Well dressings are an important part of our heritage, as well as being a fun and creative process to take part in. While the large, communal frames will not be possible this year, there’s nothing to stop households from having a go and producing their own mini well dressings. These could be placed in windows or front gardens for by-passers to enjoy, just like the Easter and VE day displays that brightened our villages. A terracotta, or even plastic, plant pot saucer could provide a make-shift frame. If you’re not fortunate enough to have your own supply of clay in the garden, it can be purchased online or from craft suppliers. Do be careful when selecting petals, leaves or berries to ensure materials are safe for little (and bigger!) hands.   

Natural material collages can also be create using paper, fabric or paper plates. They're a great way to combine exploration of nature and art.

https://theartgardenblog.com/2019/03/04/paper-plate-nature-collages-a-simple-invitation-using-wilting-flowers/

https://whereimaginationgrows.com/kids-flower-art-nature-collages/

Have a go and have some fun as a household. We’d love to see the results! Don’t forget to share them with us on our facebook page.

Crich Luncheon Club normally meets every Wednesday in the Glebe where members enjoy socialising, being entertained and a tasty meal. All organised by our team of volunteers!

Now this has changed and unfortunately all of our members and many of our volunteers are unable to enjoy any socialisation. It’s a sad fact that many of them are at home and alone.

We continue to keep in touch and each volunteer has been allocated two or three of our members to contact - a friendly voice at the end of a phone, even singing Happy Birthday!

Many love to chat and reminisce. Others have shared telephone numbers with each other. We can also find out in these conversations if they are coping with the isolation and if they need any other help.

Many of our members have benefitted from the meal provision, organised through the Support Network. Toni and Tim Shepherd have provided delivered ready meals. Dawn and Tony Harper have also catered from home, cooking hot plated meals.

Luncheon Club and other volunteers deliver these and it was the highlight of many people’s day. It’s been such a positive way of keeping in touch.

There are some good things that have evolved from this crisis: working as teams to support the most vulnerable, meeting new friends with a common aim and learning how to be more efficient with technology - a challenge for some!

We miss seeing all of our members together on Wednesday mornings but to quote a recent comment: ‘We won’t half have a good party when we all finally do get together!’

People are already discussing how we can continue some of the good things which have happened, for instance, utilising the new army of volunteer helpers, possibly continuing with a meals service and how using technology can help to keep us more in touch with each other.

How Life Has Changed by Sheila Goodhead from Crich Luncheon Club

It’s a difficult time when you can’t visit family or neighbours, at least in the 1940s during the war we could see people and could put a face to our enemy!

But we must go into battle and beat this virus together I wanted to say ‘Thank you’ to all the village volunteers looking out for friends, neighbours and the vulnerable people in and around Crich and its neighbouring villages.

The shops in the village, changing the way they provide food and essentials to people who can’t get out has been great and a real help and lifeline for many. I know other people who go to Crich Luncheon Club have found this really helpful, we (members and helpers), have all been telephoning each other to have a chat and this has been a topic of conversation, along with Dawn Harper and her catering service; this has been an absolute blessing. Fresh, tasty home-cooked food, delivered to the door – thank you Dawn and her army of helpers for delivering our lunches!

Thank you should also go to the volunteers from Care Line who ring every week to see if us ‘oldies’ are okay, although some of us are lucky enough to have family and friends that telephone
regularly but I know many don’t hear from anyone all week.

So, keep smiling, keep social distancing and stay in safe!

Sheila Goodhead

John was in the RAF in Africa during The Seocnd World War. When is his plane crashed in 1944, John's legs were injured and he spent a long time in hospital. After the war, he trained as a teacher.

John is well known locally for his interest in Natural History. He played a major role in the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, founded the charity "Cats in Need",  and was involved with many aspects of animal welfare, local history and countryside interests.

We're sure you will all want to join us in wishing John a very Happy Birthday! Congratulations John.

On a Thursday morning in mid May I popped into the Fritchley Congregational Chapel to meet Sandra and her friend Sue to see what Derbyshire Scrubs is all about. I was met with rolls of brightly coloured material and tables full of pattern pieces in numerous piles waiting to be matched up and sorted into packs. These would then be sent out to a hundred plus home sewers to be skilfully transformed into scrubs for medical, nursing and care home staff. They were a pleasant change from the blue or green scrubs we usually see and featured all the colours of the rainbow we currently acknowledge as a sign of gratitude to the NHS.

Sandra originally became involved through the original organisation called For the Love of Scrubs which first rallied those with sewing skills to provide kit for our overstretched NHS, but shortly afterwards she was asked to take on an organisational role, along with about 10 others, with the newly named Derbyshire Scrubs.

It didn’t just involve recruiting sewers either: there was material to source and it couldn’t just be any old material; it had to weigh between 120 and 150 grams/square metre, had to be 65% polyester 30% cotton and had to be washable at 60 degrees Centigrade. Then a pattern had to be sourced and David Nieper of Alfreton provided this as well as cutting out the first 174 metres of fabric. Then it was time to start cutting out by hand. Tracey, another member of the group and an ex textile employee cut patterns out and it wasn’t long before the group found a Derby couple with their own (currently closed) clothing factory offered to cut the material on an industrial scale.

The cut out pieces then find their way to Fritchley and other hubs via a posse of volunteer drivers (although I suspect Sandra herself has done quite a lot of ferrying to and fro), where the sorting into kits takes place. Added to the pattern pieces are tapes, bindings and labels to be added to the completed scrubs. So far Sandra estimates that around 10 000 metres of material has been and is still being turned into vital clothing for hospital staff.

Funding for the whole exercise has come from many sources. Sandra was pleased to receive funding from friends and people in our locality and through Rotary Amber Valley, as well as Trevor Ainsworth of Derbyshire County Council.

People in the group also set up Just Giving pages which all in all raised in the region of £9000. A further £2500 worth of fabric has been donated through Chris Evans and his family’s fundraising efforts through Virgin Radio.

I think if you’d suggested to Sandra 10 weeks ago that she’d be organising the distribution of these sorts of funds and organising the number of individuals that she has, she’d probably have had a good laugh but she admits that it’s been “a great learning curve and I’ve met lots of lovely people on the way” and that the skill mix of volunteers is amazing, even down to a lady with stock control experience creating spreadsheets to show exactly where scrubs are distributed. Maybe a few CEOs might like to copy her style!

Sandra has been thrilled to receive a thank you card on behalf of the group from William Tucker, Lord Lieutentant of Derbyshire, which reads:

Dear Sandra

Words cannot adquately express the gratitute I feel when I think about the incredible support and service you have given throughout the COVID-19 CRISIS.

I want to thank you wholeheartedly for all you have contributed.

Please pass my sincere thanks to all those involved with the Derby and Burton 'For the Love of Scrubs' Facebook group.

William Tucker