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We remember [[:Category:Margery Allingham|Margery Allingham]] as a novelist from the golden age of crime, perhaps not as famous as Agatha Christie or Dorothy L Sayers but certainly well regarded by those who appreciate good writing and excellent plotting. Her last completed book was not a novel but ''The Relay'', a combined account of caring for three elderly relatives, (Em, Maud and Grace) between 1959 and 1961 and suggestions as to how other people might achieve a good old age for their relatives. Margery died in 1966 and ''The Relay'' was never published in the form in which it was written.

Allingham identified 'protection', 'companionship' and 'care' as ''the human requirements for a contented old age''. I've thought long and hard about this and it's difficult to disagree or add anything else which is absolutely essential. My own experiences (of which more later) tally with those of Jones: the most difficult of these to fulfil is companionship. Allingham's idea was of a dower house system where the young would look after the old who once looked after them and they, in their turn would be looked after by the young whom they brought up with care being the baton passed on in the titular relay. That does make it seem rather formulaic but Allingham and, increasingly, Jones are of the view that there's a great deal of benefit to all parties in the relationship, that there's a gain other than the purely material passed to the young. As Allingham says, the ''dower house permits the family, by uniting its strength into a bundle of sticks, to afford their old people the care and protection which it is its privilege to supply and their right to accept.''