The occasional frost of recent nights is a warning of the seasons of colds, influenza and the consequent seizing-up of the bronchi, to come. I am taking precautions, as I hope others in my situation are doing: I had the ‘flu jab yesterday and will have the one for pneumonia next week.

Even so, I will do well to keep up my record of attending council meetings. I was fortunate enough to miss only two county borough seminars and one community council meeting because of ill-health in the spring. It is unlikely that I will be able to keep this up through the winter, but I shall try. I also am prepared to defend my attendance record in public, which is why I want to see Neath Port Talbot being brought into line with other councils, which publish such details, along with the register of members’ interests, on their web-sites. I understand that a review by officers of the council is already looking at this, and I hope that there will be a favourable outcome.

The councillor surgery will take place as planned on Saturday 29th November in the small room at Cadoxton Community Centre, between 10 and 12 in the morning.

I assume that people will have more important concerns during the festive season, so I do not intend to hold a surgery at the end of December, unless there is a public demand.

Ignore the jargon “delayed transfer of care”; ignore the artificial distinction between “social care” and “nursing care”; if you need health care, no matter how old you are, the National Health Service should pay. You do not have to sell your home to pay for it, and any elderly patient who has been persuaded to do so, illegally, will almost certainly be able to reclaim the money. That was the message of Bleddyn Hancock, speaking at a meeting organised by the “Elderly Care Who Pays?” Consultative Group in Cilffriw School tonight.

I didn’t recognise any faces from Cadoxton there, even though I was assured the ward had been comprehensively leafleted. However, if you do know of a family which has been affected and would like free advice, Bleddyn Hancock will be available in the Owain Glyndwr centre (that’s the new community centre in Waunceirch) between 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. next Saturday, 4th October.

It should be stressed that the consultative group is non-party-political. It is putting together an advice paper, and publicity for it (including, hopefully, a web-site).

A short note on this afternoon’s meeting. It was more appreciative than last year’s, with only two critical notes: a lady who had difficulty getting in touch with her GP, and my query about the delay in assessments of cases of delayed transfer of care (crudely known as bed-blocking).

On the subject of access to GPs generally, mention was made of health minister Edwina Hart’s initiative to open GP surgeries into the evening. However, a GP from the body of the hall pointed out that the money provided for this was not new, but taken from other GP programmes.

My question was not answered directly, but it was revealed that there would be work in the next couple of months on an additional kind of facility which would reduce the pressure on acute bed space.

Hanging over all was the uncertainty about the future in the future of the NHS in Wales envisaged by Edwina Hart.

There is a couplet in Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I think everyone in the AGM today was already thinking of the possibility of the loss of local public access to primary care administrators which we have enjoyed since 2003.

Wednesday, 24th September, at the Aberavon Beach Hotel. There will be an exhibition and refreshments from 3.30 p.m. until 4 p.m., when the AGM proper begins. It is scheduled to last an hour.

As a result of Edwina Hart’s imminent consolidation of the NHS in Wales, this could be the last such meeting in Neath Port Talbot. I found last year’s meeting very informative, and a few citizens of the borough availed themselves of the chance to let off steam about their treatment, too.