A Testing Time.

 I have just completed another day of National Youth Theatre casting auditions for the summer season. Lots of young aspiring talented people trying to find a place in one of the National Youth Theatre's events in this, the Olympic year. I've been doing auditions for the National Youth Theatre since 1984 and with the exception of last year I've managed to do at least one day of auditions every year since then.

Over that time I think I managed to get a reputation as being a little fearsome. Demanding. Difficult to please. Whatever. I call it having high standards. I'd like to think that if you audition for me and get a high mark then it means you're almost certainly guaranteed a place during the summer. I have noticed this year after having had a break last spring, I seem to have mellowed a little. I might not be giving any more higher marks than I used to, but I think I'm giving more people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps this is just a result of  getting older. More secure about where I am, and happier to extend a hand to everybody.

Certainly I don't think I've seen any really big future stars in the making, but I have seen a lot of talented hard-working and very enthusiastic and keen young people who want to do something with the NYT this summer. I hope in some small way I've helped them achieve that.

I been up and down to Yorkshire a fair few times since “Green Forms" finished a couple of weeks ago. Mums not been well throughout most of January and adopted her “ sleeping in  and I will get up later" strategy. It's caused a lot of problems. It's made me have to elicit more care from social services  so that until the end of last week she was  getting three visits a day. However when she decided to stay in bed, her will was stubborn and she wouldn't be moved. She talked of feeling tired and just wanting to go to sleep. We've been here before and it's not a nice place.

A week ago Friday I went up to find in this condition and her carer who had come for a lunchtime visit was having very little success in waking her and persuading to get up and have some lunch. I found it very difficult to keep my patience with her. I said that I thought she needed to be in a home for the first time she didn't resist that  suggestion.

I've had to stamp and scream more than a littlest Rotherham social services over the past couple of months but I have to say that on this occasion they were exemplary.  A call to the  Head of social services produced a very quick response and within an hour an offer of a room for 4 weeks of respite care had ben made . Mum has now been in Rotherwood for 8 days. It happened so quickly that I don't think either of us were aware of what we had done. The train journey back from Doncaster  to home that night was long, cold and lonely. The whole of the next day, last Saturday, I couldn't get out of my mind that in two hours I had changed her whole life. Yet as the weekend progressed, despite some difficulty in communications due to her inability to work a mobile phone properly, things improved. She hasn't stayed in bed on any single morning that she's been there. She's been eating three meals a day and everyone who has visited her,  and many  kind people have done so, have all said it's like having the old Florence back. She's been out on various excursions to the hairdressers, and people have collected her and driven her to church, so she hasn't missed any of the outings she would normally have had if she'd been at home. Yet each time she is returning to an environment where there is companionship, hot food prepared for her, and people to chat to.

There  have been a couple of occasions when she's asked when she's going home, or “how long am I in here for?" I've not given a direct answer,  but rather hoping that as time goes on she will continue to appreciate the improvement in benefits to her life. Why should she have to cope with an empty house which she occupies on her own for at least 15 hours of the day? When my dad died in 1983, I don't think my mother could have envisaged that she would now be spending nearly 30 years alone. It's an awful lot to ask of someone who spent 37 years in a very happy marriage. Mum has always been a people person. Chatting behind the counter of the village shops that she used to run, telling the church council how they should run things, or generally interfering in my life, she enjoys interaction. She's fun too, and her homespun wisdom can be intensely amusing and often very apt and to the point.

In her new environment all of this is allowed to flourish. She's been mothering some of the 80-year-olds I understand. It doesn't surprise me for a minute. At Christmas she took charge of Richards 92-year-old grandmother, and although she has trouble with her legs too,  being the more sprightly of the pair, mum was soon offering use of her walking stick and an arm to grandma Pip.

I'm going out to Yorkshire tomorrow for my first visit since she went into the home. On Tuesday morning  I will be a meeting with the social worker to discuss “the future". Before that I got to try and bring mum round to the idea that this is a new home and that the benefits of staying here and being looked after far outweigh any sense of loss for moving from her house. A house that is my inheritance and of course as government rules as they exist at the moment I will forfeit that in order to pay for her care. Which I don't care a jot about, as long as she's happy and being looked after. The rate she's going at the moment I could still be doing this blog as she celebrates her100th birthday. 

…..or perhaps I'll find her among my eager youths next weekend vying for a place in this summers fun. 

Now that would brighten up my day!