Grant

Recently, I have been unable to do any work without funding, and as my last ACE grant application wasn't successful, I was forced into deep poverty from approx October 2013 until March 2014.
During this period, I didn't pay the gas bill or the electricity bill. The gas bill and the electricity bill were still there. I simply had no money to pay them with. The money had been stolen by a woman represented in a Venn diagram in the intersection between Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and Annie Wilkes from Stephen King's Misery.
I applied for a grant to cover the bill.
It has taken several months for this grant application to be successful, and it covers the cost of the entire gas and electricity bill for the past quarter.

I'm considering its possibility as "match funding".

Today I renewed tax credits, and in the box at the end "how can we improve this service?" wrote "Paying Artists".

I had a sort of summer clean. I shredded the entire contents of a box containing all of the bills, false "debt collection" letters and court details for the old Orange fiasco that wasted so much of my time back in 2010-2012.
The bags of shredded paper were stored in the outside shed temporarily, as I missed the recycling collection, and the recycle bin was still full, waiting for this weeks' collection.

A while ago, whilst tidying out my son's room, I gathered some old clothes and newspapers with the intention of making my own guy. As in "A Penny For The Guy".
I think the idea came about around the time of The Art Party Conference, and it was possibly to make a guy out of Michael Gove, or someone equally obnoxious, that would then be taken around the city to raise some funds and later burnt on a bonfire somewhere.

Whilst clearing stuff out, I decided not to get rid of the shredded financial abuse, but to use it specifically to stuff this body, filling a pair of old tights with the shreddings, to make a pair of legs, using the broken hoover tube to make some flexible arms, some old socks (odd) and an old pair of jeans.
The torso is a toddler-scale body that Kurt once made with the intention of making a Dementor from Harry Potter for Hallowe'en, with its respective mod roc head.

I now have a sort of guy, although I have yet to decide on its identity. The head will need adapting and finishing - it currently has an old Cyberman helmet on, and is sitting in the shed guarding the bikes.

None of this was what I intended to do this morning at all.