My only visitor this year.

My thread has been brought back to life. 

So a quick update. 

My only other visitor was a gas boiler repair man, while I was out.

Moneywise it's bad.  I get Universal credit.  My full rent is not paid by it because I am subject to the benefit cap,  and I claim a Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP) to cover part of  the shortfall.  I still waiting to hear about this year's award.

 Water, my landlord will not allow a water meter, so I am on a social tarriff and I have to reapply every year to stay on it. 

Gas & Electric,  I claim a warm front grant of £140 every year towards the bill.  

I get a free flu jab from my GP because I am considered to be in a vulnerable group.

I've used a footbank twice, this was at a methodist church, where they try to persuade the users to join in prayer with them.

Work, well the most recent paid employment was as an exam invigilator at both a school and a university.  These are zero hour contracts.

Now, I am jumping on the Coronavirus panic wagon.  In January, I spent two weeks as an exams invigilator at the university of Leeds.  It was a very eventful couple of weeks and there are thousands of Chinese students there. 

I'm really sorry to hear you're having a tough time, Robert. It might be worth contacting the Citizens' Advice Bureau or the Money Advice Service for some guidance on your finances and what support is available to you.

If it makes you feel better at all, there are very few cases of the Coronavirus in the UK and, even in China, it's mostly isolated to the Wuhan province.

I'm really sorry to hear you're having a tough time, Robert. It might be worth contacting the Citizens' Advice Bureau or the Money Advice Service for some guidance on your finances and what support is available to you.

If it makes you feel better at all, there are very few cases of the Coronavirus in the UK and, even in China, it's mostly isolated to the Wuhan province.

I understand the fear, but those students might not have been home in several months, and it may be that none/very few of them have visited Wuhan. Some of their families may also be UK-based.

Statistically, the chances of contracting the virus are incredibly low, and that's what's reassuring me.

My virus fears are real.  One of my jobs as exam invigilator was checking student IDs. This consisted of picking up a student ID card with my fingers, checking if the photo on the ID matched the face and the ID number on the card matched the number on the list.  I usually checked 40 IDs in the morning and 40 in the afternoon.  I did this over 21 shifts.  This means that I touched around  800 ID. Cards over the two weeks.  That means a lot of cross contamination.  I estimate a quarter of the students were chinese.