Lent Challenge St Stephen & St Thomas Shepherd's Bush

I’ll never know what it’s like…

2010-03-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

Whoops! Last week I forgot to deduct a sum for bills and so overspent by about £20. This means I have to deduct money from all the remaining weeks in Lent to make up the shortfall. I have borrowed the money from myself.

Of course, if I was really on benefits then I simply wouldn’t have been able to borrow the money. Or if I had, it would have been from a loan shark charging extortionate rates of interest.

This all makes me more and more aware of the fact that I will never really know what it’s like (I hope!) to live on the poverty line. For me, this is an accounting exercise. The reality must be truly miserable.

Food, glorious food

2010-03-09T04:20:00.000-08:00

Food, and the cost of it, is now occupying quite a lot of my thoughts. Catriona from St Stephen’s has set the bar very high by managing to feed her family of 3 on 90% organic food for a week for just £40.

I am also a big supporter of nutritional organic food so careful thought is needed to come within budget. Bought sandwiches are out of the question, so I am now taking a packed lunch to work every day.

My partner (also called Catriona, strangely enough) is very kindly supporting me in the Lent challenge, producing delicious homemade ‘breakfast bars’ (consisting of oats, nuts and dried fruit) for me to snack on. She has also persuaded me to reactivate ‘biosnacky’ – the bizarrely named device which enables us to turn dried beans into bean sprouts.

All this is quite fun, and probably results in a better diet than we would be getting otherwise. It is possible to afford decent food on the sort of budget I’m working with – but that is about all you can afford.

My first real sacrifice

2010-03-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

This weekend I decided to come up to Lancaster and visit my mum (whose own brief spell on benefits prompted this whole venture). Normally I would travel by train at £70 return, which means a speedy 2 ½ hour journey in comfortable surroundings.

Needless to say, that is not within my current budget.

Instead, I travel by coach. At £10 each way this is just about manageable. But it means a whopping 8 hour journey and coaches often make me feel nauseous.

“I would advise you to buy some travel sickness pills” remarks a member of my housegroup cheerfully, “but then I suppose you can’t afford them!”.

Nevertheless, I grit my teeth and get on the coach. In the end, it isn’t all that bad. But it does take a very long time. If nothing else, the Lent challenge is certainly going to make me appreciate train travel more.

Recipe for feeding the family

2010-03-01T05:49:00.000-08:00

A member of our congregation has fed her family (3 people) this week on 90% organic food for just under £40. Her meal planner was: Mon -
homemade pizza; Tues - vegetarian lentil dish (much nicer than it
sounds!); Weds - fish pie; Thurs - vegetable korma; Fri - sweet and
sour noodles with pork and peppers; Sat - baked potatoes and tuna;
Sunday - beef stew. Lunch was various soups, hummus that kind of thing. The recipe for the vegetable korma was one of Gordon Ramsay's recipes from the F Word on Channel4. The recipe can be obtained from their web site (Food section)
http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/chefs/gordon-ramsay/gordons-veggie-korma-recipe_p_1.html

The Rules of the Game

2010-02-20T03:49:00.000-08:00

So, Lent has now started and I am coming to terms with my rash decision to try to live on benefits for the duration! This is where the rubber hits the road, as an American pastor I knew used to say.

The aim is to spend no more than £63.40 each week on everything (except rent, council tax and necessary work expenses).

Sitting down to do the calculations in earnest I see that I spend £20 a week on bills (phone, internet, heating, electricity) and £30 a week on food. That leaves £13.40 for everything else! Do I give up internet access or cut down on food spending if I want to go to the cinema or meet my friends for a drink?

It is quickly becoming apparent to me how hard this must be for people who are doing this for real.

Why live on benefits for Lent?

2010-02-15T04:47:00.000-08:00

My mum works as a supply teacher, through agencies. Work was in short supply so recently, for the first time in over ten years, she had to ‘sign on’ and start claiming benefits. Around the same time as I heard this news I also met a friend of my own age who was having to sign on.

This all came as quite a shock to me. Firstly, it made me very grateful for my own job (I normally complain about being overworked). Secondly, I was surprised at how little was provided to live on. Just £64.30 a week for a single person, excluding rent and council tax.

It made me feel very out of touch and unaware of what so many people are going through.

Fortunately both my mum and my friend have now found work. But when I started to think about Lent, giving up my income seemed to be the natural choice. Hopefully doing this will help me to think and pray more deeply about poverty and inequality. I look forward to talking about it with you and sharing my thoughts on this blog!

Cain Ormondroyd