Legacy
Legacy
Please note: this post is 80 months old and The Cares Family is no longer operational. This post is shared for information only
Last May Avy signed up to volunteer with North London Cares. In just 12 months she’s contributed her time, energy and enthusiasm to every programme at the charity – stretching and sharing stories with older neighbours at Yoga; relieving tech anxiety at Gizmos and Gadgets; taking on a half marathon to fundraise and hosting a poetry slam to raise awareness of NLC. Avy’s had too many adventures to count but her highlight has undoubtedly been meeting Frank through Love Your Neighbour. Here she shares her story.
Frank lives just around the corner from me in Islington. We’ve been friends for around 6 months now, and I’ve loved getting to know him. It turns out we have a lot in common so once we get talking, there’s no stopping us! We both love learning about the history of London, and Frank has some amazing pictures of how local streets once looked. I recently watched the “The Crown”, and when I asked Frank if the London smog of 1952 was as bad as in the show, he told me that you honestly couldn’t see out of the window for the thick yellow fog!
We both love dogs, and when I mentioned to Frank that I’d love to get a rescue greyhound one day, he immediately started listing racecourses he knows that try to rehome their retired racers. A good friend of mine recently got a puppy of her own, and I show Frank new pictures every week. He had dogs himself growing up, and has some wonderful stories about them.
Speaking of wonderful stories, Frank has some of the best – he’s told me about the time he outsmarted a lawyer in court; the time he bought an ex-police car that still had a police-grade engine, meaning it still went at 100 MPH; and the time he had a slap-up steak dinner on holiday in Belgium – and got away with only paying for the drinks.
Frank gave me this brilliant picture of him, and it sits behind me at work so he’s always watching over me! Frank was really hoping I had a friend that was good at photoshop, so we could add a cigar and machine-gun to this picture, and complete the “Mafia” look he was going for!
Frank and I are both fascinated by history, and he ha some amazing books he's been kind enough to lend me – for example a hefty tome on the Resistance movement in WWII France! Just last weekend I took home a book on the Seven Wonders of the World – Frank laughed when I told him my Dad taught me how to build a pyramid and the Colossus of Rhodes with Lego when I was younger!
Recently Frank has been helping me discover a taste for cheese: “Not that processed stuff from Tesco – this is the good stuff!” he says, handing me a slice of a 24 month-aged Italian Conte. Frank gave me a small set of cheese knives, as he already has three sets of his own, and my flatmates and I had a cheese tasting night. I can’t wait to show Frank the photos – I hope he’ll approve, even though, admittedly, we did go to Tesco.
Well, we did our best. The cheese knives from Frank (centre) were wonderful, but I’d better start a piggy bank for cheese expenses if I ever want to compete with Frank’s fridge!
With the Love Your Neighbour programme, each pair of neighbours has a small budget for a special outing or occasion that you can claim each year. Last year I used ours to take Frank to NLC’s Christmas party. It was such a special day, as Frank really enjoyed himself, and I got to introduce him to the friends I’d made at Social Clubs that year. I used our allowance to get us an Uber there and back. Frank wasn’t sure what an Uber was – but seemed chuffed when I told him it was a taxi for VIPs!
Frank meeting another volunteer at the Christmas party - looking dapper, as always.
I’m so grateful I had this chance to meet Frank, because he has genuinely become family to me, and I look forward to our time together every week. Even though we live a short walk from one another, I don’t know how we would’ve met without the help of the lovely NLC team.
If you have the time to spare, I really can’t recommend the Love Your Neighbour programme enough. You’ll gain a new friend, new stories – and you never know, maybe even a taste for expensive cheese!