For more than 30 years, students and staff at Grainville School have held an annual Valentine’s Day event for elderly residents of the surrounding parishes, which includes a three-course meal with students taking on the role of ‘waiters’.
This year the pandemic prevented the event from happening as usual – but the school was determined to keep the long-standing tradition going and yesterday delivered 150 afternoon tea boxes to pensioners around the Island.
Laura MacDonald, the school’s business manager, who has been helping to organise the project, said it had been ‘a lot of work’ but that it was wonderful to see everyone come together to make it happen.
‘We’ve had students and staff making fudge, Caring Cooks [a local charity that helps vulnerable families with food] have kindly been making scones and some shortbread and we’ve had the help of students and staff from Highlands – I’ve been down there making sandwiches all morning,’ she said. ‘We’ve got some very nice flavoured tea bags, and Mercury Distribution have given us boxes and paper bags.
‘Jersey Dairy have also donated us the whipping cream and the butter portions.’
She added that the whole process had a ‘really nice community feel’ to it, with students in the school’s art department even making hand-drawn cards to go with the parcels.
Yesterday, two minibuses – equipped with eight students and several members of staff – began dropping off the boxes to various care homes and parish halls, occasionally travelling ‘further afield’ to make sure that pensioners who had regularly attended the meal did not miss out.
‘Some of the residents who used to be in homes in St Saviour have moved address, so there’s a few of our regulars who we are going to make sure get one,’ said Ms MacDonald.
‘It’s a shame that we couldn’t do it as normal because a lot of these elderly people haven’t been seeing people for some time, but at least it’s something.’
