| Synopsis: |
Mrs Thelma Caldicot runs a rest home for a bunch of lively old people who enjoy playing vollyball with cushions and cricket with rolled-up socks. But, inevitably, things don't always go quite to plan. The cook turns out to have a fondness for sherry and one of the new residents, a former gardener, decides to dig up the lawn so that he can start growing vegetables. A delightfully eccentric female resident insists on being tied up in her chair so that she can exhibit her skills as an escapologist. She inevitably does this on days when council inspectors pop round unexpectedly. Just to complicate things further, two employees form the local council make a real effort to close down Mrs Caldicot's rest home. They are aided and abetted by the son of one of the residents who has spotted a way to make a profit if Mrs Caldicot loses her licence. But there are plenty of bright spots. Mrs Caldicot's romance with newspaper editor Mr Jenkins blooms very nicely - albeit sometimes frustratingly slowly for the two protagonists, neither of whom realise that their feelings are reciprocated. A resident turns out, unexpectedly, to have an apparently endless source of wealth.And a jumble sale and fete is, to the surprise of almost everyone, attended by a clutch of real life movie stars. Mrs Caldicot's Knickerbocker Glory is an uplifting story of how a group of old people, who are overlooked, patronised and under-estimated, overcome adversity, fate, malignant opportunism, greed, envy and spite with integrity, hope and a deep-rooted affection for one another. Mrs Caldicot's Knickerbocker Glory may be a parable, a story of enlightenment and achievement and an account of how determination and honesty can defeat self-centred political correctness but you won't notice any of that until a day or two after you've finished the book. Mrs Caldicot's Knickerbocker Glory is a comedy: an entertainment designed to make you laugh long before it occurs to you that it has also made you think. |