I have, it has to be said, been bumbling around for a few weeks. As previously written , I have found the transition from Leader of the council to back bench councillor a tricky one. I'm sorry for boring any reader who is still sticking it out.
It was something that got the juices flowing , something to inspire me that I was looking for. Inspiration would be the word that I'd use to describe the time I led the council. We would be inspired to try things, inspired to get involved and inspired to achieve.
That's what I was missing, inspiration.
This blog piece may go on a bit as on Thursday morning at about 10.30am I found that inspiration in bucket loads and I'm frankly in awe of the people I found it in.
I won't go into details here but picture a single mum with two daughters, one of primary school age, one older in her early 20s. Then imagine this eldest daughter, being disabled, imagine her being so poorly that she frequently has an episode that means her mum needs to administer medication immediately and wait for an ambulance.Every episode, the same thing, mum administers the meds, saves her daughters life and the ambulance comes. Imagine going through that once, the enormous trauma of it , I'd never forget it.
But wait,
Then imagine this being a fortnightly or monthly event. Because thats what this mum has to contend with.
This dedicated, unswerving woman cannot leave the daughter, she is always by her side. She doesn't sleep alone, she doesn't bathe alone. Taking the young sibling anywhere, means taking the eldest.
She does literally everything for that young lady.
By the way , the daughter's condition is such that she's going to die, shes described as end of life. But there's no date, it could be now, it could be then.
Just imagine.
And yet when I met two thirds of this fabulous female team, they were warm and friendly. The love between them is absolute. This is truly what family means.
I went to see them because of some pretty horrendous living conditions that mean they can't use their kitchen.
All this pressure and the mum cant even use her cooker to cook lunch.
They have been treated badly, but I can't believe it was deliberate by their social landlord.
Sometimes organisations , despite the best of intentions, can be crap.
There's things that need sorting, the house isn't fit for purpose anyway, but the repairs can be sorted , I'm sure of that and I'll jump up and down until they are.
But what these ladies have taught me once again, in a similar way to a family in my own patch has done previously, is that we have allowed our society to become one where families and people can be forgotten. Where it's all too easy to let someone else deal with things.
Society without an element of community is not a society worth having.
We in Gloucestershire are constantly bombarded with what are the important things, Funding for Cyber central,climate change, spending money on this infrastructure item or that one.
Nationally we are told we will spend millions on stopping the boats, on taking the ownership of failing banks or water companies that for years have dished out billions to shareholders who count their cash as their company is destroying our rivers and beaches by just dumping crap in them.
All those things are going on and we all will have neighbours, who cant heat their homes, pay their mortgage, get a hospital appointment,, get a doctor's appointment. We have people who can't get the social home they need so live in totally inadequate housing as they watch executive 4 and 5 bedroom homes being built in the field opposite. We have kids with nowhere to go and nothing to do , because people who knew better, closed the youth clubs, stopped funding after school clubs, and when they turn to anti-social behaviour or worse , we all say how terrible it is and ask what can be done.
Our priorities and our view of society has been completely screwed up.
In the coming weeks and months my Progressive Independent colleagues and I will be putting forward a number of motions to council that are aimed at making the first small steps in changing the way we view society. Where we can reexamine what's important , what's fundamental to being a community. No political emphasis, emphasis on our neighbours , on families and on people like the mother I was talking about earlier.
She gets no help, none. No rest bite, no one popping round to help. Sometimes if the neighbours are outside they will watch the daughter so the mother can use the bathroom alone.
We need to get our priorities right and we as a generation need to realise that without community we are nothing.
That's what inspires me to be involved, to give hope where there is none and to try to find a different way. I don't want to just leave it to someone else.
I have found that elusive inspiration again.
I read on her social media page this mother saying that she would like to run for council.
I can think of no one more qualified or suitable, we need more of her kind and we need to change.
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