Life Imitates Art

Readers of this blog will know that over the past year I have been writing a novel about a woman’s relationship with her elderly father, who moves into a Care Home during the course of the book.  I am in the process of editing a draft now – watch this space for further news.

My own life has been echoing the plot of the novel during the last few weeks, as I have been helping my Mum move into Greenacres Residential Care Home, just down the road from my own home in Meltham, West Yorks.  Greenacres seems to be a very good place of its kind, as far as we can tell – it’s clean and pleasant, the staff seem competent and caring and we’ve heard good reports about it.  Mum seems to be settling in reasonably well so far, touch wood, though of course it’s a big upheaval for her.  She has got to know some other residents, and seems to like the food.  And its comforting to know that she is safe and well looked-after.

I hope Mum will be very happy at Greenacres. And I certainly hope that our experience doesn’t continue to follow the plot of the novel.  My character Herbert – who unlike Mum has dementia – thinks he’s in a POW camp and spends much of his time trying to escape!  You can get a flavour of this from a blog post I did a little while ago: https://timwordsblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/prisoner-of-memory/

So let’s hope that, in this instance, life doesn’t imitate art too closely!