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Next week, the County Council is sending a photographer.

To photograph the staff that take care of me, under this new scheme of SDS.

Self Directed Support. The subject of my latest article in Care Talk, about which the County Council will be writing an article for their County magazine, to go through every household letterbox.

It’s just the kind of thing that once would have been my aspiration, to write articles about which articles are written.

It is ironic that it now is happening, only the subject of this interest is how I can survive and keep my independence in spite of illness.

A reminder, if one were needed, that we will care for those that can’t, in spite of economic weakness, I am protected from something that in another country I might not survive.

This is the surreal part of my life, that my voice might be heard now when it is all that I have left to me.

I am not bitter about this, only starkly aware of it. That I have found my voice, a place to stand, something to be noticed for, that I can still speak in spite of everything.

I would rather have been noticed for my poetry, but it is apocryphal that words will not feed the hungry. And poets are perhaps the hungriest of writers. None can make a living from their work, certainly not in this country.



Cafe Society Relinquished


My senses fade with age
the way of all things.  I do not read
the faces in a room
as once I did, and then
the glances of a youth
were seeking something. 
Spectacles restore the sight
but nothing will improve the light -
and eyes that search with subtlety
see twice the personality.