Mandalas, Mercenaries and Chocolate Trifle.

Woke up not feeling too bad.  Finished writing a bit of software to calculate and check the payments to my daughter of her survival allowance from the tax payers and discovered that she has not been paid for the first three days of her claim.  I then went searching for the letter that said she would get her ESA, how much she would get and when the payments would start.  One thing after another and I end up at the end of the day finally finding the letter and I discover they state "We cannot pay Employment and Support Allowance for the first three days of your claim.  Ask us if you want to know more about this."  So now I am going to have to spend time and money asking them about it.  It seems counter intuitive to say the least.  Would that mean that one has to apply for sick benefit three days before you get sick?

But in my rummaging through all the previous correspondence I came across this little gem.

This was part of the paperwork inviting (let's call my daughter Helen - I get offended by referring to 'daughter' all the time) Helen to the highly controversial and inhumane medical assessment by Atos.  I do understand that these people are pretending to be trying to be helpful.  What amazes me is that there are real people (well, zombies by some folks definition) who are paid salaries - enough to live comfortably with a house and occasional birthday cake and holiday and car and pension and more - to 'work' for the government, albeit indirectly through quangos and profiteering enterprises, and this is the best they can do.  Dump a printout from a crappy website, regardless of what it says, and never think about the consequences, meaning or significance of the resultant ink patterns plonked on the dead tree pulp.  Why would it be useful to anyone to be told to walk from SE81, departing at 01:13 p.m. to SE81 3EJ to arrive somewhere not specified with instructions to 'Walk to SE81 3EJ' and to be told the 'duration' is 12 minutes.  No - it is disgusting.  It is funny but only because the society is in such a disgusting shape.  It is like laughing at Hitler.  And I also note that at the bottom of the otherwise blank page it says "Atos Healthcare is a trading name of Atos IT Services UK Limited"  Raises some questions in my mind.  Obviously these mercenaries simply had a company called Atos IT and saw an opportunity to stand in as the 'medical examiners' choosing who should go to the labour camp and who should go for further experimentation.  Well I suppose they are following the general consensus and they did 'get a job'.

In a past life I used to write software and have been a bit artistic in various ways.  The symbiosis of these two activities has led me to write software to produce graphic images.  The mandala at the top of this post is one for your consumption and delectation.

It was not only Helens birthday on 31 January but my mother's too.  I thought I should do something for my mother (having sorted Helens stuff) and decided that to produce a little card with a pretty picture (the one at the top of this post) would lift her spirits and let her know that I was thinking of her.  I went to print this image on a piece of paper to produce the card.  But alas I have a Hewlett Packard HP Photosmart B110.  This printer is a technological wonder and screws up regularly in order to afford it the opportunity to offer lots of alternative expensive solutions.  They are such ridiculous human beings/zombies who produce this junk.  But it wouldn't print the colours properly.  The following several hours were bad for my health.  I think many people have had the experience of printers screwing up and spending hours and hours dealing with other people's failures just to print out one little item.  The feeling is that it was easier before they ever invented the damn things.  But in the course of cleaning the heads and being told my cartridges were counterfeit numerous times I printed out a 'test page' and the little colour chart looked dreadful.  But I liked the repeated squares and decided to play with them.  I produced a nice set of canvases that would look very good in the Tate or some other 'modern' art gallery.

If you would like to purchase this set I can get them printed on canvas through DeviantArt for you and you could have the full set for a pittance at £500.00.  Just let me know by emailing me from the Contact page.

You can also buy a print of the full image (from which the card picture above is a detail) from http://samspruce.deviantart.com/gallery/33264046#/d4dtnwy or browse other works of mine at http://samspruce.deviantart.com/gallery/ or even visit the Toxic Drums Art Gallery, Toxic Drums Images or visit the Toxic Drums Arbitrary Art page.

We then went round to B&C's for dinner with lots of chocolate trifle and chocolate cake thrown in because it was Helen's birthday (I wrote this late on Thu 31 Jan which was so late it was actually Fri 1 Feb but her birthday was 31 Jan), and B's yesterday (30 Jan), too.  What a lot of birthdays.

Incidentally and also two extraordinarily nice people who shall remain codified and other wise anonymous as WK and SB contacted me on the back of reading my blog to enquire about my health and to say nice supportive things.  So blogging does have some purpose after all.  Thank you so much to both of them - it really does make a difference - and thank you to all those thousands of other people who, through reading my blog, wish me well but are either too busy or too bashful to express their concern and good wishes.

Thank you all of you - you know who you are - and good night.

I'm tired and have to see the doctor in the morning!