Our seventh ‘Sparkle’ Event and the Homemade Christmas Cake Competition
This year the people we serve and ubu team members had no trouble in deciding what we wanted to do for our Christmas Sparkle event. Our dear friend Louise who going through a difficult time at the moment has worked for ubu for over 16 years and she loved her job. “Louise has brought lots of happiness to lots of people and we all wanted to give some of that sparkle back to her even if it was for just a moment”.
Back in June this year, Louise had to leave her role as a ubu enabling team member in York to concentrate on her battle to fight a very rare illness she has been living with. In the last few months Louise has had to rely on other people to help take her out and it has been hard sometimes to find the energy to enjoy it. In a conversation with some of her ubu friends she mentioned that she has always wanted to visit the luxury department store, Harvey Nichols in Leeds city centre.
We all thought that it would be lovely if we could arrange to take her there for as treat, give her a gift voucher so she could buy something she really wanted and have Christmas Lunch in the fancy restaurant on the top floor.
We planned the event, booked a table and prayed that Louise would be feeling well enough to enjoy her special day. She is often in considerable pain and some days are worse than others for her.
When the morning arrived for Louise to make her trip, we arranged some comfortable transport. All was well and when we arrived, Louise looked radiant! We presented her with a card with the voucher and told her of our plans, she burst into tears! But they were tears of joy not sadness.
We arrived at Harvey Nichols which is right in the middle of town, walked in past the top-hatted doormen had a good look around at all the beautiful things on display. Soon it was time to go up to the top floor for our Christmas lunch. The waiter service was fantastic and the meal delicious. We topped it off with Christmas pudding too!
When we had finished our meal, a video message from the ubu enabling team came through on our mobile phone, sending her love and best wishes, again she cried, really happy tears.
Louise told us that she would like to thank ubu for a lovely day, she also said that although she has never really liked eating Christmas pudding the one she had was so nice that she ate the lot!!!
We all had a wonderful time together and it was lovely to see Louise sparkle with her lovely smile, hear her vibrant laughter and to be with her to share and enjoy her very special day.
Our Christmas competition today has been for the best Christmas Cake. We have seen some fabulously decorated cakes and we are pretty sure that they also will be delicious too! Abigail from Leeds decorated her cake with Santa, a sleigh and a happy snowman. Her decorations were so original and well-made we thought that she should be our winner today.
At the Hub we celebrated our seventh Day of ‘Unite@Christmas’ event with seasonal snacks and lots of songs. Our guests and the Hub visitors and elves sang and danced together to “Jingle Bell Rock” encouraging each other to have fun and spread the Sparkling happiness we all felt at being together with everyone we meet this Christmas time.
