‘We’re playing uplifting songs and all the residents are so thankful’
Country singer Malcolm Mcdowell (43), presenter of Irish Music Memories on Sky TV, has been asking singers to visit care homes as a morale booster and bringing treats for the staff. He lived in Belfast until December when his mother was diagnosed with cancer and he moved to Brookeborough, Co Fermanagh, to be close to his parents. He played a few gigs before succumbing to coronavirus himself, but is hoping to start again. Malcolm says:
I’d brought together a group of singers and musicians from across Northern Ireland who were not classed as vulnerable. The idea was that there would be one singer per care home and they were going to set up their equipment outside the care home singing for half to three-quarters of an hour and I’ll be there with traybakes for all the residents and staff.
We’ve been doing gigs from Crossmaglen to east Belfast. Before we go to any nursing home, we contact Community Policing to let them know.
When you’re putting on a gig, you have to think of the age group and think of the current environment. Especially with a lot of country songs, they can be very depressing, with lyrics about people dying and all sorts of things.
So we are trying to make it uplifting stuff — the older people all love the Sixties stuff anyway, so I would do songs like Lipstick on your Collar or Que Sera Sera where they can all sing along.
They’re all so thankful and you want to go and chat to them, but you can’t.
It’s done outside and the homes have to have suitable space to do it outside, and for residents to have space to come outside or have good visibility right out to the garden so they can watch from inside. They’re loving it.
I had done it a couple of times, but then I started to feel ill and I had to pull the plug, but I’m hoping to be out again next week.
I had rented a cottage beside my parents to take my mum to treatment and was looking after them.
I’ve been looking after so many people, shopping for them and delivering stuff to hospitals that it was kind of inevitable that I was going to get the virus.
I had a brain tumour and a bowel tumour last year and I was told not to be doing anything, but I wouldn’t be the kind of person to sit in the house.
The first symptom that made me think I had coronavirus was when I was sitting one night at about 11pm and I started to get very warm and sweat was coming out of my head. I went to the front door and I was roasting — I started to feel sore down my left side thought I must have pulled something.
The next day I felt it go into the other lung on the right-hand side — but it wasn’t like a chest infection. I could feel it around the outside of my lung. My throat started to close in and then I had a problem with my hearing.
I had to be isolated totally from anybody — my brother would come up and look through the window to see how I was.
When I contacted the GP, he said I needed to be admitted so I went to the South West Acute Hospital in Enniskillen. They didn’t do a test for coronavirus, but they said I’d obviously had the symptoms.
At the time I wasn’t really that worried, I was that sick. I isolated further for two weeks after that. My aim was to get clearance that I would be no threat to anybody — I didn’t want to be going round nursing homes if there was any risk at all.
It got to the stage that I couldn’t talk. It was a choice between going to phone the ambulance or see what happens at home, but I would prefer to be lying in my bed.
It’s very difficult and that is the truth. I am clear of it now thankfully, although I’m still very sore and weak with it.”