Tea Party Girls brew up for hospice and raise €1,750

TEA PARTY Girls, a group of women, some of whom are widowed, who came together as way of socialising during the pandemic have raised €1,750 for a hospice.

Joan Wallace, Rita Cowap, Liz Russell, Phyllis Boyd, Catherine Curry and Winnie Manzon banded together early into the Covid-19 pandemic to enjoy cups of tea in each other’s gardens.

It was a way of socialising in a time of intense isolation, especially for people whose partners had died.

“Once we kept our social distancing, we could keep it going,” Catherine Curry tells The Echo.

“It helps us as well because four of us are widows, and we’re getting to come together to have a chat.

“We could be saying ‘oh I did this, I did that, maybe you could try this’ – it’s self-help.

“My husband died from cancer, he’s nearly 10 years dead now. We did family flowers only at the funeral and donations to the hospice.

“Since then, I’ve received leaflets and material from Our Lady’s Hospice and I got one in the door for the Bewley’s coffee morning.

“Where we are in Alderwood, we’re here 50 years this year. Everybody has lost somebody or knows somebody who has died from cancer.

“So, I said it to the girls, we call ourselves the Tea Party Girls, and we started organising.”

Last Saturday, September 24, the Tea Party Girls organised a coffee and tea morning in aid of Our Lady’s Hospice as part of the Bewley’s Big Coffee Morning Social for Hospice.

Using one of their front gardens as the venue, some 50 people flocked to the Springfield house to grab a cuppa and a slice of cake, all for the cause.

“We had about 50 people throughout the day, we could not believe the generosity of people,” Catherine says.

“The Butchers Kitchen down the road gave us cakes, Valley News made a donation and we’ve raised €1,750 so far, it was amazing.”

Off the back of their big event, regular scheduled programming resumed, with it being Catherine’s turn to host the Tea Party Girls meeting on Tuesday.