Chapter 6-1
330 Words
Chapter 6
We were sitting at the kitchen table on Sunday morning. I had just cleaned away the breakfast things, pleased Mark’s appetite was still good.
“Do you want to get a start on those benefit forms we picked up yesterday?” I asked. “I doubt if they’ll be processed before Christmas, but the sooner we get it done, the sooner they can start paying you.”
“Yeah, okay. Might as well get it over with.”
I got out the forms. It was amazing what the government needed to know before they’d part with a penny of the taxpayer’s money.
“It’s a good job we went clothes shopping yesterday,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I just know they’re going to ask for your inside leg measurement,” I said with a straight face.
“You twit.”
“Look, Mark, they want details of what you’ve been doing for the past few years. I know you had a job in a supermarket up in Newcastle, but how do we explain the last 6 months?”
Mark went quiet for a moment. I knew this kind of question would be on the form.
“We tell them I was homeless, it isn’t exactly lying.”
“That’s true!”
I carried on filling in the form. I had to ask him for the answers to many of the questions. After all, I had only known him for a few months, and many of the questions weren’t the sort of things that cropped up in general conversation. After we’d finished, of course Mark wasn’t able to sign the forms, but there was a section which I could sign to say I had filled the forms in for him.
“We’ll need to get you a sick note from the doctor, because obviously you can’t work at the moment.”
“We can ask the nurse about that tomorrow when I have my bandages changed.”
“Good idea. Look, I don’t know about you, but all this form filling has given me a bit of a headache. Do you want to go out to stretch your legs?”
“Yeah, I could do with a walk.”
“Right, we’ll call in at the Chinese take away on the way back if you want. They do a fantastic sweet and sour.”
Mark’s face lit up. “I love Chinese.”
- Writer
