About the author
Few know what social care is until we need it. Most prefer to gamble we never will. Ever since adolescence, the author had a utopian vision of how good it could be. When our staff and residents voted for isolation, she put her radical ideas into practice. There were just three English elderly care facilities like Meirion Court, too statistically insignificant to be included in the Hallett Report. Although none of their clients died of Covid, little remains of their endeavours except this fictionalised account. As a retired professor of medieval literature, a student of how cultures come to agree on what is true and good, I would ask: was Hallett wrong?
First Draft
It was in the autumn of the first Covid outbreak that the anonymous author of Meirion Court showed me her first draft. "Could you give it a polish and find me a publisher?" she asked. She was its feisty but deeply compassionate owner. Mortality rates in UK elderly care homes had increased substantially, and elsewhere, my contemporaries were dying in their tens of thousands. Thanks largely to her efforts, though, we led a charmed life. Our new normal was unexpectedly intense, and none of us succumbed to Covid.
As she writes in the opening chapter: “We live in a world where most people recoil from the inevitable.” So, let me give the unwary reader fair warning: Meirion Court is no entertainment. Although ultimately a fable of hope and redemption, it confronts us with the realities of ageing, illness and death. It was never intended as Gothic horror, however, and despite its references to predatory and neglectful behaviour, it’s not an exposé. It is an honest, first-hand account of an outstanding residential home in a malfunctioning system - a cross between Sheffield's Bridgedale House and a Medieval beguinage.
Her Quest
How she set off on her quest is a mystery. There is a clue in her account of her breakthrough as a 15 year old dropout at her mother’s nursing home: “But to my surprise, I clicked.” This is a gross understatement. Her empathy was the key to the Meirion Court ethos. Not everyone loved or admired her. For some of her teachers, she seemed "attention-seeking, oppositional or maladjusted." By her own admission, she "clawed" her way up the corporate ladder and "nagged" her staff. And some residents recoiled from her Cordelia-like honesty. Yet, her ability to read our thoughts was uncanny: she listened to us, then replied in that signature, gravelly voice to what we meant. We would often interpret her words as kindly, light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek, but there was often a searing intelligence behind them that we would only appreciate on reflection.
Meirion Court is a searing but prophetic literary novel set to be published this autumn. Divided into 30 chapters, it recounts the story of an upmarket residential care facility for the elderly where staff volunteered to live with residents during Covid . It offers a unique perspective on social care and provides a valuable contribution to the debate on the possible creation of an integrated NHS and adult social care system.