Keep calm and have a sherry
Residents of a Richmond retirement home marked St Patrick’s Day in style, unfazed by the coronavirus threat, which evoked memories of past epidemics.
About 40 of Oakwoods Retirement Village’s 90-and-over residents celebrated on Tuesday with a high tea and a spot of sherry while they reminisced.
Marian Johnston, part of the catering team for the tea, said Oakwoods was taking steps to reduce the likelihood of virus transmission, including registering all visitors and cutting back on hugs and handshakes, but celebrations and events for residents were going ahead.
One resident, Warren Harris, said he wasn’t too worried about Covid-19 – an attitude he credited for reaching his age in the first place. He could still recall the first epidemic he lived through, the polio outbreak of 1937, when he was seven.
‘‘You weren’t allowed out on the streets during the day. I remember once waiting to be picked up by my mother, and I was the only person out on the whole street,’’ he said.
‘‘Young people were catching it left, right and centre . . . I remember having to drink medicine from little plastic cups.’’
That’s not the only health scare Harris has lived through. He said he had so far outlived two cancer scares, a stroke, and several other illnesses that he ‘‘wasn’t going to survive’’.
He credited his survival to his practised easy-going nature. ‘‘I always say, if you get sick, there’s only two possible outcomes: either you die, so the worry didn’t help, or you get better and you didn’t need to worry.’’