DropBy

Future residents at St George’s Park in Ditchling, East Sussex recently celebrated their impending move into the successful retirement development by attending the planting of a tree at Chestnut View, the newest phase of apartments. 

The apartments have already proved a hit among prospective purchasers with many looking forward to moving into their new home. Mr Smith who is purchasing a two bedroom apartment at Chestnut View commented: “My wife and I are delighted to be here to celebrate the occasion and are really looking forward to moving into our new apartment and enjoying the wide range of facilities here at St George’s Park.”

Eileen Perrin, Sales Manager at St George’s Park commented: “We are delighted to see so many proud future residents here to celebrate the occasion. The tree not only signifies the completion of Chestnut View but also represents the new residents coming together to join our thriving community.” St George’s Park offers a lot more than an attractive setting and quality apartments, it provides a sense of community for the over 60s which is another reason the development has continued to prove so popular. Residents can enjoy an active social life by getting involved with the Resident’s Association, who organise table tennis, snooker, line dancing, short tennis, croquet and short mat bowls to name a few. Other facilities include a gymnasium, restaurant, café bar, hairdressers, convenience shop, games room and library that are located in the spacious and well used community centre, Maes Court. This centre also includes a multi-purpose function room and a treatment room that provides excellent amenities for visiting therapists. The original concert hall, with its ornate ceiling, is also available to residents and makes an ideal place for special occasions, communal gatherings and other events including plays, guest speakers, film nights or concerts. For residents that prefer the outdoors, there is a well-stocked lake for fishing, a footpath network across the 250 acres of grounds, woodland and lakes, and even an allotment club.
 

St George’s Park is superbly located for the beautiful countryside of the South Downs, a mix of rural villages and towns including Brighton, which all have numerous places to explore, shops and restaurants to try.

There is also horse racing at both Brighton and Lingfield racecourses, and further afield Goodwood, which is also a venue for motor racing and other internationally acclaimed events. The development is within 3 miles of Haywards Heath and Burgess Hill both of which offer good local shopping including major supermarkets and excellent rail links to Brighton, Gatwick Airport and London Victoria.

Prices for currently available properties at St Georges Park start at £345,000 for a two bedroom apartment. For further information contact the sales office on 01444 259732 or visit www.stgeorgespark.co.uk

Older residents of Sidcup and nearby towns – who are supported by Contact the Elderly – enjoyed a tea party at their local fire station on Sunday 10th June, as party of a community initiative organised by the firefighters.

Contact the Elderly was delighted to receive an invite to tea at Sidcup Fire Station for three of its local groups.

Almost 50 older guests and their volunteer drivers from Sidcup, Bexley and Bromley tucked into a huge spread of cakes and cups of tea. There was also the chance to visit the fire station’s museum, containing firefighting paraphernalia from throughout the years and an opportunity to ask the firefighters questions about their work. Later in the afternoon, some of the older guests had lots of fun trying on the firefighters’ helmets and jackets. The tea party ended with a friendly bet on a game of horse racing, with all the Contact the Elderly guests and volunteers putting their names down on miniature horses.

Hilda, 92, an older guest from one of the three groups (pictured second left in above photograph), who tried on some of the firefighting equipment, said: “It was an absolutely marvellous afternoon. It has made me feel young at heart. Where do I sign up?”

Contact the Elderly’s East London Development Officer, Katy Szita, said: “Thank you so much to Sidcup Fire Station for hosting such a fantastic tea party for our older guests and volunteers. The firefighters were very friendly and the older ladies loved chatting to them. One of the three Contact the Elderly groups also launched for the very first time, so it was definitely a more unusual setting for the inaugural tea party.”

The charity is looking for more volunteer hosts for the new Bexley-Bromley group.

The London 2012 Festival is here

The London 2012 Festival bursts into life tomorrow. Over 12,000 events across the UK celebrating the Games – many completely free – with incredible cultural events and top artists from across the world. Wherever you are, whatever you're into, there's something for you. Take your place at the London 2012 Festival – find an event near you

If an older person cannot get out and about locally, they are at risk of becoming ‘a prisoner in their own home’. Research by Inclusive Design for Getting Outdoors www.idgo.ac.uk has found that the design of Britain’s gardens, streets, neighbourhoods and open spaces affects older people’s ability to age well and live independently by supporting, or preventing, access for all. People who don’t find it easy or enjoyable to get outdoors can spiral into poor physical health, less social contact with others and a reduced quality of life overall. With the cost of sedentary behaviour estimated at £8.3bn per year*, this places a further financial burden on the NHS and Local Authorities through increased admissions to hospitals and residential care homes. I’DGO was established to explore if, and in what way, the ability to get out and about impacts on older people’s quality of life and what barriers there are to achieving this day-to-day. Spanning nine years, and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the project has involved over 4,350 participants aged 65 or over. Its latest findings were reported in Europe House, the home of the European Parliament in the UK, in April 2012, addressed by Baroness Greengross in celebration of the European Year for Active Ageing. The project has been cited widely, including by the World Health Organization in Global Age-Friendly Cities: A Guide (WHO, 2007). *Chief Medical Officer’s Annual Report, 2009. Department of Health, 2010.

To help the economy, David Cameron may announce shortly that he is ordering the Home Office to start deporting older people (instead of illegal immigrants) in order to lower the Pension and Benefits Bill and NHS Costs. Why? Well it makes sense: Older people are easier to catch, and will not remember how to get back home! RUN MY OLD FRIENDS RUN!!! Well... I'm not going alone!

As we older people get older still we all need to be concerned with Alzheimer's disease. This Puzzle is easy to put together, if you are not affected by Alzheimer's disease, but impossible to do for someone with the disease. Give it a try. If this puzzle is particularly difficult for you then your physician can offer you additional testing to check you for Alzheimer's. If you would like to give it a try, then click on the following link:

http://www.brl.ntt.co.jp/people/hara/fly.swf

Excellent Ageing is a partnership initiative which aims to improve the health and wellbeing of older people in Lincolnshire whilst reducing the social and financial costs. The programme involves more than 50 organisations from the public, private and voluntary sectors and throughout our work with them, we have constantly emphasised the need to engage with older people to ensure that we are considering their needs as they identify them and not as we perceive them. Together we are working to oversee a shift in the way resources are used, so that a culture of wellbeing is promoted and integrated working between different sectors is encouraged. We have tried to lead by example; engagement has formed a huge part of the programme’s work from the very start and our findings are shared with our partners and project groups, who are also encouraged to conduct their own research when developing specific projects. To give you a brief overview, we have attended a huge number of senior forum meetings, luncheon clubs, exercise classes and other events as well as visiting people in their own homes. These engagement sessions have been used both to spread the news about what we are doing and to chat informally about older people’s experiences and opinions. In the initial stages of the programme, these sessions were vital in informing how work would progress and our ten priority outcomes were formed as a result: I want to: •feel safe •have relationships •get around easily •be active •be healthy •put something back into the community •have the right help when I need it from people I trust •end my life with dignity •live at home for longer •afford my life and understand my options These outcomes act as a guiding force in every action, idea and project that Excellent Ageing is involved with. We have a Programme Officer dedicated to engagement and her work has involved continued meetings with older people to ensure that these outcomes remain consistent with the views of Lincolnshire’s older people. Now, with the launch of our new, more accessible, website, we are hoping that even more people will be able to get involved, learn more about Excellent Ageing, and help to shape the programme and its work. To find out more, please visit: www.excellentageing.co.uk By Charlie Mellor, Business & Performance Officer of Excellent Ageing

Over the last year Positive Ageing in London (PAIL) has started to work as a regional forum on ageing, bringing together older people’s organisations, other charities, service providers and statutory bodies. By Gordon Deuchars, Age UK London.

PAIL is chaired by former senior alderman of the City of London David Shalit and brings together organisations such as Age UK London, Greater London Forum for Older People, LOPSG (London Older People’s Strategies Group), Contact the Elderly and older people’s advocacy body Advocacy Plus.

Third sector members which are not age-specific include London Advice Services Alliance (LASA) and London Sustainability Exchange.

On the statutory side, PAIL has been working closely with the DWP and increasingly with the Greater London Authority (GLA) which is now represented in PAIL. Several local authorities in London are also on PAIL’s mailing list. The Centre for Policy on Ageing brings in a research perspective. Vice-Chairs are Raj Jogia (Pepperpot Day Centre, Kensington & Chelsea) and Mervyn Eastman (Change Agents).

In autumn 2011 PAIL agreed to terms of reference committing it to making a real difference to the lives of older people by:

• Raising key issues affecting older people in London
• Feeding into London and national advisory forums and the Age Action Alliance
• Developing older peoples policy and voice for London
• Challenging for change
• Engaging, advocating and promoting older people in London
• Disseminating policy and practice

MODEL OF SUPPORT

Since then PAIL has held well attended meetings focussing on fuel poverty and on active ageing – including the model of support to activity emerging from Age UK’s national and regional Fit as a Fiddle programme. Another key area covered was the emerging housing needs of older people in London.

The Deputy Regional Director of the Department of Health led a very useful session on the emerging changes in the NHS. PAIL also began to make regular inputs into the London Mayor’s Forum on Ageing, the UK Advisory Forum on Ageing and the Age Action
Alliance.

PAIL’s emerging work programme for 2012-13 includes a large-scale event looking at cooperative solutions to care needs, and “20-20 Vision” workshops on how older people and an intergenerational group would like to see London in the future.

The next two regular meetings (of which there are three a year) will follow ongoing threads of active ageing and cooperative approaches. In June PAIL is facilitating a session on “Growing older in London in 2020” at a large event organised by Age UK London, “Happy and Healthy in the Capital: Celebrating Older Londoners”.

Members have begun to receive a newsletter, and in autumn 2012 it is planned to hold an initial self-assessment exercise using a diagnostic tool to identify what is going well and what could be improved.

These are early days yet, but Positive Ageing in London is making a good start in bringing together different perspectives on ageing in London.

Our challenge will be to take this further and bring in an even wider range of voices from older people, the third sector, statutory bodies and others.

The ‘sandwich generation’ who are forced to look after elderly relatives as well as support children will be given a helping hand as councils will be forced to provide support to cover respite holidays.

Under government plans, carers will be given legal entitlement to services that will help support them and their families, including the right to respite holidays, help with transport and training in caring. The details will be set out in a white paper due this month.

Ministers have raised concerns that people who care for relatives, regardless of age, are treated like ‘second-class citizens’.

Care services minister Paul Burstow told The Daily Telegraph that people who cared for older family members were being failed by the system.  ‘Carers are treated as second-class citizens compare to those whom they support,’ he said.

‘Yet if we don’t provide them with the right support they are unable to carry on with their caring responsibilities. One of the things I want to do is to place the rights of carers on a much firmer footing, so that the law recognises carers’ rights and their role in caring for others.’

The Law Commission has also recommended increasing services for carers that apply to all of those providing care in order to end the postcode lottery of support. The Law Commission’s recommendations are likely to form the basis of the white paper.

This could mean all carers and the people they care for would be given wellbeing assessments but any support is likely to be means-tested.

Around 1.25 million people spend more than 50 hours a week caring for family members.

The rising cost of care, which insurer LV= estimates will increase to £33,000 a year per person in 2025 from the current cost of £26,000 a year, means more people will be forced to care for relatives.

It also estimated a quarter of Britons expect an elderly relative to need care, with 7% of people planning to take on caring duties themselves to avoid paying the high costs.

Probably the best known of all Newbolt's poems and the one for which he is now chiefly remembered is Vitaï Lampada. It refers to how a future soldier learns stoicism in cricket matches in the famous Close at Clifton College, Bristol:

VITAI LAMPADA
("They Pass On The Torch of Life")

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night --
Ten to make and the match to win --
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote --
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'

The sand of the desert is sodden red, --
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; --
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the School is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind --
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'

Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938)

The following narrative is from KenDrive's website:

In an era of Victorian propriety and emphasis on the seriousness of the protestant work ethic, Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938) exemplified and championed both characteristics in both his writing and in deed.

Eminently respectable, Newbolt was a lawyer, novelist, playwright and magazine editor. Above all, he was a poet who championed the virtues of chivalry and sportsmanship combined in the service of the British Empire.

Born in Bilston, Staffordshire, and following studies at Clifton College and Oxford University, Newbolt became a barrister.

Although his first novel, Taken from the Enemy, was published in time for his thirtieth birthday in 1892, Newbolt’s reputation was established in 1897 in a poem written about a schoolboy cricketer who grows up to fight in Africa, Vitai Lampada. There, in the panic of battle the boy is stirred to heroic action by schooldays memories: “his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote - / Play up! Play up! And play the game!”

“Play up! Play up! And play the game!” – words that have become famous through the years - symbolised Newbolt’s view that war should be fought in the same spirit as school sports.

The poem was well received both critically and publicly at the time, and his work underwent a further revival at the outbreak of the First World War, when optimism was high; however as gloom set in, Newbolt’s verse consequently suffered in popularity.

Newbolt came to dislike his most famous poem Vitai Lampada. During a 1923 speaking tour of Canada he was constantly called upon to recite the poem: “it’s a kind of Frankenstein’s Monster that I created thirty years ago,” he complained.

The poem retained its popularity in Canada long after it fell out of favour in Britain.