‘Delighted to be between the covers of The Big Issue once again.

Ward Music begins:

You can grow cynical about some old songs. Call them too sentimental. If you’ve heard them once you’ve heard them a thousand times.

And then you’re in a visiting room of a palliative care hospital built in the 1960s. Following directions from a receptionist, you’ve found your way through a maze of corridors by keeping track of coloured lines. Yellow for the multiple sclerosis ward. Green for motor neurone disease. Blue for Parkinson’s disease. You keep an eye on the yellow line.

The story is part of edition 461 of The Big Issue (20 June to 3 July), available from Big Issue vendors for $6.

Many thanks to Alan Attwood for his expert editing and to designer Luke Donovan for his well-considered collage.