Activities at Canmore Lodge Care Home

Our residents and staff are extremely grateful to Domini Robertson and Debbie Blacklaw who visited us with the amazing donation of 12 iPads and cases for the residents' use. This wonderfully generous gesture is in memory of their beloved grandmother, Nora Hunter, who was a greatly loved member of our Canmore Lodge family too. This is a marvellous tribute to Nora who will always have a place in our hearts.

We had a marvellous Hogmanay with a great visit from accordionist Bernie Hewitt and his wife, Liz, who were joined by our resident Bob's wife, Marie.

Bernie played all our Scottish favourites which we sang along to, and we also joined in with the ladies' dancing - from a waltz to traditional country steps. Bernie wasn't going to just have himself and the dancers do all the work - he got us all involved with a really fun competition guessing the nursery rhymes he played. We rounded off our lovely morning by all singing "Auld Lang's Syne".

Hogmanay evening was fun filled with Scottish songs, shortie, black bun and a few wee drams!

Across our services our residents have enjoyed a wonderful live virtual talk about starlings, one of the UK’s most gregarious birds, hosted by Rachel Dowse from The Royal Parks London.

Rachel examined our long history with this bird and the importance of common species to our lives. Our residents had the opportunity to find out more about the great murmuration and why we need to pay special attention to these beauties before it's too late.

The virtual experience was truly enjoyed by all.

Our celebratory lunch had the options of cullen skink, haggis and cranachan (with a wee dram!) for the full Scottish experience.

After such a delicious meal we were ready to party! We started off with creating our own saltires using templates and tissue paper, paint or pens, and we're pretty pleased with our results!

We followed this with a quiz on all things Scottish, from our landscape to inventors, celebrities, history and even The Broons! Not to boast, but let's just say 100%!

Next it was singalong time! We covered all the great songs from "Loch Lomond" to "Coulter's Candy" and wet our whistles with a cuppa and had a wee bite of some shortie and tablet.

Our really special St. Andrew's treat was a visit from our young friend, Honor, who came to play the pipes for us. Honor is an extremely talented young lady, who's band came first in the Bridge of Allen Highland Games and sixth in the World Championships! We were, as you can imagine, so delighted to be treated to a set of incredible bagpipe music which culminated in "Scotland the Brave".  We had a right rare time, singing, clapping and even dancing along.

Our Men’s Club enjoyed an afternoon with Dunfermline Athletic 1968 Scottish Cup winning captain, Roy Barry.

The subject matter (which we are at liberty to divulge) included Roy’s time at The Pars, Hearts, Coventry, Crystal Palace, Hibs Oxford United and East Fife.

Stars Roy had played with and against included the legendary Pele, Billy McNeil, Dennis Law, Terry Venables, George Best, and Jimmy Hill, Chopper Harris and, of course, the fabulous Dunfermline team of the '60s.

Managers under the microscope included George Farm, Malcolm Alison, Jock Stein and many others.

We enjoyed a beer with a pie and our gentlemen loved hearing inside stories from the days of classic football. Lots of banter and laughs were had.

We had a fantastic afternoon at our Christmas Fayre!
Thanks to everyone who supported us we raised almost £400 for our Residents' Fund which will go towards enriching their life experiences. As well as stalls, raffles and a tombola we had amazing help from some primary school pupils and Brownies, and some marvellous carol singers from a local Baptist Church. We are really grateful to everyone for sharing such wonderful Christmas spirit.