Welcome to Oakmere:
That’s what the sign in the foyer says. It is large, blue and fixed securely to the wall, so there’s no doubt about the welcome, and no opportunity to take it home with you.
My name is Colin Briggs. I’m seventy-one years old and have resided at Oakmere Lodge for the last eighteen months, though nobody’s provided me with a convincing reason why.
This morning, from the small desk in my room, I’ve decided to introduce the place to you, my friends on Facebook and Instagram, because people keep asking what life is like here. Some imagine hushed corridors, bowls of fruit and elderly women smiling over unfinished jigsaws. Others seem to think I spend my days beneath a blanket while nurses occasionally check if I’m still warm.
Neither is accurate, as Oakmere can be, at times, louder than the pub where my son, Gareth, held his eighteenth birthday, as half the residents can’t hear themselves, or anyone else, and the other half have discovered that shouting brings the staff more quickly.
But before I show you around, I should explain how I came to be here.
Oakmere caters for people with a wide variety of needs. To qualify, you must be over fifty-five, live in Derbyshire and make Oakmere your principal residence. If you own a home, you are expected to sell it. This ensures that when you discover Oakmere is unsuitable, you have nowhere equally unsuitable to return to.
There are residents with physical disabilities, residents with learning difficulties and residents who require round-the-clock care. There are also people who have bought their own flats and pay extra for the reassurance of knowing that medical assistance is available twenty-four hours a day, provided nobody has pressed their emergency pendant because they wanted the television turned over.
I belong to none of these groups. My wife, Lorna, did.
Lorna lost her left leg after a motorbike accident. This surprised everyone I told because she had always objected to motorbikes. I usually had to explain that she was crossing the road at the time. The motorbike retained both its wheels, and Lorna considers this unfair.
Before the accident, we lived in Chester Green, opposite the Coach and Horses. After several months in hospital, Lorna needed somewhere she could recover while learning to use a prosthetic leg. Oakmere had medical staff, adapted accommodation and an available flat. It seemed the sensible choice, so we sold the house.
I moved with her because we had been married for thirty-seven years, but also because she needed my help and because neither of us understood the paperwork, or consequences.
Six months later, Lorna could walk, climb stairs and catch a bus. She decided she no longer required twenty-four-hour care, so she rented a flat above a chippy in Alvaston and moved out. I stayed behind.
Mr Patel, the Lodge manager, described this as a temporary arrangement while my circumstances were reviewed, but that was twelve months ago.
There has been progress. I have passed a mobility assessment, a medication review and two interviews concerning my mental capacity. I have also completed a form confirming that I understand I don’t need to be here.
Mr Patel says my departure remains subject to a home assessment. An occupational therapist must observe me moving around my own home, and so unfortunately, I cannot return home until I have been discharged, and I cannot be discharged until she has observed me there. This is proving difficult as I no longer own my own home.
Mr Patel assures me this isn’t a contradiction. It’s procedure.
My lad, Gareth, says I should simply walk out.
I asked him who would sign for me, and he said that was precisely the problem, as he didn’t want me moving in with him, and Lorna says her flat is too small.
So, while Oakmere decides whether I am capable of leaving, I thought I might show you where I live.
It should fill the time.
The Tour Begins
Whatever else may be said about Oakmere, it does what it was built to do. It has long, wide corridors with level floors, lifts large enough for mobility scooters and handrails wherever a person might suddenly require one. There is a cafeteria where you can buy coffee and toast in the morning, and a cooked lunch is served between twelve and one for residents unable, or unwilling, to prepare their own.
There are organised activities on various days, including bingo, card games, occasional parties and meetings in the large communal lounge. Today’s activity is seated movement to music. I attended it once. Shanice played Dancing Queen while twelve residents lifted alternate feet from the carpet. Arthur fell asleep during the warm-up and woke at the end believing he had won.
Breakfast has now finished, lunch is still more than an hour away, and I have no desire to repeat the experience, so it seems as good a time as any to begin our tour.
My room is on the first floor, at the end of a corridor called Willow Walk. None of Oakmere’s corridors is named after anything you will find there. Willow Walk contains no willows. Rose Court has no roses and no court, while Garden View overlooks the bins.
From my window, I can see the staff car park. On a good day, I watch Mr Patel reverse into his space. He approaches it with the same caution he applies to my discharge, although he usually completes the manoeuvre before breakfast is over.
Oakmere Lodge stands opposite the roundabout near the large Sainsbury’s on Kingsway. It is a square, red-brick building with white windows, a gravel drive and two ornamental trees which have been dead since I arrived, though the brochure describes them as established.
The building is clean, warm and well maintained. The lifts usually work, the corridors are wide enough for two mobility scooters to pass, and most residents can reach wherever they are going, eventually . Oakmere provides everything necessary for a comfortable life, apart from any compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning.
The people supply that.
I’ve put my phone in my pocket, and I’m setting off for the lounge to observe the workings of Oakmere, so that you can get a fuller picture. I intend to return afterwards to finish this first instalment, provided nobody gives me a tambourine or mistakes my independence for a symptom of loneliness and depression.
Halfway along Willow Walk, I pass Arthur Wilkinson. He was standing beside the fire door wearing a brown cardigan fastened with the wrong buttons and carrying an unopened packet of custard creams, and studying a framed print of a sailing boat with the concentration of a man waiting for it to dock.
In my private catalogue of Oakmere residents, Arthur is known as Halfway Arthur. I should add that nobody else calls him that. The names are entirely mine, which is why I remain popular.
Arthur is nearly always halfway to somewhere. He leaves his room with a purpose, reaches the middle of the corridor and discovers that the purpose has gone on without him. Sometimes he waits for it to come back. On other occasions, he attaches himself to the next person who passes and arrives somewhere else.
This morning, I suspected he had set out for breakfast.
I left him beside the sailing boat. Lunch was still an hour away, which gave him every chance of reaching one meal that day.
I took the first lift, the small one, that doesn’t accommodate large furniture, stretchers or two residents who’ve fallen out over bingo.
Four notices had been fixed beside it.
The first announced Friday bingo. The second advertised an afternoon of musical memories with Barry, who owns a keyboard and knows the first verse of most songs written before 1974. Last time he came, he played We’ll Meet Again four times because nobody could remember that he’d already played it.
The third notice was printed in capital letters:
THE LIFT INTERCOM IS FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY.
Beneath it, someone official had added:
AN EMERGENCY INCLUDES THE LIFT STOPPING UNEXPECTEDLY BETWEEN FLOORS. IT DOES NOT INCLUDE FEELING LONELY, ASKING WHAT’S FOR LUNCH OR REQUESTING THAT SOMEONE BRINGS YOU YOUR GLASSES.
I suspect that addendum appeared after Doreen Pritchard held a twenty-minute conversation with a security operator in Nottingham. Doreen told him about her daughter’s divorce, her swollen ankle and the decline in the size of Wagon Wheels. He eventually asked whether she was trapped. She replied, only in the broader sense.
Doreen has been forbidden ordinary coffee because it raises her blood pressure, so the staff serve her decaffeinated coffee in a blue mug. Doreen carries a red mug of her own and guards it with the care usually reserved for transplant organs and disputed wills.
I call her Decaf Doreen.
The name refers less to what she drinks than to what everybody hopes she is drinking. Oakmere survives upon trust, locked medicine cabinets and a willingness not to smell Doreen’s breath.
Finally, the fourth notice mentions that smoking cannabis anywhere in the Lodge could amount to an offence whereby the guilty resident could be removed. Where they would be removed to, as none of us has our own house, is not explained, and has led to many interesting discussions as to where they might be taken, who caused management to put such a notice up, and where cannabis could be located.
When the lift arrived, Eddie Moss was already inside on his mobility scooter. He wore the grey tweed cap he had been wearing at breakfast and would probably continue wearing until he went to bed.
Flat Cap Eddie.
This was not one of my more inventive names, but accuracy has its place. It also has fewer grounds for legal action.
Eddie stared straight ahead as the doors closed. He has the expression of a man who knows something about you and is waiting to see whether you confess. What he actually knows is uncertain. His hearing aid has not worked since Easter, and most of his information comes from watching people’s mouths and assuming the worst.
On the ground floor, he reversed into the corridor without looking. Two residents moved aside just before he ran them over. There was no point in shouting a warning, as he wouldn’t have heard. Oakmere residents' reflexes improve with experience. Those whose reflexes do not improve tend to spend more time with the physiotherapist.
I followed at a safe distance.
The lounge lies beyond the cafeteria. Through the open doors, I could see Val in the chair nearest the window. She’s occupied that chair every morning for six years and eleven months, although no documents support her claim to it. New residents occasionally sit there but rarely do so twice.
In my catalogue, she is Moaning Val.
Val would object to that name, although that proves very little because Val objects to everything, though she describes her complaints as observations, which makes them sound less frequent and more scientific.
Val can identify a draught in a sealed room. She once complained that the custard was both too hot and developing a skin. Mr Patel asked which problem she wanted corrected first.
She reported him for sarcasm.
Beside her sits Jean Harcourt. Jean rarely speaks. She doesn’t need to. A look from Jean could correct behaviour, reject an argument or suggest that somebody’s marriage had been a mistake.
Quiet Jean.
And of all my nicknames, that is, perhaps, the least accurate. Jean says very little, but there’s nothing quiet about her silence. Val could complain for twenty minutes without effect, but Jean could move one eyebrow and make you reconsider your childhood.
At a table near the television, Fred Collins was examining the plug on a toaster.
I continued walking.
Fire-Drill Fred deserves a separate explanation, preferably from outside the building and after everyone had been accounted for.
Fred caused three evacuations during his first six months at Oakmere. The first involved toast, the second involved an electric blanket, and the third began when he tried to remove the batteries from a smoke detector and discovered that it was connected to the mains.
The fire brigade now knows him by name. One of them sent him a Christmas card, last December, although Mr Patel suspects irony.
Fred turned the toaster over and began removing its screws.
Nobody stopped him. This may seem irresponsible, but Oakmere teaches you to distinguish between an emergency and an incident which has not yet reached your part of the building.
I reached the lounge without speaking to anyone, being run over or taking part in organised percussion.
This was one of my more successful mornings, so I turned towards the lift.
Behind me, Fred asked if anybody had a screwdriver.
I decided to take the stairs.
Oakmere’s staircases are rarely used. They exist mainly to satisfy the fire regulations and provide Shanice with somewhere to store unused exercise equipment. By the first floor, I had passed six foam mats, a plastic hoop and a box labelled ACTIVE AGEING, which had not been opened far enough to disturb the dust.
When I reached Willow Walk, Arthur was still beside the sailing boat.
He'd opened the custard creams.
This suggested either that he had completely forgotten where he was going, or that he had decided it no longer mattered, or that there was not enough time to complete the journey any more.
I returned to my room, sat at the desk and took out my phone. From the window, Mr Patel’s car remained within its allotted space, the two dead trees remained established, and somewhere below, Fred had a toaster and a recently expressed interest in screwdrivers.
Oakmere was functioning normally.
I read through what I have written.
It seems fair. I have introduced the building, explained my circumstances and described several of the people with whom I now share my life. I have resisted mentioning Doreen’s connection with Cliff Richard, Eddie’s belief that people on the television can hear him, or the afternoon Val demanded to see the manager because somebody had died on her birthday.
I have also left out several residents altogether.
There is Dorothy Bell, who attends every funeral at Oakmere whether she knows the deceased or not. She says it's important to show support. Nobody has established for whom.
There is Bernard Shaw, the former councillor who holds surgeries every Tuesday afternoon in the laundry room. Most of his constituents are dead, but this has done little to reduce the number of complaints he claims to receive.
And there is Margaret Ellis in Room Twenty-Seven, who's been engaged to the same man since 1963. He visits every Thursday, stays for precisely forty minutes and continues to deny that an engagement ever took place.
They can wait.
I have enough material for a second instalment.
The difficulty will be surviving the first.
Until now, the nicknames have existed only in my head. Arthur doesn’t know he’s called Halfway Arthur. Doreen has never heard herself called Decaf Doreen. Fred might accept Fire-Drill Fred as a compliment, but Val’s response to Moaning Val is less predictable.
There is, of course, no reason why any of them should see what I have written.
Oakmere has ninety-one residents, but only nine have Facebook accounts, and as far as I know, four have forgotten their passwords, three believe Facebook is run by the council, and Arthur uses his iPad tablet as a drinks tray.
I press Post.
From somewhere below comes the sound of a fire alarm.
I wait.
Nobody knocks on my door, so it's presumably not reached my part of the building.
Then my phone vibrates.
Someone has replied to the post. I open Facebook and look at the name.
Oakmere Lodge Residents and Families
They've left an angry emoji.
I'd forgotten. There are ninety-one residents, sixty-four relatives, and seven members of staff who belong to the Oakmere Lodge Residents and Families group, and Val’s daughter administers the page.
The second instalment may be required sooner than I thought.
