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She'​s a cancer survivor. One appointment was about helping her with the twisted and inflamed gut that is a side-effect of the powerful chemotherapy drugs she'​s taken. Another was to schedule a booking for the next of her regular two-monthly series of mammograms to check that her aggressive form of breast cancer is not coming back.

Black finds the activities of everyday life a struggle. She likes to stay close to walls in case she loses her balance or collapses. When she gets up, she has to put her hands on the table to help her stand. Rather than write down a phone number, she asks people to text it to her it since she cannot use a pen. Her consultant, she says, told her she had been very unlucky in having been the victim of such a cascade of different side effects of her cancer treatment, including the muscle deterioration known as muscular myopathy that has left her disabled for the rest of her life.

"​I'​ve had amazing treatment here,"​ she says. "​They treat you like a queen, you get thousands spent on you, and then you go down to the work-assessment centres and you are treated like crap."​

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