A Future Strategy

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I have just returned from another enjoyable but exhausting trip to London to see our granddaughters. On this occasion, rather than driving, Mister E and I took the train and the journey proved to be the only part of our four nights away when I got the opportunity to sit down with a book.

I had deliberately chosen something light and recommended to me on the basis that it was funny and astute, a little in the style of Jane Austen's humour but set in the late 1960's. I'm not at all sure that it completely lived up to that description but it had a certain wit and whimsicality that captivated me regardless.

The book was 'Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont' by Elizabeth Taylor and it depicts the interaction between various long stay, elderly guests at a hotel on Cromwell Road in London. I was intrigued to turn the pages in circumstances where friends have often suggested that in our dotage it would be preferable to check into a good hotel rather than a care home.

Mrs Palfrey was of similar mind and had anticipated that basing herself in the country's capital city there would be plenty to entertain her and to participate in. I'm not sure that she had imagined evenings spent knitting in the lounge with fellow guests from differing backgrounds each with their own habits and eccentricities. They share loneliness, boredom and vulnerability in common. Visitors are sparse however much they might wish otherwise and they spar with each other as frustrations and petty feelings spill over.

The novel does nothing to promote any solid benefits of old age and nor does it provide answers to the challenges faced. Frailties and anxieties are depicted perceptively against a background of other age groups living busy lives to the full, ignoring and neglecting their elderly relatives at The Claremont and whom the staff view as a burden too. The guests themselves seek acknowledgement, connection and fun; it is not their intention to give up on life even as their world closes in and becomes smaller.

The story is sad, maybe disquieting. It provokes an emotional response, a craving even for the well-being of the hotel residents, for they are what the reader could become.

It has left me thinking profoundly about planning for those later years but as yet with no sensible strategy.


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