Diary – Wednesday 31st August 2016

Tweet

The end of the month marks my first welfare payment day since my relocation to Preston, so I naturally hoped for both my full money entitlement and that my already overdue rent would be processed, but the pessimist in me was unsurprised to find that neither of these was done right, if at all. I was paid about half of what I expected and on querying this by phone I found that having worked for a few days two months before, my welfare for this month were reduced accordingly – affecting far more time than the six days of actual earning time. My rent has still not been processed though I got an admission that the relevant documentation is recorded as received - I still have to wait for them to approve payments to my landlord - rejection could actually see me homeless yet. The delay was blamed on me moving mid-month, out of sync with my dates for my welfare payments as if I should somehow engineer such a move to tie in with their paperwork calendar. I updated my landlady who is still proving very tolerant and understanding to me. I job-searched at the job club though I struggled to concentrate due to the mess my rent is in, and then took a long photo walk to ease my stress. After getting a few nice pub signs, I took a shot of what looked like an old mill chimney, only for a police car to come after me and two cops jumped out demanding to know why I was taking photos of their station – the chimney being in its grounds apparently. I showed them my camera, all its photos, and they checked my name to learn that I’m not a suspected terrorist, and let me go. Such a bizarre and rather sinister confrontation. I bought food in for several days, severely economizing given my rationed income for the month, and then headed to what I had hoped would be my latest open mic performance event. Astonishingly no one else turned up and the landlord was saddened to learn that many regulars had abandoned him for a rival event at another pub offering a new directly competing event. It was too late now for me to head there too so I had another beer and came home, rather glad the day was over. Arthur Chappell