Atos Mass Read Round Up -Part 2

2.30pm I got back from town to catch up with @nellmk2  had tweeted Nelson, Tim and John's stories. Meanwhile @living_as_if had done an excellent job of curating in my absence, and it was pleasing to see so many retweets throughout the morning. 

I was very excited to discover the wonderful Act Up! Newham had sent us this video, of their rehearsal the previous night. Act Up! have been working on our play Atos Stories since last summer and readers of this blog will be aware their first performance was cancelled at Christmas. It's great to see this hasn't deterred them, and judging by this video we are in for a treat when they finally get to go on stage on the 19th June.

By 3.30pm we'd retweeted all the stories @nellmk2 tweeted earlier and it was time to release the poems that the very wonderful Fit to Work:Poets Against Atos had sent us. First up was Dan Holloway, who had joined us earlier in Oxford, perfoming his poem The Mentalist. It was then we hit our first technical glitch of the day, as when I tweeted the audiofiles I'd been sent I realised the links didn't work. Thankfully Mark Burnhope @mkburnhope was on the case, and by the evening we were able to post Nul Pwn by Kit Fryatt  and Tock by Sarah James.

At around 4.30pm  I was taking a breather when I realised that Melanie @intastellabella had begun to tweet Kate's story - as she said, "I can't wait till six some things need action now"
Again, reading this line by line was very moving, here's a snapshot:

1. IntaStellaBella ‏@intastellabella17h

   #atosmassread Unless you go through one yourself its hard to understand what they are like.

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2. IntaStellaBella ‏@intastellabella17h

   #atosmassread The stress and upset these medicals cause are unbelievable

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3. IntaStellaBella ‏@intastellabella17h

   #atosmassread It affected me so bad with how they do things and getting told in that I had not scored any points was outrageous.

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4. IntaStellaBella ‏@intastellabella17h

   #atosmassread I was very depressed anyway the day I got my letter... But that tipped me over the edge and I took an over dos

Kate ends by asking "how much fighting can you do?" It's a question we can all often ask...

By now it was time for tea, so we took another break. The rest of the day will be told in Part 3.