News

Monday
Today did not start well. I had several reports to follow up that came in over the weekend. The first surreally said please offer help to Mrs Cats who has mice. The second, slightly more surreally, asked me to phone Mrs Quack urgently. The third message - by now leaving the realms of the surreal far behind - was, from Mrs Ducks and her worries about Mr Bruin, and the last one told me that a guy had been bitten by a cobra. Stop right there. This is crazy. When do you see a cobra in North London? Let alone get so intimate that it sinks its fangs into your nether or other parts? Out of scientific curiosity I checked it out. There wasn't a cobra! The guy had copper poisoning!

Tuesday
Found out that it was Mrs Duke (not Mrs Ducks) who wanted to thank me for getting her brother Mr Brian (not Mr Bruin) emergency home care, and Mrs Quack turned out to be Miss Clark.

Wednesday
Get offered a bribe today when I was asked to remove the diagnosis of dementia from a residential care application so we don't have to wait for a place in a specialist unit. The caller in question promised I'd be looked after.

Like all social workers I've had offers to look the other way. My choice of any of the boys in an East London male brothel, handfuls of drugs of course, crates of bonded whisky, a contract on any victim of my choice (see diaries passim), and even the local police, pleased with my promised performance at the court gave me a place on their priority response list, just like the PM and MPs. I'm now waiting to find out what amount will be offered that might compensate for being found out and sacked.

Thursday
A recent article in the local paper about environmental health officers clearing a rat infested house has triggered a wave of referrals identifying residents to whom every plastic bag and old vest is sacred. I am working with my student on some of them.

Friday
There are indeed similarities between these hoarders in terms of family history, academic achievements, plausible personalities. But there it stops. One chirpy little man wraps his rubbish carefully in tiny parcels, labelled and stacked up the walls of his house. Another just opens the door of the rooms in turn and throws in his finds. He lives in a corner of the sitting room as every other room is filled with anything from TV tables to empty cardboard boxes. Some archaeologist is going to love this in a couple of hundred years' time. In other houses the goods hoarded included about 10,000 plastic carrier bags, scissors by the gross, 50-year-old dried fruit saved from the war, so the place smelt like a distillery, and alas dog mess and the like, which brought a variety of insects large and small by the thousand to swarm the walls of the flat.

I think I prefer the old vests.