Joyous 4-year-olds who taught us to love Christmas again
Months ago we told you of the schoolchildren who formed a unique link with an old folks’ home. Today the bond between young and old is even more magical
ALL THE best Christmas stories are a little bit schmaltzy. And David and Eva’s is no different. ‘I think I’m in love with her,’ says David. ‘She comes to tea. We have a little chat. There is usually cake. It’s just delightful.’
But this is no ordinary love story. David is an 80-year-old retired geologist who featured earlier this year in Channel 4’s Old People’s Home for Four-Year-Olds. His ‘sweetheart’ Eva is one of the boisterous children who were parachuted into David’s retirement home to see if the different generations would benefit from spending time together.
Viewers watched, entranced, as the stillness of life in St Monica’s Trust retirement home in Bristol was shattered by a veritable invasion of ten noisy, high-spirited children, and pensioners like curmudgeonly Hamish — who declared that he couldn’t see any good coming of the experiment — were (literally) hauled out of their chairs and forced to play.
New life was ushered into the home not just in the form of the chattering children but with a bank of incubators housing duck eggs. Have you ever watched other people watching baby ducklings hatch? It was an unusual piece of television but a deeply affecting one. Joy broke out. Laughter suddenly filled the place.
And the film wasn’t just an entertainment triumph. A raft of tests conducted on the residents before and after their six weeks spent in the company of the children proved that having inquisitive little beings around was hugely beneficial for the pensioners’ health.
Even grumpy Hamish — who has only one leg and had previously complained about mobility issues — was filmed rolling around on the floor, pretending to be a lion.
For widower David, whose grandchildren are now in their 30s, the whole experience was magical.
Since the TV show, David and Eva — the girl he now calls his ‘little poppet’ — have kept in touch, with five-year-old Eva and her mum now regular visitors.
‘I admire her,’ says David. ‘She’s beautiful. I have two daughters and they are marvellous, but she is marvellous too. On a smaller scale.’
A Christmas special will show not only Eva reunited with David, but all the original children from the first film — many of whom have kept in touch with their respective oldies — returning to the home, singing Jingle Bells as they go.
With them comes a lorry-load of glitter (essential for making Christmas cards), some curious knowledge of the Nativity, and enough excitement about the festive season to melt even the stoniest heart.
And this time the children don’t have to wriggle their way into rather rigid, suspicious arms: those arms are now flung open to welcome them back.
Linda, 80, was one of the most subdued residents on the original show. Widowed four years ago, she seemed a lost and dejected soul and scored highly for depression on the tests carried out by the raft of experts. In her initial assessment, she was one of those who declared that she found life ‘dull’.
She now tells me that she is astonished she signed up in the first place, because she was ‘never a person who was good with children’. She explains: ‘I didn’t have children of my own. I married quite late and I think I didn’t have the maternal gene. My husband Bob was always the one who was good with children.
‘I supposed I agreed to take part because I thought it was the sort of thing I thought he would do.’
Linda had struggled to adapt to life as a widow, and the circumstances that brought her to a retirement village were — as is so often the case — tragic.
Her 45-year marriage to Bob, a photographer, had been filled with adventure and a busy social life. But when he was diagnosed with dementia, all that stopped.
‘I knew that part of our life was over,’ she says. ‘I knew we couldn’t stay in our home because he was only going to get worse and our friends were going to fall away. They do. With the best will in the world, that’s what happens.’
Bob had moved into the retirement home with her but, as his condition deteriorated, he had to be transferred to a place with more specialist care.
He died just before Christmas four years ago, leaving Linda bereft. The festive season would never be the same again.
‘I miss him terribly,’ she says. ‘I can’t bear Christmas — I try to go away. I’m going on a cruise this year. I think Christmas is always a very difficult time for people like me, and there are a lot of us around. A lot of people get ill around Christmas.’
Not that when she signed up for the original Channel 4 film back in the summer, she would have said she was struggling to cope.
She was rather shocked when the doctors involved with the first series told her that she had scored highly on the depression chart, having told them that life often seemed a chore and that she found it difficult to be positive.
‘I hadn’t thought of myself as depressed,’ she says. ‘I think, like most people, I have up days and down days. Some days you just
carry on with life, thinking: “Don’t be such a miserable old so-andso.” Other days, you think: “What is the point?” ’
Being forced to interact with the children, though, brought Linda out of her shell. She struck up a bond with one rather forward little girl called Amiya, who pretty much forced her to play.
‘She did all the running,’ Linda laughs. ‘On the first day, we were asked to choose a child and take them up to the table where there was some activity going on. I froze.
‘I remember saying: “I can’t do that. I can’t just go up to a child.” It was actually Amiya who came up to me. I had the same name as her grandmother — maybe that’s why she chose me. Or maybe she just saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.
‘Whatever, she took charge of everything and that was that.’
Their friendship was uplifting to witness. Linda struggles to walk and needs a walking frame, but on one outdoors task, where the groups had to take part in a sports day, she tried so hard to keep up with Amiya that she actually ended up running.
The sight of her nearly sprinting along — walking frame pushed ahead of her — was a highlight of the show.
‘I didn’t know I had it in me,’ she laughs. ‘I was just trying to keep up with her. I didn’t want to let her down. Afterwards, I got teased relentlessly.’
While it was the well-being of the pensioners that was being assessed in this experiment, all involved are only too aware that children also benefit from the arrangement. Some of them have no grandparents of their own, and limited involvement with the elderly on a day-to-day basis.
Yet myriad academic studies show children become more articulate and confident if they are used to being in the company of older adults.
Dr Zoe Wyrko, consultant geriatrician at University Hospital Birmingham, who watched the bonds develop, says that as a society we must take steps to embrace the idea — for the benefit of all ages. Certainly the parents of the children who took part in this experiment seem delighted with the new friendships made. After the first film, Eva’s mum Sophie Alker declared that it had benefitted the little girl no end. ‘Eva made a very special connection with David,’ she said ‘She was confident before, but I think she’s even more confident now. You can take her anywhere and she’ll bowl up to anyone and chat. I think it’s a great idea for both of them. I’d love to see it rolled out at care homes across the country.’ You will have to watch this special with a box of tissues at the ready, and the tears are not necessarily those of joy. The theme of loneliness is writ large. As Professor Malcolm Johnson, who heads the team behind the project, points out, issues of isolation are brought into sharp focus at Christmas. ‘Christmas is a challenge and a threat for so many,’ he says. The task assigned to the residents and their young guests is to join forces to lay on a carol concert for the local community. In issuing invites, they take to the streets outside the retirement home to meet other people who may be spending Christmas alone. And my goodness, they find them — an army of pensioners destined to spend Christmas Day alone. ‘I am actually one of the lucky ones, because I live in a retirement village with others around me,’ says Linda. ‘Lots of people don’t have that.’ Linda lets slip that the filming for the Christmas special took place in October, so the snow in which everyone frolics is fake. The children, she says, were tickled pink by this.
‘Amiya actually put some in the little bag I have over my walker,’ admits Linda. ‘I didn’t know she’d done it until I got back to my room.’ She giggles. ‘I spent ages having to clear up the mess.’
The production team also arranged for reindeer to be in the grounds of the retirement home. Hilariously, the children were less thrilled about this than they were to see all the snow. ‘They weren’t bothered about the reindeer at all,’ reveals Linda. ‘Typical!’
WHAT is entirely real, however, is the emotion the show inspires. Reflections about Christmases past are hugely affecting. You want to reach into the screen and give Hamish a hug when he is asked whom he’d most like to spend Christmas with.
‘If I could bring anyone back for Christmas, it would be my mother,’ he says. ‘The dearest woman. The kindest woman. I miss her.’
If David could spend Christmas with anyone it would be his wife Nancy — ‘The most perfect woman. I was very lucky to have her’. Nancy died three years ago. So is David lonely? Interestingly, he insists he isn’t because he works at being engaged and at making new friends. One of the most charming encounters is when David and Eva go to meet another pensioner who has lived alone since being widowed.
Much to everyone’s delight, this 90-year-old is also called Eva, and quite a connection ensues. They swap stories about what it is like to lose a lifelong partner.
Older Eva, as David calls her, says that it’s the quietness of her house that she can’t bear. ‘My home was always full of laughter and
music,’ she reveals, poignantly. They discuss how the appetite — for food and for life — can vanish when you have to eat alone. A voiceover reminds us that in Britain today, half of all those over 75 years old eat alone.
Eva can go for days without speaking to another soul, so she seizes the opportunity to visit the retirement home for tea and be fussed over. Little Eva even presents her with a homemade invitation for the carol concert — proud as punch of her handiwork.
David seems thrilled to have made a new friend in ‘older Eva’. ‘I’ve quite fallen for her,’ he tells me. ‘She is a remarkable person. Very brave. She lives alone in a little house, and it was lovely to make another new friend.’
Is there the hint of a romance here — or is it simply friendship? ‘It’s a friendship,’ he laughs. ‘I think we are too old for romance.’
But what this show highlights is that we’re never too old for human contact — or too young to provide it. Indeed, five-year-old Nelson reckons he has the solution. ‘If I see a lonely person, I will give them a big hug,’ he says.
Of course the children will say that they are the true beneficiaries here. They leave the retirement home, having sung their little hearts out, with presents piled high. Little Eva declares that the day has been the best she has ever had.
But the benefits for the elderly are plain to see: ‘The thing about the children is that they just want you to be their friend,’ says David.
‘They don’t care about your age, about your disabilities, about the restrictions you think you have. And that is good for us. If we let our barriers drop and let them in, then we all feel better for it, don’t we?’
Old People’s Home For Four-Year-Olds At Christmas is on Channel 4 on Monday, december 18, at 9pm.