Turning the page
I GOT a nice surprise last week: £280 in my account, by virtue of ALCS, the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. This quaintly named organisation makes sure that writers get the money to which they are entitled when someone copies from their work. I make a point of telling people to go straight to the ALCS website to register an article or book they’ve written, so that they, too, might receive an unexpected windfall. I am now literally careless about my books, however. Since my accident four years ago, I have been unable to access my upstairs study and the books I have accumulated over 50 years.
All those books, just getting dusty. . . I’ve known I had to move them on, but how to, and where to? At last, aided by kindly medication (or the Holy Spirit), I heard an inner voice which said, “Stupid, stupid, just let go.” What clearly was the Holy Spirit was the ability and availability of our newly-minted curate at St Leonard’s, Fr Wa’el Qasim. Since the first few weeks of parish life consist mostly of drinking tea with accommodating parishioners, I thought as respite he might welcome the opportunity to browse old books and pack them into handy boxes.
In the end, there were 28 boxes — 30, if you count the two Fr Wa’el had filled with books that had piqued his interest. I am not sure whether this is a decent or disappointing ratio of new, fresh theology to old, well-worn tropes of yesteryear, but something else is at work. The book-lined study of the traditional vicar has been replaced by the slim iPad and an ultra, do-it-all, smart-phone. Rather than a well-thumbed edition of Jerome’s Concordance impressing the Archdeacon, virtuosity is now in social media and online streaming.
Sic transit
THOSE brooding about decluttering and downsizing will know that packing stuff into boxes is only half the task. The challenge is how to move it on. That was a miserable task — I soon discovered nobody wanted my precious books. Eventually, they were trundled away in a van bound for Petersfield, to a warehouse where they will be sorted, some for resale and some — probably the bulk of them — to be pulped. You would think this would put me off the printed word, but it hasn’t. Every couple of months, I produce a newsletter for fellow residents at my nursing home. Occasionally, to fill a gap, I resort to something from our venerable history, most recently the two substantial stone heraldic dogs that prop open the door to the maintenance department. Once, they stood proudly atop columns on the perimeter of the grounds, but they were removed for safekeeping after two chaps in high-vis vests, equipped with a cherry-picker and an angle-grinder, dared to steal their even grander buddies. Our magnificent heraldic lions have been lost forever.
Hidden assets
OUR place has been hammered in the latest assessment by CQC, the Care Quality Commission (a bit like an Ofsted for nursing and care homes). We have been judged as “in need of improvement”, although the caring was assessed as good. Three years ago, when I was looking for a nursing home, I would likely have steered well clear of a place with a dodgy CQC assessment, but our then-assessment suggested all was tickety-boo.
So, has my nursing home deteriorated over those years? No, it has not! I can only see and speak of improvements. Which makes me counsel those looking for a care or nursing home for their loved one to take the star rating of “The Laurels” or “Sunset Rest Home” with a pinch of salt. A bit like Kirsty and Phil in Location, Location, Location who chide house-hunters for ruling out properties based on what they see on the web, judging the adequacy of care homes by the stars awarded by professional assessors will tell only part of the story. Life in a care or nursing home is so complex and fluid that the snapshot taken by quality monitors — even when conducted over five days, and despite their best efforts — will be random. . . except for potentially high-scoring paper trails, which count for a lot in the assessment but little in relation to a sustained, life-enriching environment.
Fifth column
ONE unbeatable feature of our place is the foxes. There are three: Jack and Jill, and an unnamed other, which always makes me think of the woman at the well (lowly and probably put upon). Those of us who feed them know who we are — a semi-secret society, alert to the possibility of a missive from on high, which might outlaw our furtive feeding or, God forbid, our affable foxes.
We secretive feeders are rather proud of ourselves. Between us, we noticed a bare patch on Jack’s side and then on his hindquarters — the dreaded mange. But, never fear, solidarity among the wider fox-loving community brought help. An email to Derbyshire Fox Rescue and, in exchange for a modest sum, a small bottle of healing liquid arrived in the post. Three drops on raw chicken wings for just a week restored our fox family to tiptop condition, ready to display their latest additions: four fox cubs. Tally ho!
Bread on the waters
DESPITE my limitations, I remain a company secretary. The title has a superior ring and, by virtue of the forceful methods of Companies House, does carry some authority. The latest demand is proof of identity. After much effort and frustration, I have eventually proved my own identity. Now I must coax and cajole all the trustees to do the same.
The task of getting trustees is challenging enough without the frustrating rigours of Companies House, but we have just pulled out a plum: Bridget Cass, a notable figure in the charity sector. In response to a note in the London diocesan newsletter asking for trustees, Bridget offered her services, reconnecting with a long, continuous thread. In the late 1970s, the new Rector of St Dunstan’s, Stepney, Norry McCurry, found, in the bottom drawer of a little-used filing cabinet, long-forgotten deeds to a property in Kent. Bridget, then a young member of St Dunstan’s, remembered the stalwart efforts to renovate the property so that “Hoppers” could be used for weekends away, especially for groups from East End parishes.
Tracing the thread even further back, there is a distinctive example of Edwardian mission. In the early 1900s, Fr John Wilson made a point of visiting his parishioners when they went hop-picking in Kent. On the way back to his lodgings he was confronted by a fraught mother looking for help to save her dying baby, and was so affected that he set up Little Hoppers Hospital for hop-pickers. Today, Bridget and I, with a few others including Norry and Ruth McCurry’s daughter, Mary Straw, and trustees from Kent, continue the life of Hoppers.
The moral of the story? There is much to learn from Edwardian ethnologically-informed mission — and clergy should never scorn old filing cabinets.
Ann Morisy is a writer living in a nursing home in south London, and a member of St Leonard’s, Streatham, in the diocese of Southwark.