Distributing hot dinners to older people on Christmas Day

The Ciaran Bingham Foundation Trust (CBFT) distributed hot dinners to older people in South Leeds on Christmas Day.

Quote, Margret Bingham.  “This will be the third year that CBFT have supported socially isolated older people on Christmas Day. As well as a turkey dinner, they will be delivering a curry tea prepared and donated by the Hamara Centre.”

I really enjoyed helping out on Christmas Day (had I not done this, would have been on my own). Hopefully not too soon, but one day may have to have meals delivered to me myself on Christmas day. I drove up to St Peters Church in Belle Isle, to collect the meals and address to deliver to. About 10 volunteers made up into pairs delivered meals to Elderly people’s homes in the area.

I was paired up with a young lady along with her Son, who played happily in the back seat of the car, with his new Christmas toys.

In our case got deliveries in Morley and Gildersome. The young lady decided we go in her car as were going out of the area, and her car had Sat Nav.

Sat Nav very useful, until one address took us 4 miles out of our way. We decided to use the navigation tool on her Samsung mobile phone using Google Maps, which took us straight there.

Message to myself, will use this on my Mobile next time I get lost.

The meals were Turkey Lunch with all the trimmings a sweet and a Curry evening meal plus a bottle of wine.

Our remit was to spend at least 20 minutes with each of the elderly we visited.

This idea turned out quite well, as the ladies decided to warm up their meals later, so gave us time to have a chat rather than having a talk while they were eating.

The first lady I immediately knew her accent was not local but southern. I asked her where she was originally from and said London, before moving to the Home Counties. Told us about during the Blitz,  that she and family used the London Tube Stations as Air Raid shelters, when the Air Raid Sirens went during the War.

I told her my Mum was born in Harrold, Bedfordshire. 100 miles North of London and I was researching my family tree. The lady seemed very interested in my research.

The second lady was very poorly indeed and was on 100% oxygen. There was some other piece of kit that looked like a nebuliser.

This lady has always been local. Again, spent awhile talking to her about her family.

Third and last lady we delivered meals to, told us about her son who had special needs. His Mother threw him out as a teenager so was brought up by this lady, his Grandmother.

Again we talked to her, and told us more about her Family.

Well that was that, after about 3 hours, made our way back to the Church to drop off the delivery tray and collect my car.

Seeing as the church was locked up we could not drop off one curry we took back, as one lady did not like spicy food.

Guess where that curry ended up, yes as my Tea. In fact one of the best curries I’ve eaten and authentic as made by the Hamara Centre.

If I’m fit, will be back delivering meals next Christmas Day.

Photographs are from inside the Church organising the Meals to be delivered, and Tombola table. Understand from someone that the tombola is for New Years Eve. That brings me to say,

Happy New Year to all South Leeds Life blog, and newspaper readers.