Two more days (Monday and Tuesday) at the London Chamber ofiice were exceptionally busy. We had more than 400 UK certificates to stamp over those two days. We were assisted by a new member of staff from the head office who was sent down to us in Ashford for a week. He did well until he got into an argument with a holiday agency with whom he'd booked a holiday for next week. He had forwarded them a payment of £800 and they claimed not to have received it, He had a long and highly unpleasant conversation with them, as the office turned blue with his colourful language, and then he collapsed, crestfallen by the injustice of it all. I urged him to get his bank to sort it it out. It was the Bank of Ireland and I actually googled for him and printed off the details for the help desk in the London office of the bank. He had no faith in the bank but eventually he rung them. As the bank looked at the issue, it transpired that he had been scammed, not by the holiday agency, but by another body with an account which had picked up on his holiday plans.These scammers are the scum of th earth. He was only a junior lad with one of his first jobs and the £800 was a fortune to him. I don't know how things ended, but I'm sure I shall find out on Monday next week when I come back to the office.
On Thursday I travelled to the British Home (for the Incurable??!!, depressing or what?) in Streatham to visit my old Polish Solidarity colleague Naomi. When I had been Chairman, she had been Secretary, and we had been a very effective team, especially when it came to lobbying the Labour Party successfully over 2 years to convince them not to invite Communist Party representatives from Eastern Europe to their annual conferences.
She is now a tetraplegic. She is paralysed from the neck down, except that she has limited use of her hands. Very limited, I should add, as her right hand is in a harness and she can just about pick up a newspaper, or a spoon (or a chocolate) with her left. She has been in this Home for nigh on 10 years. She had been suffering from intense back pain for many years, and kept pressing her local A&E at Mile End Hospital to treat it. They could not find anything and eventually assumed that Naomi was imagining it. They pumped her full of drugs and damaged her memory and her brain irreversibly. And it was only after this treatment that they realized she had a damaged spine, which it was also too late to treat. So she is stuck in this electric wheelchair in a home in Streatham, unable to perform the most basic human functions, but still listening to classical music and remaining up to date with the news. So we chatted about old times, about Putin and Ukraine, Bolsonaro and Lula, climate change and gender politics, the German Reparation claim lodged by the Polish government, and of course the saga of Boris, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. She puts all her trust in Keir Starmer. Her assessment of Labour's chances, not only in winning power, but ultimately ruling effectively and staying in power, are quite astute. Her Labour loyalties remain intact, re-enforced as they are by her Jewish values and sensibilities (I almost said, prejudices). Needless to day, for her, Keir Starmer walks on water. I share her hopes, but not her optimism.
Yet sometimes her halluciantory obsessions return. She fears she may be expelled, because she has been rude and short-tempered with the staff. I told her she has to apologize, if not once, then more times, as she implied that she had particularly upset the black staff. She wanted to find a Jewish home for an alternative, although these are for elderly terminally ill and do not have the physiotherapy resources of the British Home. Could she perhaps stay at my flat? I could imagine Albina going bereserk at the mere suggestion that I might even have considered it. We wouldn't have the room for her and a carer, and certainly Albina would be too physically weak to lift her or even push her wheelchair. Then she expressed concern over the fate of her Iranian partner. She was worried that he may have been kidnapped. So could I ring and check with the Iranian Embassy? No, Naomi, sorry, get a grip.
I left quite depressed over her fate. Due to hospital negligence she was now a prisoner embalmed in her own body, but with an imagination and a worldly awareness that was desperately trying to escape to freedom outside. Last year she had managed to join us at the annual picnic in Ravenscourt Park, with the help of two members of staff. This year she could not make it.
On my way home I dropped into the Holiday Inn at the end of my road in Brentford to attend a meeting of the Brentford Lock residents. I thought it was a general meeting and I could ask the question that vexed Albina about responsibility for cleaning the outside of our windows at our 3 bedroom residence. Obviously we could clean the large door windows on our balcony from our main bedroom and our kitchen, but the windows to our sitting room, our spare bedroom and our study were all inaccessible from the outside. When I turned up I discovered I had made a mistake. It was only the committe meeting of the residents, although BLW members had been invited to it, on the proviso they wanted to join the Committee. It was actually the committee A.G.M, The chairman and the secretary were both fed up with poor support and infighting and had decided to retire. Seeing me, they immediately invited me to be the new Chairman. Politely, I refused. Oh OK then, but at least you can join our Committee? I shrugged my shoulders but they took my silence as a yes. They talked then about some projects and wound up the meeting. Hastily I put in my question about the window cleaning. Unfortunately, window cleaning was our responsibility, not the managers' of the building. So bad news for Albina when she next rings from Poland.
I woke up in the middle of the night in a sweat. I was now a member of the resident's committee, when I was supposed to be running down all my activities, before the big world tour. I tossed and turned over this. Finally, I got up (it was about 6am) went to my laptop and sent the retiring secretary a message. My apologies, but please do not publish my name as a committee member, as I decline that position. I felt like an idiot who did not appreciate all their hard work, but it was more than my life's worth to tell Albina that I was now on yet another committee, even though it was a British one.
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