June / July 2020

Summer is here and its lovely to get out into the garden. We are allowing relatives in the garden to visit their loved ones. This is working extremely well indeed and was much needed by our residents. We follow strict government guidance on visiting and update family members on a regular basis via our Facebook page.

We had a lovely Butterfly Growing kit, where we watched the caterpillars grow, turn into chrysalids then turn into beautiful ‘Painted Lady’ butterflies. We set them free in our garden to explore the big wide world.

We have been entertaining ourselves and also had some virtual entertainers. One of our cooks put on a singing show for one of our residents 95th Birthday. We had a good sing and dance and birthday cake too.

Mel held our first Horse Racing afternoon in July, where residents were given fake money to have a little flutter with. It was great fun to see everyone getting involved cheering on their horses.

Who knows what the rest of the year will hold for us, but we will, as always keep our spirits lifted in any way we can.

April / May 2020

April has been an unusual month indeed due to the Home being in lockdown due to COVID-19. However, we have manged to entertain ourselves by video calling our relatives, making our own entertainment and generally chatting with each other to keep our spirits lifted. Whilst our weekly hairdresser is unable to visit, both Mel and Debbie have been cutting and washing hair. Despite us both not being qualified hairdressers, we quickly picked up the skills needed to churn out some decent hairdos.

We have had lots of lovely donations from local shops of bread, tinned food and chocolate. We have also had donations of wine, bottled water, coca cola and other fizzy drinks from Matthew Clark Drink wholesalers.

The weather has been lovely of late and we are so glad to be able to sit in the garden to enjoy this beautiful sun.

We have many outside links to our local Primary School ‘Our lady of Hartley’ and ‘Bumblebees Children’s Nursery’ and we received lots of lovely hand written letters from the children. We shared these amongst our residents who were thrilled to read them.

We celebrated VE Day with a lovely 3 course lunch of Tomato soup, Rabbit Pie and meringue nests with strawberries. We sang and danced to music from years gone by and watched the VE Day celebrations on the TV with a glass of wine or sherry.

March 2020

During March, before the dreaded Covid-19 reared its ugly head, we ventured out to our local pub, The White Swan. We had a lovely Fish & Chip lunch and some had a cheeky wine. During the lockdown of our home, we decided to pop out in our Minibus to Gravesend Promenade, we took a flask of tea and coffee and some little cakes. It was lovely just to get out and see a bit of normality.

We have been using WhatsApp so relatives can have a little chat with their loved ones too.

We are missing our monthly visit from the nursery children, however, they sent us a lovely card with some sweet pictures they had made. This brightened up our day immensely.

We have also been lucky to have some kind donations from a local pub - who dropped off a car boot full of tinned foods. A local lady dropped off some home made cakes and biscuits on Mothers day and some beautiful bunched daffodils were donated from our local church. Thank you to all those who think of others at this tricky time.