In this paper, we describe the middleware that has evolved from our attempt to capture user descriptions of policies controlling devices and services from natural language. Description logic (DL) provides a formal link between the natural language processing, the ontology and the middleware. We show that the use of a formalism such as DL opens useful avenues to detecting and resolving conflicts in policies, both in formulation and when resolving them against incoming events and requests. We finish by arguing that pervasive middleware needs to move closer to the users' abstractions to provide a service for what will be a highly dynamic environment.