Out To Grass

I flick through the retirement home pages: Twilight House, Sunset Days, Dunhopin’, Road’s End, Rest Easy, Nearly Home. It’s hard to choose. There are none I feel drawn to.

I know I’m lucky to be able to choose. What did our forebears have, the rude forefathers of the hamlet, who had to work until they died? Staying alive in old age wasn’t so easy for them. If lucky they could perhaps rely on a son, or daughter, supporting them providing a home and food. But could they ever retire? Almshouse much better than workhouse but less available and often means tested by occupation, character, gender.

My great grandfather George was a drummer in the British Army, which would probably mean he’d be unvalued now. He marched and drummed his way round many a foreign campaign. It was how he earned his bread. He was a professional in the Army but when your marching days around inhospitable foreign climes are over there isn’t, or wasn’t, a lot of call for drummers back home in England.

Upon leaving the army after twenty years, in 1879, on the grounds of poor health, a kindly army doctor did him a good turn. He described him as a ‘broken-down old soldier,’ although he was only thirty-eight. It got George an army pension. He returned to civilian life and in his forties married and fathered six daughters. Not quite so broken down as the army thought. His wife kept house, raised the children and ran a terrace shop. Smart George. She was over twenty years younger and died three years before him. Poor Alice.

On January 1st 1909 people of seventy or over were paid an old age pension by the Government as long as they were of good character. A song from that time expresses one man’s thanks to the man responsible. I don't know who sang it but it was possibly written by F W Mormon...

David Lloyd George

What Lloyd George Gives Me
Well I’d walk from here to Skipton
Ten miles of lonely lane
If I could see him face to face
And thank him for his pain

‘Cause he took me out of Work-house
And he gave me a life that’s free
Five shillings a week for cheating death
Is what Lloyd George gives me

Well he gives me light and firing
And flour to bake my bread
And tea to mash with every meal
And sup until I’m dead

And I’ve nowt to do but thank him
And make a cross with pen
Five shillings a week for nowt but that
Why he’s the best of men...

There are another nine verses which he really shouldn’t have bothered writing but now he is out of the Work-house with time on his hands he felt he might as well.

An old soldier, who had charged at Balaclava with the Light Brigade, was Trooper Job Allwood, a Leamington lad. He had enrolled in Birmingham in 1853 with the 13th Light Dragoons (later the 13th Hussars). Despite having two horses shot from under him at Balaclava he was one of the few who survived and went on to serve in the India Mutiny. Although regarded by his fellow men as a hero then, his name would no doubt now be being erased from the war memorial. Upon leaving the army his only reward was a small allowance from the Balaclava Fund which was funded by public subscription. He died in 1903, aged 68, too early to have received a pension from the state. Would he have appreciated his funeral with full military honours, the expensive bouquets?

Nearly forty years after Tennyson’s poem immortalising the bravery, following suicidal orders of the cavalry at Balaclava, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem titled, 'The Last Of the Light Brigade'.

Kipling was ashamed of the way the old (retired) soldiers were treated, The poem speaks of the harsh condition they endured once their service days were over: famine, lack of shelter, unemployment, disability, painful and lonely deaths. Job was lucky; Leamington didn’t treat him too unkindly. He had a very small house, made a living, had a wife but it was nothing compared to the gratitude they showed him in death.

Old Mares
If I was a horse they’d put me down, shoot me.
Have fun being photographed with my carcass.
No chance for me of being used for breeding.
An old mare is useless for reproduction.
My only worth to be pulped for pet food.
Not being a horse the possibilities are endless.
I can run for US President. Take up Tai Kwondo.
Learn Japanese. Gain a degree in upholstery.
Long distance, cross country running. Marathons.
Whittling, whiskey mixing, ballroom dancing in wellies
Write poetry. Go on televised quiz shows.
Give my occupation when asked, as retirement.
‘And how do you fill your time?’
‘Never been busier,’ I proudly reply. Listing my
attainments. ‘I don’t know what I did before.’
That earns me a pat on the back, unprompted applause.

Thanks for reading, Jeanie B.