"This has brought my amazing life back again."

Angela, Tea Break Theatre Leader

Tea Break Theatre is more of a drop-in group. You can come if you like. You can not come for a couple of weeks. It’s playful. It’s laughter and it’s getting to know people. The session would start with a cup of tea, and a chat in the office area. Then we come over into one of the spaces and play fun games. A little bit of improvisation.

The group is mixed, physical ability, varied ages. Just about anybody can come in. It can lead onto going up to the next level. It’s basically to come and have fun, meet people and go on with a smile on your face.

Since Jacqueline first came, she is a changed person. It’s been a gradual change. She came in with a stick, unsteady on her feet. Didn’t talk a lot. Smiled a lot, she’s carried on with the smiling. But she didn’t have that courage to speak up for herself and over the weeks or months, the voice came.

She’s joined a lot of other groups now, she’s always busy. She is now using the underground and again, she’ll leave here, she’ll go off to somewhere else. Whereas before, I think she would tell you herself, she stayed in a lot, she didn’t come out, she didn’t do a lot around the house. She is an important member of the group. She’s missed when she is not here, which is very rare, she’s here most weeks.

Five years ago I never stopped lying in bed. I did take to my bed for a good time. I realised I have to get back out on my feet. I did do physio, I did do swimming, I did do going to the doctors very often.

Life wasn’t like this then. Because of being so ill, always losing balance, not able to walk properly. I couldn’t turn without canes.

I asked myself the question every day, “Would I have been able to help myself if I didn’t join one of these things here, the Tea Break and Dragon Café choir?”

When I went first to the doctor, they tell me, “It’s not a stroke. It’s a weakness.” Then eventually, I kept going and going. One doctor said to me, he said, “You had a stroke.”

Then, when I was with the Parkinson’s, going and shaking so badly, I said, “What it is that making me shake so?” I was looking for a cure – “Well, I must get something to stop this shaking.” I didn’t understand that Parkinson’s, it’s like diabetes. It doesn’t have a cure. It’s only you that can control it.

The other thing, I’m always in pain. I got chronic pains. I was going to the pain clinic thinking that I would finally find a cure for it. No, they don’t have a cure for pain. I said, “Well, what do I do?” She said, “You just have to learn to manage it and use things to manage it.”

I said, “Well, I’ll do a bit of physio to help myself, help to move my arms and things a bit better.” Because the stroke, it took me a long many, many years to able to use my left side better. Since I came here and went to the Dragon Cafe, the Tai Chi, the reflexologist, the massage I took, the dancing, the singing, the artwork relaxes you and try to make the brain remembering things and all of that. It helps.