The Best Guide for the Neston Area

30 Happy Faces at Neston's Community Christmas Dinner

Lead organiser Louise Irvine fills us in on another successful community Christmas Day meal in Neston.

Some of the many volunteers involved in delivering the annual Community Christmas Dinner in Neston.

This is our fifth community Christmas dinner and it's hard to believe that for five years we have been helping people who would otherwise be on their own to have a great meal, socialise and make new friendships.

There were thirty guests this year, including three children; regulars along with new faces and everyone had a wonderful time. It was heartwarming to see the children running around and chatting to everyone. The mix of young and old was great and perhaps next year we will spread our net wider, and try to include more young parents who are on their own with their children on Christmas Day.

Pianist Daniel Wakefield once again came along to lead everyone in some Christmas Carols, we then held a free raffle with some fabulous prizes donated by Home Instead and Cubbins the chemists.

Rev Alan Dawson came along to chat to our guests and then said grace with us before heading home to his own family dinner.

I was in charge of getting everybody there and drumming up support and donations. We have so many people to thank, people who donated to help make the day a huge success:

• Our usual crew who put this day together and spend many hours making sure everything goes to plan - Emily Truelove and Dave Truelove who were our star chefs; Alex Rigby, our resident elf on a shelf; Andy Irvine, Pat and Rob Kynaston who were our amazing drivers on the day; our wonderful volunteers including Georgina, Alice, Hannah, Jay, Tom, Hattie and Lucinda who helped us serve dinner and clear up afterwards.
  
• Helen Bolton and family for doing a great job of distributing our posters.
  
• Thanks to our many donors, including our private donations and to Justin Madders MP; Sainsbury's Neston for donating the turkey, URC church for allowing us to use the hall and kitchen.
• The staff and children of Neston Primary School for making the fabulous snowmen, the 1st Ness guides for making the little knitted Christmas decorations, Emma from Elephant Coffee for donating the goody bags.
• Skipton Building Society staff for donating gifts and Home Instead for donating gifts from their Be a Santa for a Senior scheme.
  
• Philippa Harris from Dovecote Nurseries for donating the beautiful table centre pieces and Timeless Kitchens & Bathrooms for the bottles of Schloer.
  
• We also would like to thank Kirsty Wilson (@kirstyannephotography) for decorating the goody bags, painting the beautiful Christmas cards and being our official photographer on the day.
  
• Also to AboutMyArea and Neston Life for advertising the event for us.

As usual we did not charge for this lunch. We do however like to "pay it forward" and this year we had donations of £120 from our guests which we will send to the Charles Thompson's Mission in Birkenhead who feed the homeless all year round and including Christmas Day.

Report this article as inappropriate

Comments

merrymac

At 21:43 on 3rd January 2020, merrymac commented:

Well done Louise and your team again for making it so special for many who, but for you, would have been lonely at Christmas

[Report this comment as inappropriate]

You need to log in before you can do that! It's only a quick registration process to join the AMA network and completely free.