All in a good cause

For Nepal!

We're just back from our Tuesday morning date at the Cathedral, where they are serving breakfast in aid of the Nepal Relief Fund of World Vision. All the food and labour is donated, so every cent of the charges (50c an item) goes to the Relief Fund. The Dean and his family and a band of volunteers prepare and serve the meals.

We were there just as they opened this morning, our tongues hanging out for the delicious breakfasts they serve. Today we had porridge, followed by tea and toast and marmalade. My porridge had peaches as well; Margaret had hers neat!

By the time we left half an hour later, they were bringing out more tables and table-cloths to accommodate the families and couples arriving in support of a good cause.

We sat next to a couple of regulars - one of the cathedral staff and his wife. At another table were two of Margaret's former colleagues from teaching days. In another direction we greeted an elderly couple (well, older than us!) who are also regulars. They live a few minutes away, and he rides his disability scooter. I am getting interested in disability scooters - I might need one sooner than you think - so we had a quick chat about them.

Then there was a couple and their three children, and at still another table a man with his primary school age son.

Then old friends arrived, Jill and Ian, a couple we see regularly around the town, together with a couple we had not seen before. Jill's brother and I were best friends as teenagers in the fifties. Later they introduced the newcomers to us as their neighbours, and we had a chat with them all as well.

Catching up with one's friends and acquaintances is one of the side-benefits of the Tuesday morning breakfasts; we regularly try to arrange a meeting with others ourselves, but this week we were unsuccessful. Still, given the number of people we greeted this morning, we needn't have worried!

We didn't sit chatting, because the tables were in demand. I decided to walk home, as I often do, and found the brisk exercise invigorating this morning, with a cool temperature and no wind, and the help of my trusty kauri carved walking-stick!

Before the Nepal earthquakes, the breakfasts supported Doctors Without Borders' work in West Africa with Ebola victims, and for a few weeks the Vanuatu storm relief funds.

What an all-round positive community project these folk are working at!