10 Forsythia Grove
Outer Hamlet
CORSETTSHIRE ZY6 4GT
My Dear Ralph
Thank you for returning a couple of my recent epistles; I did in the end feel that they were, on the one hand, excessively sentimental and, on the other, excessively frank. One would not wish the Whole World to hear about each minuscule turn of the cogs . . .
Turning to the matter of Pom-Pom's admission to the Crow's Nest residential care hom - situated on the banks of the river Beaver - I did receive a (rather desperate) phone call from him on the day of his transfer to these premises. I still have his words on my telephone answering machine and one sentence - currently stuck in my memory banks - is: 'Can you come and see me, today? Some horrible things are going on in here.' The message ends with the words, 'I am missing you terribly.' So I did go over and the impression I got from just walking in through the door - that stench of cabbage and urine - pretty much prepared me for what I was going to find. The place looked upon its uppers, decor-wise, and I tramped through any number of seedy and depressing corridors in order to locate my friend. He was situated in a single bed directly behind an open door. No-one in bed could possibly see round it and nobody could sit beside it because the huge, unwieldy, 'armchair' was situated at the end of the bed, by the window. A number of electrical cables were trailing across the floor and the television - situated high up on a wall - was both hard to see and not working.
Honestly dear. It is almost impossible to describe the sense of dismay and helplessness I felt on his behalf. I did assemble a couple of staff in the room to survey the scene, but no-one was prepared at that point (on a Sunday) to do anything about it. The situation was so unacceptable that I even considered telephoning the redoubtable Xanthe (a desperate move indeed). However, I recalled that she was luckily holidaying in foreign climes at that very moment and this left Pom-Pom's sister, Marian. So I phoned this lady, bracing myself - as a non-blood-relative - for an intra-family rebuff. There was indeed a silence when she realized who was phoning, but I was so evidently distressed by Pom-Pom's situation that she did promise to visit and address matters personally. She even, at the end of the call, thanked me for phoning! I could do without all this pet as the mere recollection of it makes me feel in need of an immediate sedative.
How are you getting along with your new adult mentor by the way? It is certainly good news that the Government realizes the importance of giving care and support to individuals recently released from gaol. After all, a number of people might quite like to feel, at the end of their lives, that they have achieved one or two things they can be proud of - and not the reverse.
That does, of course, leave those to whom a life of unabated hedonism at the expense of everyone else - including their 'significant others' - is quite the way to go. There are far too many people around of this ilk in my opinion pet. I fear they may indeed have become Evil.
Yours
Aunt Agatha
Thank you for returning a couple of my recent epistles; I did in the end feel that they were, on the one hand, excessively sentimental and, on the other, excessively frank. One would not wish the Whole World to hear about each minuscule turn of the cogs . . .
Turning to the matter of Pom-Pom's admission to the Crow's Nest residential care hom - situated on the banks of the river Beaver - I did receive a (rather desperate) phone call from him on the day of his transfer to these premises. I still have his words on my telephone answering machine and one sentence - currently stuck in my memory banks - is: 'Can you come and see me, today? Some horrible things are going on in here.' The message ends with the words, 'I am missing you terribly.' So I did go over and the impression I got from just walking in through the door - that stench of cabbage and urine - pretty much prepared me for what I was going to find. The place looked upon its uppers, decor-wise, and I tramped through any number of seedy and depressing corridors in order to locate my friend. He was situated in a single bed directly behind an open door. No-one in bed could possibly see round it and nobody could sit beside it because the huge, unwieldy, 'armchair' was situated at the end of the bed, by the window. A number of electrical cables were trailing across the floor and the television - situated high up on a wall - was both hard to see and not working.
Honestly dear. It is almost impossible to describe the sense of dismay and helplessness I felt on his behalf. I did assemble a couple of staff in the room to survey the scene, but no-one was prepared at that point (on a Sunday) to do anything about it. The situation was so unacceptable that I even considered telephoning the redoubtable Xanthe (a desperate move indeed). However, I recalled that she was luckily holidaying in foreign climes at that very moment and this left Pom-Pom's sister, Marian. So I phoned this lady, bracing myself - as a non-blood-relative - for an intra-family rebuff. There was indeed a silence when she realized who was phoning, but I was so evidently distressed by Pom-Pom's situation that she did promise to visit and address matters personally. She even, at the end of the call, thanked me for phoning! I could do without all this pet as the mere recollection of it makes me feel in need of an immediate sedative.
How are you getting along with your new adult mentor by the way? It is certainly good news that the Government realizes the importance of giving care and support to individuals recently released from gaol. After all, a number of people might quite like to feel, at the end of their lives, that they have achieved one or two things they can be proud of - and not the reverse.
That does, of course, leave those to whom a life of unabated hedonism at the expense of everyone else - including their 'significant others' - is quite the way to go. There are far too many people around of this ilk in my opinion pet. I fear they may indeed have become Evil.
Yours
Aunt Agatha
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