Theatre's Forgotten Audience: What Only Carers Know

Plus jobs, resources, a springtime feast of classical music and a magical adaptation of the Arabian Nights Tales.

Last week I showed my elderly mother how easy it was to make soda bread from a packet.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate fine dining - I once reviewed a restaurant in France where the chef was gunning for two Michelin stars and les petit gâteaux were decorated with gold leaf. And I know your delicious sour dough bread is a life-affirming celebration of home and hearth. Etc. It’s just she’s 89 and I, gluten-free since the mid-1990s, have done too much home breadmaking by necessity. Nowadays I agree with the late food writer Elizabeth David who thought baking was what artisan bakeries were for.

But soda bread from a packet is a useful thing to have in. Especially if you are 89 and can’t get to the shops unaided.

Well, to make this soda bread you add a measured portion of milk to the mixture in the sealable plastic bag, massage it a bit, and then pour it into an oiled tinfoil container (also provided). I did the massaging whilst my mother oiled the tin.

But she left the top off the oil bottle…