It is with great sadness and regret that we announce the death of Shirley Simmonds at 1:30am on Tuesday 29th May 2018 at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.

Shirley was a Founder and Patron of Friend to Friend and dedicated her retirement to preventing loneliness in the elderly throughout the Holme and Colne Valleys; her passion was to give people meaningful and interesting social interaction.

Her funeral will be held at Huddersfield Crematorium on Monday 11th June at 3:15pm, followed by refreshments and reminiscences at the Olive Tree Bistro Cafe at Totties, Scholes, HD9 1AU. Any members wishing to attend are asked to contact Louise or Gillian of the Holmfirth group. Donations in lieu of flowers are appreciated for the Huddersfield Samaritans, of whom Shirley was Director for a time.

On Saturday 12th May we played and sang together with  ‘Xylosound’, an inspirational group of local musicians with additional learning needs, at Holmfirth’s Festival of Folk. Here are a few photos of our rehearsals and our performance. See our Facebook page for a couple of videos.. for some reason they refused to go on our website!

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We were delighted this week to have been awarded £240 by the Holme Valley Lions, from their hard-earned Santa Sleigh fundraising efforts over Christmas.

Louise and Kate, 2 of our volunteers, attended the Lions’ charities’ night to bid for this funding, to pay for 3 planned visits by the “Feeling Good Theatre Group”. This is a group of Leeds-based actors, all over 50, who perform with great humour and intelligence on various themes related to ageing. We last saw them when they performed a series of very entertaining sketches warning of ‘distraction crime’ (doorstep and phone scams).

The shows they are to put on for us this year are as follows, all at 1pm at the Holmfirth Methodist Church Hall. Anyone interested in coming who does not normally attend our Holmfirth groups is most welcome, space allowing. Please ring Louise on 681008 to reserve a seat.

‘Active Ageing’ ~ Friday May 18th (warning: involves Lycra!)

‘Benchmark’ ~ Friday 7th Sept (reminiscences of people sharing a park bench)

‘Christmas Capers’ ~ Friday December 7th (speaks for itself!)

You should have been with us today…! The smell of home made hot cross buns baking in the ovens was truly mouthwatering! Alex from Old Bridge Bakery took us step by step through the process, and by half past one we had delicious buns to take home (although mine never made it that far! It was just too tempting to eat it warm, fresh from the oven!)

Watch out on our Facebook page for more photos.

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…and here were ours.

Hopefully this will successfully upload as the last of our videos from yesterday.

Thought I’d have another try to upload the videos. They were too funny to keep to myself!

What fun yesterday! Andrew from Coddy’s Farm Holmfirth joined us to teach us the basics of sausage making as part of our Foodie February.

After his introduction, Andrew invited us to have a go. 5 brave contenders stepped up in turn to crank the sausage machine handle and catch what came out the other end! I don’t think I’ve laughed so much for ages!

Thanks to our volunteers we all got to take a couple of sossies home for tea.

Have a look on our facebook page for some photos of the hilarity! A couple of videos to follow too!

Louise and Gillian of the Holmfirth Project Group led a breadmaking session last week (2nd Feb), and by the skin of our teeth (including the false ones!!) and everyone mucking in, we managed to get all our hundreds of bread rolls baked and given back to take home by 2pm!! Some of us haven’t sweated quite so much in a long time!!

We are hoping to have Alex from Old Bridge Bakery join us for some future sessions, exploring different kinds of bakes, from seasonal recipes to sweet treats. Yum yum! He had kindly prepared the ingredients for us, but was ill on Friday.

Here are a few photos of our creations!!

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On Friday 15th December the Holmfirth group plus specially invited guests got together for a Christmas lunch. Delicious roast turkey donated by Flowery Fields at Hade Edge (thank you Kev!), together with roasties, veg, stuffing & gravy donated by Morrisons (thank you Rachel and Steve!), were prepared for us by our superstar cook Laura. This was followed by a choice of puds including trifles made by Ann (thank you!), and mince pies & coffee for those with some space!

We were then joined by Mrs Brook and 2 of her pupils from Holme Village School, who had very kindly clubbed together to buy gifts to add to Santa’s ‘Friend to Friend’ sack, and had even designed their own wrapping paper and tags! What a very thoughtful school! Santa sent his stunt double (thank you Isaac!) to hand out gifts for everyone.

It was lovely to see so many friends come together and enjoy each other’s company, and we raised a glass to Margaret, Lise, Barbara and Louie who weren’t able to join us.

Merry Christmas all of you, and here’s to a Happy and Healthy New Year.