Democracy

My first blog from my own flat! It’s taken the best part of six months, but the effects of a heavy rainstorm in Tooting have finally been counteracted. Bring on global warming, I say. And a huge thank you to my family for doing their best to sort it out, in the face of almost overwhelming incompetence and delay from those who were paid to sort it out. Unfortunately, my dreams of spending quality time here watching James Bond DVDs have been somewhat spoiled by the burglars having stolen half of them. And all of my other DVDs. And a good deal of my CDs. So I suppose when I have the ability to carry a shopping bag, I can look forward to some fun hours spent in HMV.

The up-sides to spending the night in my flat include a bathroom on the same floor as the sofa and the bed. The significant down-side is that I wouldn’t be here were it not for the fact that it is the domestic arrangements surrounding William’s latest hospital stay that have made it a sensible option. Wills is basically well in himself, but has been quite knocked back by this latest line infection, which has proved very difficult to shift. We discovered yesterday that he had lost 1.5kg, which makes him easier to pick up, but has very little else to recommend it. All of this, and the extraordinary variety of flora and fauna that he has managed to grow in his gut, has meant that he has been transferred to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, where he spent five months in 2005/6. Clearly realising the significance of this, and fearing the worst in terms of his limited stocks of Thomas toys, William has reacted by attempting to get the two engines Percy and Emily to produce offspring, as the attached photo shows.

Ironically, given the fact that William is currently proving to the world just how dependent he is on the medical profession, I spent two hours this afternoon in a ‘public meeting’ with Croydon council, listening to them attempt to convince us that the shutting of the special nursery where he was headed will be offset by their investment in new ‘Children’s Centres’. These will, we are told, meet William’s needs, and be ‘inclusive’. Despite the fact that they had no idea how they might provide the nurse with central line training that William needs at all times. And it was glorious to see local democracy in action. We had the opportunity to moan, and to change nothing. It was entirely clear that the policy was crisis driven, solving a problem elsewhere in their education provision by removing a special nursery provision that they feel less of a legal obligation to supply. Nursery provision that was part of a hugely successful special school with medical facilities and staff on supply, now completely wiped out with a vague idea of trying to match it elsewhere in normal nurseries through ‘staff training’. Dreadful. This, sadly, will run and run. And nothing was clarified by the endless upset ramblings of one garrulous father who had a completely understandable axe to grind, but insisted on doing it without ever really getting to the point. I hobbled off afterwards in a state of some depression and fear that the Croydon Education Department are sufficiently rubbish to take one of their few schools (albeit a special school) that has received unmitigated praise from Ofsted, and set about ruining it. My opinion of a Croydon education was not improved when my hobble home was interrupted by a schoolgirl in uniform asking me if I could go into a shop and buy some fags for her. I mean, she didn’t even say please…