etceteraetcetera

In the morning Morris, Pete and I went to see Robert Seymour LL.B., in his office at King’s Place and signed forms entitling us to Legal Aid.

RS acted the careful stone-faced solicitor with us which didn’t make us feel very hopeful. He constantly corrected Morris’s legal inaccuracies and once I caught him staring hard—objectively—at Morris’s massive browed and dirt-ingrained Neanderthal features. When we got outside, Morris told us that Mr. Seymour was a completely different man when away from his desk, and “wears tattered jeans” and—pushing his heavy face close to mine and whispering hoarsely—“even blows the ganja.”

One of the more annoying aspects of this whole business is having to come into close and regular contact with Morris who I get the impression is not really as well-liked by his many council ‘friends’ and contacts as he claims. Despite this, he’s done a great deal to help us.

I walked back from the solicitor’s in a gloomy mood. Our biggest hope now seems to be that the pressure we’re exerting (what with letters of support “etceteraetcetera”—to quote Morris) can force Citibank into selling the Vicarage, because Morris claims they’re unlikely to get planning permission to convert it from residential status into staff training facilities. He makes much of the “rumours” he keeps hearing from inside Oculus that they’re “reeling” under the pressure.

I hope he’s heard right. Significantly though, his unbridled optimism of a few days ago has become more reserved of late and he acts as though a month’s stay of execution will be a victory. After all, to him it’s just another case to fight and represents good publicity for Watermouth Housing Association. What has he got to lose? We really will be homeless if we’re evicted.

Alex packed his job in today because he can’t motivate himself to get up in the mornings. Ben Beresford —we call him ‘Mother Trout’—is hardly ever here, and stays at various friends’ houses. He hasn’t paid a penny towards the communal kitty for things like bills and owes us £38.

I helped Barry move the rest of his things in Ade’s car to his dank and dingy garage-room in Westdorgan Road today too. On the way back to the Vicarage he answered some of my criticisms, saying he’d moved out now to save doing so later and that he considered our staying on to the bitter end to “a captain staying with his sinking ship.” He says he needs order to be able to get himself organised. I refrained from pointing out that the ‘stability’ of having a place at Jervis Terrace failed to excite similar results. We called round there to pick up a few things we’d forgotten—Miles Beattie has moved in and has painted the entire place, and taken up the carpets, so now it’s airy and bright.

Although I’ve been railing at Alex for lumbering us with with a couple of ‘dirty hippies,’ I found the girls themselves OK having met them properly for the first time. Barbara, the most talkative of the two, seems open and friendly and anxious not to offend. The other girl Sarah is staying temporarily and has moved into the basement despite the lack of lighting down there.

Today’s been dismal, the weather cool and grey for a change, perfectly complementing my mood. Our tails are down and we’re all waiting for the final blow to fall. Barry’s moving out is symbolic of the disintegration of our hope. In the evening we hit the bottom of our trough of anger and bitterness and Pete and I bickered with each other; he inferred that I’d end up in Easterby poncing off my parents again this summer, so I made some equally stinging dig about him and staying at Mo’s flat. But things bucked up a bit later.

Generally though, our expectations are low and we now seem to be living each day as it comes and not thinking too far ahead.