"I can now tell the difference between a pork and a lamb chop!"

Please note: this post is 66 months old and The Cares Family is no longer operational. This post is shared for information only

Jess met her older neighbour Louisa last October through our Love Your Neighbour programme. She recently reflected on her experiences and what being a volunteer with North London Cares means to her.

When I joined the North London Cares’ Love Your Neighbour programme, I was really only foreseeing the benefits that hopefully I could bring to someone else's life.

But the experience has proven to be so much more than that.

I met Louisa (90) for the first time last October. She lives around the corner from me in Highbury. She was raised in Harrogate by her aunt and uncle, and so thinks northerners are the best of people – which is lucky for me, as I'm from Newcastle! She’s kind, generous and incredibly intuitive, and she cares about and thrives off of other people – I'm sure she could tell you the life stories of every one of her carers. She’s not afraid to say what’s on her mind, and although she says she grumbles and she’s miserable, it’s not true: she lights up around people, especially her wonderful, loving daughters.

I go around to Louisa's every week. We have dinner and a gin while we talk about life, family, Brexit, Meghan Markle and the tragedies of modern dating, and laugh about my lack of culinary knowledge...thankfully I can now tell the difference between a pork and a lamb chop!

People give you kudos for ‘volunteering’ or ‘doing such a nice thing’, and it makes me feel like a fraud, because what I’m actually doing is spending an evening a week laughing with a friend eating confit of duck and buttery potatoes!

Love Your Neighbour does make a difference to someone else’s life, but it also brings a new joy to your own. The more people that discover this, the happier the world will be!