Bridging the generation gap at Shrewsbury Christmas lunch

Following on from the success of 'Old People's Home for 4-year-olds', a group of local mothers and toddlers decided to hold a festive event in partnership with Age UK.

The heart-warming documentary saw retirement home residents partnered with a band of noisy four-year-olds - with the overarching aim of seeing what the health benefits might be for the elderly participants.

Lunch organiser Annie Hambley said: "The turnout was massive - event better than we expected. All together there was about 100 of us at Palmer's of Shrewsbury, which is a real important hub in our community.

"It was really nice to see everyone sitting around and chatting. Some of the older people were even giving advice to the mums which was so lovely.

"When you do something like this, you spend months hoping it goes well and this was even better than I'd hoped. It was a real fuzzy tummy moment."

Before the lunch, guests played games, chatted and opened cards and presents that were donated by local people and businesses.

Now Annie is hoping to do more lunch events in the future.

She added: "We have just got to keep this going now. I know a lot of the parents said they wanted to keep contact with the older people so I'm meeting with Age UK next week to talk about doing a quarterly generational lunch which will be much more relaxed.

"Lots of good things have come from this lunch. I met a lady who works at a care home and has a therapy dog so we're looking at doing something generational at The Mount nursing home in the future.

"There was also lots of presents, food and cards left over so in the next week I will be giving these out to people who are alone this Christmas."