Saturday 11 February 2012

Remember the Elderly during this Cold Spell

Now I realise that –6.5 C or –11 C (due tonight in our area) might not be cold according to some countries, but here in the UK we are not used to such extreme temperatures.  So please remember the elderly.

Unfortunately my elderly mother lives too far away from me to enable me to pop in and make sure she is ok but I am really pleased to hear that in her area she has so far had four neighbours (not immediate ones that she knows) knock on her door to ask if she needed any shopping.

She does live a coastal area that has a high majority of elderly retirees but it is still refreshing that while they still have snow on the ground the elderly that are unable to get out and about for fear of falling over are not forgotten.

It is a sad reflection of our lives nowadays that we are all working such long hours that we do not see our neighbours during the winter months.  In fairness there are not too many elderly around my area as they are mostly people of working years but I barely know anyone apart from my immediate neighbours.

While my mother could not think of much except for bread and fruit it took one enterprising caller to just ask her to visualise walking around her normal supermarket and think of what she would normally put in her trolley and that she has now run out of.  Her list of shopping suddenly went from bread and fruit to quite a long list!

So thank you to those kind and considerate neighbours for keeping a watch on my mum and I hope that anyone else that has elderly living around them will do the same.

2 comments:

Bigastroandbeyond said...

In our urbanisation, most of the Brits are elderly having retired here. It isn't as cold as Britain but still nobody has knocked on our door yet. Mind you, we haven;t knoked on anyone else's door either!

Glad to hear your mother is OK.

Bigastroandbeyond said...

Oh dear, a few typos in that comment. I do apologise.