Authors Electric

  Alan Bennett’s Killing Time is a Covid fairy tale. It’s set in Hill Topp House (with two pp’s) a council home where residents pay a premium, the cuisine is ‘not unadventurous’ and a glass of dry sherry may be served on special occasions. The worst fate is probably not death but to be sent down the hill to live in the ‘sink’ council home, Low Moor.  Mrs McBryde, the refined, light-fingered, care home manager doesn’t hesitate to use the threat of Low Moor to keep her residents in line, get rid of anyone whose name seems common (Audrey is out, Amelia in) or whose relatives became unable to pay the premium. Then the pandemic strikes and the Hill Topp table top sale must be cancelled (though Cheltenham races need not). When Mrs McBryde develops Covid symptoms and is taken to hospital, she’s so sure that the virus belongs only in places like Low Moor (and will only affect ‘old people and the occasional Asian’) that her last conversations with the doctor are spent explaining why...

  Today is a publication day. Today, Golden Duck UK Ltd  (that’s Francis and I with the typesetting assistance of our son Bertie) publishes The Holding Pen: 14 days enforced isolation for people living in care homes.   It’s only a booklet: 40 A5 pages swiftly printed by Woodbridge Bettaprint. I sent it in advance to the Helen Whately, the Care Minister. I wasn't seeking a review. I want her to change the current Government policy on isolation in care homes.  This requires that anyone who has spent a night outside their care home must be isolated for the following fortnight. It doesn’t matter whether that night has been spent in their family home (so important to younger people who are living in care homes because of their significant disabilities) or in hospital (under observation perhaps, following a fall) or whether that night was their last in their own home before illness or age brings an end to independent living. All of these places apparently pose such a s...