August/ September 2020

What a lovely summer we have had at Fairby, despite not being able to visit our usual places. We have managed to get out in our bus for rides around the beautiful Kent countryside. We stop and have a cuppa and cake on board before heading back home.

Families have been very understanding during this awful time and are grateful for having the ability to visit their loved ones in our rear garden.

We had a singer entertain us through our lounge window. It was a lovely afternoon and it worked really well, with his loud amplifier so we could all hear and sing a long from inside.

Our staff have been great in keeping up everyone’s spirits during these tough times. We love singing together, having quizzes and reading about days gone by.

Staff are now being COVID tested every week and residents are being tested every 30 days.

I am pleased to say we have been COVID free throughout this whole pandemic and hope it remains that way.

Stay safe everyone……

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.