFK building. This was the first time I went to the Action For Kids building on a Saturday.

There I had a chat with a friend of a WRL staff member’s friend who worked at the BBC as a researcher for children’s television programs and I talked about the tours I had been on where I had seen the blue peter garden and the top of the pops studios

All in all it was a fun day out and it made a change from the usual Saturday’s activities.

Blogged by Richard

Two Weeks in Queens Square…………a.k.a. two weeks of hell!

A couple of weeks ago, I fell ill. I first went to the Whittington hospital, where I spent 2 days in A&E. After that, I was transferred  in an ambulance to Queens Square – the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. As there was the potential for me to have an operation, the hospital put me onto a neurosurgical ward. This is where the nightmare began.

 

 

          

          After I had seen my consultant (Mr. Watkins), I noticed an ambulance crew coming in with another patient. For the next two weeks, that patient kept bringing up everything they ate! Not only that but it turned out I was the only person in the ward under the age of 70.They did an operation and took a bolt out of my head and put a pressure monitor in my head for the next week. That accidentally came out prematurely when I moved in my sleep but they had enough readings to see that the pressure was normal. 

So I was referred to a headache specialist who said it was post traumatic migraine, the result of too much brain surgery. He gave me an anti epileptic / migraine drug which will take 6 weeks to work. So for the time being I’m on homeopathy and taking it easy ie playing Playstation! The things you have to go through to get a bad migraine sorted out!

Bloggd by Toby

The beach volley ball that was had by all

On Friday the 12^th of June I was invited to go to help out at the biggest event that Action For Kids had ever organised which had been talked about for a while by my colleagues in fundraising. It was a beach volleyball tournament in the City. I had to see what it was about. I was originally invited to come at 9:30am to help set it up but I was excused from such duties fortunately due to the fact that I had to work till midnight at my other job the day before and I wouldn’t get much sleep arriving home at 1;00am and then having to get up early to get to Liverpool street at about 9:30am.  

 

I was offered the option of either going on a mini bus with the Action For Kids students at midday or make my own way there by train for the afternoon. Unfortunately I left the house too late so I missed the mini bus so I went on a train from Hornsey station to Moorgate as my fellow aspie work colleague Ben had previously suggested to me in aspie corner one work day.

 

I looked around Liverpool Street trying to figure that map out and find the venue among those bank like building with loads of people in suits wondering around. I finally found it and there was a nice section of reserved seats for Action For Kids students to watch the games where there was sand and some banners with the AFK logo on it. Everyone seemed to have badges. I went to down to Carolyn to ask her for a badge, I got a badge that said event staff which was good.

 

There were 2 teams playing volleyball when I arrived one was HSBC and the other was Action For Kids. My bank account was with HSBC but it was Action for Kids that kept that account in the black for me so I knew exactly what team I was cheering for.

 

Some of the students where wondering around with some collection buckets Vishna and Yi Ling were waving buckets together, it was funny as they looked like twins.

I also got a chance to have a go at sitting in one of those wheelchairs and play wheelchair basket ball. Siobhan said she wouldn’t be good at it and I made a joke about how she would be better at it then me coz I’m used to basket ball and she might be used to net ball where you cant move with the ball and I couldn’t see how you could move the chair in a straight line and bounce the basket ball at the same time without having 3 hands. I tried it and I was right but I did manage to get the ball through the hoop after finding a chair which fitted me.

 

We went back to watching beach volley ball games – there was other teams such as hedge funds, banks, police and law firms playing. There was a game between city police and a law firm but I found that funny as lawyers verses cops was a regular professional occurrence. After a while of watching the Action For Kids team play and win their games, I got a chance to get on the court and do a bit of volleyball training with the students. This was fun.

 

Then I spent a while having a conversation with a lady called Drina who was an academic who had previously interviewed me at work at Action For Kids as she was doing some study on aspies in the work place. I was also talking to this other lady called Debbie who did a job supporting special needs kids in schools, she apparently supported a student in west lea the school I used to go to and started this after I left that school. We had a right laugh about some of the current special school politics my favourite was the term “ inclusion unit” as it seemed contradictory in terms as the work unit met it was one on its own where as inclusion meant it was part of something.

 

After that conversation  I went with the students to a posh yuppy bar that served food where Suzie ordered everyone a meal and all the students and a few staff members who were not playing on our volleyball team all sat round a big table. I sat and eat a burger and chips. I had Vishna chanting “Prader-Willi Syndrome”  at the top of her voice so I said  “Look Vishna, we are in a bar full of posh yuppies I feel embarrassed enough about wearing my blue jeans and trainers so id rather you didn’t draw further attention too us” and then I had Siobhan shouting across the table that the mushy pea that had come with her fish and chips were Robert’s bogies so I found a chair next to Siobhan so she could make those funny comments without the whole restaurant having to hear them….. for that reason as well as the fact that the kind of people who drink in that bar have another kind of “prada willy” syndrome where they want to talk like Prince William and wear clothes made by prada. You could see that the yuppies were not used to having disabled kids in their restaurant.

 

After watching more volleyball I made a joke about how having to clear the sand up afterwards would be a good prize if there was a load of valuable things like diamonds and £50 notes buried in that sand. It turned out the Action For Kids team came second to the Mitsubishi team in the final match. I was offered a mini bus ride home but I told Susie that I wished to see my duty through to the bitter end meaning a pint of bitter bought by the directors but unfortunately there was more to it then that.

 

At about 7:30pm the mini bus drove the students away and we all had to grab shovels to clear away the 40 tons of sand on the volleyball court. I saw even our director Paul’s 6 year old daughter had grabbed her small spade that came with a bucket for building sand castles so I said as a joke to Paul “Is it me or are site staff getting younger?”. We all got to work shovelling the sand into bags, this was really hard work.

 

It took us to about 10:30pm for us to fill all those bags with sand and by that time we decided to leave the rest to the professionals with the JCB truck. The only few of us remaining were Jo, Lawrence and Robert so I was the only member of fundraising staff remaining apart from Lyn and Carolyn who organised the event and stayed till midnight. Finally I got a pint which I really needed as Jo bought me a drink, this felt good. After that me and Jo got on a tube and got the W3 bus. She told me all about her time she ran her own business dealing in antiques when she was 18 while I talked about some of the funny business failures I had when I was that age. After that it was nice to finally be home after a long evening.

Blogged by Richard

A Teacher that didn’t quite make the grade…!

 

 Last term, one of my teachers was given the sack! The reason for this was simple: he lost our grades on no less than 6 times!

          Week 1: This teacher came to us all and said he hadn’t marked the work.  He went back to his office. Next day, he said it had ‘got caught up in a shredding pile’.

          Week 2: Teacher was in a bit of a flap over something when he came into the lesson. I asked him what was wrong. He muttered something about a mark book. I asked him as second time. This time, he gave in. He had fallen asleep on the Victoria Line and left his mark book on the train…WITH ALL OUR GRADES IN IT!  He apologised for the mistake and promised they would be found. This was an empty promise. They have never been found to this day.  After the lesson I had a massive go at the teacher. Obviously, he wasn’t best pleased. I was furious that my grades were gone! As far as I was concerned, I was as good as failed! I had to cool down for an hour.

Week 3: A message was posted on the college virtual notice board. It said that there had been a serious system error in regard to all Health and Social Care grades. All I could say to that was: ‘? *! @****!’ I was understandably annoyed. Week three and the problem had only got worse! It was traced back to this teacher. He was shown the door.             

A new head of department was brought in. She has rebuilt the reputation of the department in amazing style! The grades have never been retrieved.  I really hope that something can be done.

Blogged by Toby

The day I drank wine, sampled food and talked to posh women

About 2 weeks ago Paul (the Action For Kids Finance director) ask me if I would be willing to accompany him to an event called the London social enterprise presentation. He explained to me a little about the other organisations that might be attending including some African peoples organisation and a homeless one. He told me that he was offered the opportunity to bring a student or a colleague he said that he thought of me because I was both. My first thought was well even if it is just a load of political correctness lectures it was better then boring inputs.

So when the Tuesday came after lunch me and Paul  went to Hornsey station to get a train to Finsbury park where we got a tube towards water loo he told me about how he was raised in Enfield and he remembered an older relative working in the factory that used be owned by Ruberiod the company where my father was chief accountant back in the 80’s.

We went to waterloo and walked to the office it was quite a nice office we went into the reception and there was badges for both of us and we looked at a few amusing names of other organisations attending the event including one called “action for visitors”. We went up the stair to the conference room where the event was being hold. We sat down and the talking began it was quite a talk about how social enterprise help many organisations started up for good causes who didn’t know how to quite grow themselves by teaching them management techniques. This sounded quite interesting but despite that the room was just at the right climate for me to struggle to stay awake but I managed it.

After the talk came the best bit and that was getting to talk to all the people while plenty of wine and small samples of posh food was served. I talked to quite a few interesting people including one of the women who gave the talk she was previously in the property business providing office space for businesses too big to run from the owners home yet too small to afford their own premises. I also talked to another women who gave a talk who had started social enterprise and she was impressed that I was able to understand her talk. I also met a man from a company that’ specialises in getting disabled people into IT jobs. As well as someone from some other organisation which I forgot what it does but he recognised me from my other supermarket job. What a small world.

On my way back on the tube Paul seemed to think that it had gone well. We also had an interesting talk about quite a few things including previous jobs and he told me that even he used to stuff envelopes as a student at the Tesco’s head office in Chessant and how boring it was. I also told him a few stories’ my father told me about the early years of his accountancy career. All in all it was one of the best days I had ever had in my time of paid employment at Action For Kids and I didn’t think it got much better then sitting on a mini bus drinking coke and impersonating my old northern geography teacher for the entertainment of some students on another outing but it did the day Paul took me out to an event where I got paid to drink wine, sample posh foods and chat to rich women…

Blogged by Richard