Care homes are a good idea, just don't force me to enjoy myself

Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Delia Kerr (101) who attended the very first international festival in 1947, joined in the fun when Australian circus performers Hoop Babes appeared in her Grange care home. I am sure Delia had the time of her life with the 'Babes' but I can think of nothing worse than forced jollity. As I mature, the spectre of care homes wanders into view from time to time, making me shudder. It's not the fear of illness or frailty that bothers me, but the prospect of having to spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week with strangers, with little or no choice over what I eat and drink. And worse, having to endure 'entertainment' arranged by other folk. Now if there was even the faintest prospect of Bruce Springsteen showing up at my care home for an acoustic set one dreary Wednesday afternoon, I would move in tomorrow, but sadly that will never happen. Instead, it will be bingo, Elvis impersonators and the Hoop Babes on offer. And instant coffee. With milk. When I am at my most pessimistic, I imagine a future where I am confined to a council care home (my savings would barely cover a month's fees at one of Edinburgh's more luxurious private homes) and force fed instant coffee. I love coffee, but it has to be strong and black, preferably made in a cafetière, but a double espresso with a dash of hot water will do. I am also quite an introvert. I am at my most comfortable when I am with my husband and my cat, surrounded by my books. I love the company of my grandchildren and there is nothing better than a long lunch with good friends, but I hate small talk and the jollity of strangers. 'Hell is other people,' wrote the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. I don't hate people, I just don't want to spend the last few years of my life living with people I didn't choose. But what is the alternative if I require care in my later years? My grandchildren used to tell me they would look after me when I was very old. Now teenagers, they seem less enthusiastic about the prospect, and why should they sacrifice the best years of their life to care for me in what could be my worst? Paying someone to look after me in my flat would be ideal, but I couldn't afford a private carer for more than a couple of hours a week. Social care is so hard pressed, that when the time comes and I need support, I will be lucky to get one 15-minute visit a day. I will just have to get used to the idea that sometime in the distant future, I may well be the grumpy old woman no-one likes, huddled in a high-back chair in the corner of her care home lounge, muttering curses under her breath about the quality of the coffee and the Wednesday afternoon entertainment.