The Silverville diaries: Welcome to Lovat Fields

February 11th, 2008

I’m in Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, the day before my 16 hour flight home when I get an email asking if I would like to go for an interview for a new programme for BBC One. I have been in Argentina travelling for the last month.

February 14th, 2008

Valentine’s Day. I’m in Milton Keynes interviewing for a job on a new observational documentary series for BBC One called ‘Silverville’. I have driven up to Milton Keynes with my ex-girlfriend of three days, she is also interviewing for the job.

And that was my first involvement in the ‘Silverville’ production. When deciding whether to take up the job, should I be offered it, I weighed up the pros and cons. Living away from home for the next seven months (goodbye social life), living in Milton Keynes (my only knowledge of the place was that it was a concrete jungle), living in a retirement village where you had to be over 55 to move in at the age of 26 (not your average place to live). I sought my friends’ advice, as you do in these situations. The comments came back ranging from “enjoy the smell of urine”, “make sure you puree your pack lunches” to “at least your planning for the future” and “enjoy all the dances”. I accepted the job.

Despite all the jokes and criticisms from my friends about how bad the project was going to be to work on, I realised it was an opportunity to live with and film a section of society I rather embarrassingly, knew nothing about. My pre-conceptions were as follows:

• Old people don’t really do anything.
• Old people can’t really do anything.
• I would be living in a nursing home.
• I would have no social life what-so-ever.
• Milton Keynes is a boring town.

I was looking forward to having these pre-conceptions changed and see that life was not going to be as bad as my friends or I had thought.

I arrived in Lovat Fields and to my surprise it was not like a nursing home at all. It was a very modern facility with brand new apartments, a gym, a Jacuzzi, snooker table, pool table and even a café/bar serving a pint at £1.75! These old folk haven’t got it that bad I thought and things were looking up.

After meeting a number of the residents I started to realise they were no different from anyone else, they are just people after all. You have your jokers, your serious people, your drinkers and non-drinkers, the people that like to stay active and sociable, to those who, by all accounts would rather be left alone. I was enjoying the company of the residents and was fascinated to listen to their stories from their pasts, of the lives they had led and the experiences they could share, especially personal stories of the war.

Find out more

Discover more about Silverville: The series