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All around the houses
By: Stephen Bates
The Guardian, May 2, 2001
Stephen Bates on the moving experiences of his father.
In the first 66 years after he moved to Newbury in Berkshire as a young
man, my father had just three addresses. In the past four years, since
moving into a nursing home in his mid-80s, he has had three more.
It isn't that Dad is awkward or difficult to please; he has always been
very phlegmatic in life, accepting what has been thrown at him. It is just
that, one after the other, the care homes have closed under him.
Dad first moved into a home in late 1996 at the age of 84, after his
diabetes finally caught up with him and he had to have a leg amputated.
Prior to that, he had always been very fit and active, looking after an
enormous garden for many years in his retirement. But it was clear that
his active days were now in the past and that my stepmother, five years
older than he was, could not cope with looking after him.
The first home, in a large 1920s detached house built for the Berkshire
bourgeoisie and their servants, was very pleasant and well adapted. But
after Dad had been there less than two years, the owner decided to close,
allegedly tired of regulation by the local social services. The house was
sold for demolition and redevelopment, for getting on for £1m.
Fortunately, we managed to move Dad into a similar development just round
the corner - again, a large 1920s house, all polished brass doorknobs,
grandfather clock in the hall loudly ticking away the minutes. Dad had a
sunny room overlooking a large garden. For two years, he was very happy
there.
Then, this spring, the owners decided they too would sell up, after 30
years in the business. You couldn't blame them exactly - they were in
their 70s themselves and had had enough. Their property, too, will be sold
for redevelopment and, since it is on a large site in a prosperous part of
a town with a booming hi-tech economy, it presumably will fetch another
seven-figure sum.
Each time, the burden of regulation has been cited as a reason for closing
down. The obligation to fit en suite toilets in every room is seen as a
terrible blight, though this regulation will not come in for several
years. The corollary that such luxuries would make life a bit easier and
more pleasant and private for residents is never, of course, mentioned. It
is always the cost and inconvenience to the owners. It is said that the
old folk don't want all that fuss and bother. They are people, after all
who lived through the Blitz. They can take it!
So the little community in the home is now scattering to homes as far
apart as Nottinghamshire and Dorset. One elderly lady has lived in the
house ever since it opened for business.
Each time Dad has had to move, the family has again started a trawl of
local care homes to find a place for him to live. The pool is shrinking
and getting more expensive each time, and now we eye the owners to see
whether they are likely to stay the course almost as much as whether they
will look after Dad properly.
This time we have found him a very pleasant room (the cost makes him
wince; it's almost as much in a month as his annual salary when he retired
in 1977) in a house on the other side of town. He can look out of his
window under the eaves across fields to the local castle ruins.
Earlier this month, though, he was 89 and the moves are getting more
strenuous. Each time, a little bit more of his past is eradicated, a few
more possessions discarded, friends and neighbours shed. After we moved
him on a Friday a few weeks ago, on the Saturday evening he was rushed to
hospital with a suspected stroke. It probably wasn't - though no one seems
very sure what did happen, except that he had been stressed by the move. A
week of confusion and discomfort followed in the Royal Berkshire hospital
in Reading, 20 miles away.
Dad remains phlegmatic and resigned, but we wonder how many more times now
he would be able to cope with the stress of moving.
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