Full Metal Cardigan E-Book

David Emery

• Herausgeber: Fledgling Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Full Metal Cardigan is David Emery's first book and chronicles his adventures in social care, from enthusiastic volunteer to feral frontline worker, taking in abusive popstars, chanting cults, drug runs, sectioning a corpse and teaching masturbation to reluctant sex offenders. He recounts how he gained international notoriety for cheating in a pancake race, encounters with the supernatural, high court appearances, cryogenically frozen kittens, accidentally booking someone into Dignitas, one-inch death punches in Woolworths, jumping out of moving cars, waterboarding, psychotic psychopaths, knife-wielding pregnant women and suicide attempts with rhubarb along the way. This is a humorous look at life as a social worker: in turns both laugh-out-loud funny and mind-boggling.

Leseprobe

To the NHS

“To describe me as a user of social services is like calling a rat a user of Rentokil.” Joanna

Service user, patient, client, customer, consumer, survivor, expert with experience. The list of labels given to the people I have worked with is long. They change with time, setting, location and context. A new one is coined, fresh and positive. Eventually it becomes steeped in stigma and is discarded. By some. Others stick with it. Last week, social services referred their client who, once accepted to our team, became a service user and, on further review by the doctor, a patient. He was found not to meet the eligibility criteria; he was a survivor but not with the right symptoms, an expert but with the wrong experience. He was promptly discharged and ended the day as just a person.

I have tried to avoid labels throughout the book but apologise when this has not been possible.

People’s names, genders, ages, ethnicities, star signs, blood groups and positioning on the space-time continuum have been changed to protect their confidentiality (and my registration).

Everything else is true.

The police sergeant lowered his machine gun.

“We’ve shut down all of the surrounding streets but need this finished before the school run starts. Have you got the warrant?”

I pulled a tattered piece of paper from my pocket; the fruit of a three hour wait in court. Initially the magistrate had been reluctant to authorise it but, on learning the address was around the corner from his daughter’s piccolo teacher, he was more forthcoming.

The sergeant checked it through. “Right then, let’s go.”

I slowly walked up to the bungalow, flanked by four armed officers; them in Kevlar bulletproof vests, me in a wool-mix cardigan.

Derick stood at the window, staring out impassively. The last time he had become this unwell it had ended with him chasing his elderly neighbours around their house with a knife in his hand and a fountain of blood pumping from his radial artery.

He thought they were members of the Illuminati.

They said that they hadn’t even been to Wales.

Eventually I reached the door and prepared to deploy my trusted sponge knock, developed over years of not wanting to be heard.

Morning calls to crack dens, lunchtime visits to houses of poo, evening appointments with ASBO’d adolescents; my sponge knock had protected me from them all.

Taking a deep breath I gently wafted my knuckles against the door.

There was no answer.

God bless my sponge knock.

The police officers shifted impatiently behind me, desperate to kick the door in. This was something I wanted to avoid as it would not only stigmatise Derick further but would also require me to arrange the repair of the door once everyone else had gone home.

“Try again.”

I tried again.

Nothing.

“Ok, step aside,” said the sergeant and within seconds the door was forced and we were piling into his home.

As the dust settled I found myself face to face with Derick in his front room whilst the battalion of officers squeezed into the hallway behind.

I had no gun, no body armour and nowhere else to go.

Fighting hard to keep control of my emotions and my bowels, I pulled out the completed Mental Health Act section papers. These documents gave us the statutory right to be in his home, to remove him against his will, to forcibly convey him to hospital and to deprive him of his liberty. Our entire legal authority was conferred by these two pink forms.

Derick plucked them out of my hand and tore them up.

I lost control of my bowels a little bit.

Everyone else knew what they wanted to do. Adrian wanted to work with animals (he’s now a butcher), Penny wanted to write poetry (she’s on Jobseekers Allowance) and Kenneth wanted to be a vicar (prison). I had no such ambition and drifted through school without purpose, the only advice I received – don’t be a teacher – coming from my dad (a teacher). I had presumed a plan would emerge at college but it never did. The one thing I did know was that I wanted to go to university. My sister had gone and I had seen how it had transformed her life. Before she had got her degree in psychology she had been a part-time counter assistant in a failing delicatessen; afterwards she was made full-time.

Having (just) achieved the grades I needed at college, I decided that I would study archaeology at university. This was partly because of the practical nature of the course, partly because of the high ratio of girls to boys the previous year, but mostly because of Indiana Jones. So great was my love of these films that I once convinced my mum to take me to the cinema to see the whole trilogy back-to-back, whereupon, after six and a half hours in the dark, I ran excitedly into the bright afternoon sunshine, promptly lost the use of my legs and had to be pushed all the way back to the car in a shopping trolley.

Upon starting my degree, I (and my entirely male class) grappled with the concept of self-motivated learning and how, if you didn’t attend lectures, didn’t read set texts, didn’t submit essays and didn’t sit exams, no one seemed to mind. With a knowledge of world chronology derived largely from children’s television I (just) managed to scrape a second-class degree in archaeology and was handed a certificate, a trowel and responsibility for safeguarding the nation’s ancient past.

It would not take long to realise that the life of an archaeologist was not for me. Alongside my extremely limited understanding of history (if it wasn’t in Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds it might as well not have happened), I proved to be completely inept at excavation. In my first week my sausage fingers managed to mangle an Iron Age bracelet resulting in the professor in charge of the dig postulating that a mighty slaughter had occurred on the site.

I knew better.

Worse was to follow when I failed to spot an important settlement boundary that I had been tasked with identifying. Wrongly assuming that the subtle change in soil colour was down to my plump colleague Alan’s considerable shadow rather than a shift from manmade deposits to natural earth, I insisted that we continued to trowel, only coming to a standstill three days later when we struck the car park of Poundstretcher.

The travel and treasures that I had imagined as an undergraduate were never to materialise and, instead of ancient Egypt and Aztec gold, I was to spend six months of the year in a draughty portakabin scrubbing pottery fragments with a toothbrush. On one occasion I was flung out of a JCB scoop whilst trying to take an aerial photo of what I thought might be the markings of a Roman villa (they weren’t – they were JCB tracks from the previous day) but, that aside, the general lack of adventure provided by a career in archaeology caused me to rethink my future.

Aware that I needed to do something different but unsure of what this might be, I was to persist in the portakabin until one fateful afternoon when, having been given the day off after traces of leptospirosis had been detected in the bones I had been handling for the last three months, I went down an alleyway in the local town and stumbled upon a volunteers’ centre. Though I’d spent many lunchbreaks aimlessly wandering these streets, I had never noticed this before and, seeing it as a sign of the universe’s cosmic intervention into my destiny (rather than my poor sense of direction), I decided to go in.

Inside, a smell of incense hung in the air and the mating calls of pregnant dolphins were being piped through antiquated speakers. In the far corner sat a wise crone with a scarf on her head, an amulet around her neck and a menthol cigarette in her hand.

“Come closer my dear,” she beckoned, “come closer.”

I sat down in front of her and, encouraged by her gentle coaxing, I told her about my need for change, to find something different, a fresh path to follow, a new adventure to begin. I was shocked by the strength of my own emotions as I poured my heart out to this stranger.

I would try anything.

Anything.

Anything.

After an hour, it was clear that anything did not include children, animals, old people, religion, nature, charity shops, public speaking, fundraising, horticulture, promotion, art, culture, heritage, stewarding or meals on wheels.

“That doesn’t leave us with much,” she told me, “except...”

Looking cautiously over her shoulder (which was odd as she had her back to the wall) she reached under her desk.

“Call this number,” she whispered, passing me a tattered piece of card and disappearing into a fog of National Trust pamphlets.

Later that day I nervously called the number on the card.

Rob answered.

After establishing that I did not want my duvet cleaning (the team were based over a launderette and used the same phone line), he explained that he was a newly-qualified social worker who ran a group which gave young people with a learning disability the chance to go out socially. For many of its members, who attended centres or stayed at home during the day, the group was their only opportunity to go out with friends and Rob was passionate for it to work. Unlike more traditional, paternal services, the group was run as a collective and members were encouraged to vote for what they wanted to do each week. At the start of every meeting Rob would produce a list of diverse and stimulating activities that he had lovingly drawn up, only for them to be swiftly rejected in favour of a night at McDonalds.

Every week.

Rob told me that his main challenge (other than not contracting rickets after countless Happy Meals) was retaining the volunteers who all tended to leave after the first week, never to return again.

I asked him why this was.

He said he wasn’t sure but thought it may be linked to the long hours, high risk, poor resources, no pay, lack of recognition, and could I start that evening?

I laughed.

He laughed.

We both laughed.

Until I realised that he was serious.

“I’m going to have to think about it,” I said, unable to think of an excuse fast enough.

An hour later I stood in the train station carpark, looking out for Rob and still unable to think of an excuse. When he finally arrived, he put my preconceived ideas of what a social worker would look like to shame.

I had envisaged someone with a beard, brogues and a beige woolly jumper.

I was wrong.

His woolly jumper was green.

“Have you ever done anything like this before?” he asked, as we waited for the others.

As my only previous work experience had been in a café where two of my egg and cress sandwiches were returned because they contained soil and a builder had once started to weep because I blew my nose whilst making his bacon roll, it was clear that I had not done anything remotely like this before.

“Yes,” I was surprised to hear myself reply.

“Good, when everyone’s here we’ll split them into two groups and we can take one each.”

“But how many people will there be?” I asked, a note of panic in my voice.

“No idea,” he replied confidently.

Over the next hour people started to arrive, dropped off by exhausted family, friends and carers who would then screech off, anxious to squeeze every second out of the short respite the group provided them with. Before long, Rob and I were engulfed by a crowd of excited young people, laughing, joking and making hurtful comments about the pea green tracksuit bottoms that I had foolishly chosen to wear in an attempt to be down with the kids.

“Ok,”’ said Rob eventually, “I think that’s everyone. Why don’t you take that half and I’ll take the other?”

He bisected the group with an outstretched arm.

“That’s a lot of people,” I said surveying the jostling throng in front of me.

“But you’ll have Nicci helping you,” said Rob, reassuringly, “I wouldn’t expect you to do it on your own on your first night.”

This came as something of a relief as it would only be the second time in my life that I had had to look after someone who wasn’t me – the other time was when I was asked to keep an eye on my three-year-old niece at a family wedding.

Midway through the buffet she had come up to me and handed me a sausage roll.

“Thank you very much,” I said, before realising it was, in fact, a poo.

When Nicci appeared, she was not an experienced elder who could shower me with wisdom and guide me through the intricacies of human behaviour. Nor was she a nubile young student I could bond with on this intimate voyage of discovery. Nicci was Nicholas, the eight-year-old little brother of one of the group members.

“Hello,” he said, waving his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle at me (Ronaldo, I think).

I looked pleadingly at Rob.

“I think we should go now,” he said quickly, sensing that he might be about to lose another volunteer.

The short walk from the carpark to the platform nearly killed me. Issuing a string of feeble commands that were heard by all and heeded by none, I tried my best, but soon realised that my ability to manage the group effectively was severely compromised by being unsure of people’s names.

“Lucy, stop dangling John off the edge of the platform!” I shouted frantically.

“That’s not Lucy, that’s Lisa,” corrected Nicholas.

“Lisa, stop dangling John off the edge of the platform!” I shouted frantically.

“That’s not John, that’s Phil.”

I saw danger everywhere. The live tracks, the speeding railway stock, the plastic flap on the ticket machine. I had previously seen myself as a carefree, happy-go-lucky risk taker. At university, my cavalier lifestyle had resulted in more visits to A&E than anyone else, from a splinter in my scrotum when sliding naked down a bannister, to falling off a bridge with a girl on my shoulders who, just moments earlier, had confided in me she had a fear of both heights and water. Yet here I was, a gibbering wreck in jazzy sweatpants.

Miraculously, and with only one significant injury (Ronaldo was decapitated by the plastic flap of the ticket machine), my group eventually made it onto the train and, as we set off towards the city centre, I started to relax and enjoy the company of the young people around me.

Unfortunately this was not to last long.

As the train prepared to leave a station, young Bobby, a boy who appeared to share my passion for Raiders of the Lost Ark, suddenly jumped up from his chair, ran the length of the carriage and dived through the rapidly closing doors. They slammed shut behind him, missing his built-up shoe by millimetres, and, before I had a chance to react, the train pulled away.

“Bobby!” I cried, my nose pressed against the window, as he (and my future career in social work) disappeared into the distance, “Booobbbbyyy!!!”

Nicholas came and patted me gently on the back.

“That was actually Greg,” he whispered.

Eventually, after a desperate manhunt across the railway network, we were able to track down Greg (who was sipping from a homeless man’s can of Irn Bru) and resume our evening (at McDonalds). But such a near miss was not an isolated incident, and over subsequent weeks we would regularly lose vulnerable young people in bus terminals, shopping precincts, red-light districts and military firing ranges throughout the city. Yet by 11pm we would all, somehow, have made it back to the station carpark with family, friends and carers waiting to collect their charges, blissfully unaware of the night’s events.

Over time, the feeling of terror that preceded every trip out with the group turned to one of enjoyment and I soon found myself looking forward to the evenings rather than dreading them. I gradually got to know all of the members and loved the energy and enthusiasm that they brought with them each week. I got used to the many demands of the role and how best to manage them. I learned how to give off an air of calm when inside I flapped, how to ignore the disgruntled mumblings of members of the public whose train carriage we had invaded, and how to ensure that I was always further away than Rob when someone’s toileting accident needed to be addressed.

Whilst I continued to spend my days buffing up the bones of the dead, I knew in my heart that I wanted to work with the living. With large debts and unpaid rent, I had intended to embark upon a career change in a measured, planned way but, on being presented with another box of filthy clavicles one Thursday morning, I decided that I could not face it anymore and downed my toothbrush and trowel for good.

By now my sister, having lopped off two of her fingertips whilst slicing garlic sausage, had left the delicatessen and started to work for a charity that supported people with a learning disability to live in the community. The homes were located within leafy villages and were always advertising for staff. My sister encouraged me to apply and after a brief interview, in which I was asked my name and if I had any (really bad) criminal convictions, I was offered night shifts in one of the homes.

In which one was it to be? I speculated.

Sunny Meadows?

Honeysuckle Cottage?

Mulberry Farm?

No. Grimethorpe House, smack in the middle of the largest council estate in Europe.

As I drove to the house on my first day of work, I spotted a group of children sat talking on the kerb. Full of positive energy and joie de vivre, I slowed down and bid them a good day.

They pelted my car with grit.

I pulled over to the side of the road and marched angrily towards them, expecting them to flee.

They stood and stared. One put out his cigarette. Another screwed the top back on her bottle of gin. I stopped, untied my shoelace, tied my shoelace, walked back to my car and drove off.

I’d made my point.

The home I would be working in was for three men, Roger, Kamal and Michael who all had challenging behaviour. New to the profession and its accompanying terminology, I assumed this to mean that they would be engaging me in controversial philosophical debates or airing provocative political views. Unfortunately it turned out to be more along the lines of throwing casserole dishes across the kitchen and trying to bite me when Top Gear finished.

After the briefest of inductions from an exhausted colleague (there’s the tea, there’s the coffee and there’s the adrenaline shot that you might need to stop someone dying from anaphylactic shock), I was asked to start doing shifts on my own. In the early weeks, sleep proved elusive and I would lie awake listening for any disturbances. On this estate disturbances were not uncommon with the sound of dogs, motor bikes and semi-automatic weapons echoing into the evening air. Eventually though, as I got to know the home and the people who lived in it, I became more relaxed and would sometimes get a full eight minutes’ sleep before I was awoken by the unmistakable thud of a surface-to-air missile being launched out of the next-door neighbour’s garden.

During the day the three residents attended a local centre and so I was required to work frantically in the morning to get them ready for the minibus and meet them when they got home to help them get changed, have dinner, relax and go to bed. In-between those times I would rock backwards and forwards in the foetal position in a darkened room. The minibus arrived at 8am sharp and the driver, a fearsome slab of a man on a tight schedule, would always aggressively ring the door bell (no mean feat when it played a glockenspiel rendition of The Sun Has Got His Hat On) until I brought the residents out.

One morning I woke to find that I had overslept.

It was 7.30am.

I usually got up at 5.30am.

I hurriedly pulled on my trousers and t-shirt and burst into Roger’s room only to find him munching upon his own poo. This came as something of a shock, not least because he had refused a pork chop I had made him the previous day. I backed out and gathered myself on the landing, quickly realising that I was going to have to sort this out myself. I grabbed a toothbrush and put the radio on. Mark Morrison was playing and I started to brush.

It was like being back in the portakabin.

As we stood face to face, Roger and I harmonised to Return of the Mack whilst I discreetly turned around and dry-retched at the end of each chorus.

After this incident I would not sleep soundly again as my ears strained for the sound of thrutching bowels in the night.

I would also never enjoy listening to Mark Morrison.

(In supervision, some weeks later, I told my manager about this and she recounted how, when Roger’s dad had dropped him off on his first day at the home, she had asked him if there was anything they needed to know.

“Let’s just say he enjoys breakfast in bed,” he had cryptically replied.)

My problems with sleep were to become even more pronounced when my colleague Lisa, on completing a handover to me at the end of her shift, dropped a bombshell.

“The medication’s been ordered, there’s chops for dinner and Kamal’s birthday cake is in the fridge. Oh, and Nana Ogden was at it again last night.”

She picked up her handbag and went to leave.

“Nana Ogden?” I inquired.

“Yes, for hours. Wouldn’t stop.”

“Who’s Nana Ogden?”

“No one’s told you about Nana Ogden?”

Since starting there no one had told me how to use the phone, where the toilets were or how to avoid being hit by a flying Le Creuset lid, never mind who Nana Ogden was.

“Oh God,” she said, sitting down and put her hand on mine, “I just assumed…”

Nana Ogden, it transpired, was a ghostly apparition who wandered the house at night, only visible in the many mirrors that covered the walls (an odd choice, I thought, to put up lots of mirrors when you had a mirror-loving spectral-being in residence). She had been held responsible for fire alarms going off, windows being opened, objects being moved and several staff resignations.

“And she hates men,” finished Lisa.

We sat in silence.

Lisa patted my shoulder.

At least I was not alone.

“Christ!” she said suddenly, “I’m going to miss my bus! Bye!”

I was alone.

I had a complicated relationship with ghosts. My mum had died when I was young and so part of me wanted to see one as proof of an afterlife that I really didn’t believe in. But an incident at Cub camp where something icy had rubbed against my thigh during the night (though Graham, who lay in the sleeping bag next to me and whose civil partnership I recently attended, saw nothing) had put me right off. In my heart, I wanted to see Nana Ogden but in my head I was terrified.

After Lisa’s revelation I spent the whole of that evening clutching a biography of Cliff Richards (there was no Bible in the house) and averting my gaze from any reflective surfaces. After hurriedly getting the residents to bed I hunkered down in the office, my eyes fixed on the door, quietly reciting the Lord’s Prayer under my breath. I was just drifting off when I heard a loud banging from downstairs. I tried my best to ignore it but it persisted.

Eventually I decided that I must face whatever was waiting for me. I picked up a can of Lynx deodorant and went downstairs.

The noise was coming from the kitchen and so, edging towards the door, I nervously turned on the light and peered in.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust but then I saw it; a dark shadowy figure by the fridge being reflected in the window.

I shrieked.

This was the moment, I realised, when my refusal to acknowledge the possibility of the paranormal would be punished. Holding the Lynx in front of me I went in, prepared to face this vengeful wraith (and give it a good spraying of Congo Mist).

But it wasn’t a vengeful wraith.

It was Roger.

After gently bringing an end to his midnight feast I helped him to his bedroom and went back to the kitchen to tidy up. I opened the fridge to put the butter back.

I shrieked again.

A malevolent face was peering out of Kamal’s birthday cake.

Nana Ogden.

I ran back to the office and barricaded myself in.

The next morning, deprived of all sleep, I stumbled out of my room and tiptoed downstairs to confront the cake. With the sun shining and my glasses on, I was able to undertake a comprehensive examination and it soon became clear that this was not the supernatural mark of Nana Ogden in the buttercream icing.

It was Roger again.

The greedy little sod must have sunk his face into the cake last night and left an imprint so clear that, if I’d poured plaster over it and allowed it to set (like the FBI do with a serial killer’s footprints) I would have been able to pull off his perfect death mask.

Now that I was a fully (if meagrely) paid member of staff I was required to attend regular mandatory training sessions provided by the organisation, to equip me with the skills needed to practice safely (and, coincidentally, give them legal protection from criminal negligence). Fire safety, first aid, food hygiene: all delivered on an annual basis and, though I have attended them countless times, I still don’t know which colour extinguisher will put out an electrical fire, how many chest compressions to give someone in cardiac arrest or where to put a chicken in the fridge. I’ve probably spent more time learning how to clean shellfish properly than spot signs of abuse in children. New levels of uselessness were set by a moving and handling course that I completed over the internet and an infection control course delivered by a man with filthy fingers.

One of the most relevant courses that I attended during this time was epilepsy awareness because Kamal and Michael both had seizures. During the course the facilitator went through a list of do’s and don’ts:

“And obviously,” she said, shaking her head, “you should never give someone a drink of water when they are having a seizure.”

We all scoffed at such a preposterous idea.

It was several months later when, awoken by the sounds of a person in distress at 3am, I stumbled into a resident’s room to find them having a seizure.

I tried to summon up my training.

“And obviously,” I remembered through a foggy haze, “you should always give someone a drink of water when they are having a seizure.”

I rushed to the bathroom and filled up a large jug with water. As I bent over Michael, ready to pour several litres of liquid down his gullet, his eyes widened in horror and his seizure came to an abrupt end.

Fear of a water-boarding had brought him out of a grand mal.

It would not be long, however, before Michael paid me back for this incident.

Michael suffered from involuntary verbal ticks including a number of phrases he would often repeat.

It’s all gone wrong, hello, hello and she’s sexy! were a few of his favourites.

One morning I was sitting with him in a packed doctor’s waiting room when Michael pointed to a poster on the wall.

“She’s sexy!” he boomed, “she’s sexy!”

The other patients smiled warmly at him and turned to see the poster.

It was a new-born baby having an injection.

A move south, inspired by love, adventure and a wish to escape an alcoholic, one-and-a-half-eared line manager, meant that I had to leave my job at Grimethorpe House after only a year. Despite the low pay, sleep deprivation and faecal petit déjeuners, my time with Roger, Kamal, Michael and Nana O (as I had affectionately come to know her) had confirmed my passion for this work and I knew it was something I wanted to continue. Luckily the charity that had employed me was a national one and I was able to apply for a job at another of their properties with relative ease.

The new home was much larger, housing nine people and, after attending a short interview, I was given the news that I had been successful. Susan, a resident who had been on the interview panel, confirmed my appointment by informing me that she would now name one of her goldfish after me. This was a long-standing tradition in the home and so, later that evening, one fish went to sleep as Helga (whose Norwegian namesake had made a swift departure after a number of sex lines had showed up on the phone bill) and was reborn the next day as David.

It was 5am, several weeks later when there was a violent banging on the door of the office.

“Betty’s dead! Betty’s dead! Betty’s dead!”

I jumped up from a deep sleep and stumbled around in a daze, answering phones that weren’t ringing and turning off alarms that were silent. Eventually I put my clothes on (backwards) and opened the door.

Susan stood there in her pyjamas and steamed-up glasses.

Her hearing aids whistled.

“Terrible news,” she said holding out her hand to me, “Betty’s…”

“Dead?” I ventured.

I looked down to see a distressed goldfish flipping around on her palm. It quickly became clear that whilst Betty the goldfish may indeed be dead, Tony, whom Susan had mistakenly hooked out of her filthy tank, wasn’t. I grabbed poor Tony, rushed him back to the tank and threw him in.

He plopped gratefully back into the water.

Betty, who did not look quite so joyful, floated lifelessly on the surface. Using a fish slice and a copy of Women’s Weekly I solemnly scooped her out and buried her in the garden with the countless other pet corpses.

Susan had a heart of gold but the mothering instincts of Genghis Khan.

Living alongside Susan were eight other people and Pebbles the cat. Obese and toothless, Pebbles spent her days moving from lap to lap, waiting for a new staff member to start a shift so that she could hoodwink them into giving her another bowl of food.

“Pebbles is so good for them,” commented a colleague one day as we sat watching Edith lovingly stroke her.

It was only when Pebbles came into the room that we realised that Edith had been petting a bobble hat for the last ten minutes.

Pebbles’ nemesis was a nameless, scraggy white stray that wandered in from time to time. Starved and full of fleas, he would nervously creep into the house, hopeful that a few drops of the love poured onto Pebbles would fall his way.

It never did.

On spotting the intruder a cry would go up and the residents (many of whom were reliant on walking aids) would spring to their feet and chase him off. Vile curses and bits of soil would be thrown at the wretched animal before everyone went back to their jigsaws so that their adrenaline levels could settle.

Every Friday at the home we would have a team meeting to discuss any issues that had arisen the previous week: faulty washing machines, the wrong brand of cereal, updates on the hanging baskets and, time permitting, the lives of the residents. Once a month we would be joined by Joy, a clinical psychologist, who would offer suggestions and interpretations on some of the problems we faced. These were often invaluable and allowed us to consider the psychological needs of the residents in greater depth. With Joy’s help we were able to develop effective care plans to manage self-harm, obsessive rituals and low self-esteem.

Sometimes, however, I felt things went too far.

When an ongoing strong smell of urine was found to be coming from the corner of Edward’s room, Joy excitedly told us about the aggression of this act and its significance in denoting ownership. Within the blink of an eye poor Edward was whisked into weekly one-to-one sessions to improve his sense of citizenship and to emphasise the need for more appropriate forms of communication. It would only be several years later that a carpet fitter found that a leaking waste pipe was the cause of the stink, rather than Edward’s psychological distress.

Another time, the home was hit with a spate of toilet rolls being jammed down the toilet, causing flooding, stench and expensive visits from the emergency plumber.

We had no idea who was responsible.

Joy did.

“It’s clearly Trevor,” she said, singling out a gentle, older resident who had recently been diagnosed with early onset dementia. “At some nonverbal level he is trying to tell us that the home is no longer meeting his needs.”

Trevor was swiftly transferred to a more intensely staffed nursing home and we all felt satisfied with the outcome – that is until we overheard Alastair confessing to his sister over the phone that he had been responsible for the bog blocking so that he could get his hands on Trevor’s larger, en-suite bedroom.

Joy’s final pièce de résistance was when she facilitated our team building day, the centrepiece of which was an exercise she had devised in which we all had to say one thing we didn’t like about each of our colleagues. After an hour of accusations and recriminations about weeing on the toilet seat, leaving out-of-date yogurt in the fridge and who was responsible for the stains on the sleepover bed (me), the team were able to come together as one and bond over the decision to pull Joy’s plug for good.

Around this time I was introduced to the benefits system and learned how to ensure that the people I supported were receiving the money that they were entitled to. The system was incredibly complex but luckily, a local authority agency, the Money Advice Unit, was always on hand to help. As well as providing training sessions they also ran a telephone helpline that I used on a regular basis and so, when I received an ominous letter from the Department of Work and Pensions saying that they had overpaid a resident by £12,000 over the last ten years, I reached for the phone.

After giving my name and place of work, the advisor told me about the relationship between Housing Benefit and Income Support and how the award of Severe Disability Allowance could reduce the former and be means-tested against the latter. I quickly gave up trying to follow her and decided that this was a matter I could pass up to my manager.

“Now,” said the advisor, unaware of my flagging attention, “you need to formally challenge their decision and quote the following piece of case law. Have you got a pen and paper?”