METROLAND Spring 2022
Metroland Magazine is written by the community for the community with our own unique design. Covering life in Chesham, Amersham and Chalfont bringing you the best places to dine, days out, high street businesses, charities and projects.
Metroland Magazine is written by the community for the community with our own unique design. Covering life in Chesham, Amersham and Chalfont bringing you the best places to dine, days out, high street businesses, charities and projects.
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What’s even more heartwarming is how so much<br />
of this has continued. Hot meal deliveries - The<br />
Big Community Takeaway - started as a treat for<br />
keyworkers, exhausted after long shifts caring for<br />
others, which then became an essential service<br />
delivering hot meals to anyone who needed that<br />
support, and then stepping in and delivering<br />
lunches during school holidays to help vulnerable<br />
families. This is still happening! Amazing!<br />
Restore Hope - first with their Easter deliveries,<br />
educational toy boxes to keep our young people<br />
occupied whilst isolated, food deliveries for families<br />
in need, then fresh food boxes and now, what<br />
an incredible project they are running - their own<br />
allotments, chickens, and regular help for those<br />
who need it. And they continue to support the<br />
community in this way!<br />
A number of WhatsApp groups were set up in<br />
neighbourhoods, usually one for each road - what<br />
a godsend this proved to be and continues even<br />
now!<br />
And of course, technology! Who knew we would<br />
all be meeting online, and using terms like “hybrid<br />
working”? Who knew we would be working closely<br />
with people we’ve never met, except for a small box<br />
on the screen - it’s funny when someone meets you<br />
finally and they say “oh! You’re tiny!” We’ve seen<br />
the greatest engagement with online meetings<br />
and it’s been extraordinary to think that someone<br />
could be working for a company in our area, but<br />
actually live hundreds of miles away! And what fun<br />
to catch up with a childhood friend in America with<br />
a glass of wine and an hour chatting - this certainly<br />
brought so many of us together more closely than<br />
ever before!<br />
Retailers changed the way they worked. Cafes<br />
and restaurants became delivery services and it<br />
was amazing to see how so many adapted what<br />
they were doing in order to survive. As for online<br />
shopping locally… well! That has worked so well and<br />
we are all grateful to those retailers, restaurants<br />
and online businesses that brought some<br />
semblance of normality and actual joy at eating<br />
food someone else had cooked for you! What a<br />
treat to get a takeaway! Even when on a couple<br />
of occasions we would order at 4pm and not get<br />
our food till after 9pm because everyone wanted<br />
a treat. It was fine! We were happy to get what we<br />
could! We were grateful!<br />
For a moment, as we move back to the new normal,<br />
let’s remember how nature saved us and say thank<br />
you for the beautiful area we live in. The walks,<br />
the weather, the birdsong everywhere - we were<br />
bathed in nature and appreciated the beautiful<br />
area we live in as never before. I learned to grow<br />
tomatoes, courgettes, chillies and the enormous<br />
joy I felt when I made food from the ingredients I’d<br />
grown and nurtured, has fired me up to share that<br />
joy with everyone!<br />
It was awful, and my deepest condolences to<br />
everyone affected who lost loved ones. But it<br />
was also beautiful when we reconnected with our<br />
families and friends on zoom meetings and coffee<br />
mornings, when we supported the vulnerable and<br />
when we learned how to enjoy our families and “me<br />
time" without guilt. I hope we don’t forget what we<br />
went through and some of the lessons we learned.<br />
It still feels surreal. It still feels like something out of a<br />
storybook that we never imagined would happen to<br />
all of us. The whole world united - and even though<br />
my health has not returned to what it was before<br />
the pandemic post having caught the virus myself,<br />
I still feel grateful for the lessons I’ve learned and<br />
the friends I’ve made. For the warm memories of<br />
phoning lonely people who wouldn’t have survived<br />
without an army of people ringing round chatting<br />
to them. To everyone who volunteered, thank you,<br />
a heartfelt thank you. Everyone pulled together<br />
and made it work.<br />
Human beings are resilient and we have just<br />
proved it! I hope you don’t mind me sharing<br />
some of my most personal thoughts with you.<br />
I hope some of it has resonated and I am truly<br />
grateful for everything I have learned and the<br />
amazing people I’ve made friends with - it has<br />
made me a better<br />
person. And it has<br />
been a universal<br />
lesson bringing us all<br />
together across our<br />
world.<br />
Cllr Mimi Harker OBE<br />
<strong>METROLAND</strong> SPRING <strong>2022</strong> 15
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