There was an OLD LADY…

 … who lived next to school. She loved to hand knit woollen slippers for every student. Not just a few. Hundreds. 

She knitted all day, most days, just in time for winter. Each slipper was a uniquely functional creation, multi coloured and textured. They weren’t perfect and they didn’t need to be. One size fitted all! No fancy labels. 

They were delivered to the school office in boxes and handed out to each class. Students loved them. Each staff member got a pair too. They were free and they were ‘toasty warm’. 

As a way of saying thank you to a couple of high school guest speakers at school, they were given a pair each. The looks of genuine delight on their faces said it all. 

And it wasn’t just for the Hamilton school I was teaching at either. She also made them year after year for a larger primary school on the west side of the Waikato river. 

On reflection, I need to revise my original number of hundreds. It was thousands. 

I invited the TV 1 presenter of ‘Good Sorts’ (In the early days of the programme), Haydn Jones to do a story about her work. Much to our delight he accepted and it was screened a little while later. Long gone, her generous legacy to two school communities is fondly remembered.