Giving time - gaining friends
More than giving time
Mike joined the Link Visiting Scheme after retiring, looking for a way to stay connected with people. "One of my biggest fears about getting older is being on your own," he says. "I love people. I love to be around people, so I spoke to someone who had told me about the Link, and I thought I should do it."
It's a fear that will resonate with a lot of us - and it's often talked about from the other side, the person being visited. Mike's story is a reminder that volunteering can be just as much about warding off your own future loneliness as it is about easing someone else's now.
A shared starting point
Mike was matched with Alan around three or four years ago. Both had military backgrounds - Alan in the RAF, Mike in the military - and that shared history gave them common ground from the very first visit. Their weekly meet-ups soon became a fixture in both their routines.
Vera joined their outings a little later. She'd been visited for years by another volunteer, Wendy, who would join her and Mike and Alan for coffee - until Wendy moved away to Somerset. Rather than Vera's outings coming to an end, Mike simply kept taking her along too. "We kind of adopted Vera into our Link," he explains. Now the three of them meet every week, usually at California Country Park, where they can sit outside with a coffee - an environment that works particularly well for Alan, who has hearing difficulties and finds busy, noisy spaces harder going.
What Mike gets out of it
Ask Mike what volunteering has given him, and his answer is straightforward: "I've got a lot of enjoyment out of it." He describes Vera and Alan as "great fun" - Vera's sense of humour is a constant, and Alan, who was initially quite shy, has become more playful and mischievous the longer they've known each other. Mike puts a lot of that down to Vera's influence.
The two-hour weekly commitment is easy to manage, but what Mike takes from it goes well beyond that. "I get a lot of satisfaction out of it. We do have fun!"
Friendship, not just a favour
What started as Mike wanting to give something back and stay connected has become two genuine friendships he looks forward to every week. That's really the heart of his story: he came to the Link worried about ending up isolated in retirement, and instead found exactly the opposite - people he now can't imagine his week without.
"I've got a lot of enjoyment out of it. We do have fun!"
Interested in volunteering?
We simply couldn’t do what we do without the amazing support of our volunteer family! We are looking for volunteers to give some of their time regularly to make isolated older people in their community feel connected and valued.