It’s Fifties karaoke at the Eventide Residential Care Home – so loud the care assistant who answers the door has to lean in to hear who it is I’ve come to see.
‘In the conservatory!’ she shouts, laying a hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you alright to give the injection there? I’ll put a screen round.’
‘Fine!’
She hurries off to fetch it, and I wait with my bags in the hallway. I don’t want to add to the chaos in the lounge. They’ve set the chairs back around the edge of the room to make space, but even so it’s looking pretty busy. There are residents dancing with the staff, relatives slumped on chairs next to sleeping residents, a handyman struggling through with a box of tools (who decides that doing a restrained kind of jive is the easiest way to make any progress); a kitchen assistant keeping everyone topped up with tea and biscuits, the whole scene dominated by a gigantic, floor-to-ceiling plastic christmas tree flashing its lights in and out of time to the music, and a giant plasma TV screen on the wall, scrolling through the lyrics of the current song.

It strikes me you could take any Fifties hit and find a poignant match with the scene in a home for people suffering from advanced dementia.

Now playing?
There Goes My Baby – The Drifters.

I decide to sit down on a padded bench to keep out of the way until the assistant returns.
An elderly woman in an electric blue dress and pure white hair swept up in a bun comes and sits next to me.
‘How are you today?’ I ask her.
She smiles in a non-committal away and shakes her head from side to side.
‘Love the decorations!’ I say, glancing around. The truth is – they make me feel a little scratchy. We’re not even done with November, and here we are in a thorough-going grotto, surrounded by strobing lights, silver lanterns, baubles, tinsel – as thickly applied as if someone had been given a box of tack and told to empty it in five minutes or else. What makes the effect even more dizzying is the number of mirrors around the place, one behind the bench, and one behind the reception counter opposite, so that whichever way I look, the decorations, my reflection and the reflection of the woman sitting next to me are replicated over and over and over, smaller and smaller, all the way to infinity.
‘Lovely to have the music!’ I say to the woman.
She shakes her head, smiling coyly. And then – just as I think she’s happy not to speak but just to sit there, she suddenly leans in and starts an intense monologue, so random I struggle to follow the logic of it.
‘Oh!’ I say – and then, tapping my ear – ‘Sorry! It’s really hard to hear with everything going on!’
The woman laughs and slaps my knee, as if I’d said something shocking, just as the assistant comes back, pushing the kind of hospital screen you might see in a Carry On film.
‘Alright?’ she says. ‘Put him down, Samantha! This way!’

The assistant uses the screen ruthlessly, like a kind of snow plough, but even so, getting through is a tricky business. I end up jigging about in her wake with a couple of residents. One of the relatives slumped in the chairs gives me a sad kind of smile.

Now playing?
Ain’t That A Shame – Fats Domino.

The conservatory is obviously being used as a refuge for any resident who doesn’t care for rock n’roll. Margaret, the patient I’ve come to see, has a blanket over her head. Her daughter Leonie is sitting next to her, looking as washed-out as the mug of tea she cradles.
‘Margaret?’ says the assistant, gently stroking her hand and then slowly pulling the blanket clear. ‘The nurse is here to give you an injection.’
‘Lucky you!’ says Leonie, looking at me with a smile that segues into a grimace.
Margaret looks outraged.
I kneel down in front of her.
‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, Margaret! It’s a real nuisance, I know – but I’ve been asked to give you another one of those injections? Is that alright?’
‘It goes in your tummy,’ says Leonie. ‘It’s not so bad, mum. D’you remember? From yesterday?’
If Margaret does remember she makes no sign, looking down at me in horror.

Another assistant comes through with Margaret’s yellow nursing folder and a box of Enoxaparin. There’s nowhere to set the folder down and fill out the scrip, so I do my best to do it all in mid-air whilst the assistants negotiate enough space to put the screen around Margaret’s chair. I’m on the outside of it for the moment, which is fine – except I’m immediately accosted by a tiny woman as fierce and pointy as a vole in a twinset. She stands by the screen and starts picking ineffectually at the fabric whilst muttering bitterly about something.
‘Are you okay?’ I say to her. ‘We won’t be long.’
She comes right up to me and starts talking quickly and severely – about what it’s impossible to know.
‘I love this music!’ I say at an opportune moment. ‘What d’you think? Do you like rock n’roll?’
She starts back, frowning in such an angry way I think I might have touched on exactly the wrong thing.
‘Classical? Maybe they’ll have a classical session next week…?’
Luckily the assistants have finished setting up the screen. The second assistant leads the angry woman away whilst I duck behind the screen and prepare to give the injection. It all goes smoothly, thank goodness. Leonie kisses her mum and puts the blanket back over her head whilst I clear up and the assistant folds the screen away.
‘I’ll just take this back then I’ll let you out,’ she says, pushing it through the lounge.
‘Okay. Won’t be a second.’
As I’m writing a brief note in the yellow folder, the resident in the chair next to Margaret, a large, slack-faced man in a business suit two sizes too big, holds out a Ribena carton to me.
‘No thanks!’ I say. ‘I’m fine!’
But then he shakes it, I realise it’s empty and he wants me to take it away.
‘Yep! Okay!’ I say, balancing it on the folder with the rest of my rubbish.
It’s easier getting through the lounge, thank goodness. The music is slower and the floor has cleared, apart from the angry woman doing a slow foxtrot with the second assistant.

Now playing?
Stand by Me – Ben E. King