Epilepsy in a growing child is just like the sword of Damocles. Hanging over you, waiting, you don't know when, but you do know that one day it's going to fuck your shit up.
A few months ago I decided I would like to try to put together a series of photos about life with a disabled son, the problems that arise and stuff like that. I'm not 100% clear on the brief myself but I thought it will become more apparent as time goes on. Eventually I was thinking I could display these in a gallery setting of some sort, I just need to develop the concept further until I'm happy with it. I'm only got nine photos so far and I'm not even sure I'll keep all of them but I thought I'd start sharing some of them here. This is the first photo I took. It's very dark and without context it's probably hard to see what's going on. This photo was taken at 3:07am. John wakes up most nights and it can be a struggle to settle him back down to sleep. One way I try to do this is just to climb onto his bed, sit him on my knee and cuddle him. Doing it this way I can attempt to stop him throwing his arms and legs round and he settles down agai...
It's that time again. School photos. Great yeah? No. I've got a camera, I'm perfectly capable of taking a photo of my sons. I take lots of phots and keep the best. I've got loads of great photos of my sons. So why do I need to sit my son in front of a stranger with a camera for 10 seconds, hope he is willing to smile then pay twenty odd quid for a few photos that aren't even that good? At least these days we get a choice of photos, we can either have sinister or serious. Not smiling or happy or laughing. When none of them are great, I'm not paying out for them. I not going to spend money on photos I don't want just because it's his first school photo.
Dole life Once they've got you in the system they don't want you to leave. At least not until they've with you down and accepted your worthless existence. I could do with some more money, as could most people, so I looked into how earning some money would effect my benefits. I can earn £20 per week! Wow, a whole £20! Anymore than that would be deducted from my benefits. If I earn enough to replace that benefit then I'll be above the threshold for my carers allowance so would need enough to replace that as well. By then if probably be losing my other benefits as well. The way I work it out I'd need a starting wage of about £21k to be in the same financial situation I'm in now. But then I'd have to add on the costs of going to with (travel, meals, clothes, etc) and I'd be worse off. The chance of going into a new job at the same level as my old job after a break is pretty much non-existent. So this means I'm pretty much stuck on benefits. So is it ...
Comments
Post a Comment