New Year Update

 Start of the New Year. I'm really forcing myself to write because I cannot be arsed at all. Mentally I'm stuck in that same old rut of nothing happening and my brain is turning to mush. Likewise, my mental state is following it. I can't say I feel stressed or depressed. It's something else. Bored, maybe? Just fucking chronically bored out of my mind with looking at the same four walls. Staring at a laptop screen all day. Nothing to do at night except watch TV.

It is driving me fucking insane. Before Christmas we'd been asked to start working out of the office again. I was really apprehensive and got stressed out of my mind about it. But it actually turned out OK. In the little section where I worked there were three of us. Tons of space, lots of ventilation. I felt pretty confident about being back. It was only when the post-Christmas lockdown was announced that I realised how much I was enjoying it.

It had made a massive difference to my mental state. Leaving the house and going to work brought a little bit of normality back. Seeing other people. Being able to have conversations about trivia rather than all work. I liked it and I'd missed it.

The other thing I missed was being warm. I'd forgotten how fucking hard to heat this house is. Luckily my daughter doesn't feel the cold. She's quite happy wearing fleeces and giant hoodies. But not me. Sitting in the spare room I use as an office I am absolutely freezing. A few times, today was one of them, I was physically shivering. One thing I only discovered today is how good a hot water bottle is. I stuffed it under my fleece against my belly and the difference was incredible. It made me feel so much better.

The other thing I do is work out at lunchtime. I've found that if I start at 8.30 then the cold starts to become uncomfortable around 11.30. I can push it another hour then at 12.30 I go and train. Sitting there in front of a screen for hours is the problem. The blood isn't flowing. But I find if I go and do a bit of hard exercise then I'm good for another few hours. Then by about 3.30-4pm I don't mind doing a few short blasts of my little fan heater.

Financially, Christmas was okay. I had to transfer about £100 from my savings to cover it all but other than that I survived alright. I'd tried to prepare in advance. When I was a kid my mum always had the Christmas Box. Whenever she was out she'd buy something extra, something that either we would need for Christmas or would just make a nice treat. So now I do that. Starting in October, every time I go to the supermarket I buy something extra for the Christmas Box. And by Christmas Day I've got a nice little supply of both Christmas essentials and a few luxuries. You don't really notice the cost and the end result is that my "big" Christmas shop isn't much different to my normal weekly one.

I get a Christmas dinner pack from the local butcher. It saves a ton of money compared to the supermarket. You get a 2.5kg turkey crown, a tray of their hand made pigs in blankets, a load of sausages and a big pack of bacon all for £30. There's about a good 10 meals of food that went into the freezer just from leftovers.

Presents. I only have my daughter to buy anything major for. In a normal year I wouldn't see my parents til January so their presents come out of that month's budget. This year? Who knows. I did some baking and sent them a few treats instead rather than presents through the post. But for my daughter I spent maybe £300? It wasn't far off what I'd budgeted. I started putting aside £20 a week starting in October so that when I came around to pay my credit card bill for December I had enough to cover her presents.

The big financial problem I've got at the minute is that one of my old fillings disintegrated at the weekend. I patched it up with one of those repair kits and went to see the dentist today. I was registered with an NHS dentist but, stupidly, I'd not been for a long time so got dumped. The only place I could get seen at was a local private dentist. Partly practices aren't taking on patients because of covid but it seems that no-one wants to do NHS treatment now either.
So I went, knowing that this is going to be a fucking disaster. I'd been stressing about it all week. I get there, she does X-rays and pokes around and starts telling me my options. Cheapest is an extraction at £80. The other option is a root filling at... £650. Then she starts talking about implants like we're talking about a new tyre for my car. £2000 and she's acting like it's nothing.

It really saddens me. I'm in a position where I could, in theory, slap the £650 on my credit card. But there is a hell of a lot of people who can't. It's fucking disgusting that in a country like hours that good dentistry is beyond the reach of people on even a decent salary. Who has £600 to spend on a fucking filling in one tooth?

So unless you are fairly affluent... bye-bye tooth. That's the reality for most people. It's incredible that if you are not wealthy then your only dentistry option is the same thing we were doing 200 years ago. I imagine for the average person who isn't with an NHS dentist then instead of the traditional "how much will this hurt?" they are worrying about "how much will this cost?".

That's been the reality of this pandemic for the average person. For most working class people the big worry has not been whether or not they get sick, it has been whether or not they will lose their jobs, lose their homes, lose everything. The inequality and the fragility of existence for a working class person in Britain is awful. It makes me both sad and angry.

Anyway, I think my next step is to try to find either an NHS dentist or someone willing to do something cheaper. I can't believe that the only replacement for a £20 filling is £650 of work or just take the fucking thing out. That's bullshit.

I've got a few financial aims for this year but I think I'll save that for another post.