MADGIE’S story

Age UK is good for connecting people, it’s a really good social place. 

“I’m a volunteer befriender. I befriend on Mondays and have three visits. I befriend a gentleman in the mornings, then I see two ladies in the afternoon. I also help with Thursday’s activities like the Friendship Café where we do tea and biscuits. Then there’s Lads @ Lunch where they have like a chicken dinner, or actually last time I made potato hash.

Age UK is good for connecting people, it’s a really good social place for people. They all get dressed up and they look forward to coming in on the afternoons and, you know, it’s really nice to have these activities for them. I like just turning up and just knowing people. It’s just a pleasure to come here. I like seeing the people that come, and I know them all now, they’re so sweet.

I enjoy being a befriender, and it’s an important role - it’s a very different job to being a carer. I visit and listen to the person. The wife of the gentleman I visit is in a nursing home with dementia, and I can relate to that as my husband also had Lewy Body dementia. I looked after him twenty-four hours a day.

I didn’t take my husband anywhere during Covid. He didn’t understand it; he didn’t understand why he couldn’t go out and he just said things like, “Well, it won’t happen to me, it’s only getting certain people”. And then he went in nursing home in June 2020, and I never saw him again because we couldn’t visit.

After he passed, I sorted everything out. I’m someone who just carries on – I don’t dwell. I mean that’s the way we were brought up, you just get on with it. After a while I went away on holiday – my best friend lives in Tenerife, so I went to see her. I’d looked after him for so long I decided it was my turn to go away and enjoy myself. I’ve got to keep my house going and the garden now, because my husband did all of that.

I think people are still frightened about Covid. A lot of people don’t go to places as much now, it’s like there’s this fear. It’s in people’s minds. I lost a lot of friends who died through Covid. And it does pass your mind, you know, when you get a cold or anything, it’s still going about now, but I just think, no, get on with it, don’t let it beat you.”