The Natural World

We visited Priory Park in Bath today, once the estate of Ralph Allen. Allen lived in the eighteenth century and built his Palladian mansion on a hill and then constructed his park. He was an entrepreneur, the founder of the postal service in the West Country and one of Bath’s favourite sons. The Georgian city was mainly built from the stone he quarried at nearby Combe Down. Now a National Trust property, efforts are being made to try and recapture the original design and the plants that Allen left when he died in the 1760’s.

There is a mass of wild garlic covering the steep slopes that descend from the house. Today the fritillary flowers were in bloom, and cowslips and narcissi were dotted amongst the grass and trees. We saw a duck on the lake, with five ducklings valiantly keeping up with her, and high above on the branch of a beech tree, a heron was guarding her chicks in their nest. So many lovely things to see on this Spring morning.

I was reminded of my mother-in-law in her latter days when she wasn’t sure who she was and where she was and sometimes confused my wife with her mother. Often we would go for a walk with her around the village where she lived. Whereas at other times she would be silent, now as we slowly walked, she would say ‘hello’ to a child as we passed, and express enjoyment at the natural world around her, pointing to the trees in bud, the flowers in the hedgerow, the sheep and their lambs in the field, and the birds on the chimney tops. It was as if the natural world that surrounds us all, became the continuing reality that reconnected her to the person she had been and the life she had led, restoring for the moment, stability to her mind.

I find that I have grown in my appreciation of nature as I have got older. My interests in ideas, continues; the immense value of my friends and family give purpose to my life; and I remain a political animal and a person of faith. But as I get older I am moved by the natural world around us more than I have ever been before, and have time to be fascinated by it in a way that’s not always been true for me. I wonder if others have that experience as they age.

Bryan

Turnips and Dormice

I was reading an anecdotal story about C.S. Lewis the other day. Lewis was a Cambridge academic who wrote several books about Christianity that became required reading for many serious people in the middle years of the last century. He was a confirmed bachelor – ‘crusty’ they said of him. But then to his own surprise and the astonishment of all who knew him, he fell in love with an American divorcee. They married and had some years of happiness before she contracted cancer and died. It was a terrible loss to him and his faith faltered as he lost many of his certainties. Later when he himself was frail with various disabilities, he wrote to a correspondent who was similarly ill and alarmed at his failing powers. ‘The best way to cope with mental debility and total inertia is to submit to it entirely’ Lewis said. ‘Don’t try to concentrate. Pretend you are a dormouse or even a turnip.’

If the advice was meant ironically, there is still some truth in the idea that you can’t go back to where you once were and sometimes it may be better to surrender to tiredness and forgetfulness, than getting worked up and anxious about it. But I don’t find much comfort in the thought that I might end up as a vegetable or a sleepy rodent.

I watched the mixture of people in town this morning. We have two universities here, and there were loads of students, often in companiable groups, walking briskly, sharing news. There were the little trails of bemused tourists, being introduced to the city by official guides. Some local people of indeterminate age were there to do routine shopping. And then there were the old folks – some very old indeed. A man with two sticks, slowly, slowly crossing the road. Several women hobbling along, supported by the shopping trolley they were pushing. An elderly man was sitting in his wheel chair in the shade of a tree, eating fish and chips. Another man was walking with the help of a zimmer frame. On the bus on my way home the two elderly women sitting behind me were swapping stories of younger days and checking up on who was well and who was not.

Submitting to failing powers may be a good thing sometimes, and the luxury of allowing forgetfulness to take over without panic can ease the strain of trying to remember names and places. Part of the rhythm of ageing perhaps: giving up but then taking up. There were no signs of surrender amongst the people I saw and travelled with on this Spring morning. Perhaps it was the sunshine. More likely here in the city, taking their place in the wider community, were older people determined and commitmed to keeping going.

Bryan

Social Care for older people

A report on social care, commissioned by the U.K. government, has recently been published. It includes thirteen background papers on care for older people. Unlike the National Health Service, social care is not free here but means-tested, with 50% paid by the public and 50% by the private purse. The system is riddled, says a leading Guardian article, with unacceptable variations in standards of care and grossly unequal charges between local councils. We are drifting, says the editorial, to a U.S.-style service where the poor are covered by the state, the wealthy pay for private care and those in the middle have to fend for themselves.

The Report is the work of Sir Derek Wanless. In April 2002, he produced the report Securing our Future Health: Taking a Long-Term View, for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is a Trustee to the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts and has had an interesting career in banking and the arts. Clearly he is one of the ‘great and good’.

Wanless sets out the social demands which will arise in the next 20 years when he estimates the number of people over 85 will rise by 66% compared with the present 10% of the overall population. He advocates less use of residential care for the very elderly and estimates that 30% of current clients could in fact still be in their homes. Apparently there is a pilot scheme in Scotland where all sorts of additional aids for a house-bound person secures their safety and welfare. He argues that the state should provide 70% of the agreed social care package in future, the rest still paid for privately.

The government’s care minister – Liam Byrne – has responded positively to the report, and has a new expert group which includes the author of this report, it’s brief being to feed such concerns and costs into the forthcoming Treasury review that will settle the next three years of public spending. I have the general impression reinforced by this report, that suddenly a whole area of human need in our society – the respect for and care of older people – is beginning to be a public issue supported by widespread concern. I do hope so.

Bryan