All Hail The Snail Mail!

Where there's a will there's a way! Shortly before social distancing came along and scuppered our plans, we were due to visit our friends at the Guinness Partnership in Swindon (providing housing and care) where we are regular visitors. We can normally be found helping out in the gardens, or when the weather has not been our friend (remember party pooper Storm Brendan? We've only just dried off!), we've stayed in and played games together.

We've always loved these particular tasks as we get to connect directly with the people we are helping and so the benefits can be seen and felt instantly, and that's a bit special. We always leave with a warm glow after an hour in the company of all those smiles and twinkly eyes, and of course good chat, lashings of tea and cake, and the odd sausage roll! Even though we need to keep them safe and we are not able to visit, we did want to stay in touch and let them know we are thinking about them. What to do??

We decided to write to them with a card, letter or some art work so we got out our best paper, stamps and colouring pencils and got to it. We had a list of 10 people to write to - people who we had met and chatted to on our previous visits, so we were able to personalise them. Parents and grandparents turned their hand to being art teachers and so the GoodGym children helped us out too with beautiful artwork and neat handwriting. Our youngest contributor is Eli Bonner at just 2.5 years old who produced a picture of an angel fish, a lobster and South America - very impressive. We also had rainbows, daffodils, unicorns, hearts, a GoodGym postcard and some sticker flair on the envelopes. One of the less young (but still young at heart) had to apologise for barely legible handwriting with a promise to draw a picture next time!

Soon, the snail mail was all on it's way. We know from our visits that they are lovely places full of happy people but we also know that this is a particularly difficult time for them with all the impacts that social distancing brings to sheltered housing. We were delighted and touched when we heard that the residents loved receiving our post and they had brought the smiles we hoped they would, and is giving them something that they can return to if they need a little extra cheer - it's brought us a lot of joy too!

Mission accomplished! It's been fun to find a creative way to still do some good even when we're all at home, but we are looking forward to our first visit back when we hope the storms will hold off and we'll be sure to celebrate up our own storm! Thanks to everyone who took part in this very special task, of which we hope there will be more.