A Review Of My 2018

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The year just parted was a good one for me overall, though it lacked paid work. I started the year with the bulk of my pay from the Xmas work I did for the post office in 2017. Sadly, despite expectation I wasn’t rehired in 2018. Other income sources were more unexpected with wedding photo I took for a friend being used without my permission in a media feature. I was able to claim compensation. Later in the year an expose I wrote about the welfare system saw me get paid too but the media outlet who interviewed me did everything they could to delay the payments. My welfare payment system changed as I was switched to the universally despised Universal Credit, which has reduced how much rent support I get. I have obtained temporary council support for this up to April this year. Their plan is to drive me into cheaper housing. It won’t work. I got to Manchester to meet friends for my birthday in February, and joined them again at a major science fiction convention in Harrogate in the April. This was a great opportunity for me to get pub sign photos too, as was a later visit to Canterbury and Faversham with other pub sign collectors. I made multiple visits to other towns to get photos too, Morecambe, Lancaster and Liverpool especially. The latter also included a trip to one of two weddings I went to last year, and I’m going back there again very soon. I gave talks at the community centre, a voluntary work assignment that the centre then discounted as the kind of voluntary work they invited volunteers to their volunteers Xmas party for. My university voluntary work was much more demanding, but that was rewarded with a Christmas meal. My work on their twelfth annual mental health awareness movie festival gained me a free pass to the Preston International Movie Festival too. My book, story and poetry writing took up much of my time with my first pub signs book due out in April this year. I got to perform poems several times including a set at one of two burlesque shows I attended. Sadly, my favourite local performance venue closed down. I attended the Wigan Diggers Arts Festival, and performed there too. There were some sad events. A neighbour died just before the year 2018 started and his funeral was an early activity for me in 2018. Later, two good friends had heart attacks, but both have made good recoveries. I also learned that my Mum’s cat, Shadow, has a critical heart condition that will kill the cat any time, but Shadow plays and runs happily oblivious of her pending doom. The local Humanists proved to be a waste of time, often talking over one another and rarely doing anything with their knowledge. I quit going. I got lots of great books read and saw many excellent movies. Overall, it was a very good year. Hopefully 2019 will be even better. Arthur Chappell