Fish on Fridays

Nora once told me that Friday's lunch was the her favourite part of the week. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I guess it was like a party - my kids loved Fridays because dinner was leftover Fish and Chips - Nora, Marlene, and the others, loved it because there was wine.

Marlene is well... how to describe Marlene... she is unfailingly polite, as if eternally grateful that we're working here. Like Nora, she is a chainsmoker, and she doesn't always seem to be "all there". She almost looks like a caricature of herself: round circles of red rouge on either cheek, bright red lipstick, lashings of blue eyeshadow and permed hair. Marlene is up and out of the village every morning after breakfast. Where, I hadn't a clue, but it was her daily routine, and she was never present for lunch - except on Fridays. Every Friday was Fish and Chips. There was only one resident who turned it down. (It was Dawn, the round lady with her chin permanently on her chest, and she always had a slice of Thursday's left-over meatloaf instead. Shudder.)

It was one glass per resident, which we poured in advance and took in trays to the dining rooms. It wasn't usually my job to serve Marlene's dining room, but one day there was a new girl and I grudgingly agreed not to send the poor lamb to the slaughter make her job difficult by subjecting her to Barrett and the Royale. So we swapped.

I had only just given out the wine in the Barrett dining room when Marlene asked for another. This was new to me... but why not, so I went back to the kitchen to get more. It was only after finishing dessert that I overheard another resident also giving her glass of wine to Marlene. Oh, dear. This was not going to be good - she sometimes reminds me of a miniature Hunchback of Notre Dame who shuffles along unsteadily, grinning from clown makeup.

I spoke to Maria about it, who agreed that while they were adults, we kinda had a responsibility not to get them sloshed on a Friday afternoon. Maria, in turn, asked the residents not to hand their wine around to each other. Problem solved, right? Wrong.

The following Friday I turned down Marlene's request for more wine, using the porky pie that we'd been told we weren't allowed. She looked utterly crestfallen. But it turned out she had planned in advance anyway! Sweet Bette, who wasn't a drinker, had today asked for a glass - which she handed to Marlene later. (It's not like she'd have remembered not to, anyway.) Several other residents were only too happy to also give theirs to Marlene. As far as we can guess, she managed to get four glasses down in less than half an hour.

Maria found her sprawled in a Barrett hallway, with her skirt hiked all the way up, wearing red high heels and stockings with suspenders, and giggling non stop.

Bus trips

The residents in the village have fairly active social lives. It's a great thing, and something I'm trying to make more people aware of - there are far too many older people remaining in their huge family homes, unable to cook and clean for themselves properly, and camped alone in front of the tv, with only daytime soap stars for company.

Contrast that to our village. The less active among them head into the communal lounge areas, or meet in each others' apartments for a cup of tea and a catch-up. Even the meal times are a social event. Nobody is ever lonely in this place unless they want to be.

A few people socialise outside the village, and it's mainly the younger, fitter ones. Ted puts a bet on the horses now and then, and toddles off to church every Sunday. Ransa is a regular volunteer of some sort (I'm not sure where, but she mentions "reading to the ladies", so perhaps it's a nursing home). We always know when Elsie is going out for the day, because she will refuse to drink any liquids at breakfast time. Wouldn't want to have to locate a public toilet during an errand, would we?

Doris, the amputee, should probably be one person who doesn't venture far. But she is a real social butterfly. She has a veritable army of friends who are either visiting for Sunday lunch, or taking her out for coffee. Her favourite café is one in a neighbouring suburb; I know which one, because she brings me their home-made chocolates after every outing there.

Then we have the bus trips. Once a month we book a bus and take them on some outing. The destinations are always somewhere obscure or else sound boring - the only way to gather interest is to take them somewhere they haven't been, and everyone has been to see most local tourist attractions over the course of the last 75 years.

One month they were going to see some heritage garden, then heading for a picnic on a beach boardwalk. Yawn yawn, so I wasn't too upset that I had to stay at the village while Carlotta got to go. The morning was a hectic foodfight in the kitchen, preparing sandwiches to go, thermoses of coffee, and all manner of takeaway delicacies in plastic containers.

By contrast, once the bus left, the place was quiet and very calm. Lunch was a sandwich platter - no messing around with cutlery or desserts - all very cruisy and peaceful. Until the bus returned, and the chatter was like an electric current.

Nora had suffered a Terrible Accident, oh wasn't it terrible, did you see it? and was it terrible? and on and on and on went the village grapevine. I sought out Carlotta to get the scoop.

Nora, it emerged, had merely tripped up the bus stairs, right after the first stop. I don't make light of her injuries - she is old and frail, and took a large amount of skin from her shins, making quite a mess with the blood - but she would certainly survive. But the Oscar-winning performance was from dearest Marjorie, who happened to be sitting in the front seat and witnessed the calamity unfold.

Carlotta had been helping "herd" other residents towards the bus and didn't get to see the fall. The first she knew of it was the moan and the heap at the bottom of the bus door. And then Marjorie began her refrain. "She went down! Down like a sack of potatoes! It was awful! She looked just like a sack of potatoes!"

Marjorie, of course, promptly forgot what she'd seen. People were all discussing that Marjorie had witnessed the event, but when asked what happened to Nora, she just gave them a blank stare. It didn't matter how many people asked, she hadn't a clue what they were asking about. It was only later in the week that someone else commented they'd had a fall, "but not nearly as badly as poor Nora on the bus!", that Marjorie seemed to awaken.

"She went down! Down like a sack of potatoes!" yelled Marjorie from her solo spot at the corner table. "We're having baked potatoes for lunch today. That's what she looked like, just like a sack of potatoes."

The firemen visit

I have learned...

...that a REALLY REALLY LOUD fire alarm is of little use when so many residents are deaf.

It went off this morning at about 8am. We all ran out to find out whether it actually was our property and yep, it was us. No info in the personal care room... no idea what to do really, so I called my aunt at home, who called the manager for me while I rang the fire brigade. I called them mainly to ask about evacuation (it's something of a pain in the backside when you have so many elderly residents, some of whom are unable to walk very far unassisted). The firey remarked with surprise that the back-to-base alarm had not activated at his end. (Disturbing, but it's because there wasn't one.) No smoke anywhere so we were pretty clueless as to what was happening.

And so began the fun of getting them all out of their rooms. I ran to about the first five, knocked, barged in, and told each of them just to come out their front doors so that we knew they weren't inside. Almost none of them had heard the alarm. Those that had heard something hadn't thought to find out what it was, or hadn't clicked that a fire alarm means "get out". Sigh.

I then found that some of the other staff weren't helping me. What the HELL? One was sitting and eating cereal. Another one was setting the dining tables. Good luck to the residents if the building goes up in smoke one day... don't worry, the tables will be set and the staff's stomachs will be full while people die. I managed to get them to help, and I am still surprised that I had to *ask*.

Dennis has a broken arm; Marjorie had a fall yesterday and is wobbly; Mrs Xu had not heard the alarm and had no idea what I wanted (with almost no English) so I managed to explain that she had to sit outside, and when she came out she heard the alarm and finally understood what I wanted. I walked in on one lady on the toilet (door open wide, the poor thing was in a terrible hurry). Two of them were showering. The second one, Pete, was stark naked when I walked into his bedroom. He had the good humour to laugh at my embarrassment.

By this stage the fireys had arrived and residents had congregated on the balconies to watch the "show" as eight of them walked in with gas tanks and wearing full paraphernalia. The fire engine followed them (we're on a long driveway off a back laneway). The fireys all marched around all purpose-like while 30 sets of elderly eyes followed them with keen interest. It was all very entertaining for an otherwise boring Sunday morning. The "terrible fire" was determined to be the shower of the gentleman I'd walked in on, but nobody knew how to turn off the alarm. It's a good thing the manager called me on my mobile just then, to tell the fireys how to disable it ;)

So, no fire. What a let-down! Still, it's better than actually trying to get all those people down to the ground floor if there actually had been a fire that was moving with any speed. Celia (the manager) told me that the alarm went off a week ago too, and that there was a new system going in over the next month. Thank goodness for that.

Once we realised all was good, I started letting the residents know they could go back to their rooms. But they stayed right where they were, despite the rather frosty air (probably about 10 degrees C, which to an elderly person is Arctic). Nora, who is a miniature chainsmoker whose room constantly oozes cigarette smoke, remarked, "They're strapping young men, aren't they?" and leered at them over her balcony. I attempted to make small talk about needing to be fit to climb ladders, but it became apparent their ladder-climbing skill wasn't what she was interested in. When I got back to the kitchen to try something mundane, another staff member was giggling madly. "Ester is perving on the firemen," she said. As I write this, I'm finding this difficult to believe. Ester is the sweetest, perfect 'little old lady' type person, and here she is, starring in two perve anecdotes in a row. I would sooner imagine her baking scones and bottling home-made jam.

"They're all still standing out there and talking about how handsome they are and the great bodies they have. And how they thought that firemen were supposed to be in red suits, not yellow. But how they're very handsome young men anyway who are welcome to visit any Sunday they please. And then they started discussing whether anyone knew how to set the fire alarm off next week."