Getting The Picture by Sarah; Salway Page B

do everything I can to encourage him to enter more fully into the social life of Pilgrim House and to develop some more interests. I can see that more occupations will be healthy for him.
    In the meantime, I am enclosing a small donation to the staff social fund. I hope that you will be able to use it as a way of saying thank you for looking after my father so well.
    I was also grateful to have the chance to talk to Steve Jenkins. He is, as you said, an asset to the home, particularly with his experience of personal training and his charitable volunteering. I will consider his suggestion of coming in to talk about my work but will have to think first of an angle that might be interesting to the residents. My father finds my job as a trend forecaster hard to understand, but I would very much like to give something back for all the kindness you have shown my family.
    With best wishes,
    Yours sincerely,
    Nell Baker
    41. email from nell baker to angie griffiths
    Brenda suggested we persuade Dad to take up some hobbies. Any ideas? I was wondering about forced marches and double-column accounting. ‘Does he have any friends who might like to visit him?’ she asked. I was about to say something sarcastic about whether she could imagine anyone wanting to visit Dad, but then I couldn’t do it. ‘He has his family,’ I said. She gave me a funny look then, but it’s probably because she knew I was protecting him. Why do we always do that? I wonder if it’s because people normally just see the one side of him, but it’s easy to forget how we used to go to him when we were in trouble. Mum was for the good times but you could always rely on Dad to sort things out, couldn’t you? He’d get out that notepad of his, get you to tell him the facts, turn it into an action list and suddenly things seemed doable.
    He’s drawn up a work schedule for Robyn. She was furious at first, but when I went into her bedroom I noticed she’d pinned it up by her bed. ‘Are you going to follow it?’ I asked. It’s fairly ridiculous. Up at six every morning, bed at eight thirty. You can imagine. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but it’s so granddad, isn’t it?’
    She was right. It was. He drives us all mad, but I could still see the comfort for her in having a chart like that to look at.
    42. letter from florence oliver to lizzie corn
    Dear Lizzie,
    I am wiped out. Shattered. Susan Reed had her family around again today. They were allowed to have their dinner with us and you should have heard the shouting. I like a bit of life, as you know, but it made my head hurt. No one said anything, not even when the smallest boy started throwing his mashed potato around.
    When I went into the dining room to look for Martin later, Sophi and Steve were wiping all the mess from the walls. ‘If it’s not one end of the age scale causing trouble, it’s the other,’ Sophi said, when she saw me standing there. She’s come in for work experience before she goes to university. Uni, they call it now, just as she’s called Sophi. ‘What happened to the e?’ I asked her once. ‘E’s too much trouble,’ she said, and she drew me a picture of her name with a smiley face over the i. She’s a lively girl, although not particularly favoured in the looks department. Unlike Steve. He’s a tonic.
    I couldn’t help thinking of you during dinner. Not about the kids, I’m sure Brian and Amy are much better behaved, but you and me. We were such mice, weren’t we? Remember when we first met and we’d sit together at those army dinners when the men would get drunk and start playing silly buggers. We spent such a long time just smiling at each other, but then once we got talking we couldn’t stop. Maybe that’s what Graham and Frank were scared of, us spilling the beans about them. Divide and rule, and all that. It would be about the only bloody thing