Well May is here and so are the winds and rain that were surposed to be in April!! Shame it has blown a lot of the blossom away as well. But the garden is starting to look lovely, thanks to Debbie’s hard work, and the help of our residents.

With the arrival of May come a new set of guidelines for visiting, and for residents to be able to go out and about, but with conditions. we are still awaiting for upto date guidelines from the Goverment, because as usual they announce it to the press but forget to tell us.  We will be sending an e-mail out in the next day or two to explain the new guidelines.

So please be patient with us, we want nothing more than to be open for all visitors, not just nominated visitors.

Thank you

Karen

On Tuesday 23rd March we will be taking part in the National day of Reflection. To commemorate we will be planting rosesin the garden,observing a minutes silence at 12 oclock as well as  enjoying an afternoon cream tea. We also have several craft activities planned for the residents and will be decorating the home with fresh roses, bunting and hearts. Although we are in the fortunate position of not having lost loved ones to Covid 19, we feel it is important to recognise what a difficult and challenging year this has been for everyone.

Happy new year! well lets hope so!!

Yesterday all of our residents recieved their first vaccination, and most of the staff as well, so the future looks promising! Visiting in a pod is not the best thing to do, but with vaccinations and the Lateral Flow devices it can only get better!!

Christmas was lovely, we had lots of visitors to the pod, and made the day really special for the residents, and as usual the food was amazing!! I would say that I was cook!! But truly it was lovely and everyone had fun and we have the photos to prove it! I would like to say an enormous thank you to all the staff and famillies who helped to make it great and a big thank you for all the lovely chocolates and presents! Slimming world here we come!

I really hope that 2021 brings better times for all of us, it has been such a difficult year for everyone wether working in this industry or others, my thanks go out to all the local businesses who have kept us in food, drink  medication and all the staff working in them. You have been amazing.

Stay safe/stay well.

Wow just started writing Summer is here and the skies opened up, and it is pouring buckets! and I can now hear thunder! so looks like maybe summer has passed! All I can say is the garden needs it! Our rear garden is looking beautiful, and the roses are the best ever, as you walk down the drive you can smell them! beautiful, one of the best smells of summer, along with the smell of the sea and fish and chips!

We have now been in lock down for 13 weeks on Friday! and we are all starting to get a bit of cabin fever, and are feeling the need for families to visit again, with this in mind we have sent out e-mails and letters describing how we might achieve this in a safe controlled way, working with the residents staff and families. I think the residents are getting fed up of the same faces and only seeing their family and friends on face time or talking to them on the telephone or seeing them through glass. We are doing our best to keep them entertained, but I actually think they find it funnier watching us  trying to get them to join in! But we will persevere, never give in is the moto today!

We have had a wonderful lunch, Beef Bourgogne, new potatoes, creamed cabbage, French beans and broccoli followed by Lemon and raspberry roulade all homemade by our lovely chef Stephen and all produce from local providers. It is a great time to get together (staff eat with the residents) and talk about the outside world and the memories it brings back to the residents. We have joined a facebook page “Hayling Island then and now,” which has had some amazing photos of Hayling past and present and we have even found school photos of residents on there as well as staff, this has caused a lot of laughter and memories, I even learnt that one resident was born in house I now live in! fascinating especially as she is 103 and has told me so much about the history of the house which was built in 1884.

So although we have been in our bubble! we have managed to have good times and enjoy it, we have managed to continue giving our residents the high quality of care they deserve, and look forward to a brighter future.

Well VE day has come and gone, and we managed to have a lovely celebration with lots of memories and laughter, even though we were very few. We painted banners to hang on the walls curtesy of Creative Mojo and with the help of residents and staff. We had lots of bunting and flags everywhere and it looked lovely with our rainbow banner and Rainbow bunting. We had a lovely lunch of Fish and Chips and the memories just flowed, most of the residents were 13/15 at the end of the war and were laughing at the memories that stayed with them and where they were at that time. We talked about rationing and growing vegetables and keeping chickens, as well as the role of the Royal Family through out the war years. I think we all learned something new! In the afternoon we had Music with Miranda as she had very kindly made us a CD with all her songs on.

We are all managing very well and have adapted to the different ways of working, but boy do we all need a Hairdresser!!!

Stay safe.

Well life has certainly changed over the last few months, but we are settling in to it. The first week was very stressful, working out how we can do things in a safe and professional way and of course everyone’s stress levels were very high both staff and residents. We were very lucky as we had a supply of PPE already in as well as hand sanitizer and bacterial soap. But we are now in the fourth week and everything has settled down and actually we are all quite enjoying the peace and slower pace. The staff have been amazing as usual, I am so very proud of them all, they have embraced all the new ways of working.

We have been doing facetime calls, and the residents all received a letter from Mill Rythe Infant School which they loved and are all wanting to write back. These letters were wonderful evoking lots of laughter and memories. We have painted our sign for Keyworker’s and have hung it form the balcony along with rainbow bunting, which we have also hung at the end of the drive.  We enjoy the clapping at 8pm on Thursday’s especially when a neighbour calls out “We are clapping for you!” It is lovely to be recognised.

We have a beautiful resident who plays the keyboard and the favourite song at the moments is “Busy doing Nothing”!

So we miss our visitors and the hustle and bustle and we certainly miss the Hairdresser! But we are coping. So please bear with us, We understand it is difficult not visit but please don’t.

Stay safe and strong.

Please be aware that at the moment we are closed to all visitors this is to ensure the health of our elderly residents.

We welcome letters, postcards, phone calls and  e-mails – we will print off your letter and any photographs you wish to send. We can also arrange facetime calls for you.

Well it has crept up again! Where has the year gone, if anyone finds it please let me know!!
It is a really busy time here with lots going on! We had our Christmas Party on Sunday with lots of amazing food. A big thank you to Nicky, Debbie and of course me!! resonsible for the sausage rolls and Coffee cake yummy and also to Glenys for her Hazelnut Meringue and Stephen for the Chocolate Brownies and of course a big thank you to Mirandas Music who played all the favourite Christmas Songs as well as to everybody who came it was lovely to see everyone looking so smart and great Christmas Jumpers.
Yesterday we had the local playgroup come in and sing for us, they were superb very well behaved with beautiful voices and an appitite for chocolate biscuits.
Please remember you are always welcome to come and join in any of the activities the monthly list is always just inside the front door on the wall.
We do have a new security system in place so you will now have to ring the bell and wait to be admitted, we are sorry if it takes a while to answer the door, but sometimes the staff are busy with a resident so please be patient.
Please remember if you have any concerns about anything just let us know and it will be dealt with quickly, if we don’t know we can’t do anything about it!
Please have a very Merry Christmas and a great New Year from everyone at Saltmarsh House.