Diary 28th February To 1st March 2018

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Diary Wednesday 28th February 2018 The shortest month ended with my welfare payment coming in, albeit late. Knowing it is due at midnight from the day before the last day of the month, I checked my account at just gone midnight. Nothing. It went in at about 6 AM in the morning, though much went out in bill right away. I had a trip to the community centre to job search on their computers. We were treated to free biscuits there. I had to buy a monthly bus ticket, which meant a trip to the bus station to collect it, only o find that they still can’t take bank card transactions for the fifth month in a row. I had to traipse through the blizzard to the nearest free bank machine to get cash out and take it back to the bus station to get my ticket. Ridiculous. Diary Thursday 1st March 2018 The start of a new month, and 28 days to go before a big science fiction convention I’m attending. I expected to be going to the community centre again in the afternoon, but I got a call asking me to help volunteers with the university medical school, as a few scheduled volunteer were snowed in by the increasingly awful weather. I agreed to do it. Before going to the University I had my now weekly welfare hearing, where I was given a mandatory invitation to a job fair on work in pub and hotel hospitality next Wednesday. Much of this is bad for me as the work finished late and I’d need to get a taxi home after most shifts. I called in the library in the city centre for an hour, before heading to the university. This is usually enjoyable but today it was disastrous. There were too many volunteers present and for over an hour I was just left alone on a surgical bed with no students looking in on me at all. The staff apologized and put this right in the second half after the break. I was invited to leave my bag in the office, where one of the volunteer liaison staff would be present to keep an eye on it, but after my work finished I found she had locked up and gone home (she had done similar with things left in there at lunch time for other volunteers). As I was wondering how to get my things back another staff member who knew me came by and was able to let me in to recover my things. Thanks to the avoidable delay I just missed a bus and ended up waiting twenty minutes in a howling blizzard for the next one. The last disaster involved having to pay my over-stated council tax which I paid through the post office minutes before it closed (my late attendance due to the locked room incident earlier). When I got home I got a letter telling me that my bill has been more than halved and I only need to pay £50.99 rather than £124.04 This after the time the bill had to be paid so I now have to chase the council yet again to recover the money (£70.00) they took off me without cause. Not one of my happiest days. Arthur Chappell