Bosham nursing home staff turn panto stars!

The residents couldn’t go to the panto… so the panto came to them.
Kings Lodge pantoKings Lodge panto
Kings Lodge panto

Staff at Bosham’s Kings Lodge Nursing Home wrote their own pantomime, dressed the part and performed to ensure a little Christmas cheer.

Lorraine Smith, who was the tin man in their version of The Wizard of Oz, said the residents absolutely loved the show – at the end of an enormously difficult year.

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“With Covid, we have not been able to have any entertainment at the home at all, and so we decided that the staff would get together to produce and perform a panto. We all made our own costumes and we did our own script.”

They gave three performances, one on each floor (nursing, dementia and residential).

“Obviously we can’t mix the floors and then straight afterwards we had our Christmas party. We joined it all together and had a lovely day.”

The hope is that they might one day be able to show a video of the performance to friends and family.

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“It was all for the residents. We are not perfectionists. We are not professionals. We are just wanting to give the residents a happy time, and they loved it.

“It was absolutely amazing.

“I did wonder whether we might now get invited to the London Palladium or to the Royal Variety Performance… or maybe just You’ve Been Framed!

“It has been an awful year, but we have really tried our hardest to give the residents as much as we possibly can.

“We have even opened a new cinema room. We had a James Bond cut-out to open it for us!”

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They even managed to create a beach outside as well: “And we have had lots of school children writing to our residents which has been nice. They pick a name and they write.”

It all helps everyone feel just that little bit more hopeful for next year, Lorraine says.