Flashback: This week last year

My Diary for this week last year tells me that I was…

Talking to Fiona Jones about a grant application. Fiona is Professor of Rehabilitation Research at St George’s University of London and Kingston University.

I first met her in 2015 during my rehabilitation from a stroke. She pioneered a method of stroke recovery based on the type of incremental gains used in Sports Psychology.

By setting small, deliverable targets, people dealing with the effects of stroke can build a bridge to a better quality of life. She named the method Bridges Self Management.

I have used this method in many aspects of my post-stroke life and have written and spoken widely of its benefits.

So when Fiona is applying for grants to test her method in ever-bigger health environments, she often asks me to write a plain-speaking summary for anyone who falls asleep while reading academic reports.

This what we were talking about, a grant application to test the Bridges method in two large NHS hospitals.

In my diary, I made an inappropriate reference to Fiona’s voice being “girly”, meaning it sounded very childlike.

My 2019 Diary also showed that… Liverpool trashed Man City 3-1 and that I was contemplating the soul of the UK Labour Party after a speech by then shadow education chief Angela Rayner (now deputy leader of the Party). I worked through my ideas while making a very bad drawing of her in full voice.

Other things my Diary says happened this time last year is that I had adapted my portrait monoprinting method to print images on textiles, which could then be augmented with stitchwork.