Tell me what you want....

She never married and now, at almost ninety, she is the last surviving member of six siblings. We looked after two of her brothers and I can see a family resemblance. They were married though, they had families and were somehow more in touch with the everyday world.
She lives in the house she was born into. I don't know what she did for a living, it's hard to picture her anywhere but in the little terraced cottage with it's two steps up to the kitchen and it's coal fire. Her nephew shops for her once a week but apart from that she has no help. Every day she ties up her hair and does "her jobs". There is a strict routine, floors one day, washing another and all to a background of an ancient radiogram, she has never had a television. She is tiny, doll like, and she tells me that she has never bought a skirt that she hasn't had to shorten, showing me tiny stitches in her hem with a justifiable pride. She is called Minnie - never was anyone more aptly named.
Her nephew has contacted us because she is losing her memory, forgetting where she has put things and burning pans. I can see that her mind is failing a little but she appears to be functioning in her familiar surroundings, a check call to make sure she has taken her medication and isn't distressed should keep her going for a while. Situations like this are like a house of cards, enough help and she will tick over indefinitely, too much and her independence will be compromised, her routine disrupted, and the card house will collapse. What fascinates me though is how she lives. She has never had a bathroom, her toilet is in a shed in the yard with gaps in the walls that a mouse in a tall hat could stroll through. She has no hot water, she boils it up in a copper the like of which I have only seen on television and I assume she washes in the unheated kitchen because she looks immaculate. We are in the Twenty First Century but the Twentieth seems to have largely passed the little house by.
We make a mission of her. Her nephew is enlisted and a grant is applied for. Minnie accepts the idea of a bathroom with mild pleasure but no great enthusiasm. She likes the workmen though, she mops the floor where they have left footprints and makes soup for them every day. God bless them, they eat it with loud praise and when I call in I swear this tiny elf of a woman is flirting with them, looking up through her little round glasses and twinkling as she makes mugs of tea and doles out Welsh cakes.
The bathroom is lovely. Her niece has made curtains and her family have bought towels to match. The multi point water heater is a success, it sits in the middle of the antiquated kitchen like a visitor from another planet but the copper is gone and she is agog at the miracle of hot water straight from the tap. The bathroom is unused though. She doesn't see the point, or maybe she can't adopt new habits at this point in her life. She still washes in the little back kitchen, a private ritual that stretches back almost a Century. She is grateful though, visitors are given a tour of the transformation of her back bedroom and she points out the various features like a proud mother. The bathroom is pristine, keeping it clean is now one of "her jobs".