Right, since the last street poem, the person responsible for doing the injury to me eye was taken to court and he pleaded guilty. The judge let the person go on bail pending a further trial on the 18^th of December to determine the sentence that he would get, however, the 18^th of December came and went, and our man didn’t turn up. We put out on all forces, picture and description of this guy, so hopefully within in the very near future they should catch up with him but he’s gone into hiding.  It’s something that I’m finding really hard to live with at the moment because since the last exhibition that we did, so much else has changed I feel that I want to put that behind me now.

I’ve got great support from all the people at the Booth Centre and I’m regularly talking to a couple of members staff expressing how I feel. I really do want it behind me before I start work again.

I was very successful at what I did. I’ve been a Rep, I’ve been a sales manager. I’ve always been in sales or something connected. I’ve been in senior management positions with companies and you got rewarded for the amount of effort that you put into it and the results that you’ve delivered.

But, after everything that’s happened, I decided that I don’t want to do that type of career anymore. I don’t want to have a boss screaming at me “hit them targets, hit them targets”. I always managed to hit my targets whether it’s out of luck or good fortune or what ever, I seem to get by. I feel now, I don’t want to do that anymore, so, because of all the things that I’ve done over the last 2 years I felt that I wanted to go maybe into the public sector, doing a type of job where I could encourage other people a lot younger that myself. I’ve got the experience and the depth and knowledge to guide, to mentor if you will. That’s the type of role that I want to go for.

I did have 3 interviews at the end of 2018, however I didn’t succeed in any of those but I came back after Christmas with a new fight. 3 applications from Christmas, 2 for the DWP and one for HMRC. The first DWP interview that I went to, albeit that I scored very highly, I didn’t make the grade, so I kind of learned from that if you will. I came away and I talked with my job centre adviser, who really has been like a rock and a really good guide and influence on me. He’s helped me with quite a lot of the applications and we looked at different interview techniques and decided that we’d try mock interviews. We used his knowledge of actually applying and being successful in the public sector to hone my skills. Then I got another 2 interviews after that and I was successful at both scoring sufficient points where I ended up on the reserve lists.

Having attended the last 2 street poems, the first one was really, well supported which was on Oldham street and the 2^nd one was just off Piccadilly gardens, many thanks to Bruntwood for lending us a really nice, atmospheric room and again it was really well supported. I came down myself and it really was an uplifting experience yet again. You know the number of people that came up to me and other people that had done their stories saying “well done, I’m finding your story really, really interesting.” In actual fact since the day event, I have had 2 or 3 occasions where strangers have come up to me in the street and said “ohh, I saw that exhibition” and you know it gives you a little sense of pride really, that people are actually interested in what’s going on around them, you know they are aware that a lot people are out on the streets, they are sympathetic towards them, they do make donations to all the charities that are trying to help people who are homeless.