‘“Islands in the Stream”? Who’s ever seen an island in a stream? Pah!’
Edna, a large, loud woman with thickly bandaged legs and a blunt northern accent, spat out the ‘Pah!’ with exaggerated venom. Her room was directly opposite my elderly mother’s, and despite Mum, now in her third year at the care home, being quite frail both physically and mentally, she and Edna had somehow (to this day I’m not exactly sure how) become arch-enemies. Mum and Edna were among the octogenarian audience wheeled or otherwise cajoled into the lounge for the afternoon’s entertainment, and I was there as the entertainer…
In her younger years, Mum had generally preferred to keep herself to herself, so although the dutiful care-home staff jovially encouraged everyone to partake of the communal activities, I didn’t see why anyone should have to change their personality just because they now resided in a care home, so I wasn’t really one hundred per cent behind their continual efforts to prise her out of her raised armchair and into the lounge to sit with all the ‘old dears’, as she disparagingly referred to them.
But I did think that getting her out of her stuffy bedroom every once in a while might not be such a bad thing. So I came up with a cunning plan: I decided to ask the manager if she’d be up for booking me as a ‘country and western’ entertainer one June afternoon, as I knew Mum wouldn’t want to miss that. It wasn’t so much the ‘country and western’ element that she wouldn’t want to miss as the fact that it was her daughter providing the entertainment. That would be one in the eye for Edna!
So there I was in full cowgirl regalia (including a hefty fringed leather jacket and an authentic-looking Stetson) in a sweltering communal living room that, with the radiators full on in the middle of summer, felt more like the tropical greenhouse at Kew Gardens. I already had the makings of a heat-induced migraine as I launched into my opening number, aimed at getting a room full of sleepy, blanket-enfolded OAPs to join in. ‘Country roads, take me home…’
‘Yes! Take me home!’ piped up Edna, ‘I keep asking to go home, but no one listens around here!’
That was my first inkling of trouble in the front row. As I’ve gained more experience as a care-home entertainer, I’ve realised that there’s invariably one resident who’s far more vocal than any of the others. That can be in a good or a not-so-good way. In Edna’s case, it was definitely the latter.
I almost avoided ‘Jambalaya’ as I knew the pickings would be rich on that one. ‘“Filly gumbo”? What’s that supposed to mean? “My ma sheremeeo”? Do we ’ave to listen to this? What’s on’t telly?’ Followed swiftly by: ‘What on earth does “eight days a week” mean? Load of nonsense if you ask me! Nurse, I need the toilet!’
As to how ‘Eight Days a Week’ snuck into a country and western set at all – well, once Edna had shot down most of the cowboy numbers, I’d decided to switch to something that I hoped might be safer. How wrong could I have been?
But I hadn’t spent three decades pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter in clubs, pubs and festivals in the UK and the USA to be heckled off the stage on my first care-home gig by an elderly woman with fairly advanced dementia. So I ploughed on – as much for Mum’s sake as to preserve my own dignity. Mum’s once-resonant primary-school-teacher voice had dwindled to not much more than a little-girl whisper, so although she tried to give Edna a run for her money, only I was aware of her mouth twitching in indignant but ineffectual response to her barbs. I knew better than to engage with Edna myself, so my only recourse was to keep singing, keep trying to involve the rest of the room, and keep trying to will the hands of the lounge clock to move a little faster towards three o’clock, when they’d wheel the tea trolley in and I could stop singing.
By the time three o’clock finally arrived and ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ soared into the ether, my head was pounding and I was sweating copiously in my heavyweight leather jacket. I looked around for Edna, but – thankfully – she was nowhere to be seen. What I did see, though – and hear – was a rather more enlivened room than had been the case at two o’clock. Mum was basking in reflected glory (Excellent! I thought. Exactly what she needed!), and I could hear others still singing some of the songs they’d just joined in with. Even though I already had a suspicion that there would always be an Edna in the room, the palpable buzz right then made me think that there just might be something longer-term for me in care-home entertainment...
To be continued...
Edna, a large, loud woman with thickly bandaged legs and a blunt northern accent, spat out the ‘Pah!’ with exaggerated venom. Her room was directly opposite my elderly mother’s, and despite Mum, now in her third year at the care home, being quite frail both physically and mentally, she and Edna had somehow (to this day I’m not exactly sure how) become arch-enemies. Mum and Edna were among the octogenarian audience wheeled or otherwise cajoled into the lounge for the afternoon’s entertainment, and I was there as the entertainer…
In her younger years, Mum had generally preferred to keep herself to herself, so although the dutiful care-home staff jovially encouraged everyone to partake of the communal activities, I didn’t see why anyone should have to change their personality just because they now resided in a care home, so I wasn’t really one hundred per cent behind their continual efforts to prise her out of her raised armchair and into the lounge to sit with all the ‘old dears’, as she disparagingly referred to them.
But I did think that getting her out of her stuffy bedroom every once in a while might not be such a bad thing. So I came up with a cunning plan: I decided to ask the manager if she’d be up for booking me as a ‘country and western’ entertainer one June afternoon, as I knew Mum wouldn’t want to miss that. It wasn’t so much the ‘country and western’ element that she wouldn’t want to miss as the fact that it was her daughter providing the entertainment. That would be one in the eye for Edna!
So there I was in full cowgirl regalia (including a hefty fringed leather jacket and an authentic-looking Stetson) in a sweltering communal living room that, with the radiators full on in the middle of summer, felt more like the tropical greenhouse at Kew Gardens. I already had the makings of a heat-induced migraine as I launched into my opening number, aimed at getting a room full of sleepy, blanket-enfolded OAPs to join in. ‘Country roads, take me home…’
‘Yes! Take me home!’ piped up Edna, ‘I keep asking to go home, but no one listens around here!’
That was my first inkling of trouble in the front row. As I’ve gained more experience as a care-home entertainer, I’ve realised that there’s invariably one resident who’s far more vocal than any of the others. That can be in a good or a not-so-good way. In Edna’s case, it was definitely the latter.
I almost avoided ‘Jambalaya’ as I knew the pickings would be rich on that one. ‘“Filly gumbo”? What’s that supposed to mean? “My ma sheremeeo”? Do we ’ave to listen to this? What’s on’t telly?’ Followed swiftly by: ‘What on earth does “eight days a week” mean? Load of nonsense if you ask me! Nurse, I need the toilet!’
As to how ‘Eight Days a Week’ snuck into a country and western set at all – well, once Edna had shot down most of the cowboy numbers, I’d decided to switch to something that I hoped might be safer. How wrong could I have been?
But I hadn’t spent three decades pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter in clubs, pubs and festivals in the UK and the USA to be heckled off the stage on my first care-home gig by an elderly woman with fairly advanced dementia. So I ploughed on – as much for Mum’s sake as to preserve my own dignity. Mum’s once-resonant primary-school-teacher voice had dwindled to not much more than a little-girl whisper, so although she tried to give Edna a run for her money, only I was aware of her mouth twitching in indignant but ineffectual response to her barbs. I knew better than to engage with Edna myself, so my only recourse was to keep singing, keep trying to involve the rest of the room, and keep trying to will the hands of the lounge clock to move a little faster towards three o’clock, when they’d wheel the tea trolley in and I could stop singing.
By the time three o’clock finally arrived and ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ soared into the ether, my head was pounding and I was sweating copiously in my heavyweight leather jacket. I looked around for Edna, but – thankfully – she was nowhere to be seen. What I did see, though – and hear – was a rather more enlivened room than had been the case at two o’clock. Mum was basking in reflected glory (Excellent! I thought. Exactly what she needed!), and I could hear others still singing some of the songs they’d just joined in with. Even though I already had a suspicion that there would always be an Edna in the room, the palpable buzz right then made me think that there just might be something longer-term for me in care-home entertainment...
To be continued...
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