News

Monday
Went to visit a lively client of mine, who moved into a residential home last week. She woke at 2am on her first night, and found a woman sitting silently on the bed. She thought that perhaps Death had come to take her away. Then, with the light on, she recognised her caller as a neighbour from supper, pulled the alarm cord, and someone came and walked the newcomer away. The next night at 2am she woke to find the woman stroking her hair and crooning. On the third evening the woman was lying in her bed wearing her nightgown. There is a physical similarity between them and for a moment she thought it was a doppelg„nger. It also had a touch of the Three Bears about it. Next morning the woman came in at seven, drank my client's early cup of tea, then walked silently away. No one knows why she has this attachment to my client. She had no friends previously in the room. Perhaps the new resident resembles a sibling or her mother? No one can communicate with her so cannot find out. My resident is shaken but determined to stick it out - her words.

Tuesday
Great excitement: Prince Charles came to open a local factory and residents and staff from the home went over in the minibus and lined up in chairs to watch. He shook hands with one bechained dignitary followed by another, but merely smiled at the wheelchairs as he walked past. My client reached out, tugged at his suit and said, "Don't forget us!" Apparently he then spent an extra 20 minutes speaking to them all while his staff hopped up and down looking at their watches. Worried home staff muttered: "She's for the Tower!"

Thursday
lushed with her success at being the Woman who Tugged at a Royal Jacket (she said it was a beautiful suit, too, and her late husband was a master tailor so she should know), my client has suggested to the head of home that they have a newsletter where items of interest can be printed, new residents like herself welcomed, and the recently deceased bid farewell. The head of home, equally flushed with the success of her outing, agrees. As social workers we have tried for years to alert residential managers to the need to have a Village Voice newspaper, and with one tug at a royal jacket, this 94-year-old lady has succeeded. There is to be a relatives meeting at the home so I hope some of them will offer a helping hand with the proposed newsletter.

Friday
I'm sorry I missed the meeting. Apparently chaos set in after relatives complained about the food. Speedily it deteriorated into a shouting match between a woman saying she wouldn't give the meals here to her dog and a guy bristling with rage on behalf of all dogs, shouting out in detail what his mutts ate every meal. The chairperson lost control, and eventually it was the chef himself, all 20 stone of him, resplendent in whites and a tall hat that took him to seven foot in height, who took control and stopped the free-for-all. The newsletter didn't even get a mention.