Simpsons is a resident hospital for elderly men. The Dublin SR team took it onto themselves to arrange an outing with the residents. Thank you Daniele Protani, Begonia Burgos, Simon Bove, Elodie Latreille, Yasmine Abbas, Florent Delouche, Farid Hammouti, Judy Walsh, Aleksandro Bojko, Christiane Maria-Hoffman, Sally Kornneef and Andreas Kerekes. Did it go well? You judge...

What a beautiful letter we received back from Simpson's Hospital after this trip:

Mary O’ Leary casually suggested during one of our Resident’s Meetings going on a trip to Dublin Zoo. As it was a few weeks away we all agreed, but when the day arrived some of us were feeling a bit apprehensive about the whole venture but didn’t air our views. A fleet of taxis arrived and all of our reservations soon disappeared.

Sean said one of the highlights of his trip was seeing old parts of Dublin that he hadn’t seen for years. Most of us hadn’t been to the Zoo for a long time. John was immediately impressed by the cleanliness of the whole place compared with his last visit over 50 years ago. Joe has a big collection of soft toy monkeys and he was besotted with the monkeys and spent a long time watching them. Richard is still musing over the gorillas. Robert on the other hand liked the snakes and we were all highly entertained by the squirrel monkeys.

There was a newness about the Zoo and the day. None of this would have been possible without the help of the volunteers who pushed our chairs and pointed out the various animals to us. Their good humour, kindness and gentleness was infectious and rubbed off on all of us. We remember them with great affection and we look forward to meeting them again on another venture. The visit to the Zoo was a day of gentle surprises.

And this is what Sally Koornneef had to say:

I think I can speak for everyone when I say it was a very moving and emotional day and it really gave it all a lot to think about. I would like to suggest that some of us continue to maintain some contact with the Men we met yesterday. We all formed the beginnings of warm relationships with the residents and I know many of them said they would love to see us again.