Diary Tuesday October 4th 2016

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Though it had a central great result for me this felt like a really horrible day. I had my big interview with the post office, held at Preston North End Football Club and it took a while to find out which part of the huge complex the interviews were in. The post office would have seemed a more obvious place to go. I watched them tell some men arriving ahead of me at the signing in desk that they needed to bring in a printed out version of the completed online registration form, and I realized in dismay that I would have to get mine too. We were given a few hours to get them. I went to the library to get a print out of a form the interviewers have already seen. To me the whole point of filling it in and pressing send is to avoid print outs. The library computer was slow and the site itself very hard to access. Then the library printer broke down. I made it back with my form to find the interviewers had gone on lunch so I had to wait until they returned about twenty minutes later. I was seen, and the interview was just a rea through my application form, which was then done again by a second interviewer to make sure the first interviewer had processed me through properly. I was then given the job – actually just five weeks work and not starting until late November, and running to right before Christmas. The hours are not too bad except on Saturdays when I’ll have to walk half way to work to get the second of two buses as the first one won’t be running so early. I then got hassled by e-mails over the unpaid course I was booked on for the same period as the paid work. They expected me to visit the college hospital twice just to help process my placements. I was delighted to tell them I now had a valid reason not to do the course. I got home to find my request for full council tax rebate backdated to my arrival in Preston has been rejected – I have a partial rebate that won’t start until late September, as that is when my claim was finalized. They say it is my fault it wasn’t done sooner though I was seeking advice on procedure for it even before leaving Manchester two months ago. One more ray of golden light is that my rent has now come through properly and I went to my bank just before it closed (I had expected to get there three hours earlier) and transferred it to my land lady’s account. Hopefully the process will be smoother at the end of October though in December I’ll be paying the full amount. Moving from my mum’s has been a horrible wake-up call to billing and administrations I have never faced before. Arthur Chappell