Stuart G Bennett

But I had to admire Kate.

She could so easily have given in, gone on the social, had her kids pretty much paid for.

Instead she slogs hard to make ends meet.

Her son is 14. He’s getting a bit much to handle, and he certainly doesn’t like being a poor kid.

You can understand all too well, he wants the stuff his friends have. When I was a boy I wanted / needed a bike. Strangely now you can get a bike for less than I could 25 years ago, and his was just found somewhere. It wasn’t nicked, it had just been abandoned by some other kid, it just needed a bit of oil and a clean.

But he wants a phone, wants a PSII, wants cool gear.

Trouble is the only way he can get it is to steal, and so far he won’t do that. I do so hope he manages to retain his strength in rejecting theft. He does a paper round, he cleans cars at the weekend, he earns an OK amount of money, but Kate needs most of it to feed them all.

Kate’s home is clean. Not spotless, but clean. She cooks at home every day and serves up an OK meal.

Her flat is small, the kids share a room, and she has her own. It’s a council property so the rent is reasonable. Do you get the picture?

When I write some words tomorrow I’ll introduce the fellow I took to Kate’s house. He’s not an ogre, he’s not even unreasonable. We’ll call him Ken.

Following on from yesterday’s post…

I’m going to write about the work I’ve been doing over the past couple of weeks more like a story than the usual posts. And if I use the word ‘the’ more often than might seem sensible it’s because I have lost the ability to type the quickly and so I need to re train my head and fingers. The. There. The.

So yes. The story of these customers.

I’m thinking of one particular family.

I’ll call the mum Kate.

Kate works blinking hard. She’s a cook at the school. She starts at 9.00, which is cool as her youngest goes to the school she works at, that means she can drop the little one off and go straight to work. She finishes at 2.00, but the little ‘un doesn’t finish until 2.30. But Kate can’t hang around for her as her next job starts at 2.30 cleaning in a restaurant after the lunchtime shift. So little has to go home with her friends, and no one can know that she then just goes home alone. At six!

Kate’s shower is cracked and I just looked up a new one on UK Bathrooms as I’d just used them to buy Mum’s new suite. But of course Kate couldn’t even pay to have it fitted let alone buy the damn thing. I wanted to buy it for her but the poor girl was torn between anger that I’d seemingly taken pity on her, and gratitude that I’d even consider doing so.

It has been a hectic couple of weeks and I haven’t really caught up with Y let alone spoken to mother, or written anything in the blog. I’ve been working all over the place as part of a project for the bank to help its board get to grips with its customer base.

It must be an odd thing being hugely well paid, for a long time you must carry on thinking you’re normal, leading normal lives. But then eventually you have to realise that it’s not normal to send your kids to private school. It’s not normal to get your driver to take your dog out to the park. It’s not normal to have a bonus each year at all, let alone one that resembles the GNP of some countries.

I’ve been introducing guys who are in that sort of position to customers who bank with us who might have nothing.

Nothing.

No house.

No car.

No job.

Or worse than that, a job that only just pays the most basic of their bills.

But then they have to do that annoying thing of eating.

And even worse, the kids need to eat too. How inconsiderate of them.

And then there’s the need for TV.

I’d argue against TV being a need – but then I can afford to go out. And so I’d argue that for these folk the TV is a basic requirement.