Once I Was a Young Woman With a Walking Stick (by sarah)

This is a long piece I (Sarah) have written in response to Kathleen Stock's article Why Are Young Women Using Walking Sticks? in The Times newspaper. The article is behind a paywall. The gist of it is the concept that young women ("gen Z") are appearing using walking sticks and mobility aids because of social contagion from seeing them on social media and that they don't really need them...

This attitude is not new and it is something that causes harm - disability and dependence are seen as weakness and scrounging, especially if you are from a working class background. This social concept gets to individuals especially girls and young women and causes them to turn on themselves, "pushing through" situations that should not be pushed through, leading to more medical problems down the line and self loathing. Chronic pain patients are already at high risk of suicide before this is added in because it's not fun being in pain all the time and watching your life go down the drain is soul destroying.

The idea that walking aids cause disability and reliance is just wrong - they are not the hindrance but the freedom. Using walking sticks or wheelchairs or glasses means you have a chance to live, work etc... independently. Not using them can quite literally cripple you for life in a horrible cycle of "pretend you are fine until you collapse dangerously ill" and then being more disabled than you were before.

I had horrendous internalised ablism, as this is called, and have even almost died. I always thought I was weak and just not trying hard enough - I was in despair. I am writing this piece because there are young women in the same position now as I was then and I do not want them to suffer the mistakes I made - mistakes that will seem right to them after reading the article by Kathleen - mistakes that will lead to more pain and struggle.

Also keep in mind these are the average lengths of time for diagnosis to take for some conditions that can lead young women to needing to use walking aids:

Endometriosis = 9 years and 4 months. You will be told to keep bleeding and pain diaries for months to years before anyone will even start looking into it.

MS (Multiple Scleroses) = on average 3 months to a couple of yrs from the point of being sent for specific diagnostic tests. Most people will have had symptoms for years before they reach this point (MS can present fast and quickly deteriorating, and that is diagnosed quickly from first symptoms, but a lot of the time it presents in a less acute form). With the less acute form you also need have multiple episodes of your nerve fibres being attacked before you are diagnosed. This condition also needs a neurologist for diagnosis and the UK has a shortage.

Hypermobility Syndrome = an average of 21 yrs, which takes decades to be diagnosed with a connective tissue disorder that causes mobility issues. Even if you are diagnosed there is often very little help to be had, even for children.

If you have one of these conditions you are at higher risk of having others.

And so with all that in mind - here is my piece:

I am now 45 years old and have had head injuries and falls and damaged joints from not using walking aids and wheelchairs when I should have - why did I not use the walking aids such as walking sticks?

A mix of embarrassment, feeling it would be giving up and also the attitude of people when I did use them made me feel like I was making the whole thing up especially before diagnosis - even though I actually had a diagnosis from childhood of hypermobility I was made to feel that was some how not enough.

With family and friends actively encouraging me to ignore the physio's advice and just get on with things - they said everyone aches on long walks and whilst standing for long periods. So I tried to ignore the dull burn that would get worse and the steps that made it feel like glass was shearing my pelvis in two. I worried about asking to rest, I would be trying not to cry when there were no seats for me at the gig or bus stop or on the train - the pain would become all consuming, I would be more likely to lose my temper towards the end of a shift because pain killers were not touching the pain and in one of my jobs I wasn't allowed to take my opiate based pain killers. I was walking around on a broken pelvis with a wonky neck vertebra. My knees were actually dislocating in different ways and after one stint of pretending I didn't need a walking stick a physio was needed to teach me how to walk with a permanently mangled ankle.

My pelvis was diagnosed during Jean's pregnancy with the severity becoming life threatening during labour as my coccyx was fused on one side where my body had tried to repair the damage itself.

In the wheelchair times when I was 24-25 years old my parents took me to Hobbycraft and the little independent Sewing shop in Brentwood so I had stuff to do because I was an outside person - I had just graduated as a geologist - but I was stuck and entering motherhood where I was going to be trying to breast feed and therefore not taking the painkillers that could actually help me. I needed distraction and to feel like I was still doing something... anything so as not to feel useless.

Even the land lady was refusing to allow social services to put the bars and ramp in I needed because I was young and I surely wouldn't need them long term. I did not know this was an illegal move on her part at the time.

In Hobbycraft there were wonders - expensive wonders... and I got some card making stuff there and a whale embroidery kit from the sewing shop from 2 years previously when I had destroyed my ankle for the third time - trying to keep up with everyone and pretend I wasn't disabled. And the fluffy yarn/eyelash wool from a little while before that when I was recovering from chronic vertigo/labyrinthitis and chronic fatigue.... from glandular fever now called EBV.

I had begun to notice a pattern... there was always someone else in there like me in a wheel chair or on crutches or using a walking stick... lots of young women. But I didn't see them in other places - at the charity disco - just me, buying fun wedding clothes - just me, even in the park - just me.

Intrigued I actually asked my mum about it as at the time she worked in what is now called SEN (Special Educational Needs). She said that the women were about the right age for things like muscle wasting diseases to hit or for there to have been some complication with wombs which can cripple you in many ways and even sadly to have been attacked and left injured mainly by hopefully now exes. Mum said and that craft is often suggested as occupational therapy both to get the use of hands back or slow the degeneration and to keep people from going stir crazy being stuck in bed all the time. She ran a group at one of the local libraries teaching crafts to exactly this demographic - young women with walking sticks and in wheel chairs.

We had recently had the incident where one of my mum's colleagues had commented on how they didn't know how I could possibly go out and about in this sort of state (the wheelchair) and how they wouldn't have been able to face it.

Then there was the issue of the fact I could get myself in and out of the wheelchair and I could walk with my crutches - being made to feel that I was making up needing the wheel chair at all - so much so that I did myself active harm trying to walk without it - and doing completely daft things like getting out and folding it up so I could get on the bus - after the third time the bus driver told me not to - he liked using the ramp lowering thing which was relatively new. But I had been told off by other commuters for taking up the wheel chair space for actual wheel chair users.

Just on crutches with no obvious cast or bandages got me shouted at for using the accessible seating and that escalated even more when it was just the walking stick.

And I wasn't the only one experiencing this - being made to feel shame at the disability and also like we were somehow expecting too much or taking resources from others. It was so bad that at the group for chronic pain at Chelsea and Westminster hospital the younger attendees which was anyone under about 60 had a session on it - being told it was ok to ask for a seat and then all of us explaining how it was us that tended to give up our seats for the frail old people mainly because we knew what it was like to need that seat but we would then end up in weeks of flare up and pain or even passing out.

This was more a thing predominantly for the young women on the course who definitely still felt they had to pretend everything was fine and end up in pain so children and partners etc.. could have the best of it - not just an ok time but the best of it whilst some of us were literally dying.

The routes to diagnosis for many conditions also take like a decade - endometriosis can cause massive issues with walking and passing out and might need operations and even without ops the patient might need a walking stick, autoimmune diseases that attack after illness like flu and COVID can take years to be diagnosed and generally have to get life threatening - and we all hope it is just a post viral malaise. Hypermobility and connective tissue disorders and syndrome even when picked up in childhood can be ignored until a server injury occurs. And this is before those muscle wasting diseases are taken into account or strokes caused by birth control (yes really it is a side effect - one of my friends had a stroke before she was 20 because of this and I myself can not take "the pill" due to the blood clot risk).

Due to the biology that allows pregnancy to actually be able to happen those of us with wombs are more likely to get autoimmune diseases than those who have never had a womb.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece having one of the medical issues means you are more likely to have others like seizures and low oxygen levels, heart problems... and a lot of it will become an issue or be triggered in young women. Hormone shifts alone can cause these illnesses to switch on and pregnancy and birth by their very natures are traumatic.

They will often have to use a walking stick and pre diagnosis have a list of vague symptoms like palpitations and fatigue. They are on a long road with conditions that cause and are often misdiagnosed as "just" anxiety. Some of them die or end up in wheelchairs for life because no one listened and it was only when it got life threatening were they taken seriously.

Even coils (IUD) another form of contraceptive in the form of a device inserted into the womb often without adequate pain relief and various other medical gauzes and sheaths used on women can migrate into the body and causing pain and mobility issues and in rare instances wheelchairs for life. A lot of women with this issue have to argue and beg for the device to be removed and the issue is only discovered when the attempt at removal is made. These devices are often put in to help with other conditions like endometriosis.

Many of these medical conditions are variable meaning you don't know how you will be each day - some days you can climb a mountain and others you need an adapted bed just to sit up from laying. Sometimes that can be the same day.

Sometimes people see you doing exercise and report you (or try at least) because they believe you are fraudulently collecting benefits because you are following the hospital and physios advice :/ (yes this happens - yes this happens to me and yes it happens to others).

For me the advent of collapsible walking sticks was a boon because it didn't look so medical and came in pretty colours then there were crutches too! And I kept saying if I would get some nice crutches I could theme sticks and crutches to my costumes and outfits - I spray painted my chipped walking stick to make a candy cane one for when I was working in a Christmas Grotto... the crutches were prohibitively expensive but I was saving for them when post COVID I noticed some rather nasty things being said both by the general public and sometimes even medical professionals - the pretty crutches are seen as what the not really ill have... because they are a fashion accessory.

Grave's disease nearly killed me because it was dismissed as early menopause and just anxiety... even I ignored it for those reasons. Endometriosis took until I had Mary to be diagnosed as bad - I was 30 years old and had had an ectopic pregnancy due to it and had been going to the doctors' since I was 13 with periods that were more of the month than not, made me pass out and throw up. It had been diagnosed from my corresponding nose bleeds but seen as mild. I bled for 2 years after having Mary and had a wandering coil that had to be cut out... and these are just some of the things that I have as an individual have that can cause a young woman to need a walking stick with no diagnosis because they are pre diagnosis. And if you need a piece of equipment on such a regular basis and can afford a pretty version... then why is that a problem?

I was pleased that there were more options for young women going to end of school parties and graduations - they should have the option of themed walking aids that match their outfits.

With studies and investigations highlighting just how much medical gas lighting happens to women and actual investment into the chronic conditions and into things like how medicines actual work on bodies with wombs and how they work - I was starting to feel the world was turning for the good on this subject but then this article started doing the rounds at the same time that people especially young people on benefits are being scapegoated and villianised - and I felt I have to say something because I was one of those girls being dismissed as making it all up for attention and accessories.

Young women needing walking sticks isn't new just in the past young women just felt they had to hide when they were like this including never socialising and being stuck at home and now they are out there doing things - visible and living life - including working and paying their way.

I was a sick child with complex medical stuff but it still basically took me until my 40s to get some of my diagnoses including a rare genetic disorder and over 10 autoimmune diseases not to mention physical injuries - some of which could have been avoided if I had been using a walking aid like I was supposed to. That is over 2 decades of diagnostic vagueness that had me doubting myself so articles like this are so so dangerous and I just hope that any young woman who sees that article or has to deal with well meaning family or friends ramming it down their throats - gets to see a post like this one and knows that they should keep on being themselves and getting out there and supporting themselves in what ever way makes life work able for them.

In fact that is the reason social media is so full of walking sticks and crutches in the first place - not a social contagion as Kathleen would have it but rather a sharing of stories - an active statement that we exist and can still live our lives. We are no longer hiding and we are sharing so the younger generation can see and know that it is ok to go out and about and use the walking stick.

And you know there will be people who don't need them they will be rare but exist but walking home on your own as a young woman... speaking softly and carrying a big stick is also going to be appealing and still not some underhanded fraud on the part of the young woman.

Why are so many young women using walking sticks?

Because they are disabled and this article seems to want to stir up bad feeling towards an already marginalised group.

And I haven't even covered the author's dismissive comments on medical conditions that she sees as made up but have firm diagnostic criteria such as PoTS - there are many other write up from the official support groups for these conditions - here is PoTS UK's.

Future Shock and Its Rot (by sarah)

We are creating a new Category "Future Shock and Its Rot" to go along with things like Aethelflaed and All Things Anglo Saxon, Moon Mania and Beyond, and Ammonites and All Things Cephalopod. These are categories that define specific topics of research or longer form projects such as poetry collections. Topics written about in these "Quests" will also appear in other categories such as history or technology, but tend to have over arching themes that need looking at all collected together rather than just disappearing into the broader categories.

I (Sarah) have been debating the addition of this category for a couple of years now because I am aware I straddle two worlds - Art and Science/Craft and Technology and though people would like to split them into exact dichotomies they are not, but they do tend to exist socially in distinct and separated communities. I have always seen myself as a bridge between those communities - back in the day helping artists with websites and following the progress of accessibility tools without which I would not have been able to complete my degree, as at one point I had lost the use of my hands for even holding a book to read, and of course my interest in green technologies and medical advancement as well as the intersection of tech and art in things like case modes and poems about Markov chains.

My two worlds are imploding and exploding and warring and hating and hurting in a great big mess involving greed and witch hunts and a perfect example of dipoled thinking that is currently crippling our society in everything at the moment.

The topic I am avoiding writing is of course AI - a meaningless term in and of itself. I have avoided writing about it because as I said I straddle the two worlds and am in the weird position of watching as a tech utopia I had envisioned 20 years ago can now never be, even though the technology for it now exists. And watching those technologies being badly and irresponsibly made and used causing ecological and economic devastation whilst still having to defend the use of technologies that provide access for disabled people like me, which have all been rebranding as AI for marketing purposes, and having to field issues such as getting my work rejected because I have "obviously used AI" when I have not, but work of mine that has been published has been scraped and I write genre anyway..... or my photos of storm light looking too realistic or the astronomy photo montages... a story of false AI use accusations that can currently sink your career.

I was loathed to start writing without doing a lot of research and then even more so when I realised it would be a topic I am on both sides of - something that will endear me to nobody and actively harm my career and then the issue that I am now going to be filling our over 20 year old blog with terms that may break who finds it and associates all our work with AI because algorithms can not get the nuance or even often the bluntness of a written argument often misunderstanding whether something is for or against a thing let alone giving complex overviews.

So I spoke to Alaric and the kids about this to check everyone was ok with me writing and potentially breaking our family blog and then I started my deep dive. And some of the stuff I have mentioned above happened after I started this deep dive and I realised I didn't want to just be writing about the negative either - there are plenty of awesome things happening but at the same time as I tried to research this topic and some stuff for post COVID revival projects. The more obvious it became that the wonderful window to people and knowledge that I had watched grow throughout my life was dying or in its death throes. The internet as I knew it doesn't really exist and that added a new quandary - was there any point in even attempting this? Will people even see it?

My conclusion was that it doesn't really matter if others get to see this as I need to put it down in writing so that I personally know where I am going with it! And there is rot and destruction and active death but there also needed to be scope to still celebrate and mark the good and just discuss the "ugly" or ill fitting parts. Bits that might fall into the good or the bad depending on how they are used or implemented.

I had already written Future Shock almost a decade ago now and that techno-social aspect has lingered in my thoughts and the disparity has grown. It was the moment we realised we were living in the future - I remember Charles Stross mentioning his similar moment which was a laptop-using cybergoth girlfriend and a "I'm living in a cyberpunk novel" realisation.

I am alive due to medical tech and people I know have been using AI to find and fight cancer... brain injury survivors and the elderly struggle to use the online world the doctor's surgery try and force you to use to order prescriptions and make appointments... I have had to talk vulnerable adults out of actions AI chat bots have encouraged...

Once upon a time I was very excited about Google Deep Dream and trained it with photos I'd taken to produce a book baby and other bizarre concoctions and my poetry was on a website under a specific licence because it was being used with permission for a language model to create poetry. These were interesting and fun art projects - the images were delightfully weird and the poetry, so obviously generated, was the entire point. This was machine art with human curators.

So how I can say I am anti AI and I definitely can't say I have never used it - other artists when I explained my projects to told me to rename them - they aren't the same as what is happening and accessibility tools are not the same... but on some level they are, and this is where the tangle exists... pretending you have drawn something created, and where the material used to train the AI come from, is important but is a distinction many in the Arts community do not want to acknowledge or more likely simply do not know about. The poem generator was also next to a poetry ping pong where different types of words are on different coloured ping pong balls and you turn the handle to produce a sentence - they both used the same under laying language constructs... this was a Literature Festival about 20 years ago - these fun things could not happen now.

And what even is AI? What is meant? Artificial Intelligence has meant many things to many different people and those in industry use it differently from those in academia, who have several uses depending on which research groups they work with, and this is all different from sci-fi readers which is different again from the general public and of course the marketing department is something else again. So there is a language barrier, and when I was first looking at writing about all this there actually was not the language to do so - sure I could make up terms but sometimes it is best to wait and see what words emerge. and sometimes due to dual meanings or ambiguous or rarely used acronyms you still end up making up your own terms for things. AI needs a lot of defining at the moment and it is a forever shifting landscape under my keyboard clicking fingers.

To try and work all this out I have been attending tech events and discovering some awesome charities Tech4Good SouthWest and more weapon design companies masquerading as humanitarian aid than I thought possible.

When offered sessions with experts I have taken them... they suggested I write a series of articles, or a book, or a series of workshops to explain the whole AI thing across multiple industries and the first time I was like "but... but that is why I am here... I wanted another answer - case studies I could point people at - lovely summaries" but apparently they do not exist yet and as the months drew on and I was getting the same response in despair I have been thinking this is going to be more than a simple few blog posts, and I don't really want to do it, but I can not see disabled people excluded from creative spaces just because of a confusion of word use and I can not leave the dangers of chat bots left unsaid and I can not ignore the environmental impact or the lost legacies of AI contaminated medical data bases.

And I can't ignore that sometimes AI is a tool for art but that the ethics of using ones trained on stolen art has possibly destroyed any legitimate use of it for that. Curation, intention and directional lead are important with inkblot paintings as much with AI which is why I am horrified to see such bad images being produced.

At an arts strategy group I attended the AI Good or Bad Session and I said "if you are going to steal the art and cost the earth can't you at least make sure there are no extra legs or pugs of a million eyes."

The environmental impact is bad - you can tell it's bad by the fact that companies dumped their green credentials in a way that had the geek communities in uproar. With situations like noise pollution caused by temporary generators in car parks and extreme energy and water consumption and that is before we look at emissions in general and building on what had previously been protected land (or at least attempts including here in the UK).

The concept of Meek Geek has been supplanted with Crypto/tech/AI Bro and all our heroes are dead or have been exposed as the villains. The great philanthropy future is drowning under billionaires, and the coders with consciences are working for community interest companies and not really making much money.

This keeps sounding like it will be all depressing but it won't be, honestly - I want to look at ways forward and positive developments too! I mainly want to untangle it all.

Eve and May (by sarah)

It is May, the beginning of May, the beginning of Summer - for some the new year begins now, what ever it is a time of new beginnings... except it is also when Mum was dying, it was an end, a birth to the after life maybe... a something and definitely a transition.

Tomorrow it will have been two yrs, we are only just sorting out her room... only just removing the broken stair lift (it couldn't be fixed metal had sheared off of it), only just paying off some of the stuff that needed paying off. We have only managed any of this with help - we found the roof had been leaking and teenagers swarmed the house and like a little chain of ants took ruined carpet and matrices to a small skip we had out the front. We made them sushi and they stayed to play video games and craft things afterwards - I cried because the teddy bear calendar had been moved - it was still in the configuration my dad had set it too. It had to be moved.

The house moves forward, into a new era, it is once more a big house - Jean has wondered off to University... there are no small children... it is strangly empty and yet not as we have a house full of stray animals... but it is different. Mary likes being able to use the computer more - the entertainment centre is back in the living room and we watch films and play games.

My health has not recovered from miscarriage, covid or looking after mum... but it has gotten better just not as much as I would have liked. And if I was angry about womb stuff before hand I am livid now... we had to go private to get teenage periods that were heavy enough to cause passing out looked at treated in any sort of reasonable time frame... and mum... mum who made sure I knew about periods before I had them because she hadn't and had thought she was dying when her's started... was still too embrassed to tell me she was having some problems in her 70's because everything about wombs and sex and often boobs... problems conceiving, loosing pregnancies, still births, abortion, periods, STDs, AIDS, problems both physical and mental after having a baby and even not wanting babies or sex... all of it is taboo still - all of it is not talked about.

And well I confronted her about blood... she had stage 4 womb cancer... with everything else that was happening it was a drop in the ocean of medical chaos at the time but involved us having to make "interesting" medical decisions, she had already had two different types of breast cancer (no really) which she had beat with operations, radiotherapy and the lighter end of chemo. They told us that it would only be pallative for the cancer but that it was initially advancing quiet slow - the treatments for it in the state she was in would likely have killed her but she was still scheduled to go on the lighter side of chemo etc... as she fought off infections it became aggressive and very quickly spreading. It still wasn't what killed her.

There was genetic testing and a want to stop this kind of thing happening in future - for womb and reproductive system health to stop being shunted to the side. I am sharing all of this with my mum's permission including that though she would never sign a Do Not Resuscitate or ask for no treatment whilst there was hope... she did decided to only take palliative care and go for quality of life over more invasive cancer treatments. I know some people felt this was me allowing mum to kill herself but it really wasn't and all the decisions where talked over endlessly with her and medical professionals. It was also not her only active cancer - she had a slow growing tumour on the adrenal gland.

But all that aside the womb cancer could have been found sooner... and this is the case for many and we don't talk about it... lives are lost needlessly because we won't talk. Before covid I had a set of workshops I had created specifically to try and break these barriers down - the conversations can save lives. Even nurses attending the workshops told me they had suffered and talked about stuff with colleagues or gone to the drs. Stephen Kings mother died because this very thing and that is before we even look at how birth control has been used untested and has its origins in eugenics, or how pain is dismissed as hysteria or aesthetics denied because you managed a vaginal birth so you'll be fine with pain...

This was why I started The Glass Pelvis, and the more I looked the worse it got.

All of this and more is bumbling around my brain - and it is two yrs since mum died, five since dad died and mum basically gave up on life, six since I the miscarriages.

I am a mess, I am still on a crutch... but it is much better than it was... I like to earn medals - you know those race at your own pace type thingies and after mum died I did a Golden Heart challenge with Medal Mad inscribed for her. Then last yr I did the Fogetmeknot medal to remember dad - he always thought he'd be forgotten... ironically or the universe joking with me... I forgot to get the inscription done - Alaric says we can take it and have his name added to it at a shop in Gloucester. I also dragged the family into memorial walks for diabetes, cancer and dementia charities.

This year I have chose Get Lippy 60k in May from the Eve Appeal which is a charity that deals with gynea cancers of which there are five main ones. Womb cancer is of course one of them.

Walking is hard for me and oftentimes painful but there will be dedicated walks for this with live streaming from the me only ones and I am resurrecting my walking group but under the new name Wandering Stars who I plan to walk with on Friday's. I am happy to go visiting country parks and things with people too or do the odd evening if peeps want to join me.

You can of course sponsor me and help raise money for the charity - here is my just giving page:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/sarah-snell-pym-get-lippy--eve-appeal?utm_medium=fundraising&utm_content=page%2Fsarah-snell-pym-get-lippy--eve-appeal&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=pfp-share

Gloucester Story Telling Cafe – Stories and Songs For May (by sarah)

After last months amazing first birthday bash The Gloucester Story Telling Cafe is hitting it's second yr running with the fabulous Cath Little as guest storyteller and Jessica Law as guest musician. It is very exciting to be able to bring such fantastic artists to Gloucester and to hear everyone sharing!

I can not express the joy it has given me, Jane and Deborah to watch the cafe grow and bloom in this way.

It is the fist Thursday of every month at The Folk of Gloucester a fabulous timber framed building that looks like it is from a fantasy story itself!

Doors open at 7 pm for a 7:30 pm start.

99-103 Westgate Street - just down from the Cathedral and it used to be the Folk Museum and then The Life Museum.

It is pay what you want and as well as our monthly guests we have an open mic - 10 mins max and welcome all forms of story telling within in that so bring you personal anecdotes. flash fiction, traditional tale, shaggy dog story, musical ballard and share!

Gloucester Story Telling Cafe 5 – The Summer Time Special (by sarah)

It's that time again already! July was hectic with end of term and beginning of summer holidays events including The Gloucester Festival of Archaeology!

Now its Augusts turn and we shall be starting off with The Gloucester Story Telling Cafe tomorrow evening at The Folk of Gloucester - this is our monthly story telling night and is open to many and varied different types of story telling from flash fiction, to biopic, to traditional tails, to Crankies and probably a whole lot more!

What you need to know to come and see the show!

When:

Thursday 2nd of August 2023

(It is the 1sr Thursday of every month except January)

Doors open 7 pm for a 7:30 start

It is a pay what you want system - we have no funding currently so could do with some shackles to keep the night running but equally if you have nothing or little to give just come along and enjoy the night for free

End time is around 10 pm (we are aware that one site says 9 pm it is an external site to us so we can't change it!)

We have an interval where you can buy drinks and cakes at the Cafe and Bar, it is also open before the show

Where:

The Folk of Gloucester, 99-103 Westgate Street, Gloucester (just down from the Cathedral)

It is the old Tudor style wooden framed building!

Who:

This months guest story teller is Nick Brunger - check them out even if it is just to see the awesome photos on their website!

And music from Ed B

You:

We also have open mic slots capped at one story, three poems or 10 minutes maximum. Please come and share your stories with us or just kick back with a beverage of choice and enjoy the night.