26th October 1998
I am gripped by fear. I have unleashed my ire and indignation at my LEA having exposed me to scepticism and having created a terrifying habituation by unjustly having failed to resource my disability needs for 5 long years. In 1995, I complained about it all to the Local Government Ombudsman and he finally concluded in a report published in July 1997 that my Council (who administer the Local Education Authority) were guilty of maladministration amounting to injustice because for 4 years (as it then was) I had received no education and no care support. He criticised the LEA for not producing a Statement of SEN till I was nearly 10 and for failing then to implement my Statement of SEN with "sufficient urgency and determination". The Ombudsman recommended that I be provided with agreed stuffs asap. The Council voted to accept his findings and recommendations in September 1997. What have the LEA done to rectify the wrong? There has not been one single meeting to discuss how to rescue me from my fears. There has been a very exponential rise in my fear because they have changed from supportive to overtly hostile and dishonest. Yes I do mean both of these most horrid words. I shall repeat them. They are acting with hostility towards me and with a absurd preposterously absurd dishonesty. Mad mad to be so sad and sad sad to sound so badly mad. They do not think they have enough information about my abilities and how I communicate. They think my Statement detrimental to my interests. They do not accept the advice they have received. They do not have any other advice. Whose advice do they ignore? Here is a short list.
I have always been part of the state system. All these people are very respectable and well-meaning. And yet 6 people who have never met me have decided that these opinions are without value, as indeed are those around 20 of my friends who have also written in to the LEA to support me. And so I am unleashing my ire. I will not be suppressed by them. I have had my depression when I could not move, when I could only cry. When I could only cry and cry and cry. I cannot even contemplate explaining to you the hurt I felt when I lost my place at the Academy. The hurt is still raw and unhealed 2+ years on. But the reason it's still raw is as much to do with the fact it's not been replaced as with the trauma of my exit. I have been led up a very long garden path of promises, I have been encouraged to trust these people, I have been coaxed out of myself into a mad mad world. I have not read Alice but it could scarce be madder. I frequently have employed the Alice imagery in my writings and adapted it to incorporate silverbacks, mature dominant males who combine a bullish disregard for considerateness, fair play, the good of the younger generation, etc with obnoxious personal quirks such as scratching their bums and sitting in a very solid impassive way and an irritatingly evident enjoyment of both their status and the discomfort of juniors. My mind's eye transmogrifies certain people all too easily into some caricature of a mountain gorilla and the same is true of vultures, griffon vultures, circling high around me, watching without helping, waiting for a stumble, waiting for my flesh to be ready to yield up its sacrificial pound, ready to tear and gobble, utterly callous survival machines. I have grown a third autobiographical ballet thus out of metaphor and fear, a clashing of spirit with state, weak with power, solid fragile self in a deranged world. Who is mad but the individual squirming on the end of the red tape? I shall bellow forth in music, I shall bitterly complain to the media, I shall pursue a case of negligence through the courts.... I demand to be allowed to be me and to be treated justly and kindly. I sympathise with people everywhere that are wronged, who are fighting a system and feel persecuted. But my heart is faint and I sometimes just curl up in a ball of depression instead of being the spitting wild cat ball of fury indignation and energy I at this moment feel myself to be.
* * * * * * *