And so the nonsense continues to engulf my life.

“When are the newsrounds coming back?” they bleat.

How can I answer that when I have no permanent home? My business has no power? I look at my thirteen month old baby playing in her cot in a foreign room in a foreign place, oblivious to my troubles, and I think to myself: “Why should I give a fuck about these people?” I don’t. I only care for my baby and my family. Everything is peripheral now.

We have a new loss adjustor because I had no faith in the last one. This one is no better, so it is time to fight fire with fire. We rise to the fight. We love a good scrap. The fights we win and lose define who we are. Again, we cannot get any business interuption payments until we actually work the business. How do you work a business that is smashed beyond all control? We had to take out an emergency overdraft to cover the commercial mortgage. The business manager says: “Even if you don’t recover, we are alright. You have a small mortgage. We’ll get our money back and more just selling your property at land value.”

The vultures continue to circle…

The only glimmer of hope involves getting someone on our side. I speak to my accountant (he’s good, he’s expensive, he drives a very expensive car and has a motorbike, despite being too old for either). He tells me what I already know that the loss adjustor is only looking after the bank and insurance company’s interest because we have our insurance and mortgage covered by the same company. My accountant reckons that we could “clean up” with this if we get the right people working on side. I’m not interested in cleaning up, just getting my business and home back in one piece so that I can support my baby.

He gets me to talk to his partner at the accountancy who puts a man in touch with me. This fellow is a Greek Cypriot from North London. He shares a name with my best friend when I was seven years old. Like my accountant, we have that spark, we can talk the talk. Even though I have never met this guy, I instantly trust him. The same can’t be said for either of the loss adjustors. Shame he’s going to take 10% of the cost of the claim, but the stakes are higher than 10% and when the odds are stacked against you, you need someone to level the playing field, even if it does cost a lot.

Late on Friday, the new loss adjustor phones to introduce himself. He warns me that there is going to be a massive shortfall in the insurance cover to the building work, despite there being a fairly high figure set aside for that work. You only get 60% of that.

Luckily, I am a pretty clued up guy and so I’ve already put in a claim with the Motor Insurance Bureau. This organisation was set up to pay out compensation to those of us affected by uninsured or unknown drivers. I put my claim in last night. When I tell the loss adjustor, he appears to whoop with joy.

I also wonder why he insists that we can throw away all the chocolate and sweets from our business, despite them being unaffected by the crash and only needing a wipe off with a cloth. Surely, he should be saving money there?

It was heartbreaking to send back all the magazines to the wholesaler. They sent out a van especially to collect the stock and then took it off so they could credit me. They have been very good to me in the past and I cannot fault them.

The thing I find the hardest though is waking up in the mornings and crying.

I do not like this at all…

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