Amber Theatre

My mum lived her last year in a small and very loving care home in the Orkney Isles. She went peacefully looking out to sea.  My nephew Alex and me share her last Christmas and New Year with her at Kalisgarth Care Home, where we made puppets, a theatre stage as well as clay models and coil pots.

It was a most loving time.

The winters storms kept us from leaving for another 2 weeks This suited everyone just fine. I’d been making marionettes heads from air-dry clay and liking molding with clay, so I ordered a 1kg block and had it posted (free!) some 600 miles north to the care home. Modeling with the air-dry clay was wonderful. I loved seeing the clay change into little beasts; they pushed in crab claws for rhino horns and and sea shells elephant’s ears.

We made a cardboard box puppet theatre with a beautiful mermaid, spurting  whales, a dozen arctic terns; ships and rotating all-weather cloud scenery and Caramel wrappers.