I wasn't going to pop anything about this on here, till something I didn't expect happened yesterday.
Last Sunday I hosted my first Old People's Tea Party at home, on behalf of a charity called Re-engage – ably co-hosed by Janine (thank god!). Yes, crap name for a nice charity that tries to get older isolated people in the community together for different events, including a monthly hosted tea. It's taken me about 3 years to wait for the Wimbledon area to gain a local co-ordinator and a HUGE amount of time and faff to do all the online sign up, training and monumental charitable shenanigans that is required these days. (You'd think that Age UK could tell them – yep, Scotty's got a DBS check for older people through us and has done the online gubbins, but no, that would be far too logical and common sense-y..)
Anyway – the date finally rolled round. Heralding me shitting myself about having to bake an actual cake. And Janine kindly offering to do one too (in case mine came out like the apocryphal carrot 'biscuit' (meant to be a cake) some years back). And also meant I was up at 8am to calculate / guesstimate how many sandwiches, cakes, nibble choc bites, bits of quiche, mini pork pies etc etc about 14 people would eat. Only half of whom were elderly and the rest being drivers to bring them. Hmm, differences in appetite levels to cater to as well, OMG. Spread that bread and cut it into vaguely dainty triangles….
Anyway – long story short, it went better than expected. The oldies were sweet and fairly chatty and the drivers oiled the conversational wheels. One lady was so disabled it took 2 men to heft her over our tiny front door lintel, and another was so tiny that she had to sit on a big pillow to see over the table top.. And boy did they consume a lot of tea & coffee alongside the scoff! The 2 hours whipped by fairly quickly and I was then packing a party bag for 1 other lady who couldn't come and trying to hand over sarnies etc to anyone keen, so we weren't left with too many.
Top tip of the day – they love egg mayonnaise!! Cheese & pickle next and the ham and cucumber a lowly third choice.
But this is what came as the lovely surprise yesterday – a hand written letter from one of the elderly ladies. Super chuffed that she bothered to capture my address and write a thank you note. Now that made it more than all worthwhile, so so sweet.
And the bit about 'Mr Scotty' (H had a bad back that day) – priceless!!!