We hope you all enjoyed Carers Week 2021 as much as we did. Throughout the week carers in the City came together in various ways.

We had a presentation from the City of London Children and Families team on Short Breaks. Let us know if you’d like information on the Short Breaks policy.

This was followed by an online self-massage session with the Mary Ward Centre.

We had our first in-person coffee morning with carers at the Golden Lane Community Centre, and our first male carers online event was a great success.

We finished the week with a poetry session hosted by The Reader Group.

Thank you to the carers and others that attended the events. You helped celebrate carers in the City of London!

Below are screenshots from some of the online events. We’ve also added the poem discussed in the session with The Reader, and a poem submitted by a city carer.

If you feel inspired to write some poetry, then do send it our way to be shared on the website. Email Kevin@cityconnections.org.uk

Visit the National Carers Week Website Here

 

 Happiness

by Raymond Carver

So early it’s still almost dark out.

I’m near t he window with coffee, 

and the usual early morning stuff

that passes for thought. 

When I see the boy and his friend

walking up the road

to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,

and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.

They are so happy

they aren’t saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take

each other’s arm.

It’s early in the morning,

and they are doing this together.

They come on, slowly.

The sky is taking on light, 

though the moon still hangs pale over the water. 

Such beauty that for a minute

death and ambition, even love,

doesn’t enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on

unexpectedly, And goes beyond, really,

any early morning talk about it. 

My morning walk
By a City Carer

Out of the lift, through the door and onto the brick paved podium

But a podium is a small raised area

For someone to stand on to be seen

So why has a vast paved area at first floor level in the heart of a housing estate been given that name?

A man passes carrying a bicycle

Conforming with the rule, “no cycling”

But only he conforms – he is middle aged

The young ignore the rule

No snail to be seen on the paving

Maybe it is the weather

On a rainy day they proliferate

They need moisture to survive

There’s a man on a mobile access platform

Manoeuvring both vertically and horizontally

Snipping at a cable that lies on an overhang

Occasionally bits of the cable fall down

Pozzo is the name of a shop one can see from the podium

Pozzo was an Italian football coach

Or a symbol of the excesses of capitalism from “Waiting for Godot” –

Maybe the sign is incomplete

The shop on the corner of Carthusian Street with a toponym, Vecchio Parioli

An old part of Rome

Italian restaurant of course

And Carthusian for the Charterhouse Monastery that stands there

Memories of Henry V111, and his “Great Matter” and the break from Rome in order to marry Anne Boleyn

He had to ensure the acquiescence of the Carthusian Monks

But he failed

And so began a long process of attrition and martyrdom

It is a warm morning – people pass in straw hats and clothes become fewer

The statuesque Mediterranean Spurge has had its Spring day

but the triple headed Turkish sage Phlomis is bursting in to life

Whorls of tubular hooded yellow flowers

A group of sightseers, one lies face down photographing water

Their leaderwith a knapsack

Topped with a vertical wire from which flutters a flag

And so to home