Crossed lines can occur when people are talking at different levels of understanding or expectation. When agencies and service providers are involved our family’s experience suggests it is inevitable. Not with other family members, but with all of the agencies and providers that are involved with health and old age.

Journeying back from Cardiff one evening, as a passenger in the car, I was able to take in the passing scenery. The telephone lines strung up along the edge of the road. I took a few snaps with my phone to catch the changing fading evening light. The sky seemed to be on fire; the fields too seemed to have a fire glow. It made me think of battlefields (which I’ve only experienced in movies or archive film).

The birds on the wire are a nod to Leonard Cohen’s song about being free. They were in my memory from a time when I was travelling. The telephone lines zig-zagged across the city of Nagoya in Japan. Birds on the wire looked like musical notes on a stave.

This acrylic painting is finished with a couple of layers of gloss varnish to give it a window-like finish.

Image: Acrylic on 40 x 40 x 1 cm canvas with shallow stretchers. The image goes slightly around the edge. The rest of the edge is painted chalk-white.
Ready to Hang: D-rings and hanging cord attached.