Bullseye! Former Cheshire County archer, Linda, helps us to hit targets in our Liscard charity shop

Linda Ferrie would do anything for Wirral Hospice St John’s. When we meet her she’s helping to re-ravel, is that a word? forty black bin bags filled with wool donated by one of our kind supporters. Yes, FORTY!

It’s all quality, there’s so much of it, and when we ask if it will sell, she assures us,

“Oh yes! Like Hot Cakes.”

It’s just one of the many tasks that Linda helps with while volunteering each Tuesday and Wednesday at our Liscard charity shop. Sorting, merchandising, re-stocking, moving furniture, serving customers, it never stops.

“I love it. No two days are the same.

Sometimes there’s a plan of the tasks I’m set for the day but that soon goes out of the window as we have to be ready for stock leaving and new stock coming in.

My volunteer colleagues and I are a crazy, random bunch of people from all kinds of backgrounds but under the direction of shop manager, Sue, and assistant manager, Holly, it all somehow works. Beautifully.

Well, nearly always. Haha!”

Linda has a special affinity for the hospice. Her dad, Jack, was a patient here in the early part of the new millennium.

Cancer in his spine led to a referral to our outpatients’ service and Jack also agreed to join what were then known as day services, nowadays the Wellbeing Centre. Linda told us,

“I don’t know what we’d have done without the hospice and the caring staff and volunteers.

Dad loved his visits. He really looked forward to his aromatherapy sessions. As a family member I was able to access them too. He meant it fondly when he referred to then aromatherapist, Lindsey, as the smelly lady. He was, of course, referring to the essential oils and aromatic scents that were part of the therapy sessions.

We were given benefits advice for dad, and I also accessed some pre-bereavement support, and even continued with aromatherapy for some weeks after he died.

By December 2002, dad had been admitted to the inpatients ward. My husband, Bill and I, would have our dinner with him in the then dining room and he was there for that year’s Light up a Life service, which was magical.

Dad wanted to come home for Christmas and although he was gravely ill by now he was determined to have his Christmas dinner at our house. At that time, we honestly didn’t think he would make it, but make it he did, and, despite everything, he was not readmitted to the hospice until early in February 2003. He died peacefully on the 6^th.

I’ll be forever grateful for the care and support of Wirral Hospice St John’s.”

Sometime after Jack’s passing, Linda was able to return to the NHS, where she’d been working since leaving Oldershaw School, at age 16, in 1987.

Working in microbiology at Clatterbridge, as a clinical lab scientist, meant that she was regularly, and in a routine far removed from what volunteering at Liscard is, analysing bodily fluids for signs of infection.

In later years she met someone at her local WI (where she is now a member of the Wallasey Iron Maidens), who worked in the same field and so was happy to share, “Ah, you worked describing poo for a living too!” EEK!!

Linda’s both a team player and talented individually. She was secretary, on a voluntary basis, for Wirral Archers archery club for twenty years and competed for the Cheshire County team. Bullseye!

With husband Bill, she was also part of the original organising committee, and keen pillion rider, on the famous Wirral Egg Run. The annual motorbike ride which sees hundreds of keen motorcyclists taking a 20-mile route around the peninsula raising money for charities and collecting Easter Eggs for underprivileged families.

Now retired, community focused Linda puts her heart and soul into volunteering for Wirral Hospice St John’s at our Liscard charity shop.

Linda, you help so much in the hospice continuing to provide the specialist care and support that we did for your dad all those years ago.

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

If you’d like to volunteer at the hospice or in your community at one of our charity shops follow the links at www.wirralhospice.org/volunteering or email volunteering@wirralhospice.org or call 0151 334 2778 and ask for volunteer services