HOW will you spend your old age?
Pitt Town resident Hazel Hagar is 95 and is still not only volunteering at Hawkesbury Hospital but driving herself there and back.
“I had a driving test in October,” she said. “I don’t drive at night. Any further [than Windsor or Richmond] my son takes me.”
When asked why she is still showing up week after week she said “I have to have an interest of some kind”.
“I can’t just sit in a chair doing nothing. A couple of hours here and there is nothing. I just decided so long as I could, I would be involved. I joined Windsor Golf Club too, in 1990.”
As a member of the hospital’s auxiliary Mrs Hagar does the rounds of all the patients, replacing water in vases and throwing out old flowers and having a chat with the patients at the same time.
“We go into every room in all the wards. Most of the men’s rooms don’t have flowers. When my husband was alive, in hospital [at the the Mater] he’d ring me and say ‘can you bring some flowers? The nuns have got no flowers!’.
“If I didn’t have any I’d raid a friend’s garden or buy some.
It’s not only the flowers she does there.
“At the moment it’s only Wednesday morning when I do the flowers,” she said. “I also like to sew and knit, and every couple of months we have a morning selling the things we’ve made.”
Mrs Hagar embroiders baby singlets with rosebuds around the neck which sell for about $4. She also makes handknitted booties – and felt moved to defend that.
“I know they put them in those leggings but I’m still old fashioned – it’s such a short time they’re in them [booties],” she said.
“I like them as a baby for the first couple of months, in a nightie. Some men say they don’t want rosebuds on their clothes if they’re a boy – but they’re a baby! A nightie is easier to handle [than buttoned up onesies with feet in them].
“Wednesday we see all the new babies – I saw one today in dark grey and white,” she said, indicating disapproval.
She reminisced about the fabrics they used in the past. “We used to have Clydella and Viyella (blends of wool and cotton) and we’d do embroidery and smocking on their nighties. But nobody wears them now.”
She said she used to do matinee jackets sometimes, “but mums these days want to put everything in the washing machine”.
She also plays a round of golf and helps do the morning teas at Windsor Golf Club one day a week.
“I think you have to be involved in things and do things. I have a bad ankle at the moment but it’s the first thing I’ve ever had to go easy with.”
