Holidays Started

The holidays – our special holidays – were started in 1958.  No longer would applicants have to produce certificates to testify to their good health, their ability to walk, climb stairs, and look after themselves.  The Committee knew all these people many of them enjoyed two, three or more vacations each year.  Not that anyone begrudged them their employment.  If, having additional assets or affluent sons or daughters, they wanted to spend their money on trips away from home, it was recognised that this was as sensible a way of spending money as on other pleasures.  But, knowing scores of frail, aged, and even bedridden folk, we could not ignore the reproach that nothing much was being done for them, so we embarked on a scheme to make sure that everyone had a similar opportunity.  At first it was tough; authorities demurred and warned; we were advised of the possibility of peril, disaster, or even tragedy.

 

It was a principle of the scheme that no-one alert enough to enjoy a holiday should be refused.  As well, we frequently accepted the responsibility for taking away some mentally confused old dear whose caring relatives wanted a week free to do as they liked and to go where they wished, without the necessity of fitting Grandma into their plans.  Furthermore, we argued, should not life be lived to the full while it was still there?  Inexplicably, it seems that there is an accepted rule that no-one has to die unless everything has been planned and arranged – the time, the place, and the circumstances.  To the warnings that “she may die while she is away from home”, we gave the reply that she might die while she is at home, and it is surely better to die happily among a crowd of friends than leave this life behind when living, possibly, alone and maybe feeling desolate.  Anyway, we assured our Jeremiahs that none of our people would dare leave us while there were on holiday, otherwise they would forgo the privilege of accompanying us again!  There seemed to be a psychological safeguard against leaving us when happiness was all around.  No-one, in twenty-five years, has put us to that inconvenience, but it has been a close shave on one or two occasions.