Lost home & business after lightning strike

As a freelance translator from 6 continental European languages into English on diverse & disparate topics, I've learnt to keep abreast of as many disciplines, topics, events etc. as possible. Therefore, like many others, I had often heard contemporary news stories surrounding homelessness being encapsulated with "many being unaware how they may be a month or two away from being made homeless".

After a lighting-strike on Saturday 16 June, midway through a job that I had been commissioned with on Friday for delivery on Monday; I've found myself in precisely that position. Being in a location that undergoes power-cuts for the most trivial of ambient conditions, I had purchased a UPS to keep my work as undisturbed as possible & had reasonably thought that this investment would save my skin (as it had on several other occasions).

It was only after I had decided to use my smartphone as an access point that I noticed that my laptop was not functioning. In my panic, I purchased replacement components & a replacement laptop but by the time I had everything up & running again, work commissions had dried up because of the seasonal summer lull. I had to move out last week & have left utilities such as electricity (£500) & telecoms (£370) unpaid.

I hope to be able to raise the amount needed to move to a new flat/house & pay the utilities arrears & get reconnected and working again.

To add to my joy, I had taken what I considered a wise proactive measure and ordered a new battery for my phone, in order to extend its deteriorating autonomy. Once I had installed the new battery, the phone would no longer work and all my personal contacts (via Whatsapp) became inaccessible, together with all my usernames/passwords and other functionalities such as the camera to photograph ID documents and e-mail them. To illustrate this new folly, I had an older model wherein I inserted my SIM card and could use it solely for telephonic functions. However, all my contact details were lost and when I wanted to get in touch with a friend on the island, I had to ride to his house and restore contact with him. All my Whatsapp contacts remained inaccessible. Hence, my only contacts presently available to me are professional contacts from work & a few semi-official/official e-mail addresses that were fortuitously retrieved via browser settings from a cloud.

As if this was not enough to contend with, the UK's exit from the EU has thrown another spanner in the works; so besides getting a roof over my head, I also have to normalise my residency status in the coming months - one of the few things that I can be justifiably optimistic about in the present circumstances. However, this is no walk in the park when all my belongings are currently stored on top of one another in a kind friend's garage.

With this in mind, please understand that sartorial sense in my photo is dictated solely by the first clean item that came to hand from the pile of belongings that I store at a friend's doorless, concrete garage, that is now my home.