The central character is Joe Earnshaw, a pensioner of some seventy-odd years of age. He has a wife, Annie, and a daughter, Elsie, who is middle-aged and married to George Hardwick.

Anne has had a stroke, slight enough in its apparent physical effects, but damaging to the heart and brain. She is slipping rapidly and inexorably into seility, and has only occasional and brief intervals of lucidity. Most of her time her mind wanders erratically through the past. She meanders on about experiences of her childhood, her youth and her marriage, even waking in the night to sing the old chapel hymns of her earlier years. The title is taken from on line of a hymn which she often sings, and is an ironic comment on the central event of the play).

Joe and Annie have enjoyed an idyllic marriage, and the situation is for Joe well-nigh intolerable. The worry and the strain of attempting to nurse Annie are threatening to take their toll on his health. His daughter and son-in-law try to persuade him that Annie is now too much for him and needs round-the-clock nursing. He resists for a time, but eventually agrees to see the two doctors whose visit on the afternoon is the central situation around which the whole of the play revolves.

What Joe does not know and what his family have understandably not told him is that in order for Annie to be admitted to the geriatric ward attached to the local mental hospital she must first be certified insane - which she now unquestionably is. Nor is he aware that the hospital which his visitors have in mind is the place which Annie has known and dreaded as "The Asylum".

Their life together has been based on a simple and unquestioning Nonconformist faith. The idea of a suicide pact would be as abhorrent to Joe as his present situation. Nor can he bring himself, despite his great love for Annie, to administer a fatal dose of the brightly coloured sleeping pills which have been prescribed for her by Dr. Milner, the family physician. To Joe's simple mind that would be downright murder and a sin against the light.

When the G.P., as kindly as he knows how, tells him that Annie must be certified, Joe has approached the breaking-point. He leaves the doctors and seeks the comfort of Annie's presence. When he enters the bedroom he tries to make her understand that the doctors have come to examine her, without success. In a desperate bid to think out the problem he gives Annie two of the sleeping tablets, hoping that she will sleep too soundly for the doctors to complete their work, at least on this occasion. Then he goes back into the other room to play for time and allow Annie to fall asleep.

When at last he can put things off no longer, he goes into the bedroom to prepare Annie to receive the doctors. He comes out at once, alarmed by Annie's condition. It transpires that Annie in her bemused state (or in the interval ? - we are not told which) has taken the remainder of the tablets.

The G.P. with mistaken humanity, tells the distraught Joe that there is nothing to worry about, since Annie has only had the tablets a very short time. Privately he admits to the consultant that he is worried about the possible effects on Annie's suspect heart.

Annie is rushed to hospital, leaving Joe to ponder the doubtful benefits of her recovery. His son-in-law arrives from hospital where he had gone after summoning his wife, thinking Joe would have travelled with the ambulance and be already at the hospital. He has to tell Joe and Elsie that Annie has died. The end of the play is a comment from Joe on the way things have turned out.

Editor's Note:
In typing out this play I thought it fitting to add a short note at the end of the synopsis. This was one of my father's more powerful pieces, if it was not his best. His brother, my Uncle Arthur, felt that it had mirrored life too closely suggesting it was a commentary on how his own family had managed a similar situation with my grandmother. My father acknowledged that their experiences had certainly informed his understanding of senile dementia, but the characterisation was not based on his own parents.

Unfortunately my father had used my grandmother's favourite hymn, The Sands of Time are Sinking, as Annie's favourite as well and my dear old Uncle Arthur could not be reassured on this point. He dealt with it simply by not talking about the play again, and my father never mentioned it in his presence. This was a trial for my father. He had a great deal of affection for his older brother and a childlike pleasure in Arthur's pride of his success as a playwright.

So for both his and Uncle Arthur's sake I wish to emphasize that any similarity between the characters in this play and anybody living or dead is entirely coincidental.