She comes once a month with her weeny plug-in keyboard. A pair of legs are attached to them, taken from a long solid case. Then she sits on a borrowed chair, as battered as her audience, and holds her hands above the three octaves, poised like a concert player, as if the large room were the Albert Hall, as if the old dears with food stains on their mouths and tops were aristocracy in tiaras and gowns.

            Ta-ra-ta-tum! The opening notes of I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside, in an electronic tinkle, and she is singing in a pleasant tenor, smiling at the half-ring of armchairs and wheelchairs. Slumped heads lift, minds which exist in a fog have moments of clarity, return to childhood holidays, recall sandcastles, brylcreemed fathers in turned up trousers with braces, and shirts with ties, mothers with fat red legs spread in deckchairs, the sun roasting them stealthily.

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