When the Tory party chair Nadhim Zahawi was sacked, back in January, I was at the food bank, where I work five days a week. Seeing him not being clear about his tax affairs made me think more than ever that those who have, help themselves, and those who haven’t, help each other. I listened as one woman, already struggling and with several children, was talking about how she’d taken in a homeless friend for a while.
In the long months of January and February, when it’s cold and there is anxiety about paying energy bills, people have been struggling. We’ve had a couple of incidents of people coming in very distressed, people who thought they’d never need a food bank. They say: “We thought we could cope”, and they’ve been trying to extend what they’ve got in the cupboard, but actually we are there to help. People come in and feel low; the stigma is still there, regardless of what we tell them, but lots of us have experience of using a food bank. We say: “We’re all having weird things on toast.”
I’ve signed up for a counselling course, and although I can’t offer professional support, I hope it just means I’ll know what to say instead of “Are you all right?” I’ve learned that listening helps. It is mentally hard work at the moment, but there are lots of lighter moments. I was playing with a woman’s two kids on the floor while their mum was getting advice, and they left with a Christmas selection box under their arm because we’re still giving them out. They had no idea they were at a food bank.
This month, a few months after I started my job, was the first time I got the universal credit payment that I was expecting. I didn’t have a fine taken out for the first time since August – but I still don’t know how taking a job will affect what benefits I can continue to get, and it means I’m being more careful than ever. I had my first full council tax bill the other day, which I knew would be going up now I’m working – I was paying about £15 a month and now it’s £162.
I woke up in the morning with my hat on last week; I didn’t realise I’d gone to bed wearing it – because I do wear a hat indoors, and when the boiler broke recently, I was wearing a scarf and gloves too. For my birthday last week, I rented a movie on the TV – it was a fiver. We talked about going to the cinema but we had crisps in the house and a couple of beers, and it would have cost me a fiver just to get to the cinema and back on the bus. It was lovely, but it would have been nice to go out.
I’ve started having jam sandwiches at work because they taste better than the cheap ham I was buying. You go too cheap and it’s not worth having. I buy the wonky veg, which is fine, and I make stews and on day three it becomes a soup because there’s not much left in it. It’s about making things stretch a little bit further.
I still don’t know if I’m better or worse off financially by having a job, but it has done wonders for me. I told my mum I’d been to the pub with my friends after work, and she was over the moon for me, she said I’m a completely different person. I’m getting an identity, so I am upbeat, but I’m very aware of the precarious financial situation I’m in – but I can’t dwell on it.
Sometimes it does feel like I’m just surviving though, rather than thriving – but I am not the person I was a year ago, that much I do know. It’s my money and I’ve earned it, and I have pride in that. I’m holding my head up a little bit higher even though I still love an orange sticker at the supermarket. The other day, the man in the shop said he’d got some meat he needed to shift for some new stock. “Just wait there,” he said, and he put some nice ham in the reduced section and I picked up two packets. I laughed and thought, he knows me well now. But it means I am having nice sandwiches this week.
