Tuesday 20 May 2014

Story Seventy - A Pink Inflatable

I found my relationship with the social worker utterly impossible. There didn't seem to be any meeting ground at all.

Early on in 2010, I had a dream about her that proved to be quite a good commentary dream and was useful throughout the year in informing me how to deal with her.

The location for the dream was the river at Windsor.- the spot by Eton Bridge. I was travelling upstream in one of those small motor boats that you can hire there. Meanwhile, travelling downstream was the social worker. She was on a giant pink inflatable. It was double the size of the largest bouncy castle you have ever seen in your life. The inflatable was causing chaos on the river - boats were hurtling into the riverbank to avoid colliding with it. And yet, she was oblivious to all this. She was sitting on a throne on the inflatable, giving a majestic wave to anyone walking along the towpath. Nobody was noticing though - people were busy feeding the swans or heading off to the changing of the guard. I was aware that I was working very hard in my boat trying to navigate around her inflatable because I knew that it would be carnage if my boat hit her head on. End of dream.

Well - she was certainly inflated. I believe her narcissism was the cause of a great many of the problems that occurred in 2010. I was intrigued how her colleagues used to give her a wide berth but perhaps they spotted the fragility of the inflatable as well.

Towards the end of the year I was avoiding her completely. She used to invite me for a coffee to talk things over but how could I? I emailed her once, declining an invite and said: "How can I offload to you? You are the biggest cause of my distress. You cannot help me. In fact, meeting you would add incredibly to my stress".

In a way, we did eventually collide in Court. Only she never made it to court. For both the December hearing and the week long inquiry in May she went sick. (The December one was odd because she was off for about three weeks leading up to the hearing but returned the day after it). I remember the day the judge picked up on her "There's always something or other with Mr Neary" email. That evening, coming home on the tube, I looked at the image from the dream and the pink inflatable was in bits - debris all over the river. For a whole year, I'd put so much energy into avoiding a collision and then it was inevitable. But as my mate said at the time: "What do you expect, riding a fucking huge inflatable done a busy river".

4 comments:

  1. This is so funny but I know it's not meant to be. In fact it's sinister really. But I know Lynne, Chris mum, desperately trying through Chrisvoice to get him out will recognise another " cloned" social worker. I'm sending it to her. Mark gave you seen Chris campaign? Sadly another dreadful tale of extremely disturbing abuses and violence.

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  2. The horrible thing is poor Chris has a measly, deflated paddling pool for his sensory garden. An essential part of his treatment and help.

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  3. Mark thank you for sharing this, your way with words makes it very funny but in truth I've met this SW and dozens like her. In my dream I think she'd have to be have her fingers in her ears and her eyes shut because, in my experience, they refuse to listen and somehow can't see the bleeding obvious. So glad shes had her comeuppance and you won. Unfortunately that doesn't happen often enough.

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  4. Hi Jayne. No, I don't think I've heard about Chris. Can you send me details?

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