Arnside, South Cumbria UK. 51 year old woman blocked from the world for 2 years, still awaits human rights assistance.

 I am a 51 year old woman, currently residing in temporary accommodation unrecognised by the local authority at a cost to my family of 840.00 a month.  I have a small bedroom and facilities which are fully used and occupied by the host family so I cannot, e.g. put things in the fridge.  I was in this situation (or similar) since January 2021, only then the accommodation was slightly cheaper and had its own fridge and microwave oven.  I have, in writing, evidence of my homelessness since 16th June 2022 from a local authority. I am a postgraduate qualified individual with a great deal of experience in the voluntary sector, and have qualifications and previous employment in education as well as developing an arts career. I am an inquisitive, creative, and helpful personality and have always strived hard for success, including gaining a first class degree (Photography, Fine Art) and a triple distinction grade diploma (Media, Moving Image). In 2021, my eldest child left home and went off to university.  I had expected this to be my moment, having achieved also a Masters in lockdown.  Instead, my life was hacked and stolen by someone and I am fighting every day to get it back. This fight has taken me to at least a dozen cities, including London, Edinburgh and Bern, where I asked authorities for assistance and ended up with none.  My mobile phone was hacked and intercepted, and as I found myself in deeper and deeper difficulty in terms of housing and accommodation, I also lost access to wifi, data and mobile communications - the smartphone being my only device.  I was totally isolated for the majority of the two year period (so far), even losing access to live television which I still have no access to.  My life is lonely, impoverished, and desolate as I wait for assistance.  I am also a domestic violence survivor and endured incidents during that two year period of physical assault, control and abuse - not just from my husband - which involved policing services for the first time in my life.  I had a head injury, was pushed to the ground and momentarily unconscious and bruised, I was hurt in many different ways, then forced to rough sleep as I had nowhere else to go and my car had been sabotaged in 2020.  I slept on a church bench, in a telephone box, in a bus stop, even once right outside Holyrood in Edinburgh.   For two weeks I slept on benches in Switzerland as the same happened there in terms of no access to services.  People have given me bread, water and some have given me small amounts of money to see me through with food.  I was offered hot food by a homeless girl who was given it at the end of the restaurant shift.  I declined but it was very kind of her to ask me.  I wouldn't take her food.  I have been bullied, intimidated, harassed, including by some security personnel.  One example was when I went into a Travelodge for a hot drink late at night and a security guard said something to the young barman who previously had been polite with me.  The young man then came over and hurried me to leave while the security guard stood by me and cracked his knuckles. I found a bench to sleep on. It was intimidating.  Incidentally, another security guard in the same city spoke with me and I told him my story.  He was, I think, shocked, and said placing his hand on his chest "hand on heart, it is not us".  I was grateful for that.  He was a decent man.  There have been a few with some respect for society, not many.  My life over the two year period has been one of enforced isolation and poverty, for reasons unclear, with direct impacts on my physical health.  My hair fell out in February 2022.  It was devastating, as I have always had long straight brown hair, which I typically wore in bunches or plaits. The toll on my health of this bullish process against me is visible.  I have worry lines now where there were none last year, I have pains in my arthritic body, a condition which I had managed entirely successfully prior to someone's involvement in my life.  I used to dance and sing and laugh and had a playful character.  My sense of humour endures, thankfully, as without it I wouldn't have survived.  I found humour in Switzerland in the dark of the situation, and humour in London, humour in Edinburgh and humour everywhere, especially in hindsight as I am good at moving on from things and laughing them off, I always have been.  The problem I have now is that I am still in an AirBnB, still wrestling with local services to get any kind of assistance, however small, and humourous moments are few and far between.  I keep my head up high and adhere to my own adages 'a lack of information breed chaos' and 'my conscience is my rod of iron' in particular as well as the Japanese adage 'fall down seven times, stand up eight' which has always been a strengthener for me.  I am an artist, a 'condition' which brands my soul.  My work has been inaccessible to me for two years now, and everything I made had my blood sweat and tears underpinning it, though on the surface it may look small and insignificant, even, dare I say it, commercial. Only I have the stories.  No one can take them from me.  Everything made and painted, filmed and photographed, written and sketched is unique to my own life, my own situation, as a mother, a daughter, a housewife, a student, a socially spirited individual who loves nature and is fascinated by the world.  From a swallow on a wire, to collage of a staircase, a film of light in water, a poem about waiting in the snow, a novel about technology, a children's book about the wind, all have come about through my own unique personal circumstances, and all were - are - a work in progress. Nothing, yet, is commercially available or shared, as I was, as they say, emerging as an artist, finding my way.  I was always working on multiple contracts and/or projects.  My mother always used to call me a 'busy bee'.  For two years I have nothing.  Nothing.  Just 'kept' in a room, all services, accommodation, jobs, resources blocked from me.  There are various connections which have led me to question who and why.  American connections, Irish connections, Spanish connections and so on, to my story.  There are also question marks over some media organisations in England and Switzerland, social media, mobile phone companies, ISPs, political connections, music industry connections, public sector - local authorities, police forces, doctors - as well as security guards.  All are part of the story.  I am, thankfully (I think), still alive.  I almost wasn't a few times but the suffering is immense.  I missed my niece's wedding, my auntie's funeral (online), my friend's heart surgery, the death of a colleague, and my own 50th birthday.  It led to many tears and much distress.  In Switzerland, I missed the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and would have queued for hours to pay my respects.  I missed the changing of the Government which, falsely, led me to believe things would change when I returned.  My own history was being written by someone else, a fake view of who I am.  A murder report appeared in the press which implied I was dead (the details were so very similar), my family had mock up mugshots of them in the press also as a gunman and a terrorist sympathiser, so my situation grew another strand, another connection, this time with the Reach Plc media scandal that Prince Harry and Elton John are working to resolve with their legal teams.  The strands keep on appearing.  I was contacting Reach Plc many months ago, as Google indicated (incorrectly, I think) that an old journalist friend of mine was employed by the Mirror and I was trying to contact him. We studied together and I knew he had published articles in The Guardian because I had written to him to say I had read them and he messaged me back with the loveliest message, to say, I seem to remember, that I had helped him somehow when we studied Media together.  We were the only two mature students on that course. I have another old friend who was a newsreader for ITV London.  I tried to call her.  The woman who answered the phone wasn't her.  These fictional calls have persisted.  I used to work in universities, too.  I rang an old colleague to see if she could shed any light on my predicament.  The lady who took the call claimed to be her but absolutely was not her.  She has a very distinct tone of voice.  Fake calls have dogged me for a long time now, including Houses of Parliament, Number 10 Downing Street, House of Commons, Institute for Government and governments of other countries. I have been desperate for assistance, and when visits to the Houses of Parliament in London earlier this year resulted in being told I was "not allowed" to see anyone, my suspicions grew.  Holyrood provided an interesting experience, too, as there were incidents at City Chambers, and directly outside Holyrood.  I also emailed and called Nicola Sturgeon MSPs office with no assistance and yet more homelessness.  The man who took the call, though very polite, refused his name.  I have called so many MPs and left voicemails as well as emailing prime ministers and human rights organisations, such as the European Court of Human Rights and Human Rights Watch.  It is a complex and interesting story with tragedy and comedy intertwined and I keep smiling every day, though my life has been erased, it seems.   

Julie currently resides in Arnside, Cumbria, UK