The Afternoon Play

Okay, I admit it, I have a Radio 4 habit. I love it. Today though, they have excelled themselves. A story that fits with today. Story telling at its best. And a palpable reminder of how we remember the most ordinary things about those we have loved and lost. They way they laughed, spoke to people in the street, slammed doors or walked softly into a room; what they looked like when they were sleeping, how it felt to hold their hand. I recommend Setting a Glass, by Nick Warburton, directed by Peter Kavanagh. Get to it just as soon as you can on iPlayer. The fox is important.

Summary:

A man is summoned to a hospital where his elderly mother is fading away. He arrives in the middle of the night and walks through empty corridors looking for a coffee machine. So why is he avoiding sitting at his mother's bedside?

He gets talking to an auxiliary nurse a disgruntled but determined young woman whose life is starting, just as his mother's is ending. As he tells this complete stranger about his mother's uneventful life, her small achievements, he comes to understand some of the mechanisms at play in his strange inability to sit with her.