Week 51.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

A Third Millennium Nativity!

I hadn’t been to a live play in a theatre for many years. I was determined though to see CHRISTMAS NOW (a Play for our time) at Clacton’s West Cliff Theatre on 4th and 5th December. Sponsored by 'Churches Together in Clacton', it was proclaimed to be a Nativity Play of the here and now…..its leading characters contemporary young people and something like half its action taking place in Clacton-on-Sea! What’s more, I knew both the producer and the Director. The former was Susan Wiggins, an active member of St. James’s Anglican Church and the latter, Rev. Roger Parsons, the one-time Minister of Trinity Methodist church.

During his time with Trinity Methodist Church Roger Parsons had been responsible for several very successful musical productions there. I recall once referring to him in Tendring Topics (in print) as Clacton’s Rogers and Hammerstein! I was sure that CHRISTMAS NOW, would be a great success, and so it was. It was a truly ecumenical event. I went to the Saturday matinee performance with a small party of Quakers but it was an extra pleasure for me to encounter personal friends from St. James’, from Christ Church URC Church and from Trinity Methodist Church. The theatre was well filled as, so I am informed, it was for the other three performances.

The plot followed that of the original Nativity Story (with a ‘voice from outer space’ – actually that of Fr. Anthony Spooner of St James – reading the appropriate passages from the King James Bible), but Mary was Maria, a waitress in a far-from-posh café in a big city and Joseph an out of work young immigrant, a carpenter of course, finding difficulty in getting a job because he was ‘a foreigner’.

The actual birth took place in a storeroom behind a take-away in Clacton-on-Sea. Maria and Joseph had been lured here with a false promise of a job and accommodation by a crooked property developer (the equivalent of King Herod). ‘The shepherds’ were contract cleaners and ‘the Magi’ three people of different talent from America, Eurasia and Africa. It must be said that the actor who stole the show at the end was a real, live baby (I believe it was a little girl) who, acting the baby Jesus, was wheeled onto the stage in a baby-buggy. I know from personal experience that babies can be pretty unpredictable. This one though might have read the line from Away in a Manger, ‘Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes’, because she put on a superb performance, smiling, gurgling happily, playing with a ball of wool and, so it appeared, waving to the audience. Could she possibly have managed it for all four performances?

It was a very memorable, enjoyable, and thought-provoking, production.

Afterthoughts

Christmas Now was, as I said, thought provoking. What, I wondered, would really happen if a twenty-first century teenage girl from a church-going working class family experienced an angelic visitation and, immediately after, discovered that she was pregnant? Christmas Now didn’t have an unequivocally ‘happy ending’, but I have an idea that ‘in real life’ the outcome might well have been even more disquieting.

The modern Mary would confide in her parents, who would find it impossible to believe her when she assured them that neither her boyfriend, nor any other man, was responsible. Being practising Christians though, they would promise to stand by her and help her with her expected baby. As loving and concerned parents, they would also insist that she should be seen by a psychiatrist (‘She never has lied to us before. She must surely be delusional’) a gynaecologist and an obstetrician. I can imagine that, after thorough examination and long consultations with both Mary and her parents, these experienced professionals might issue a statement on the following lines:

We have interviewed and thoroughly examined Patient M. (her name cannot be revealed for legal reasons) and we have confirmed that she is, as she has always maintained, a virgin. She cannot therefore possibly be pregnant, as she believes she is. We have come to the conclusion that changes taking place within her uterus are symptomatic of a very rare (though probably not unique) psycho-gynaecological condition producing physical indications of pregnancy. Even more serious is its psychological effect, its victims being subject to convincing delusions and hallucinations. The experience of Patient M clearly demonstrates the power and persistence of these.

Fortunately this patient has presented at a very early stage. We are unanimously of the opinion that a surgical hysterectomy carried out without delay could provide a complete cure and make it possible for Patient M. to live a perfectly normal life. She would not, of course, be able to experience maternity, but that would surely be a small price to pay for being freed from a crippling and probably fatal condition.

This straightforward surgical procedure normally requires patient consent. Patient M. however is just over 18 years of age and resolutely refuses to sign the consent form, insisting that she is pregnant. This refusal is symptomatic of her condition and was to be expected. It might well have been over-ridden were it not for the fact that her parents and boyfriend, who drew our attention to Patient M’s condition in the first instance, are now firmly backing her refusal.

We hope that a positive decision on this issue will be made in time to save Patient M’s life and sanity.

If I were making a modern nativity play out of all the above (which I am quite incapable of doing) I think that I would leave it at that point and let the individual members of the audience go home to think about it and make up their own minds about probable subsequent events.

Would Mary weaken? Would the parents and the boyfriend yield to pressure from the experts? Is it possible that the medical experts would, to quote our Quaker 'Advices and Queries', ‘consider the possibility that they might be mistaken’? or…….. could they possibly not be mistaken, but absolutely right in their assessment of the situation? If the case went to Court what would be the likely outcome?

That would be something to discuss over the sherry and mince pies!

Essex’s Telecare Home Safety Service

When, a few weeks ago, I fell over, broke my glasses and gave myself the blackest of black eyes, I didn’t suffer serious or long lasting injury. My black eye has long since faded. I have new glasses and have abandoned the bifocals that I think may have contributed to my accident. I am now one of those irritating old men who never seem to have ‘the right pair of glasses’ with them!
It did make me think though. I am definitely less steady on my feet than I once was. If I fall, even if I am completely uninjured, I find it impossible to get up again without help. Out of doors there is usually someone available to help. I never (well hardly ever!) go out without my mobile phone for use in an emergency.

Indoors though, a fall could have a very different outcome. If I were uninjured I might be able to crawl to a piece of fixed furniture and laboriously pull myself up, or at least reach a phone to summon help. If I twisted an ankle or broke a limb, I wouldn’t be able to do that. I am fortunate in having caring and attentive neighbours, but it would obviously be hours at least, before they realized anything was amiss.

'Tendring Careline' came to mind. They, as I knew, install a special phone in the homes of their members, who are issued with a pendant alarm button to hang round their necks at all times. Provided that the wearer is within 50 metres, indoors or out, of the phone, pressing the red button raises an immediate alarm at Careline’s HQ. It also activates a loud-speaker system enabling the wearer to communicate with that HQ. It is a tried-and-true system from which hundreds of elderly and/or disabled Tendring residents have benefited.

I was on the point of phoning them when I learned that Essex County Council is currently offering a more comprehensive alarm system that, for me at any rate, seemed to offer positive advantages over the more local one. They have available no less than six ‘telecare’ sensors that cover virtually any possible emergency in the home. These are, I have little doubt, all part of an overall plan to keep us oldies in our own homes for as long as possible, rather than clogging up spaces in a care or nursing home.

There is the Personal Alarm that appears to be much the same as is offered by Tendring Careline. Also available is a ‘Bogus Caller Button’, fitted unobtrusively near the front door, enabling the householder to summon assistance when a dubious stranger requests entry, Smoke Alarms (I already have them fitted), a Flood Detector (never a problem in my part of Clacton), a Movement Detector (a kind of ‘burglar alarm’ that can detect the presence of an intruder and raise the alarm) and a Fall Detector which is said to detect serious falls and alert the monitoring centre.

What makes the County Council’s service of particular interest to me, and to my contemporaries, is that these systems are available on a twelve month free trial to all Essex Residents aged eighty-five and over (those living within the unitary authority areas of Southend and Thurrock are, of course, excluded).


I would, I think, only be interested in the Personal Alarm, though I ought perhaps also to find out a bit more about the Fall Detector. I have already written off asking for further details. ‘A twelve months free trial!’ Goodness, at eighty-eight that’s very likely as long as I shall need it!

Particularly if you are elderly and living alone, or with a disabled husband or wife, and especially if you are eighty-five or over, do make further enquiries. It is a service you have paid for with your Council Tax. Make the most of it. What have you got to lose?

Leaflets about the service are available at Public Libraries. To learn more, write to Essex County Council (Telecare), FREEPOST CL3636, County Hall, Chelmsford, CM1 1XZ or phone 0845 603 7630 (quoting 857) If you are on-line, contact www.essex.gov.uk/telecare I understand that they are prepared to send a speaker if requested, to explain the service to voluntary organisations.

I’ll keep blog readers informed of developments in response to my own enquiry.

Why not support Shopmobility?

Tendring Council is one of fifty local authorities throughout the country that have received a windfall grant of £52,000 ‘to support their high streets and town centres during the recession’.

The Council (or, I suppose, its inner ‘Cabinet’) is considering how best so spend it to create the maximum impact. One scheme they have in mind is for the Council to acquire the leases of boarded-up shops ‘and offer attractive rates to start-up businesses and entrepreneurs to give them a foot on the ladder’. It overlooks the fact that the reason the shops are boarded up is that their previous owners couldn’t attract enough customers to stay in business. Why should ‘start-up businesses and entrepreneurs’ succeed where experienced shop-keepers have failed. In any case, boarded up shops aren’t really very conspicuous in Clacton’s High Street and Town Centre since occupiers have been found for both the Woolworth and the Co-op sites.

I think that by far the best use for that unexpected £52,000 windfall would be to keep Clacton and Tendring Shopmobility afloat. It is a charitable enterprise that has the sole purpose of enabling Tendring residents with mobility problems to visit surviving shops in the High Street and town centre and help to keep them alive. It was for just such a purpose that the money was entrusted to Tendring Council!

Without the cash injection that Shopmobility had every reason to expect from the Council, this vital service, both to town centre shops and to the elderly and disabled, will close down on 31st December and its stock of electric mobility scooters, wheel chairs and so on will all be sold off early in the New Year.