Ms June Taitt
Transcript
When I turned eighteen I moved into a flat that was empty so I headed off to buy crockery and I came back quite pleased with what I’d got and when I got back to the flat my friends, they were a little bit aghast at what I’d bought. I think they thought ‘Oh, just a bunch of plates’ and then what I realised was that I bought the same um set of plates my parents had. That I was used to at home. It was totally an unconscious act you know. I had the same plates as my parents. Those plates then stayed with me and they, the whole dinner set, travelled with me through life. Recently, last year, uh, following a life change I went to buy a new set of crockery so I headed up into town and I came back with this (laughs) and this was again I ended up buying another Denby plate set. No conscious thought. And my son said straight away “Oh that’s, that’s like that old plate that’s in the cupboard”. So, for me, it highlighted, that that sense of circle. That sense of change, but not change, of staying the same. So, despite my life journey, I’m still drawn to the same kind of plate wear that I was attracted to at eighteen. So I’m fifty six and at eighteen I’m still buying the same stuff.
Communal care, at this moment in time, what I would say now would be how I am now. What would fit me now. I don’t know if that’s going to be the same when I’m eighty or ninety or whatever age. So I don’t have that kind of fixed thing. I think it’s about choice, so, for me, the key element is going to be something that allows choice, gives me choice. And I have enough faith in my son um that I think I’ve instilled enough of a value base, if I’m wrong I’m wrong, that would know what would be important for me rather than what would be important for him. And I just said we all change anyway, so people of my parents’ generation, when they were thinking what was care for them was one particular way, but the the the, you know, the world moves on. We change. My concept of communal care may be very different to the concept that communal care was for my parents which would be a nursing home being cared for. I’ve never experienced living in a commune. It is in my knowledge bank, it is in my sense of reality so um it may be looking more like that than this where I am being given care. It would be more entrapped. A lot of the things that I like in the past I still like. They still kept a plate.. the only way they’d find out is getting to know me or talking to somebody who does know me and who has known me in the past. And so it would be about talking to the right person who can give a sense of me.
Initially that should be me but if there’s a point where I can’t be me, for whatever reason health wise, then it will need to be somebody who knows me enough that they could say well, you know June likes this or wouldn’t like that or wouldn’t appreciate this um and taking what that person is saying seriously. Not paying lip service to it. I have some pretty strong feelings and they, they have either grown stronger or they remain the same um through my life, so I don’t see how I’ll get to a certain point and suddenly shred those, you know, and they’ll become unimportant. They’ll be a key and a whole personalisation and be clear what that means.